The recent publicity spike for the upcoming Christian Symposium on Aliens, to be held this July in Roswell, NM, has prompted me to blog about its content. This symposium focuses on the view that what people think are aliens (mostly from contactee and abductee experiences) are demons. I’m speaking at the symposium, but I’d like to be clear that I am not committed to the aliens=demons view to the point that I have excluded all other views. Now, I’m not saying that I think the aliens=demons view is wrong. It may be the answer. It also may be only one of several answers that can co-exist just fine. What I’m saying is this: There are other coherent possible answers to what an intelligent ET is (assuming ET life is ever proven) and that Christians who put all their eggs in the single basket of aliens=demons are unwise to do so.
Personally, I don’t think there is, can, or should be one particular Christian view of aliens at this point in the discussion. The sooner the Christian community admits that, the better off it will be in terms of its participation in the discussion. I’d like to unpack what I mean in a series of blogs, so here we go with Part 1. I apologize for the length, but I want to introduce the issues properly.
Hostility Toward the Aliens = Demons View
The view that aliens are demons is bound to be met with hostility. That’s understandable on a couple of levels.
1. For some, aliens are savior figures, replacements for anything that looks at all like traditional theism. Calling their saviors demons isn’t going to be taken well by that crowd.
2. Others view the aliens=demons view as an intellectual retreat or simple superstition, since the belief in beings that somehow transcend the terrestrial space-time world we occupy is nonsense. If there are aliens, they are from elsewhere in the material universe we know of, period. There are no such things as demons or angels, so to bring them into the discussion of intelligent ETs is a waste of time.
3. There’s a third group, too. Those who would entertain the idea that there are other universes or “reality planes” that are not the same as our space-time reality, but which can intersect with it. The “interdimensional” view was popularized by writers like Jacques Vallee. But (per Vallee) there is an underlying assumption that such a view is incompatible with a traditional theistic worldview–as opposed to it being just a different articulation of that religious worldview, or something co-existent with that worldview. This is unfortunate, since there is fertile ground to be cultivated here.
The old guard of ufology is filled with people who take the second view. Their minds are closed to anything they can’t grasp with their calipers. Never mind the host of philosophers down through history (yes, including people who teach at universities TODAY) who have assailed the materialist view of reality as logically troubled. Oh well. The nuts and bolts crowd has their place, and we can be grateful when they do good work in the field. On to my real thrust in this post.
Tunnel Vision on the Aliens = Demons View
The typical Christian interested in ufology has rejected all three views. There are several reasons so many Christians conclude that aliens=demons is the ONLY possibility:
(1) Believing that the question of intelligent aliens cannot or should not be separated from the abduction phenomenon. If the former cannot be separated from the latter, then whatever these beings are, they commit atrocious evil. I’ve talked to abduction researchers who have tried to argue that I’m judging the alien by my set of ethics. It just doesn’t work. If aliens are intellectually superior and aren’t demons, then it is perfectly logical to expect that the ethical quality of their behavior shoul dbe superior. Exhibit A here that this is not sophistry on my part is the mountainous pile of abduction reports that have the abducting aliens as altruistic saviors of our environment and world (“they look scary but they care so much about us and our world”). You can’t argue for an ethical motive for what they do on one hand, and yet have them deliberately harming a lesser being who can ask them — nay, beg them — to stop. If they are so intelligent (and I’m paraphrasing the famous Vallee quotation here), then they should be smart enough to create methods of studying us or helping us that don’t involve our trauma. If they can but won’t, that’s evil. To disagree here is to mark yourself as a study in the Stockholm Syndrome (and that didn’t make those captors ethical either) or to propose that it’s a valid response.
Now, if the alien question is separated from abductions (legitimately), then you can (theoretically) have both real aliens who aren’t out there committing atrocities and demonic beings who are. There are naturally other ways to parse such a dichotomy, but this will do for now. Yet many Christians are resistant to allow that “alien” and “demon” could be separate ontological categories. Why? The answer may be ….
2. Alien messages during “contact” and/or “abduction” are very anti-Christ or anti-theistic. This will sound foreign to those who are in love with “revisionist views of Jesus,” like the New Age Christ, or people who think Dan Brown and Michael Baigent know something about New Testament theology. They don’t. The reasoning here is that, since these alien messages are so antithetical to New Testament theology (and they are), aliens must be demonic. Anyone who is familiar with New Testament theology (and I speak here of the biblical text, not denominational creeds or claims about truth) and who has read very deeply into abduction literature knows there are profound incompatibilities between what the NT says about Jesus and these alleged alien communications. That this is so demonstrably true is what has led me on this blog to write a series on Msgr. Corrado Balducci (Balducci’s Conundrum), who speaks as though he’s never read any of the stuff, and ends up endorsing ideas that repudiate his own theological commitments.
The theology of abduction narratives is a legitimate gripe for Christians to have with the alien idea, but it is not in and of itself proof that aliens=demons. While I oppose the theological content of alien messages as unbiblical, I can introduce you to lots of PEOPLE who have the same ideas, and of course you wouldn’t be meeting a demon. Again, theoretically, it may be that there is another intelligent race out there that (a) doesn’t know anything about biblical theology or (b) doesn’t buy it. Christians (and non-Christians as well) seem to think it would be the death knell of biblical theology if there were aliens out there who knew about it and didn’t believe it. This is both philosophically and theologically incoherent. Philosophically, a gap in intelligence means nothing with respect to ontological truth. I can put a PhD up against a toddler, and just because the PhD doesn’t believe in X and the toddler does believe in X does not mean that the PhD’s disbelief is proof or even evidence that X is false. It’s just that we PERCEIVE the falsity of A on the basis of appearances (“that guy has a PhD”). Appearances do not = ontological reality. For the sake of the discussion, God could have created ETs and not told them anything about his plans for earth, which involved the Bible. Or, he could have told them long ago and they forgot, or became arrogant, dismissing their creator as real, and come up with their own ideas to displace Him (something we see on earth among intelligent beings all the time). Theologically, biblical theology teaches that God created intelligent non-human beings to whom the truth of the gospel was at best obtuse, and to whom the redemption offered through Christ was not available. I speak here of angels, of course.1
3. A certain brand of biblical literalism compels many Christians to assert that only the alien=demon view is “biblical.”
This one covers the “well, the Bible doesn’t say anything about aliens, so there can’t be any aliens, or else the Bible is wrong” position. Yeah. The Bible doesn’t mention the known planets, either. Oops. It doesn’t talk about microwaves, sunspots, television, chicken curry, or the Red Sox. Guess the Bible is wrong all the time. This way of thinking is alarmingly naive (that’s the nicest phrase I can think of without just saying it’s stupid).
More serious is the notion that (alleged) alien behavior in abduction reports mirrors what went on in Genesis 6:1-4 with the fallen sons of God. I would agree that, if what people report in alien abductions is real (i.e., that they are indeed physically sexually violated by a non-human entity), then such a thing would mime the kind of thing that is described in Genesis 6. But notice how this point of literalism assumes an unbreakable connection between aliens and abductions. If (see above) an ET reality were separable (even among presumed “ET species”) from abduction trauma, then Genesis 6 loses explanatory power and validity in terms of a reason to oppose the idea that there are aliens. It would only apply (hypothetically) to where it would apply — it would be of no use across the board, and would be a misuse of Scripture. See below for more on this.
4. Commitment to an un-nuanced literalist view of end times held by many Christians interested in ufology. Now, the issue of the merits/flaws, coherence/incoherence of an exclusively literalist eschatology (“end times”) is beyond our discussion here. ALL views of eschatology are based primarily on presuppositions to certain questions; that is, NONE of them is self-evident from the biblical text, despite proponents wanting that to be the case. (And what is “literalism” anyway?) I only raise the issue since many Christians tie the question of aliens (married as it is to abductions) to their view of end times, so much so that it makes me wonder which one parses which.
There are typically two passages used to defend tying aliens (and again, by virtue of the sexual violation of alien abduction accounts) to the end times: Daniel 2:43 and Matthew 24:36-38 (cp. Luke 17:26-27). Without getting bogged down in too many details, Daniel 2:43 occurs amid a description of a prophecy about a succession of ancient empires, described as parts of a great image / statue. Literalists agree that these kingdoms (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome) came as prophesied. Even though the last of these kingdoms, described as the feet of the statue that were made of mixed iron and clay, is Rome (accepted by basically every Daniel interpreter, liberal or fundamentalist), what is said about this last kingdom is frequently re-applied to a presumed “revived Roman empire” that is presumably described in the book of Revelation. This “new empire” to come had an unusual characteristic (or so it is thought) described in Daniel 2:43 — “As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.” Literally, the Aramaic here has “they will mingle themselves with the seed of men.” These “mixed marriages” or “mixed mingling” are taken to refer to alien-human intercourse in the eschatology of many who hold to an aliens=demons view. The justification of this interpretation is usually that the phrase is unusual or doesn’t occur anywhere else, or that the prhase “seed of men” is very odd (well, what other kind of seed is there?). These are bogus arguments with respect to the Hebrew text. Those who think the phrase doesn’t occur anywhere else can only make that argument if they are doing their work in English Bibles. Sorry, but the Bible wasn’t given to us in English. It was given in Hebrew, Aramaic (this passage), and Greek. If one searches the entire Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old Testament for all occurrences where the root word “seed” (zera’) occurs in a phrase followed by any of the words for “mankind” (‘ish, ‘enosh, ‘adam – see the screens shot of my search below), you get two other occurrences besides Daniel 2:43.
The first of these two additional occurrences is 1 Sam 1:11, where the child Hannah prays for is described as “a seed of man” (it’s a Hebrew idiom for “son”) and Jer 31:27, where God promises to return the “seed of men” and the “seed of beasts” to Israel and Judah (a promise of blessing that the land, soon to be emptied and destroyed, will be repopulated (see the context of 31:23-26). For our purposes, the noteworthy parallel is 1 Samuel 1:11. The boy Samuel wasn’t an extraterrestrial (!) so that sort of ruins the point being made by that interpretation of Dan. 2:43. That verse has other problems. Who are the “they” who will mingle their seed with the seed of men? Are there hints we are dealing with ETs or demons in the context of Daniel 2 prior to v. 43? No. In biblical theology, intermarriage between people groups (which is NOT synonymous with biological race as we think of it) is always viewed unfavorably, especially by Israelites, but also as a general bad behavior of non-Israelites. In other words, it’s viewed as self-destructive behavior, mostly because of the view held throughout the ancient world that intermarriage dilutes culture, which can only have ill effects on society and empire.
In regard to Matthew 24:36-38, here is the passage (ESV):
37 ?For as were the days of Noah, ?so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 ?For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, ?marrying and giving in marriage, until ?the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, ?so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
The key phrase is the “marrying and giving in marriage.” In the Old Testament, the flood narrative is Genesis 6-8. That narrative is introduced by Genesis 6:1-4, the account of the sons of God. The argument is made that Matthew 24:36-38 teaches us that, just as in the days of Noah, when the sons of God were having sexual relations with human women, so shall the days be when the son of man (Jesus) returns. There are a number of problems with this view, and I will try to distill them here. My point is NOT to say that the aliens=demons literalist view (hereafter, ADLV) is impossible or should be rejected. (Perhaps it can be articulated better without certain fallacies or without over-reaching the biblical data). Rather, I’m saying that those who take this view should be honest with its difficulties (and, so, its uncertainties). I’m just advocating honesty, which is an important part of a Christian ethic.
First, the ADLV would have us believe that the phrase “marrying and giving in marriage” must only refer to the demonic marriages of Genesis 6:1-4. If it refers to other marriages (normal human ones) then the argument fails or (at best) loses a lot of steam. I think it would be quite fallacious to assume that Jesus was referring to only those marriages, since (a) we know people were getting married left and right during the days of Noah — humanity still needed to reproduce the species — and (b) Jesus uses the same phrasing to speak of humans in his own time period having normal marriages (Luke 20:34-35).
Second, the combination of “marrying and giving in marriage” with “eating and drinking” strongly suggests that the phrase, as used by Jesus, is generic (= “having a good time, oblivious to care of life”) and not a specific reference to Genesis 6:1-4, which does NOT have this phrase in it.
Third, the fallen divine beings and their sexual relationships with women occurred well before the flood. According to the biblical account, the flood was preceded by the events of Gen 6:1-4 by at least 120 years. If 1 Enoch is to be trusted, the sons of God activity occurred beginning with the “days of Yared” [the proper name Yared can be translated as “the coming down” – i.e., when the angels “came down” to earth, as Enoch describes, to commit the sexual transgressions]. In biblical chronology this was centuries before the flood.
Fourth, The Bible never actually tells us that the sexual sins in Gen 6:1-4 was the CAUSE (or even primary cause) for sending the flood. For sure it tells us the sons of God were punished (and that was before the flood, too, at least according to 1 Enoch and 2 Peter cites this punishment). Genesis 6:5 tells us the flood was punishment for HUMAN sins of all types. The literal biblical sequence is this: (a) sons of God cohabit with human women, which was a transgression; (b) they have offspring, known as nephilim-giants; (c) humanity is overblown with wickedness; (d) God sends the flood as judgment for human wickedness. The book of 1 Enoch puts extra information before (a) and in between (b) and (c) the sons of God corrupt humanity with forbidden knowledge of various sorts] and (c) and (d) [the giants go on a rampage, killing humans]. My point is that 1 Enoch clearly has humankind being corrupted by the sons of God and the giants to the point where the flood was the solution. NEITHER ancient book (Genesis, 1 Enoch) has the sin of the sons of God as the exclusive reason for the flood. At best (or worst) it is a precursor to the flood judgment, which is squarely directed at evil humanity, not the sons of God or their offspring. Those two groups are put forth as agents of corruption of humanity. THIS point, in my view, ought to be the focus of the ALDV, not that aliens are going to be used to explain the rapture, or that the antichrist is busy creating alien-human hybrids for an army, or something like that.
I would hope it’s clear that ET life isn’t needed to parse biblical eschatology (end times), but the two are so tightly woven by some that to suggest another view of aliens might feel like an attack on a view of eschatology. When that happens, a demonic view of aliens has become non-negotiable. But if a rigidly literalistic brand of Christian eschatology is flawed, then its incorporation of aliens (or demons disguised as aliens) will also fail. Given that eschatology is in large part about presuppositions — assumptions BROUGHT TO the text — and not the biblical text itself, this is pretty shaky ground. I know Christians who read this will think that isn’t true, but it is. Everybody cheats when they need to in this area. Having taught all of these views for years, I know it’s true and ought to be admitted as true (there are good reasons why the believing Church hasn’t agreed on eschatology for a couple millennia — it’s not about one group “believing the Bible” and other groups refusing to do so).
Hope this generates some discussion.
- 1 Peter 1:10-12;1 Cor. 2:7-8 (“rulers” = archons); 2 Peter 2:4. ↩
This is a great break down Mike. Ive wondered of late if there could be a number of different entities involved in the UFO phenomenon. Some might be demonic to be sure, but there are also might be other beings from other dimensions (possibly planets) that might not be so easy to define. I wonder if it is possible that an angelic type being (elohim or otherwise) could have actually lost knowledge of God or at least the truth about God. I also wonder if there is some effort on the part of some of these beings to prevent humankind from spreading out into space. That may be a little too much like science fiction. But consider this. What if they dont want the spread of Christs word to reach out there? Or that they dont want this upstart new race to which God has given such special privilege to get beyond earth because it invades further into territory they want to claim as their own. I believe you are right to clarify that there could be many possibilities to what is happening in the UFO realm.
@aeneas: thanks; I’m expecting some heat from this, though.
Yeah. From both demon-only crowd and the “this is all just fairy tale, including your Christianity” bunch too. I hope it does inspire at least some intelligent discussion.
An absolute “thank you” for delving into such challenging material to say the least. This is an area in which I have numerous questions and it is a travesty to think (from what I’ve noticed) that those in laity would choose to sweep such a subject under the rug.
I personally believe the subject of aliens will not go away and Christians must become educated in this area. How can we afford to ignore such a subject? Not only that we must truly understand what those out there are experiencing. Not all experiences are negative experiences with aliens and it is important to realize what is happening amongst us.
If fear holds many a Christian back from truly knowing (or seeking) the answer, then just realize God is above all other “gods” and He will still reign sovereign no matter what we come to discover.
Are Aliens Not To Be Saved?
http://www.berfrois.com/2010/09/09/aliens-to-be-saved.html
why would we assume they need to be, since Romans 5:12 has HUMANS under condemnation (the fall was on earth).
I am a Christian who has had to reconsider my beliefs because of my study of so called facts about ETs’. In my severe Bible study I have not come across mention of people that didn’t resemble us. Rather people who were made without taking of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil that was placed on their planets as a test also. That they were more perfect and beautiful because they were not ravaged with the scars of sin as we now are. There must be more to know than was given in the bible but was left out for some good reason.
You really need to think more clearly than this, though I don’t doubt your sincerity at all. “Things left out of the Bible” — to show that something was left out of the Bible, you need to show it was in at some time and then removed, or that it was intended to be part of the Bible. There is no evidence of that at all. I’ve been asking for such things since 2001 form the ancient astronaut “experts” – publicly, on the web and on shows like Coast to Coast AM. Zero result.
“In my severe Bible study I have not come across mention of people that didnt resemble us.” – I actually don’t know what that sentence means, so I can’t respond.
“Rather people who were made without taking of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil that was placed on their planets as a test also.” — and where is the proof for this?
The subject of Extra-terrestrials has been somewhat challenging me in my faith as well, and i really appreciate what you put on this sight. I don’t believe the demons = angels theory explains everything either. For some cases, yes that might be a viable option to consider, but there are too many unanswered questions and too many strange coincidences in our past, as well as encounters to say that some other biological form of life more advanced than us does not exist. I personally believe that there may be different groups of extra-terrestrial life out there, just like there are different religions on earth. Some may very well be religious and hold a strong faith in God, others i believe rejected God and may even believe they themselves are God’s because of how far they have come technologically. Or there is another option that these beings may be a race of individuals who are demon-possessed and can attribute all their knowledge and technological-advancements to demons sharing information with them. Demons are far from all-powerful, however this does not mean they don’t have a great deal of knowledge that can be applied to scientifical and technological advancements.
anyway, I am just a christian college student fascinated with this topic and am open to every theory possible on this matter. Thank you so much for creating this blog site
you’re welcome – where do you go to college?
I take pleasure within the comments on this weblog, it actually gives it that community feel!
I am a Christian and an Engineer. I have been on a quest to understand the UFO technology and the science behind it and not to pursuit the alien side of the issue. This I deemed a spiritually safe and a theologically uncomplicated area. I have come to understand that separating UFOs and their alien operators is not so easy, as the technology pivots on the operator/designers. I purposely sought out thought by scientists interested in science and facts alone if that is possible, authors like J. Allen Hynek, Paul Hill and others. One thing that I became more convinced of is there are a lot of well documented human encounters with UFOs and aliens by reputable responsible ordinary people. Additionally the UFOs are performing incredible feats involving speed, acceleration, maneuverability and apparent energy consumption. I have tried to ignore the alien status issues but the more I research the more I find I need to know who they are and what there purpose is here. They appear to be at least intellectual equals to humans but likely superior to humans so they dont seem to be part of the creation mandate we subdue and rule over (we are no longer at the top of the food chain). If aliens are fallen angels/demons the UFO technology seems pretty sophisticated from the technology they released to man in Enoch 1, is this observable technology (UFOs) what the fallen angels and demons have been developing over the millennias? Could this be considered forbidden knowledge? The questions that keep coming up in my mind are: Aliens appear to be a different species; do we treat them as equals or like animals? Do they have a soul and if so what is its status before God relative to humans? Do they fall under the curse of original sin? If not most of them seem to sin like humans. I believe God created all, aliens included, so what is Gods purpose with them? Where do aliens fit into the Christian world view?
What evidence is there that fantastic technology could not be human? We cannot know that all human technological achievements are publicly known. Hill believed in aliens, but he maps out the physics. The question is whether there are human technologies that have achieved these things (anywhere, however experimental). There is also the observation problem. Is what is being observed truly a *craft* (why isn’t the sound barrier broken, for example, when pilots are in close proximity to craft whose maneuvers would have to break that barrier?) Might it be something else? That is, while I don’t don’t that trained observers observe things that have no conventional explanation, until we know that there are really biological ETs, then they cannot be used as an explanation for these observations — because that would be assuming something that isn’t proven to prove something else.
If angels and demons are non-corporeal beings, they need no technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nguXc-NpyDI whatever the demonic part of this stuff is, there is something very physical.
Christ would not have to die on other planets. One time covers all creation.
Also, God might have made planets habitable with relevant life to house excess
human population eventually, but the Fall messed this up, or some might have
been terraformed by high tech people from before The Flood. And aliens might
be originally human that were reengineered by human mad scientists for work
in extreme environments.
I am always looking online for tips that can facilitate me. Thank you!
I am subbing tonight for the 5th grade Sunday school teacher, when he told me I could talk on anything, my first thought was Aliens or Demons. Your site has given me some good content for tonight. I would like to point out, and correct me if I am wrong. Did God make the stars to illuminate the Earth? When Adam fell, did not ALL creation fall? Was not Christ made of God and the seed of woman ( human )? If we are to take God’s word as truth, Then it seems to me, we can trust that this Earth and Human beings, are the apple of His eye ( those who were saved, are saved and are being saved ) by the blood sacrifice of the second Adam Jesus The Christ, who will come again, to this Earth, and set up His kingdom.
There are signs in the Heavens like the Bible said there would be, but we ain’t seen nothing yet. men’s hearts will fail at what they see. These objects flying in our atmosphere must be subject to the laws of our physics, and they are not, therefor they must be spiritual. As for abductions, these are physical, and they are mostly, terrifying!
Here is my two cents.
(1() Angels left there first estate and mated with daughters of men and died in the flood. Hence, Greek mythology.
(2) Fallen Angels, are still at work in the history and future of Man, Satan is ” The prince of the power of the air ”
(3) There is no part of God’s creation, outside of Holy angels and Himself, that did not fall with the First Adam
(4) Christ died, once for ALL, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, Being put to death in the flesh and made alive by the Spirit.
(5) Jesus the Christ was not an alien, He was, The God Man.
What we are seeing is a manifestation of the powers of evil, and I believe, the great delusion coming to mankind. Not some wonderful awakening to other worlds and beings, but the very powers of darkness themselves.
Did God really say, you shall not eat of it.
There are a few things in here that I would word differently. I wouldn’t say “all creation fell” since creation isn’t a moral agent. The result of Adam’s fall (one of them) was that the little slice of earth described as Eden was lost — humanity lost immortality in the Edenic realm (God’s “residence” or space as it were) and Eden was gone. The rest of the planet aside from Eden (99.999+ % of earth) was not Edenic and so not perfect. But it *was* very good in the creator’s view. Genesis 1 contains hints of “creation chaos” within the creation that were restrained but not eliminated, but that’s a digression.
The literal view of Gen 6 is the one reflected in the comments of Jude and Peter (2 Peter) and so that has to be on the table. The Bible is clear that residents of the spiritual world can enter the human world of flesh and assume genuine corporeality, having the properties and abilities of humans. There is another possibility for Gen 6 (what I’d call “literal/real but mythic”), but that is also a digression.
There is no evidence that demons are “fallen angels” in the Bible. They are never described that way. The Bible doesn’t tell us what they are, though 2nd temple Jewish literature (some of the same books used by NT authors on occasion — e.g., 1 Enoch) does tell us what the “Jewish view” was: demons are the disembodied spirits of dead nephilim, who were produced/fathered by sons of God (divine beings – Gen 6) who cohabited with human women.
I’d agree without reservation on #s 4 and 5.
Thanks for this article! I’ve been both curious and frustrated by this phenomenon ever since I saw a UFO in broad daylight while I was in college. I wanted to think that it was an illusion or a demon, but was frustrated because I couldn’t label it as either (it flew away too fast after hovering for a while to be an illusion, and I think I would have sensed at least a little spiritual darkness when I saw it instead of just intellectual curiosity). I’ve been researching the subject for years now, and while some accounts do sound like definite demonic activity, I am convinced that there is more to it. Also, you have to keep in mind that humans have done some very dark/demonic things as well, but the Holocaust doesn’t make the Nazis demons…. There’s a lot to think about, and I love seeing such an objective Christian view on the matter!
You’re welcome!
Actually the bible does explain these strange phenomena that haunt mankind: ghosts, false gods, demons and so-called space aliens. Satan was a liar from the beginning and is the source of all these manifestations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYe-MsVl8s
The Bible doesn’t actually link any of this to outer space, and so the question of ET life isn’t addressed by the things you list. Many of the messages and trauma associated with contactees and abductees are certainly sinister from a biblical and moral perspective, though. But this demonstrates overlap, not a 1:1 correspondence.
Any hoax and/or lie is certainly sinister and demonic from a biblical and moral perspective. There is a 1:1 correspondence between the lights and physical manifestations of ghosts and space aliens. The remarkable similarity between lights floating through a house and lights floating through the sky should not be ignored.
That said, I doubt many of the “sightings” that are reported by people are genuine. Both Satan and mankind certainly share a tendency towards hoaxes and jokes.
What should be the Christian’s stand towards ET? I would suggest that we should demand remarkable proof for such remarkable claims. There continues to be no solid evidence for any alien visitations on earth, just delusions and events that bear remarkable similarity to demonic possession (messages and trauma associated with contactees and abductees).
What I meant to say is that there is no 1:1 correspondence between all the UFO/alien stories and demons. There may be many explanations for that, and there is no theological / biblical argument against alien life, so in principle, that’s a possibility, though I see no evidence for it.
You are (I think) focused on the entities involved in abduction narratives. Since I believe most of those narratives are false (not hoaxed, but occurring only in the mind), then I see no 1:1 correspondence there, either. But in the absence of a genuine ET life form, I’d equate these entities with sinister spiritual forces as well.
Adam & Eve were the first humans to have to formulate a disposition on “ET”s. I would argue that this task was seminal to the “Fall”. Clearly, by interacting with “The Shining One”, they were exposed to a version of life, delivered by “The Shining One” that caused them to depart from the life lesson that “The Lord” delivered to them- the one about death and dying…about knowing good and evil.
Once “The Shining One” convinced A&E that Tree of Life fruit was going to make them “like God”, (sounds like a sermon delivered to an abductee, doesn’t it) then A&E signed up with the “Heaven’s Gate” cult of “The Shining One”. Obviously God was disappointed by their decision, and owing to His nature, which was a “free choice for all”, He allowed the events to unfold as they did, throughout the bible story, and put The Rescue Plan in place. Nevertheless, “The Shining One” did take physical form, spoke to A&E, and at the same time, “The Shining One” is widely understood to be multi-dimensional being (able to “move” in and out of space-time) as are God’s “Angels”. The only difference between “The Shining One” and God’s “Angels” being that God’s “Angels” never appear in scripture to be acting independently of God.
Christians endeavor to be in lock step with the purposes of God. That’s why we are so circumspect about what opinion we form about this topic. MSH has kindly “pastored” us by allowing a discussion of circumspection, highlighting the pitfalls of “worshipping other Gods before Me” and the indicators of such behavior by our contemporary fellow human Adams and Eves. Surely, it is fascinating and empowering to our walk with God to have this opportunity to discuss openly with each other, and to have the oversight of Mike, with all of his resourcefulness, to engage the subject without ridicule or dis sisal that we encounter when broaching this subject with the church hierarchy. But it is equally daunting to see the formidable delusion taking form in the world, contemplating what circumstances may be coming that will attempt to make humanity ripe for the deluding, and how the principalities and powers will manifest themselves in our space and time in order to convince us that some other reality other than our John 3:16 worldview is to be embraced so as to attempt to put humans out of reach of Redemption.
Oh, did I mention, “Thanks Mike!”
I appreciate the article and comments. Being a Christian I felt alone and very confused after seeing a “ufo” 50 feet over my head and having physical aspects to it as well. It put my faith in serious jeopardy for many years. Thanks