Aliens, or Angels? On the Similarities Between UFO Encounters and Religious Experiences

When Lonnie Zamora peered into that arroyo in Socorro, New Mexico, back in 1964, he saw an egg-shaped object with some sort of markings or insignia on its side. He was strictly warned by the Air Force not to share that knowledge with civilians, and he kept his word.

Similarly, numerous witnesses associated with the 1947 Roswell crashes told government officials they saw hieroglyphics on various pieces of the debris, but they were told not to discuss this publicly. Witnesses of the UAP encounter at Rendlesham Forest in 1980 also saw similar symbols on the craft. There are many other examples like these.

Whether it be French cave paintings, Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or old Hebrew in the Dead Sea Scrolls, writing is a universal way for humans to communicate with each other. Does this logic apply to UAP? Did we learn this at some point from the nonhumans who control UAP? Do the mysterious markings on crashed UAP broadcast some sort of profound universal message? Or are those messages far more practical? Are they just simple safety warnings like “Danger. Don’t touch?”

Studying ancient writing systems swiftly morphed into studying past religions, cultures, and credible artifacts. Not only was the rabbit hole deep, but it was also very slippery.

The ancient Hebrew text called the Book of Enoch caught my attention. The book is not found in the Bible most Christians use today; it’s considered apocryphal. It predates the Gospels, but it was so important in its day that its premise would have been known to Jesus and many of his disciples. It’s the first Hebrew text in which a man, Enoch, journeys to Heaven, encounters God, and learns about the hierarchy of angels. Arguably, it’s a theoretical precursor to Christ’s resurrection and ascension to Heaven.

Enoch’s journey is filled with heavenly accounts, including descriptions of angelic and demonic hierarchy, God’s throne, God’s inner circle of guards, and even the language of the supernatural. On paper, Enoch’s travels don’t sound that dissimilar to reported nonhuman encounters.

We also looked at the sixth chapter of Genesis. That’s the chapter that contains the story of Noah’s ark. Before we get to Noah, verses 1 through 4 of that chapter quickly share that otherworldly beings came to earth and mated with human women. Some translations call these offspring giants, while others refer to the visitors by the original Hebrew word, Nephilim, which some scholars say means something like fallen angels, or beings that cause others to fall.

If Genesis 6 were a movie, the Book of Enoch would be its prequel. (Enoch is said to be Noah’s grandfather.) In the book, the Nephilim discuss their plan to take earthly women as their wives. The Book of Enoch also refers to these heavenly beings as Watchers. Two hundred Watchers travel to earth to enact this plan.

Nephilim…Watchers…angels…aliens.

To be clear, I’m not advocating the ancient astronaut hypothesis that many today believe. I’m simply drawing some interesting parallels. The Bible as commonly read today offers us details of Ezekiel’s Wheel and Jacob’s Ladder. Are these stories merely instructive, or are they feeble attempts by humans to reconcile their bewilderment over seeing otherworldly technology?

In Western Australia there are 4,000-year-old aboriginal rock paintings that depict the Wandjina, spirit beings with big white heads, large eyes, and little or no mouths. In Peru there is a strange 1,300-year-old image of a Mayan king ensconced in what looks like a spaceship. In Cherokee folklore there is a myth about how glowing people descended to earth, stayed a short time among the Cherokee, then ascended to become the stars in the sky.

These stories are separated by centuries and continents, yet are undeniably similar. Are these solely works of human imagination, or is there more to these stories?

This line of thought raises an interesting point about human psychology. When we are confronted with the unknown, humans invariably look to religion to explain the unexplainable. As a species, we have a hard time accepting things we don’t understand as real.

During World War II, American bombers and cargo transport planes sometimes landed on Polynesian islands and encountered people who were not connected to the so-called modern world. Pilots shared a little of their cargo with the locals, rested up, then departed for their intended destinations. Anthropologists later discovered that in the pilots’ absence, these people built wooden effigies of those aircraft, and conducted rituals designed to coax the planes to return again with their bounty of cargo.

The encounters these Polynesian people had with unusual technology inspired beliefs. This is referred to as a cargo cult.

Imagine building a model of a giant supermarket delivery truck and praying to it every day so that it will return with a bounty of food again and again. Are these people “wrong” for doing this? Especially if, in their minds, their practices deliver results?

As humans, we often assimilate what is not known into what is known, in order for things to make sense to us. Religion, myths, stories…these are things many of us accept. As a spiritual person myself, I understand this, and by no means am I denigrating any religion or belief system.

Now, one could easily argue that this course of research was not related to national security. Moreover, some people would start to feel uncomfortable digging into this kind of material, the moment it touched upon religion, but we needed to understand the past to see if it provided valuable clues.

My religious background growing up was fluid enough to keep me open-minded. By attending both a Jewish temple and school and, at the same time, a Catholic church, I grew up immersed in both faiths, celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas, until I grew older.

In the world of academia, if you were truly going to investigate a mystery of this magnitude, you would assemble a cutting-edge team of researchers who were experts in the relevant fields. You’d have a cryptographer to study the codes. You’d have linguists who specialize in languages and writing systems. You’d have scholars who specialize in religion and mythology. And you’d have a solid budget to get the work done in a reasonable way.

As these experts brought their brainpower to bear on the problem, they would write up their research and publish it in academic journals, for the whole world to see. That’s how science is done in the real world. It’s completely transparent, which is the best way to get ideas flowing.

But that was never going to happen with our government investigation. For the sake of national security, we would rarely get permission to farm out this kind of work to outsiders. We didn’t have the budget for that anyway.

One day I arrived at our group office to find Jim and a couple of the others kicking around ideas for a chart Jim had conceived. At the top he’d typed the word God. At the bottom was Humans. In the middle was Angels.

That’s where the conversation became mired. If we went down this avenue as a possibility, one had to ask certain hypothetical questions. Did angels belong halfway between humans and God? In the Bible you have humans seeing, speaking with, and hearing the words of angels. An angel visits Mary to tell her that she will give birth to the infant Jesus. In the famous story of Abraham and Isaac, the angel verbally halts the elder from sacrificing his son.

Jim theorized that if the distance between humans and angels is large, was it not probable that other beings existed between the purely spiritual angels and the flesh-and-soul creatures known as humans? Was it possible an entire ecosystem of divine and semidivine life forms existed in an invisible ecosystem?

Our job was challenging enough without having to grapple with theological questions. Jay clearly felt the same. We had a hard enough time talking to officials about UAP; how could we possibly speak about this other element without provoking powers that be to shut us down?

I shook my head as if snapping out of a daydream. “God’s Angels and Aliens?” I joked.

Jay laughed and agreed, but Jim wanted to pursue this line of thought, regardless of the risk. I don’t think he necessarily subscribed to it, but as a true scientist, he was exploring all avenues, no matter where they might lead.

Jim felt you could not intelligently pursue some of the questions raised without going deep into every idea that we tripped upon. I didn’t blame him, especially since I had been learning firsthand about disturbing and surprising matters related to UAP, from implants to biological effects, and Jay’s other work that I would soon learn about.

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Excerpt from Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs by Luis Elizondo. Copyright © 2024 by Luis Elizondo. Used with permission by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.