I’m often asked in regard to UFOs and the angelic understanding "Well if they’re angels, why do they need ships to fly in?" My first response is that maybe they don’t. I don’t "need" a car to go from here to the corner for a cold drink, but 9 out of 10 times I’m going to use one. I’m lazy, it’s quicker, it’s more convenient to not have to get there "under my own power." In the case of angels, maybe they don’t want to get their robes dirty flying through our polluted atmosphere! I'm being light-hearted of course, but really there’s nothing in scripture that indicates that normal angels (like we're talking about) even have wings – that’s just artwork. The fact is however, there simply is no getting away from the fact that in the Bible, angels DO use vehicles to fly around in! Whether they need to or not is debatable, but that they do use them is not.

The really easy example is the account of Elijah being taken up to heaven. This chariot was witnessed by his younger counterpart Elisha, as well as 50 other prophets who were waiting for them to return. Now technically though, the Bible specifies that it was a whirlwind that took Elijah, so we can’t even say for sure whether he actually boarded a chariot, or how the wind and the chariots were connected. He may have been raptured like Enoch apparently was, or simply translated like Phillip. There’s no chariots mentioned in these other cases. But because there are also "horses of fire" in this scene, I think we have sort of a "Ben Hur" image of this chariot, and paintings have reinforced that image.

But this may or may not be accurate – the craft could have looked very different than a typical horse-drawn vehicle that we think of. It seems from reading the passage closely that the horses actually had the job of separating the two (E & E), and may not have been actually drawing the chariots mentioned. The younger Elisha actually specifies in his own words "...the chariots of Israel AND the horsemen of Israel..." (whatever they are!). It's hard to picture a typical horse and rider, where the horses are also drawing a chariot - that doesn't happen, so I don't think it's the case here either. I think the chariots and the horses were separate. Nonetheless this is THE ONE - and I'm going to have to emphasize here THE ONLY - clear-cut case in scripture where a chariot was physically visible, and by multiple witnesses. It was a physical craft of some sort.

The truth though, is that these occurrences are really not as frequent as some people tend to make out. We can’t honestly say that "the Judeans," or "the Hebrews" (plural) claimed to see these things. We have only two passages of scripture, both involving Elisha. The actual phrase "chariots of fire" only appears once in the entire Bible. The younger Elisha was surrounded by enemies and he asked God to open his servant’s eyes so that HE would see the situation was not hopeless. Elisha’s servant was then able to see the Chariots of Fire surrounding the prophet. BUT there’s no indication at all that anybody else saw them. This is a unique case where God allowed the guy to see into the spirit realm (or perhaps the ultra violet realm, given recent technological findings about UFOs). And the earlier instance is the only time that mentions both chariots and witnesses in the same passage. To say that the Bible is full of these cases is simply not true.

There is one other really usable passage where the words "chariots" and "fire" come very close to being mentioned together, that I want to mention, mainly because nobody in the secular humanist or New Age community ever brings it up. It’s a reference to what most will say is a future event...

Isaiah 66:15-6 says  "The Lord will come with fire, and his chariots are like a whirlwind; he will bring down his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For with fire and with his sword the Lord will execute judgment on all men, and many will be those slain by the Lord."

Now, here we have another instance where the chariots and fire are connected to the angelic hosts, but in large numbers and only in the sense of final battle. These are not individual flying chariots being seen by casual observers however. This scene of the Lord’s judgment by sword and fire is echoed in Revelation’s accounts of Jesus and his armies riding into the battle of Armageddon on the "horses of heaven" from earlier.

You want Biblical chariots of fire, HERE they are, in spades (!), but they’re apparently nothing to be courted. I don’t think modern UFO sightings are examples of these either. You better be real sure which side you’re on by the time you encounter one of these!