I'm not all that sure where I picked up this book, but I believe it was at the half-way house that I was staying at for about a year in the very early 90's. Obviously at that time I was still young and I still loved my fantasy and science-fiction, so anything to do with aliens, particularly the alien mysteries that I would get caught up on in my youth, would have caught my attention. The reason I also suspect that it was that house is because the book is decidedly Christian and I also suspect that Dr Wilson is a member of the American Christian Right.
Now, I have not actually read much of Dr Wilson's work, only this book, a book that exposes the flaws of Von Daniken's works, and a paper on the discoveries at the archaeological site at Ebla. However, since that particular paper was put up on a Creation-Science website, I suspect that he does have strong connections with the anti-evolutionist mob in the United States. Once again, I do not have any particular concerns with Dr Wilson's works though, and what I have read, especially this book (which I would love to get my hands on again), has interested me.
The paper on Ebla is particularly interesting because he asserts that amongst the library that was uncovered were numerous clay tablets detailing trade deals, of which some of then mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah by name. Now, there is an acceptance of the existence of these cities, and there are people (who are not members of the Evangelical Right) who to place these cities in the Jordan Valley. My position is that they were where the Bible says that they were, except that, from my reading of the Bible, at the time of their existence, the Dead Sea did not exist and the Jordan flowed all the way to the Gulf of Aqaba. Whatever destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah though pretty much created the Dead Sea as we know it.
Anyway, this book looks at alien encounters and the alien phenomena that has been sweeping the United States since the early forties (though you don't hear much about it these days). Dr Wilson's argument is that these phenomena were nothing new, and the only reason that that we have been identifying them as extra-terrestrial of late is because of the expansion of human knowledge, and the development of science-fiction as a literary form. Now that we are even able to travel into space (beyond theorising the possibility of doing so), such phenomena are now being associated as such. In more primitive ages (for want of a better word) such phenomena would have been interpreted in other ways, and in fact Wilson even explores some pre-industrial reports of unidentified flying objects.
The conclusion is pretty much what one would expect from the Evangelical Right, and that is that these beings are of outerworldly origin and they also have spiritual connections (which is plausible). There is also the suggestion that because the United States is a Christian country, that is why a bulk of the sightings are occurring there. The conclusion is that the alien agenda is to basically convince humanity that God does not exist and to take them away from acknowledging and worshipping the one true God by providing them with an alternative (as if they really needed to do that, because cults of that sort have sprung up without actually seeing any UFOs).
As I have mentioned previously, if these events are actually true, there is actually no difference between extra-terrestrials kidnapping and performing anal probes on us and us kidnapping native Americans and Australians and locking them up like caged animals and studying them. Is it not the case than in so called scientifically superior cultures on Earth that we also like to study more primitive cultures and people. No doubt numerous Indians and Aboriginals were cut up to see what made them tick. As for UFOs visiting the United States predominantly, isn't it the case that the United States is the most technologically advanced nation on the Earth, and would not an extra-terrestrial, with all of his (or her, if they indeed have a form of gender that we can relate to) fancy bells and whistles on their space craft, be able to actually see that, so then would that not be the first place that they would visit and explore? ( )