September 3, 2019 Show with Kenneth R. Samples on “Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men: A Rational Christian Look at UFOs & Extraterrestrials”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this third day of September 2019.

I hope you all had a safe and joyful and blessed Labor Day weekend and I'm glad to be back at the helm of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for our first live broadcast in September.

And today we have one of my oldest Christian friends on the program, a returning guest who

I love to interview, his name is Kenneth R. Samples, senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe, and we're going to be discussing one of his most controversial books that he has co -authored with Hugh Ross and Mary Clark, Lights in the

Sky and Little Green Men, a rational look, a rational

Christian look, at UFOs and extraterrestrials. Oh, Ezekiel saw the wheel a -rollin' way up in the middle of the air.

Ezekiel saw the wheel a -rollin' way in the middle of the air. Well, the big wheel run by faith, my lord, and the little wheel run by the grace.

Oh, good old wheel and all wheel a -rollin' way in the middle of the air.

Oh, Ezekiel saw the wheel a -turnin' way up in the middle of the air.

Ezekiel saw the wheel a -rollin' way in the middle of the air. Yes, Ezekiel's wheel, believed by many

UFO enthusiasts to be the first recorded UFO sighting in history. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my friend

Ken Samples. Hello there, Chris. It's good to be with you. Thank you for having me on.

Hey, it's great to have you on. And first, why don't you let our listeners know about Reasons to Believe, where you serve as Senior Research Scholar.

Yeah, Reasons to Believe is a science -based think tank.

We have lots of great information about issues relating to the

Christian faith and its compatibility with science. We've got a very expansive website, reasons .org.

I'm on the scholar team there. I'm kind of the oddball in that I'm the only non -scientist to bring my background in philosophy and theology.

So, reasons .org will open up Reasons to Believe to you. Great. And if anybody has more questions or they'd like to explore in more detail

Reasons to Believe, you can go to reasons .org, reasons .org, and hopefully we will remember to announce that website later on in the program as well.

Well, you know, I've been watching, I don't know if you ever watch Tucker Carlson, who is my favorite host on Fox News.

I don't agree with everything Tucker says or does, but I agree with a lot of what he says.

And he has really been captivated by the UFO phenomenon, and I think that he's a very level -headed and reasonable guy.

He's not a nutjob or a sensationalist that would want to cater to something that he thought was utterly ridiculous.

And he has been talking, basically, a lot with expert guests on the program, those that are experts in aeronautical aviation and engineering and so forth, about the

UFO phenomenon, about the fact that there are unidentified flying objects that have been witnessed even by astronauts and people in the

United States Air Force who are highly respected. And so, this is an interesting thing.

He believes that there is, and his guests typically believe there is great evidence that there is a government cover -up about this, which further entices the imagination of people who run wild and come to all kinds of conclusions about that.

But, what was the initial catalyst that you, Hugh Ross and Mary Clark, came to write

Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men? Yeah, Chris, I've watched the

Tucker Carlson interviews as well and found it interesting and you've had some interesting guests on.

Well, my interest in the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials probably goes back to my time working with Walter Martin, who was the original

Bible Answer Man. I worked at the Christian Research Institute from 1987 until near the end of 1993.

Walter Martin was interested in UFOs. He had a lecture that he gave on the topic and I listened to that many years ago.

When I was a researcher at CRI, people would call in or write in and inquire about UFOs.

Then I was approached by a colleague from Biola University who was writing a series on various cults and they wanted to include a book on UFO cults.

That project was not completed, but I did a lot of research for it.

So, when I began working at Reasons to Believe in 1997, Hugh Ross, who was an astronomer, he, of course, has long been interested in the subject and, of course, worked in the various science fields, looked through telescopes and various issues, so he was interested in the topic.

So, what we decided to do is, when we worked on lights in the sky and little green men,

Hugh would present the kind of scientific data as an astronomer. I would look at the religious and sociological, philosophical implications, and then

Mark Clark is a professor that deals with basic governmental studies.

So, we thought, wow, this could be good because we can address the scientific issues, we can look at the religious issues, and we can get

Mark to comment on maybe government conspiracies. And that was the result of that book.

It came out in 2002, and people still have lots of questions about extraterrestrials, about UFOs, about abduction, contactee, and I think the book has held up pretty well.

I think it is fair -minded, we offer differing interpretations about how to understand the phenomenon, and then we offer an explanatory model.

Well, my deepest apologies to Mark Clark for at least twice calling him

Mary. Oh, that's okay. I'm sure he'll forgive you.

He's a very gracious guy. Just another sign that I definitely need prescription glasses.

Sorry, Mark, and perhaps this is a warning to the person who chose the typeface for the cover of the book.

Well, blame it on the cover. Well, this subject has actually fascinated me since I was a little kid.

And one thing that I have told people, and perhaps you have a different way of responding, but there are many

Christians over the years who have said to me, Do you believe in UFOs?

And my answer has typically been, well, it's not really a matter of a fact what

I believe in. It is the question, do

UFOs exist? And they do, because UFO means unidentified flying object.

That does not mean, if I say, yes, I know that UFOs exist, that doesn't mean that I believe in intelligent life on other planets.

It doesn't mean that I believe in visitations from extraterrestrials. It just means that there are flying objects that have yet to be identified.

Am I right in that? Yeah, that's right. UFO simply means unidentified flying objects.

There have been tens of thousands of reports that have come in over the last 70 years or so.

The phenomenon largely began right after World War II, but it's also true that people have reported seeing unusual things in the sky for many centuries.

But most UFOs become IFOs, identified flying objects. I think it is reasonable to conclude that the vast majority of UFO reports or UFO sightings are simply misidentified natural or human phenomena.

For example, we write in the book that we think anywhere from 90 to 95 % of UFOs have some natural explanation and can become

IFOs, identified flying objects. But then the question is, for that small percentage that is left over, how do we then interpret that and understand that phenomenon?

Well, I had heard, even as a young boy, that many

UFO enthusiasts, as I've said in the opening, do include or state that Ezekiel's wheel in the

Bible is the first recorded sighting of a UFO. Have you heard that same report from those involved in the

UFO phenomenon? Oh, yeah. Yes. I mean, there are plenty of people who engage in what

I would call UFO religion. There are many UFO cults, and many of these people would look to scripture to some degree or another.

The Ezekiel passage is a very common one. Unfortunately, UFO religion, whether it is contacteism, which was very, very popular in the 50s and 60s, abduction became popular in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

And then UFO cults, they are steeped in occultism.

They're steeped in things like seances. But instead of talking to spirits, they believe they're talking to UFO beings.

But UFO religion is very, very popular.

And yes, people appeal to the wheel in Ezekiel, and some people try to read the scriptures through the prism of kind of a

UFO worldview, if you will. Yes, and some of those, or at least one of those cults that was a

UFO cult, I don't know if it still exists, because most of the members, including its leader, committed suicide, the

Heaven's Gate cult immediately comes to mind. Yes, exactly. I write about that in a chapter in Lights in the

Sky. This was a group that was in San Diego, California, not too far from the

Reasons to Believe headquarters. And that was the time in which the Hellbot comet was circling the

Earth. And I remember being up in the mountains, being able to look up and see the

Hellbot comet, and Marshall Applewhite, who was the leader of the Heaven's Gate group, said that there was a spacecraft behind the comet, and they ultimately committed suicide, believing that they would join these beings.

And so, you know, Chris, UFOs and the UFO phenomenon, it is weird, it's strange.

It's kind of kooky. But UFO religion can be dangerous, because the ideas not only are contrary to historic

Christianity, but as we have seen, it can be very cultic, and in that case, it led to the death of quite a number of their members.

Yes, do they still exist at all, that cult? To the best of my knowledge, it's largely...

After the suicide, I think it's largely gone, but, I mean, there are other groups, the

Ethereus Society, there are other UFO groups out there, and so, you know, to one degree or another,

UFO religion has become popular. In fact, I am a passionate student of history, and I love to watch the

History Channel, there's a couple of them. Well, I used to say, it used to be the

Hitler Channel, meaning that it was always about World War II and the Nazis, and, you know, you could always see a good special on Hitler and the

Nazis. Well, now it's become the Alien Channel, where, you know, aliens,

UFOs just kind of dominate that kind of programming, and so, people are interested, and it's easy to understand why,

Chris. A lot of people, even if they don't believe in traditional religion, maybe they're not Christian, or maybe they're not

Jewish, yet, they're still looking for ultimate answers, meaning and purpose.

Is the universe, are we alone in the universe, and could these beings be coming here?

So, some people believe in salvation from above, by extraterrestrial beings that have all this wisdom, and so, this is, again, kooky, strange, weird, but some people take it very, very seriously, and I thought it was worthy of trying to write in a very careful and credible way about these groups, and fortunately,

I was joined by an astronomer, and by an expert in the area of, you know, the government, and how the government deals with these kinds of things.

And I don't know if you would categorize these groups that I'm about to mention as UFO cults, but they involve extraterrestrial phenomenon within their religions.

You have the Mormons, a lot of people don't even realize that the Battlestar Galactica TV series, and subsequent movies, were originally based on Mormon theology.

In fact, the TV series, and perhaps the movies, I don't know, but the TV series was certainly written and directed and produced by Mormons, and there is replete throughout the series, hidden Mormon theology and doctrine.

You also have the Nation of Islam, where they are awaiting the mothership to take the faithful black

Muslims, or Nation of Islam members, off this planet. And you have, of course,

Scientology, that is also involving extraterrestrials and so on.

If you want to comment on any of those that you're familiar with. Yeah, let me mention just a couple of the particular groups that I write about.

The Aetherius Society, Uranus Academy of Science, I write about Heaven's Gate, the

Raelian Movement, a little bit about Urantia, all of these are kind of UFO religions or cults.

But it's interesting, and I'm glad you mentioned it, that there are other groups, such as the

Latter -day Saints, that they have a perspective on outer space.

And you're right, that particular program had a backdrop of kind of a Mormon context, and some of the black

Muslims have also talked about these kinds of things. And so I think Christmas really is a religious phenomenon.

Again, the idea of space, the idea of reaching out to beings that may be out there, there may be other worlds, and I think this is, of course, a counterfeit religion.

I think that, again, these groups have specific beliefs. Here are some of the major beliefs of UFO cults.

They believe that flying saucers are real, they believe people are in touch with alien intelligences, and they believe that there are messages given from these aliens that are religious in nature.

And so, again, the Urantia book is supposed to be a revelation come from beings from outer space.

So, yeah, this is, again, a religious phenomenon. But, of course,

Scripture tells us, I think, that when people stop worshipping the true and living

God, or cut off from God because of their sin, they don't stop worshipping, they don't stop becoming religious.

Rather, they look to find something else to worship, some other element to connect themselves to.

And so this may be kind of the new techno -religions, the religions of space, and, again, even though it's kind of a weird phenomenon, and I had some people take some shots at me about writing a book about UFOs, but I think that this is a very significant apologetic area, and we need credible people writing and critiquing this phenomenon.

Oh, yeah, definitely, because when I interact with non -believers, especially millennials, that's one of the first things they bring up.

Do you believe in life on other planets? Is it possible that there's intelligent life on other planets? Is it possible that Jesus was an alien from another planet, and the apostles, etc.,

etc.? There have even been suggestions or theories by UFO fanatics that have said the reason why the artwork of Christ and the saints from the medieval period and earlier typically will have halos around their heads is because those were actually some kind of apparatuses so they could breathe, you know?

Yeah, I have, even in some of my other apologetic books,

Chris, I've written about the so -called extraterrestrial Jesus, that Jesus was able to do miracles in the minds of UFO religions because he was from the technology of the future, and maybe he pulled off the resurrection because of that.

And so, yeah, even though this is, again, unusual and non -typical, it nonetheless has gotten a lot of street cred, if you will, by people who are interested.

And, of course, people are fascinated with conspiracies, they're fascinated with the idea that the government may know a lot more about this than they're letting on, and so people,

I think, are drawn to these kinds of questions. Yes, well, I mean, with one thing that you just said about the government keeping things hidden and secret, obviously this could be involving, if indeed that is true, and I don't, the government hides a lot of things from us, so,

I mean, it could be involving, you know, military machinery and vessels and aircraft and all kinds of things that they don't want the public to be aware of for obvious reasons, and also it could be the discovery of that type of machinery, aircraft, weaponry, that has been discovered from the enemy and so on.

So, I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why the government might cover something like that up that does not involve invasions from outer space.

But before we even, perhaps even go further into that aspect, why don't you, before we go to our first break, go over some of the types of UFOs.

Yeah, you know, what's kind of interesting as we look at this, we start to see that the

UFO phenomenon really kind of comes out of the backdrop of World War II, and I simply wanted to quickly make the point that, you know, when you had a

Cold War, the government was very protective about various things, but even today you still have great competition with the

Chinese, with the Russians, and so there are reasons why the government is kind of slow in many ways to kind of let some of this out.

Well, let me talk a little bit about the types of UFOs here a little bit.

You know, you have, going back to the Spielberg movie, you know, close encounters.

That is kind of a way of kind of explaining UFO phenomenon, and you have various close encounters.

You have the four kinds. The close encounter of the first kind would be seeing a

UFO or seeing some kind of phenomenon. Close encounter of the second kind would be where that phenomenon leaves some kind of physical effects in the environment, you know, a broken tree, signs of radiation, scorched earth.

Close encounter of the third kind is where people actually claim to see occupants, witnesses.

You know, maybe they have communication. And then close encounters of the fourth kind would be where people actually maybe go on the ship.

And then the fifth kind, and this is rare, but there are cases of it where a person is actually killed because of some kind of phenomenon that they're experiencing.

And again, you know, kind of broadly, a lot of people think, and I am one of them, that the vast majority of UFOs can be

IFOs. They can be explained naturally, usually some kind of natural phenomenon.

I mean, there are a lot of things in the sky that we could mistake for some kind of aircraft or some kind of human phenomena.

I live near an Air Force base in Southern California, and when it was very foggy,

I saw a plane come out of there, and it was like, whoa, what in the world was that?

So a lot of people, a lot of critics would simply say, if 90 to 95 percent can be explained naturally, maybe all of it can.

But as we'll get into in the show, I think there are still some questions about that small percentage.

Yeah, we're going to our first break right now, and if anybody wants to ask a question of their own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter, and I assume that if somebody out there has seen a weird -looking flying object that they have no explanation for, they might want to remain anonymous, they might be too embarrassed to say something about it in public, especially perhaps if they're a

Christian and they know that the majority of their brothers and sisters are very leery about such phenomenon.

We could understand that you would want to remain anonymous, and we will grant your request. But other than that, if it's just a general question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. So we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Ken's samples on Lights in the

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Wheel in the Sky Yes, Wheel in the

Sky by one of my favorite hair bands from the 1980's Journey and Wheel in the

Sky, obviously a reference to our discussion today Life's in the Sky and Little Green Men A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and Extraterrestrials A book by my guest,

Ken Samples and also his co -authors, Hugh Ross and the now masculine version

Mark Clark and again, I apologize to Mark about calling him

Mary before and I hope that he had never been called Mary before this or after so once again, my apologies

If anybody has questions our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com and as always, please give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter and we do have a question from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania and she asks

Do you know anything about the Barney and Betty Hill account? Do you think that these two people, this married couple were charlatans?

That they were mentally disturbed? Or if they really, at the very least believed that they were abducted by aliens, whether or not this was actually the case?

Yeah, Susan, thanks for raising that question I have read the account of the

Hills and this is again part of what we call the phenomenon of abduction you know, abduction is where people claim to have some kind of encounter with UFO beings or creatures sometimes they are taken upon the ship, they're captured they undergo interrogation sometimes they even claim that they undergo some kind of physical examination some of them even claim that they have bruises or wounds on their body, there have even been people who have claimed that there were physical objects that were taken out of their bodies and things like this you know, it's kind of hard to understand what is the best explanation of this when

I read the Hill report there were a lot of things that ran through my mind

I wondered how much they had been given over to kind of UFO religion and various ideas there are questions that are raised, and I don't mean this as an offense or an ad hominem attack but there are times you wonder what kind of emotional state people were going through at the time but there is also other times where people make claims that can't be fully substantiated, and you're not totally sure how to explain a lot of this, but I can tell you this that whether you look at abducteeism or contacteeism or UFO religion it almost always has some kind of occult connection and whenever people are involved in the occult there are weird and strange and potentially demonic things connected with it but yeah,

I read the Hill report not sure how to make of it I don't know I don't know that I would say that they were charlatans but I wonder if some of their ideas weren't mixed with UFO phenomena and so yeah it's been a long time since I read it but I remember the report

I remember clearly watching the TV movie of this account

I was a young kid somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 or so actually perhaps a little bit older than that, maybe 15 but I think it might have been the first movie

I ever saw James Earl Jones in. He and Estelle Parsons starred in that made -for -television movie trying to remember the name of it,

I think it was called the UFO Incident and I was captivated by it.

As a kid I became that might have even been the catalyst that I became a UFO nut as a child still a nut, no longer a

UFO nut but now obviously you have been giving hints here and there throughout the beginning of this program that there is an alternative way of interpreting these things.

You have first those things that have been explained or can be logically explained through natural means and phenomena you have charlatans fakers and you also have people who are mentally ill perhaps but there's also the demonic realm how much of the unexplained

UFO phenomenon those that you are aware of that have no explanation nobody has provided an explanation and at the same time experts at least the majority of them in certain cases believe that these events that I'm speaking of in this category are not faked they believe that there is some kind of real phenomenon there but they have no explanation

I mean do you have any, I mean obviously this would be a guess on your part but do you have any idea of what you think the percentage might be actually supernatural demonic activity?

Yeah Chris let me say just first of all that page 128 and 129 of our book we have a basic summary of Barney and Betty Hill so Susan can check that out yeah you've asked a really good question and Chris having a background in philosophy and logic

I'm very interested in a form of a reasoning called abductive now this is not

UFO abduction this is abductive reasoning which is contrasted with deductive and inductive so deduction if you do the process right you end up with certainty inductive arguments you do the process right you end up with probably true conclusions abductive reasoning has to do with what's plausible best explanation if you will and I think that explaining the

UFO phenomenon the extraterrestrial issue it really does kind of come down to three broad theories call them hypotheses if you want

I would say the first one is the misidentified hypothesis I would agree that 90 -95 % of UFOs have some kind of natural explanation you know it could be things you see in the sky we mentioned that in the book various things you could see that are natural that you might think are something other than natural and we also talk about man -made phenomenon as well so the misidentified hypothesis just simply says look the vast majority of UFOs become

IFOs so why not all of them are just misidentified phenomenon a second hypothesis or thesis if you will is what we call the extraterrestrial view and that's the most popular idea you know that's the idea that there are beings in other parts of the universe in other galaxies and these creatures are thought to be highly advanced in terms of science and technology so much so that they have traveled to Earth and they're desiring to communicate so again this would be the extraterrestrial hypothesis this would mean we're not alone in the universe this would mean that these beings are highly sophisticated then there is the third hypothesis and it's the position that we take in the book although you know again we're very careful

I don't think you should skip over the misidentified hypothesis too quickly

I mean a lot of a lot of UFOs can be explained in terms of people misidentifying reality but here's the third one it's the interdimensional hypothesis or viewpoint and it says that while the vast majority of UFOs and UFO phenomena can be explained naturally that there are a residual phenomenon and that this residual phenomenon does not correspond well to misidentification because after all

Tucker Carlson was talking about naval aviators who have a lot of experience with man -made phenomena they're also very familiar with the sky and things of that nature there were some sightings of filmed sightings that those that are experts in aeronautical aviation or aeronautical engineering and aviation that they have said on his program we do not have the technology to create an aircraft that can travel at that speed stop instantly in mid -air, reverse its direction and other things that these sightings have done so it is quite a bizarre and fascinating phenomenon yeah that's exactly right and in our book we talk about people who have observed phenomena very similar to what these aviators are saying of recent reports that they've the what they observed violates the very laws of physics and that if it were human beings in these crafts because after all

America is kind of in a second cold war there's lots of competition between America and China there is still competition between the

United States and the Russians and so you know military technology is secretive but people have said in these recent reports as well as the reports that we recount in our book that if there were a human passenger in that craft they could not survive the aeronautical phenomena and so some of these some of these reports don't seem consistent with a regular time space world they seem to be extra dimensional and then of course if you begin to look at any kind of the

UFO religions connected to it there appears to be a demonic connection to these kinds of things and so all of these views, the misidentified phenomena view, the extraterrestrial perspective, the interdimensional view all of them have strengths and weaknesses

I mean you know in the extraterrestrial one think of it, you'd have to have these creatures who live in some other galaxy they would have to have this enormous investment of traversing to planet

Earth my co -author Hugh Ross would tell you that traveling through space is never easy it is very dangerous and the distances that they would have to traverse, it would take multiple generations now of course the explanations given the exotic explanations that they go through a wormhole or these kinds of things but none of that, you know all of that is still science fiction but there is in this residual, this small percentage it does seem like this is a phenomena that doesn't seem physical it doesn't seem natural it seems spiritual, it seems to be part of another dimension and if it's spiritual the connection could very real be demonic in nature and I'll tell you

Chris, I do not recommend that people fool around with UFO religion or UFO phenomena it is not good for your psychological state, it is not good for your spiritual condition it is not in some cases it's not even safe for your life and you know

I'll tell you, and you know me Chris you know me pretty well I'm not from a

Pentecostal or charismatic background I tend to be very analytical my wife would tell you

I'm too rational but when I was researching for this book, I felt very oppressed and I'm not someone who is quick to say that but I had to read a lot of strange and weird things and it wasn't something

I would quickly go back to because it's not just weird and strange

I think there is something oppressive about this phenomenon

Is there a way that you can if you feel comfortable doing so summarize and explain in more detail what this oppression was like?

Well I remember very distinctly writing, you know, working on the book and I have to tell you being an author is not an easy thing there is a great investment in working on a book and of course there are pressure of deadlines and things of that nature but I remember very clearly

I was writing about this and my wife who was late at night

I was working on a chapter my wife was asleep in bed and she woke up out of bed and telling me about this strange dream that she had and it was like nothing

I had ever experienced, my wife is she is very level -headed, she is you know, a very dedicated

Christian, but she began talking to me about these weird dreams that she was having and I also felt, you know spiritually like there was

I was under some kind of attack and again, don't get me wrong,

I am I am the last person to attribute a spiritual explanation

I'm probably more the kind of person who would be looking for hey, maybe I just, you know didn't get enough rest but that was a weird experience that I had during that time and I've never had anything like that before or after.

And the possible explanation for that, if indeed it was demonic oppression would be that you were prying the cesspool lid off of something in the demonic realm that the demons and Satan himself don't want you to be able to explain,

I'm assuming. I that is a possible interpretation that I was encroaching on territory that tends to be connected to the occult and to the demonic realm and you know, again,

I was trying to think through their doctrines and their ideas I read some of their literature and it was high strangeness, there's no doubt about it and I distinctly remember thinking when that book was done,

I was like I am glad. Wow. Well we're going to our midway break right now this is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida always requires of us in the middle of our show a longer break so that they can localize

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida which is a requirement of the

FCC that they localize their programming to the city and state in which they exist so while they air their own public service announcements and other things we air our globally heard commercials so we ask of you to use this time wisely please write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and more successfully patronize our advertisers please please try not to, at least not every day, fast forward through our commercials because we really need our listeners to patronize our advertisers if we are to remain on the air and the more, we will more likely remain on the air if our advertisers stick around, they see value in advertising with us they see responses coming from our listeners, for instance

Solid Ground Christian Books has been getting very good responses from you in the audience and I'm so thankful for that, they have tripled their spending as far as advertising is concerned on Iron Trouper's Iron Radio and they have done so voluntarily

I haven't even asked them to do that they've done that because they've gotten a ton of business from our listeners so, they are certainly going to stick around as long as they are able to, as long as they continue to get business but there's a lot of other advertisers that we would hope that you would patronize as well, so please remember to write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more successfully and frequently patronize them, also write down questions for Ken's samples about UFOs and extraterrestrials our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com don't go away,

God willing, we're going to be back after these messages with more of Ken's samples and lights in the sky and little green men gotta tell you, for my money

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Before I return to my guest, Ken Samples, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make. The first is this

December 19th and 20th, Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th, I am going to be in Manhattan, in my old stomping grounds, to attend the

Foundations Conference. And I am so looking forward to that, and I don't think there's a better place in the world to be during the

Christmas season than New York City. And that's where the Foundations Conference is, a conference of sermonaudio .com.

And I really hope that, as many of you who are men in ministry leadership, that is who the conference is for.

It's restricted to men in ministry leadership because of the small size of the venue. They can only seat less than 200 people there.

So I hope as many of you who are men in ministry leadership join me there, Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th, in New York City.

The speakers include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, Paul Washer, Rev. Jeff Thomas, Rev. Armin Tomasian, Richard Colwell Jr.,

and Andrew Quigley. For more details, go to thefoundationsconference .com, thefoundationsconference .com.

And then in January, Thursday, January 16th through Saturday, January 18th,

I am going to be, God willing, in Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, at the

Georgia International Convention Center, to once again attend and also man an exhibitor's at the

G3 Conference. I have always had such a phenomenal experience manning an

Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio exhibitor's booth at the G3 Conference in the

Georgia International Convention Center. The G3, by the way, stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory. And this

January's theme is on worship matters, a very important theme for sure in this day and age when worship seems to divide those in the body of Christ more than anything else.

The speakers at this conference include Stephen J. Lawson, once again,

Paul Washer. We have my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

We have Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of John MacArthur's Media Ministry, grace to you.

We have my friend Kosti Hinn, the nephew, believe it or not, of notorious charlatan and heretic

Benny Hinn. And Kosti Hinn has renounced the heresies of his uncle and is now a

Reformed Baptist and cessationist pastoring in Arizona. You've been hearing Dr.

James R. White advertise the G3 Conference and he has been saying that Kosti pastors in California, but there has been a very recent development where his church in California sent him to bless a congregation in Arizona where he now is serving on the ministerial team.

There are many more speakers and the one that is the most recent addition is

John MacArthur himself is on the speaking lineup. So I would register if I were you as quickly as possible before they run out of room and especially if you want to register for an exhibitor's booth like I will be manning for Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

If you have a business, a parachurch ministry, an event, or something that you want to promote to the body of Christ, this is an ideal conference to do that because every year they have over 5 ,000 people there and with John MacArthur added to the lineup,

I think they're going to have over 6 ,000 people. So I hope that you join me there and I hope that you have an exhibitor's booth near mine.

That's Thursday, January 16th through Saturday, January 18th at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia.

For more details on registering to attend and or register to have an exhibitor's booth, well actually if you register for an exhibitor's booth, you will be attending.

So it will be either registering to attend or to register for an exhibitor's booth.

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com and please mention that you heard about the conference from Chris Arnsen at Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Last but not least, if you love this show, you don't want it to go away. You look forward to the topics and guests that I feature on this show every single day.

Sometimes they are guests and topics that are never heard anywhere else.

Well if you don't want Iron Trip and Zion Radio to go bye -bye, please help us remain on the air through your generous and frequent donations as much as possible.

As I try to remind you every day, never take money away from your regular giving to your local church in order to give to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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I believe, we would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we surely do need the advertising dollars.

And if you are not a member of a local Bible -believing church and you're not even prayerfully looking for one, you're living in rebellion against God.

Please rectify that situation immediately. And please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put something like, I need a church in the subject line. I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and I may be able to help you find a church near you or a church for your loved ones in any part of the world where they live and they don't have a church currently that they're attending or where they are a member.

Or the churches may be located where you are going on vacation.

I've had a number of people ask me to recommend churches where they are vacationing. Well, whatever the case may be, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Ken Samples.

We are discussing his book co -authored with Hugh Ross and Mark Clark, Lights in the

Sky and Little Green Men, A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and Extraterrestrials.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Ken, we have a question from John in Bangor, Maine who wants to know, is it ever compatible with biblical orthodoxy to believe it is possible for life to exist on other planets and other galaxies and solar systems?

Yeah, John, I'm glad you asked that question. You know, what's interesting is

Thomas Aquinas, the very influential Catholic philosopher in the 13th century, asked the question, could

God have created life in outer space? So Christians for a very long time have given consideration to the idea of whether we are alone or whether God's creation could be more expansive than we think.

My own thought about that is that I wonder about one very serious question, and that would be,

I think that if God had created people, intelligent creatures in other worlds, they would be fallen, and then how would they be redeemed?

Would Jesus have to go from planet to planet or from solar system to galaxy?

There are questions relating to the exclusivity of the Incarnation.

I tend to doubt, maybe, that God had created people in other worlds, but I don't know that we can exclusively rule out the idea.

But you could go at least all the way back to Thomas Aquinas, and Christians have been asking those questions.

You know, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, a fellow Calvinist, the other day about this very issue, and for the entirety of my

Christian life, I dismissed the idea of life on other planets, and I specify intelligent life.

I don't know if there is any reason why a conservative, biblically sound

Christian would automatically renounce or dismiss the concept of unintelligent life on other planets, because if you really put all your eggs in that basket, and science does eventually find plant life and animal life or microscopic life on other planets, then you've really put your own faith in question to those around you.

Does that make sense to you? Yeah. I think you have to be very thoughtful, very deliberative when you set forth what would falsify the faith.

That is, you know, what are the absolute essentials of our faith, and if they were disproven, what would that mean?

And you know, I clearly think the resurrection is there, creation ex nihilo probably is right there at the core, but you know, whether God's creation is more expansive than we think,

I think we're speculating a little bit, and there would be very serious questions again about God's redemptive plan, but I think it's interesting that Christians have always been thoughtful people and have speculated about this long before modern science.

Well, one of the things, one of the reasons I specified that my conversation recently about this subject involved a friend who is a fellow

Calvinist, is because for the first time that I can remember,

I began thinking to myself, now if we who are

Reformed believe that there are an elect people, which is only a percentage or a portion or a segment of all of humanity and all of creation, that have been chosen to be saved, that receive the full benefit of Christ's death, through his shedding of his redemptive blood on Calvary, and we do believe that there are reprobates, does it then therefore necessarily rule out that there could be some kind of intelligent creatures, perhaps even some realm of the demonic phenomenon or what have you, but creatures that would not have to have a gospel scenario wherever they are, because they're reprobate,

I mean, God never intended to save them, and I know that you're a fellow

Calvinist, does what I just said just add to my reputation for lunacy, or is there some kind of rational thinking there?

You know, I think you're reasonable. Now, I mentioned

Thomas Aquinas, I think Aquinas' response was, probably the incarnation would not come from planet to planet,

Thomas then proposed maybe there would be another way that God would save them. Now, that's more difficult for me to adopt, but here's where I think that I would be open and sympathetic to your view, and that is,

I think that creation may be much more expansive than we've ever known, and you know, one of the famous cosmologist, physicist

Paul Davies, said that if a UFO landed on the White House lawn, would that disprove

Christianity? Well, that sparked my own thought. Could there be life?

I would expect that God is not just the creator of our small solar system, but of the cosmos itself.

So, whether they would reflect maybe part of that intelligent life that God has not chosen,

I don't think that that's an unreasonable question to ask. Now, having said that,

I think that there is danger, a danger, in preoccupying your mind with these things, because the

Bible has given us more than our minds can handle already, to understand and to live by the unfathomable riches in Christ that are found in the

Scriptures. If we spent a lifetime studying the

Scriptures for the majority of each 24 -hour day, we could never plumb to the depths of this book, and since this book does not contain any mention of these, at least nobody that I know of has exegeted passages that we can certainly get any kind of hint of extraterrestrial life other than the supernatural realm that includes the angelic and the demonic, that we shouldn't be really putting so much time and effort and thought into this.

And I have told friends of mine who are not believers, especially the millennials who

I mentioned in the beginning of the show, who seem to have that as a among the very first questions, I have said to them, you know, you are going to be standing before God as your judge one day, and you need to be right with him.

And these rabbit trails that you allow to deflect or enable you to escape, at least in your mind, your need to repent and believe upon the

Lord Jesus Christ as your only hope for salvation, you've got to stop doing that. This is just theory and speculation and imagination and all that kind of a thing.

Do you think that I'm responding correctly? I think you're offering some very prudent advice,

Chris. I think that there are various areas in which people can get off base, engage in speculations, in conspiratorial thinking, and I think that we have a powerful, clear revelation from God in and through the person of Jesus Christ, fleshed out in the

Old and New Testaments. I will tell you this, Chris, I think that, again,

I think that for people who are not traditionally religious, not Christian, maybe no association with the

Bible, I think human beings are made, because they're made in the image of God, they naturally are looking for answers to the big questions.

Now, they may not want the answer that the New Testament gives, but they're looking, and they're looking for purpose and hope and meaning, and so I think that this unusual phenomenon is just part of that inner sense in which human beings know there's got to be more than just, you know, the average day -to -day.

But, Chris, it's very clear. I mean, if you want to see the demonic, the demonic in the

New Testament is found in false doctrine. That's where it's at, and there is tons of false doctrine in the

UFO phenomenon. Yeah, it's amazing, it shows you how over and over again the

Bible proves to be true. When you constantly have men who are viewed as brilliant, who basically prove in their wisdom they have become as fools, you have people who would rather believe that all the gifts and blessings of innovation and engineering and architecture, all of the things that we consider to be gifts from God using the minds of men that he has chosen to bring invention and truth to the masses, whether they are

Christian or not, that all these things are gifts to the human race from outer space, and therefore we owe some kind of an allegiance to these creatures, these alleged creatures, and we should be expecting the return of these alleged creatures to Earth, or to finally manifest themselves clearly, rather than thanking

God for these things, and rather than looking to him and his return. Yeah, I mean, that is really the explanation that people who are fallen, who are separated from God, they still have a religious impulse, they bear the image of God, and yet they will worship almost anything rather than the triune

God of historic Christianity. And so, idolatry becomes a real issue, and it's interesting.

Turn on the History Channel or some of the other cable programs, people will talk about, you know, ancient aliens who've come here and buried all of this technology, and that we owe them some kind of allegiance.

And so, yeah, human beings, I think it was Pascal who used the expression of, human beings are religious creatures by nature, and either they'll worship the true and living

God, or they'll worship something else. We have

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, Forgive me if you've already addressed this,

I'm tuning in late, but do you cover Area 54 in your book, and what are your thoughts on this, and the conspiracy theories of government cover -ups?

Yes, CJ, again, I'm glad you're listening, and I'm glad you asked the question. We do have discussion of Area 51.

We have, as one of the authors, Mark Clark, who is a national security scholar, and so he has a particular chapter looking at Area 51, also looking at various other places in which people have claimed to have had, you know, the government was hiding these kinds of things.

I think Chris touched upon this a little bit earlier. It's natural and normal to think that the government has to protect various secrets, especially when it comes to military, maybe even advanced military technology.

I'm not surprised that, I wanted to mention before it jumps out of my head, that we also deal with the

Roswell, where, again, people believe that the government was covering up UFOs, but I think that, very clearly, the government has natural security issues, and if you think back to the

UFO phenomenon in the 50s, this is right after World War II, right at the height of the

Cold War, so part of the explanation is that, you know, the government is hiding things, but it's not

UFOs. They are trying to keep secrets that they think are really important to the survivability and the integrity of the

United States. Now, again, I think when you look at these kind of broad conspiracy theories, people sometimes have reason to distrust the government, and the government doesn't always, they're not always forthright.

They sometimes engage in communicating things that are false, but we have not found anything in Area 51 or Roswell or any of the other bases in the nation that would lead us to conclude that they're covering up the

UFO phenomenon. So there's a correction, it wasn't Area 54, Area 51.

Area 51, yes. Okay, might have been a typo on our listener's part. By the way, I want to inform everybody,

I don't know if I've been mentioning that everybody so far, at least, who's written in a question has won a free copy of Lights in the

Sky and Little Green Men, a rational Christian look at UFOs and extraterrestrials by our guest

Kenneth Samples and also co -authored by Hugh Ross and Mark Clark, and so make sure you give me, you send me, whoever you are who have sent in questions, your full mailing address so that cvbbs .com

can ship out those free copies of this book to you, and we want to thank Reasons to Believe for providing us with these copies.

We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, what research have you done and what is your opinions about the alleged bodies of aliens that have been discovered at wrecks of spaceships?

Yeah, part of this again goes back to places like Roswell, New Mexico, and reports that there was a

UFO spacecraft that crashed there, and the story is that there were bodies of these aliens, and you know, the government kind of covered all of this up, and you know,

I've even seen alleged photographs which were never authenticated, but yes, we do write about, again, this idea that there are people who make claims, who have had real encounters, and again, we have not seen any convincing evidence at all that there are literal metallic crafts visiting our planet from, you know, other galaxies or from deep space.

In fact, if you look at the phenomenon, oftentimes the best attested, that is, the

UFO reports or claims that have the most evidence in their support, the ships or the crafts or whatever it may be, they don't appear to be physical.

They don't appear to be material. They appear to, again, violate the laws of physics, and so I think the reports of interplanetary space visitors from out in space,

I think that's a very weak hypothesis, for other reasons like the tremendous distances that they would have to travel, the difficulty getting here, how much of an economic investment that they would have to make, and some people think that there is an intelligent life in Washington, D .C.,

so maybe why would they come here? That's a joke. Maybe they're smarter governments somewhere else.

Took me a few seconds to grasp that one. Now, so, when we see, like on Tucker Carlson's special interviews and other places, documentaries, when we see with our own eyes films of crafts or at least things that look,

I mean, it typically just looks like a speck on a screen to us, but when we hear aeronautical engineers and when we hear aviation specialists, and by the way, my father was an aeronautical engineer for Grumman Aerospace.

He helped design the lunar module. He helped design things that were breakthroughs in aviation, like the thrust reverse, which all jets now have, which enable the jet to slow down while it's landing.

But my father, he took very seriously the reports of astronauts that saw things and filmed things from space that could not be explained.

So, my question is, when we see these things, are you saying that there is a likelihood, when we hear that these experts on aviation and aerospace are saying, this is not some kind of a speck on the lens of a camera, this is not some kind of a trick, it's not, these astronauts have no reason to be, you know, manufacturing these kinds of things, that they believe these are real crafts of some kind.

Are you saying that, as a Christian, the most plausible answer to this would be that this is a demonic creature or a false miracle, something supernatural that Satan himself is causing to appear in space or even in our atmosphere?

I believe some of these things that have been filmed appear to be in our own atmosphere here.

These are somehow false miracles of the demonic realm? Well, I think when you look at, when you ask the question, what is the best explanation for this phenomenon?

How do we account for it? Obviously, there are credible UFO reports.

And when military experts, astronauts, scientists say that they have seen things,

I tend to give credibility to that. I think, however, that you want to think about a number of points.

You want to say, could there be a natural explanation for this?

Could it be, for example, the craft of the Chinese or the

Russians? If that is not viable, and if these ships or these crafts are violating the laws of physics that would not allow for a physical being to survive through it, then

I think we do need to ask the question, could this be some kind of other -dimensional phenomenon?

Now, Chris, I would say this, you know, people who tend to see

UFOs sometimes have what we would call open doors to the occult.

And what that means is, and you know this very well, we live in a society that is very religious, but that religion includes

New Age ideas, it includes, you know, things like people who believe in seances and spiritism and various issues.

I mean, one question that I would ask even aviation pilots would be, do you have any open doors to the occult?

That is, what is your kind of experience about that?

So, I don't think that, I think we should look very carefully at whether a UFO could become an

IFO. It's possible that some of them could. I tend to gravitate away from the extraterrestrial because I think that it has too many difficulties to deal with.

But yeah, I do think that there may be a religious connection to this.

And while I can't state categorically that, you know, these best

UFO reports were clearly interdimensional, I can say that they seem to fit well with demonology, with a

Christian perspective on an angelic realm. And so we try to develop this thesis very carefully, very deliberately, and I'm cautious about giving any fast and loose questions, but, you know, there are a lot of people who have weird experiences, and sometimes the people who have weird experiences have dabbled in the occult.

Well, we have to go to our final break right now, and if you have a question for Ken Samples, please send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these final messages with more of Ken Samples, and lights in the sky, and little green men.

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Thank you. Yes, we know that the

UFOs are there! This is Chris Arnson for our final segment, with Ken Samples discussing lights in the sky and little green men, a rational

Christian look at UFOs and extraterrestrials. And we have a final question that we have time for.

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, can you describe in detail at least some of these unexplained

UFO phenomenon that have no answer to them so far?

And this would, in your book, you actually call them R -UFOs, I believe? Yes, we do.

We would call them R -UFOs or residual UFOs. Again, 90 -95 % can be explained, so there is a residual.

They tend to, again, report phenomenon that doesn't correspond well with the physical world.

I mean, a jet aircraft has to obey the laws of physics. It can't, you know, just go off on its own without following the laws of physics.

What we do in our book is, we do talk about some of the experiences that people have reported, where the phenomenon strikes us as something from another dimension rather than, again, you know, unexplained natural or human phenomena.

And I should also mention that there are other people who study UFOs, like Jacques Vallée, the

French astrophysicist. He is not a Christian, but he also says that some of the best -attested

UFO reports seem spiritual or interdimensional in nature.

So it's not just Christians who have said this. You know, the phenomenon is unusual and comports better,

I think, with a spiritual explanation. Do you have any details very quickly that you could provide for a couple of these unexplained

UFOs? Well, again, some of them are things that have been seen in the sky, sometimes by scientists, sometimes by military individuals.

So they would be engaging in a phenomenon that would violate the laws of physics. And this would not be leftover pieces of a craft, because these are not metallic, they're not physical.

So often it would be observations, although sometimes there have been reports where you've actually seen effects, physical effects, like into the ground and things of that nature.

Well, I want to thank you so much, Ken, for being our guest again. I look forward to your return. If anybody wants to find out more about Ken's samples, and anybody who wants to purchase this book,

Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, go to reasons .org, reasons .org.

I also want to remind you who are listening, please pray for Joe Jackowitz, the founder of First Love Radio, the internet radio network that live -streams

Iron Sherpins Iron Radio every day. In fact, you can hear Joe Jackowitz preaching right after this show is over. Please pray for him as he has been recently diagnosed with an aggressive and deadly form of leukemia.

And I just interviewed Joe recently on Iron Sherpins Iron Radio. You can hear the recording of that archived at ironsherpinsironradio .com,

and just type in Jackowitz into the search engine J -A -C -O -W -I -T -Z,

J -A -C -O -W -I -T -Z, and that will be the most recent interview with Joe Jackowitz. Thank you so much,

Ken. Thank you, everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater