In Part One I looked at Pentecostal Christian Kelly Cahill’s account of her 1993 UFO encounter in Victoria, Australia, which she described in her out-of-print 1996 book Encounter.
As I have discussed here, here and here, I believe UFO abductions are demonic in nature, they are demons affecting the minds of people so they think they are being abducted by aliens. Support for the demonic hypothesis can be found in cases of UFO abductions being stopped by the abductees calling on the name of Jesus. This makes sense if the abduction phenomenon is demonic, but not if they really are alien visitors. First-hand accounts of calling on the name of Jesus can be found at Alien Resistance, the book Unholy Communion by David Ruffino and Joseph Jordan (Defender Publishing, Missouri, 2010) and the documentary Alien Intrusion.
As mentioned in Part One, Kelly thought the beings, which she encountered, were evil and anti-God. Along with the way she stopped the abduction, her encounter appears to support the demonic hypothesis.
Non-Christian UFO researchers, reporting on the Kelly Cahill case, tend to downplay how she stopped her abduction by calling on God (Bill Chalker, The Oz Files, Duffy and Snellgrove, NSW, 1996, p 9-17, Keith Basterfield, UFOs: A Report on Australian Encounters, Reed Books, Victoria, 1997, p 123-128). This has been a problem in other abduction cases where non-Christian UFO researchers do not report how abductions have been stopped by calling on Jesus, apparently because this conflicts with their extraterrestrial hypothesis (Gary Bates, Alien Intrusion, Master Books, Arizona, 2004, p 259).
UFO researchers find the Kelly Cahill case interesting because it involved three independent groups of people having an abduction experience at the same time. In most UFO abductions only individuals are affected.
Another interesting feature of this encounter is that abductees do not usually consciously remember their experiences and they need to be hypnotised to recall them, but, while Kelly did not remember her experiences at first, she was later able to remember what happened without being hypnotised. Unlike some other abduction cases, there can be no suggestion that her memories were created by the hypnotist asking leading questions.
Christian UFO researchers believe that demons are able to influence people’s minds so they think they are being abducted by aliens because they did something, like being involved in the occult, which opened the door to the demonic influence or attack (Unholy Communion, p 245-275, Alien Intrusion, p 262-263). Because UFO abductions imply demonic control or authority over the abductees, we should not expect Christians to have abduction experiences.
It is true that Christians are less likely to be “abducted”, however there are a few cases where it has happened to Christians. It has been suggested that they are not true born-again Christians (Alien Intrusion, p 256-257).
Kelly Cahill comes across as a sincere and devout Christian, yet she still had an abduction experience. I don’t know if being married to a Muslim before she became a Christian counts as a demonic doorway. Nevertheless, without turning into one of those cranky, judgmental heresy-hunters on the Internet, there appears to be something “off” about Kelly’s Christianity.
As mentioned in Part One, Kelly described how she spent several weeks before her UFO encounter, fasting, praying, and trying to get closer to God “in pursuit of perfection in the eyes of God.” (Kelly Cahill, Encounter, Harper Collins, Sydney, 1996, p 27). However, Christians cannot hope to achieve perfection or please God through their own efforts. They can only hope to be seen as perfect in God’s eyes because Jesus’ righteousness has been imputed to them (Romans 3-6, 2 Corinthians 5:21). Instead of trusting in what Jesus has done for her, Kelly appears to be trying to earn favour with God.
In fact, the word “Jesus” appears to be completely absent from the book. Kelly does not stop the abduction by calling on “the name of Jesus”, but “the name of God” (Encounter, p 134).
Many Pentecostal Christians appear to rely on their subjective experience, rather than the objective Word of God, as their source for truth and authority. If they experience something, it must be true and from God. This has made Pentecostals to all sorts of deceptions and heresies.
Other Pentecostals, such as Andrew Strom, are more discerning and accept that Pentecostals can have false demonic experiences which they think are from God.
As mentioned on Part One, three weeks before her UFO encounter, Kelly, who had been praying and fasting, had an intense spiritual experience, which she described as energy rolling over her and which left her physicality exhausted (Encounter, p 29). It might sound like what Pentecostals refer to as being baptised in the Holy Spirit, however Kelly says the energy which she felt “was very similar to the energy I experienced during the [UFO] encounter, except that my interpretation of it was completely different (Encounter, p 30). If both experiences were similar, and she regarded the UFO experience as demonic, this suggests her initial experience was not from God and she had been deceived.
Kelly saw her first UFO on the way to her friend’s house and she was at first confused, but then concluded that God must have sent it to acknowledge her devotion to Him. She said in her mind to the UFO that she would see it again later (Encounter, p 35-36).
At this point Kelly did not consider the possibility of demonic deception. She assumed it was from God, as if God sends us UFOs to show us how good we are, and probably opened herself up to demonic influence by trying to communicate with the UFO in her mind.
Kelly was conflicted about her experience. When she first saw a UFO, she thought it was from God (Encounter, p 29-30), but she thought the UFO beings, which tried to abduct her, were evil, demonic, soulless, anti-God and wanted to kill her (Encounter, p 115-134). Later, she had a dream in which one of the beings gave her a choice between giving up her Bible and coming with them or keeping her Bible. She decided they had to be Satanic to give her such a choice and she chose to keep her Bible (Encounter, p 62-66).
Although Kelly at first chose her Bible and Christian faith over the UFO beings, in the end her Christian faith lost the struggle. As I have discussed in UFOs, the Bible and the Worldview Problem, one of the consequences (or purposes) of UFO abductions is the transformation of the worldview of the abductee from a Christian or Western secular worldview to a more (for want of a better term) “New Age” worldview. Some Christians, who have had abduction experiences, have abandoned their Christian faith and become more “New Age” in their thinking as a result of their experience. This includes Kelly Cahill.
Kelly said that her encounter gave her a new purpose in life as she tried to make sense of her experience (Encounter, p 221). She writes, “I got hold of everything I could find on the subject of UFOs and began studying this as intensely as I had once studied the Bible” (Encounter, p 201-202).
It sounds like she did choose UFOs over the Bible after all.
Kelly does not appear to have consulted any Christian books on the demonic nature of the UFO phenomenon, such as UFOs and their Mission Impossible (1975) and Close Encounters: A Better Explanation (1978) by Clifford Wilson, UFOs: What on Earth is Happening? (1975) by John Weldon, The Facts on UFOs and Other Supernatural Phenomena (1992) by John Ankerberg, UFOs in the New Age (1992) by William Alnor or Operation Trojan Horse (1970) by John Keel, a non-Christian who recognized the demonic aspects of the UFOs. I had read all these by the time Kelly had her encounter in 1993.
She does not say anything about talking to other Christians about her experience. Indeed, like Jesus, there is no mention of other Christians or her church, if she went to one.
Like some other abductees, Kelly’s UFO encounter resulted in a transformation of her worldview. She concluded her book,
“So overall, the effect of the encounter has instigated a kind of “flushing out” process of all my traditional values and precepts – sort of wiping the slate clean, ready to begin again. This time, instead of being taught what to believe, I’m on an inner journey of discovery, where I can find and place my own beliefs according to where I have found truth. If nothing else, I have learned one thing: You can never know anything unless you have experienced it.” (Encounter, p 230-231)
I have never experienced the American Civil War but I know it happened.
The Bible warns about spiritual deception (2 Corinthians 11:14, 1 John 4:1-2), so just because we have an unusual experience does not mean the Bible is wrong. It means the experience was not from God. Kelly had an unusual experience, but it did not disprove the Bible. It was a demonic attack and the Bible gave her the authority to resist it. However, even though Kelly originally believed the encounter was demonic, she chose to believe her experience over the Bible.
The Kelly Cahill case not only supports the demonic hypothesis, it also shows why Christians need to base their beliefs on the Bible, not their experience. Our experiences are different and cannot all be objectively true. The Christian worldview is not founded on subjective experience, but on objective historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God who revealed the truth to us and rose from the dead.
Malcolm Nicholson 