I offend some people by saying; you can have better discussions about spiritual things
at a UFO conference than you can at church.
Because people are predisposed to thinking about big picture questions,
you know, that are ultimately and inherently theological.
Now how I got to know you; I was actually looking for more material about Ezekiel's wheel.
Okay.
And, of course, I knew it wasn't a UFO, but a lot of people that I deal with,
have that interpretation. I was just looking for more material. And you know how
the YouTube, they recommend things, and before you know it, you're going down this rabbit trail.
And then I see you at a UFO conference.
Yeah.
A Christian. I'm like, What is a Christian doing at a UFO conference?
Right.
And that's when I saw you on critiquing Zecharia Sitchin.
Ok.
And it was, it was pretty amazing stuff. So how did you even get involved in those type of arenas?
Yeah, I sort of got sucked into the vortex. In 2001, really, in the wake of writing my novel,
my first novel, The Façade. So I mean, I'd always been interested in anything old and weird.
And I had a year to burn or so I told myself, I had a year to burn
on what should have been my dissertation, I had just gotten through prelims,
you know, as a doctoral student, and honestly, I was kind of burned out,
I didn't really feel like writing anything serious. So I thought, you know,
I'm just going to take a year and do this thing I've always wanted to do and write a novel.
You know, I had a late-night, third shift security job. I had it for years, I've worked full time,
15 years, going through grad school, and I listened to Coast to Coast AM,
I was just really familiar with all that stuff. I had a command of ancient texts
that always been into UFOs. And I just thought; I'm gonna throw it all into a blender
and just, you know, have fun with it.
But the stick was everything has to be real. It's just what I do with the data points,
and so I wrote this novel. And it was kind of like, just a personal thing.
I had a friend read it, and they said, Hey, you should try to get on the Art Bell show,
because the Art Bell show then in Coast to Coast. And I thought that'd be fun.
You know, and we thought it was kind of a joke.
Because we thought he'd be surrounded by a phalanx of people, like, we'd never get to him.
So my friend sent an email off. And then like, two days later, I'm coming back from school,
and my wife meets me at the door and says, You're not gonna believe
I just got off the phone with; it was Art Bell. He wants you to call him back.
So I did. Sure enough, it's Art. And then the rest is sort of history.
You know, I wound up going on the show. I've been on the show 34 times now.
And I've sort of turned into the nice, Bible debunking nonsense guy, you know,
and it's always Ancient Aliens and stuff like that, even with George Noory, the host now.
But once I did that the first time, then I started getting invitations to speak at UFO conferences.
And the thing that your listeners should know is nobody vetted me.
Oh, wow.
Nobody vetted me at all, you know, and so I'm getting all these invitations,
and I accepted a few. I thought it would be fun.
I mean, did they know what you were bringing?
Apparently not because they... the first one I did was the Bay Area UFO Conference.
And it was the week after 9/11. So like, it was really hard to get there.
It was in San Francisco. I was in Wisconsin. And I wound up doing two sessions.
One was; could Christianity accommodate a genuine extraterrestrial disclosure?
Where I had the surreal experience of going through the gospel,
the Romans road in front of 500 people at a UFO conference.
And then the other one was the Zecharia Sitchin thing, and I was asked to leave.
Really?
Yeah, I was told in no uncertain terms, would I ever be invited back.
But, you know, nobody vetted me. Nobody did anything like that.
I mean, I've since been at other conferences and they sort of know what they're getting.
And I typically go because I'm friendly to the question of extraterrestrial life.
I don't see it as a theological problem. But I hammer the ancient alien stuff,
because to me that actually cheapens and makes ridiculous a legitimate question.
It's a cartoon. It's the cartoon version of the actual discussion. That really needs to happen.
So that's sort of how I got sucked into it. But I'm happy to do it. They're fun.
The people that UFO conferences, I can count on one hand, the people I've run into
that I thought probably needed therapy like really, or might be dangerous.
Everybody else is just very normal there. And I offend some people by saying;
you can have better discussions about spiritual things at a UFO conference
than you can at church, because people are predisposed to thinking
about big picture questions, you know, that are ultimately and inherently theological.
So it's a good thing I think, to have Christians involved in.