by Paul Seaburn November 3, 2017 (mysteriousuniverse.org)
• Presbyterian Reverend Barry Downing, has published a new book, Biblical UFO Revelations: Did Extraterrestrial Powers Cause Ancient Miracles?as a sequel to his 1968 book, The Bible and Flying Saucers.
• In the book, Downing speculates that the angels in the Bible are actually extraterrestrial beings; that the pillar of fire by the Red Sea in Exodus was a UFO’s propulsion system which also was used to split the Red Sea to save the Israelites; that the “bush” that spoke to Moses was an alien; that Moses went to the top of the mountain to find a space ship wherein the ETs gave him the 10 Commandments and specifications for the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant; and that Jesus was himself an extraterrestrial who “ascended” in a spaceship.
• Downing asks his readers to keep an open mind.
“The UFO got in the way of the sun, causing the earth to seem darker, and this would make the ball of light show up even more where the children were.”
What is this retired Presbyterian pastor talking about? If you think this sounds like the apparitions seen by three children in Fatima, Portugal, 100 years ago – except for the UFO part – you must be a fan of Reverend Barry Downing, who makes this and many other astonishing claims in his new book, Biblical UFO Revelations: Did Extraterrestrial Powers Cause Ancient Miracles?. Wait until you hear what he thinks about the burning bush and the pillar of fire.
Barry Downing isn’t just the Pastor emeritus of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Endwell, New York. He has bachelor’s degree in physics, a degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in the relation between religion and science from the University of Edinburgh of Scotland. He’s been enlightening and aggravating both theologians and ufologists since 1968 when he published his first book, The Bible and Flying Saucers, in which he equates biblical angels with space aliens.
“Church people have trouble with what I’m doing. People who’ve seen UFOs have no problem.”
That’s an understatement, considering Pope Francis talks about baptizing extraterrestrials while there are other Catholic Church leaders still arguing about Galileo. In an interview with Sean Casteel (who contributed to the book) on the website Unexplained Mysteries, Reverend Downing explains what’s in his new book, which is both an update and a sequel to the first:
“My argument is that the Exodus UFO, the pillar of cloud and fire, which appeared cloud-like during the day and glowed in the dark, used its propulsion system to split the waters of the Red Sea and save Israel from the Egyptians.”
Did religious scholars just feel a disturbance in the force? Downing calls the description of this event in Exodus 14:19-30 a “very detailed environmental impact statement.” He also looks at another significant phenomenon in that book as evidence of an encounter with an alien.“What is not amazing to me is not that we had a burning bush … we had a talking bush. A voice came to Moses from the bush.”
Downing also returns to his idea that angels were aliens who took Moses on their spaceship to receive the 10 Commandments and specifications for the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. Statements like these have been made by others and can certainly sound believable, at least to ufologists. Where Reverend Downing will likely get criticized is in statements about close encounters of the New Testament kind that he spells out on the back cover:
** That Jesus was an extraterrestrial sent to earth to rid the world of sin and wickedness, quoting Biblical text to support his claim.
** That Jesus left earth in a spaceship to another planet, or perhaps another spatial dimension.
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