have reported seeing what they think are aliens from outer space. How should Christians respond to these reports? We'll give you some suggestions this week
on Creation Magazine LIVE! Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE! My name is Richard Fangrad. And I'm Matt Bondy, and this week on Creation
Magazine LIVE our topic is about how Christians should react to reports of aliens and UFOs. Now, at first you might be thinking, do we
need to react at all? Do we need to fuss over a few minor reports
that usually end up being hoaxes anyways? Yes, well, that's the reaction of a lot
of people, that the whole aliens and UFOs thing concerns just a few people.
But that's not the case at all. There are about 150 UFO sightings a day! These happen all over the world. That's a lot of something going on there, right? Now 9095 percent of UFO sightings can be
explained as natural or man-made phenomena, such as the planet Venus (that accounts for
quite a few) or satellites, but that still leaves quite a few that need some other explanation. So, UFOs have apparently been seen on commercial
and military radar.
They've even been seen by a US President:
Jimmy Carter in 1969. They are said to change shape and merge into
one another. They appear to defy the laws of physics by
travelling at high speed, thousands of miles per hour, and then just change direction without
slowing down at all. Some polls suggest that up to 20 million
Americans have seen a UFO and four million claim to actually have been abducted by aliens.
Now, UFO 'experiences', as they call them,
are often generational, spanning several generations of family members. And UFO cults are some of the fastest-growing
religious movements in the world (like the Raelians, for example). In addition, science fiction is the most popular
entertainment genre today, accounting for about 70 percent of all movie box office receipts. And, the idea that 'aliens are with us'
has become mainstream now.
Just ask a few teenagers. You'll likely find some who think that intelligent,
extra-terrestrial life is a fact, and some would say they may have even been our creators. Do you find that shocking? Well, surveys reveal that more than 80 percent
of people in Western countries now believe that ET is 'out there' somewhere. Yes, it's very popular.
Finding ET is actually one of the goals of
NASA's taxpayer-funded 'Origins' program. To them, the search for the evolutionary
origin of life on other planets will provide meaning for our own existence. Now, this is despite the fact that we can
already deduce purposes of life: if we just evolved from a pool of chemicals, when we
die we go back to the elements. That's it.
That's all. Sure, you can try and manufacture or imagine
some meaning to life but there really isn't any in an evolutionary worldview. And, evolution is the central tenet, whether
you look at science fiction, SETI or the various missions to Mars. Belief in evolution, which includes the cosmos
being billions of years old, has preconditioned people to expect alien visitations.
Yeah, and UFOs and aliens are big business too. The book The Chariots of the Gods claimed
that ancient artifacts, like the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge and so on, were evidence
of alien visitations to a primitive earth a long time ago. It was an international best-seller. Author Erich von Dniken made the transition
from the science fiction market into mainstream, selling over 63 million books.
This made him one of the biggest-selling authors
of all time. Not only that, he replaced the God of the
Bible with aliens claiming that Biblical miracles like the parting of the Red Sea and the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah were 'UFO-mediated' miracles by way of advanced technology. Right, yes. So, this is not some little issue and, for
us as Christians, the question is, how does a biblical worldview explain what people are
seeing and experiencing? Does God's Word give us some insight about
what's really going on here? And we're going to look into that today,
but some of you might be scratching your heads wondering why we're talking about this subject
on Creation Magazine LIVE!.
What's the connection to the origins debate
and Genesis? Depending on which origins account for the
universe you believe to be true, either creation or evolution, the question about alien life
is phrased a little bit differently. If you believe, for example, that God created,
then the question is, could God have created intelligent life elsewhere? If you believe in the evolutionary history
for the universe, then the question is, could intelligent life have evolved elsewhere? So it does connect to the origins debate. There's a lot going on globally around the
subject of aliens and UFOs. And these things do connect to the
creation/evolution issue.
We'll continue on this in just a minute,
and we'll look at God's Word to provide clarity on this subject. If all of humanity descended from Adam and
Eve as the Bible teaches how is it possible that people have different blood
types today? An answer comes from basic genetics. Unlike other traits that are controlled by
multiple genes, the A, B, and O blood types are controlled by a single gene. However, this gene comes in three slightly
different versions, known as alleles, and that is why we have these three possible major
blood types.
When God created Adam and Eve, He could have
created them with great genetic variety. This means Adam and Eve could have possessed
all three alleles between them. However, blood type O appears to be due to
a mutated or damaged version of blood type A allele, which suggests it arose later in
human history. This means Adam and Eve would only need to
possess the A and B alleles between them.
So, the origin of blood types is consistent
with the Bible's history. To find out more from Creation Ministries
International, visit our website, CREATION.Com. If you've just tuned in, this week we are
talking about Aliens and UFOs. And we've talked about this topic on Creation
Magazine LIVE before, for example, way back in Season 1 we had Gary Bates on the show.
Now, he's the CEO of our US office and the
author of "Alien Intrusion". And if this is a topic that interests you,
earlier this year CMI released a fascinating new documentary based on Gary's book called,
"Alien Intrusion: Unmasking a Deception". It was on over 700 screens in theatres all
across the US and there were international releases as well. Depending on when you're watching this,
the DVD may already be available.
Right, yeah. The movie spends some time discussing the
logistical and scientific challenges to aliens visiting us from great distances away, but
the interviews with the people who've experienced being abducted by aliens, those are incredible. These are people who've actually had these
experiences where they are taken on board spacecraft or have interacted with these beings
in a variety of ways, in my opinion, those interviews are the highlight of the film,
because it's information from those interviews that leads to the mind-blowing conclusion
of the whole documentary. Which we're not going to give away too much here.
Yes, go watch the DVD! But what we do want to do here, is to look
at a few ideas a little more deeply than we did on previous shows. Questions like: does the Bible support the
idea that intelligent alien life could be out there? Did aliens design us, and are aliens really
all around us? So, let's put all these question into a single one: does the Bible support the idea of intelligent alien life? OK. Well, the short answer is no, the Bible does
not support the idea of intelligent life elsewhere. But let's take some time to go through the
reasons behind that conclusion.
People say, "Look, just because the Bible
teaches about God creating intelligent life only on Earth, why couldn't He have done
so elsewhere?" And then they'll rightly point out that
Scripture doesn't specifically mention everything there is or specifically address every issue. It doesn't mention cars or the internet,
or how to make a spaghetti dinner. The argument is: those things exist and the
Bible doesn't mention them, so could aliens exist, even though the Bible doesn't mention them? That's the argument. The thing is, the biblical objection to extra-terrestrials
isn't just an argument from silence.
I mean, just because the Bible doesn't mention
aliens, doesn't mean they don't exist. It's understanding the "big picture" of
the Bible and the gospel message that enables us to conclude why the Bible doesn't mention
extra-terrestrials: and... It's because there aren't any! And we'll explain this over the next few minutes. We need to explain that, yeah.
Also, consider this, if the earth were to
be favoured with a visitation by real extra-terrestrials from a galaxy far, far away, then wouldn't
it be reasonable to expect that the Bible, and God in His sovereignty and foreknowledge,
would mention such an important occasion, because it would clearly redefine our place
in the universe. Yes. And there's more to it than that. Let's walk through the basic arguments that
lead to the conclusion that there is no intelligent alien life.
Ok, there are 4 key points to consider. Number 1 is: The effect of the Curse following
Adam's Fall was universal. So, the whole creation groans under the weight of sin. Romans 8:1822 describes a contrast between
this current world and the New Heavens and Earth in the future where there is no more curse.
So Paul writes, "For I consider that the
sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing
for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility,
not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will
be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the
children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together
in the pains of childbirth until now." OK, so the whole creation, the entire universe
is under God's curse.
Which means it would include any ETs living
elsewhere, right? So, they're affected by a curse that they
had nothing to do with? They're not descendants of Adam and wouldn't
have inherited Adam's sin nature in the way all humans, all descendants of Adam, did. So, that's the first point to consider. Number 2 is: Christ's atoning death at Calvary
cannot save extra-terrestrials. Why is that? Jesus is called the kinsman-redeemer.
What's a kinsman redeemer? It's someone who redeems or saves someone
that has a relationship by blood. So, Jesus is a descendant of Adam in the same way that all people who ever lived on this planet are. In this way he is our kinsman redeemer. Yes.
And that's why those genealogies in Matthew
and Luke that link Jesus back to Abraham and Adam are so important. Yes, and Jesus is also called 'the last Adam'. The first Adam sinned, and that brought death
to all his descendants. Jesus was sinless so he had no need to atone
for any sin of his own.
His death paid for the sins of all believers. So, a sinless human substitute took on the
punishment humans deserve for sin. That's right, yes. The thing is, Jesus isn't a Vulcan or a
Wookie, he's a human and He paid the price of death to set right what the first Adam set wrong.
His death was substitutionary. 1 Corinthians 15:22 "For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive." That's the second point. And it's a major point to consider when
trying to answer the question, could there be intelligent alien life, and we'll be
right back with points 3 and 4. With all the responsibilities that most pastors
have, it is often too much to ask them to keep up with all the latest science that supports
the Bible and creation.
The Information Department at CMI reviews
the leading evolutionary science publications so that our scientists and speakers are both
constantly updated with the latest evolutionist information and able to refute it. Give your pastor a break. Book a CMI speaker into your church for a
faith-strengthening Sunday morning message. Visit creation.Com to contact your nearest
CMI office.
Welcome back. This week we're discussing the Christian
response to aliens and UFOs. Now, we just covered two Biblical points to
consider when answering the question, is it possible that intelligent alien life exists
out there somewhere? There are two more points to consider, and
all four kind of work together to answer the question. The first 2 points lead to the third.
Because (point 1) the Curse on creation is
universal, it would have included Yoda and any other life in the universe. And because (point 2) Jesus is human and died
for humans, all those who are descended from Adam have inherited a sin nature from him,
therefore point 3 is: any ETs would be lost for eternity when this present creation is destroyed. Right. And they would have no hope of being saved.
In 2 Peter 3:10 and 12 it says, "But the
day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works
that are done on it will be exposed. Waiting for and hastening the coming of
the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the
heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!" OK. So there's a description (a scary description)
of the final judgement. So, putting these 3 points together; even
though the Bible doesn't specifically mention alien life, given the big picture of the gospel,
the Curse on creation, Jesus as a substitute for humans and the coming universal judgement,
alien life just doesn't fit into that reality.
Now, some people wonder whether Christ's sacrifice might be repeated elsewhere for other beings. But, Christ died once for all as it says in
Romans 6:10 and elsewhere. In 1 Peter 3:18 it says, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death
in the flesh but made alive in the spirit," That's right, yeah. He's not going to be crucified and resurrected
again on other planets.
This is consistent with the fact that the redeemed earthly church is known as Christ's bride. We read about that at the end of Ephesians
5 and in Revelation 19, and other places. This is a marriage that will last for eternity. Christ is not going to be a polygamist with many other brides from other planets, that type of thing.
And that leads us to the fourth point in our
list: The Bible makes no provision for God to redeem any other species,
not even fallen angels. Hebrews 2:16 says, "For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham." Actually, verses 9 to 18 give the greater
context, that Jesus is our perfect saviour. And that doesn't fit at all with Jesus also
redeeming other non-human intelligent life. So there are 4 Biblical considerations.
Put them all together and we can say that
the Bible rules out intelligent life on other planets. Let's look at some other verses that people
have used as justifications for aliens. Some translations of Hebrews 11:3 say, "Through
faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Yes, some people claim that the word 'worlds'
refers to other inhabitable planets. That word is ain, from which we derive the
word 'eons'.
So a better translation in that context is simply 'universe'. The word describes 'everything that exists
in time and space, visible and invisible, present and eternal'. But, even if it was referring to other planets, that wouldn't imply that there's intelligent life on them. Right.
Another passage pro-UFOers point to is John
10:16 in which Jesus says, "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must
bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd." But the 'other sheep' there is clearly
a reference to the Gentiles. The Jews had believed that salvation
was for them alone. Jesus was reaffirming that He would be the
Saviour of everyone not just the Jews. We'll be right back to look at other objections
people have raised to try to support aliens biblically.
Who would have every thought that scratches
in rocks could disprove the biblical flood? Well, scratches in rock, call striations,
are sometimes caused by a glacier moving over bedrock, therefore, when geologists encounter striated rock, they often claim that a glacier caused it. Striated rock occurs within the sedimentary rocks
that were laid down by Noah's Flood. Evolutionary geologists claim this is evidence
of multiple ancient ice ages, so they claim that Noah's year-long flood could not have
laid down these rocks. However, we now know that underwater landslides
cause rock striations, similar to those caused today by glaciers.
Furthermore, there are important differences
between glacial deposits formed today and those of the alleged ancient ice ages. So don't let scratches in rocks, scratch
away your confidence in God's word. To find out more from Creation Ministries
International, visit our website, CREATION.Com. This week on Creation Magazine LIVE we're
looking at the subject of aliens and UFOs from a biblical perspective.
The Bible, when we understand the big picture
of creation, the gospel, the coming judgement - it teaches that there's no intelligent
alien life. But, aliens are very popular so people try
to make them fit into a biblical worldview. Yea, for example, Michael S. Heiser is an
influential Christian UFOlogist and speaker, with a Ph.D.
In Hebrew Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages. He claims that the arguments we've just
summarized in the last few minutes might not apply to God-created aliens. His reasoning goes like this: Because they
are not descendants of Adam they haven't inherited his sin nature, and therefore, aren't
morally guilty before God. So just like 'bunny rabbits' on the earth,
they don't need salvation.
Even though they'll die, they don't go
to either heaven or hell. Alright. Well, on the surface this sounds like it could
work; after all, fallen angels are intelligent but they're beyond salvation, right? ET would be highly intelligent like angels,
but, it seems bizarre to assign no moral responsibility for the actions of one group of highly intelligent
beings and not others. Heiser also claims that vastly intelligent
ETs would not displace mankind's position as being made in the image of God because
'image' just means humans have been placed as God's representatives on the earth.
But the Bible says we are made in God's
image and likeness in Genesis 1:26. Man was created as a fully intelligent being
about 6,000 years ago. Just a few generations later they were able
to invent musical instruments and forge things from different kinds of metal. That's right, yes.
And since that time, even we have not been
able to develop technologies advanced enough to travel to other star systems. If aliens were capable of developing faster-than-light
spaceships needed to get here, it suggests that they must have been created with vastly
superior intellect to ourswhich would make them even more in God's likeness, in that
sense, than we are. So, the whole idea runs into serious problems
when we try to fit it into Scripture. Once again, if you take the 'big picture'
of the Bible, creation, the Gospel, the proposal that intelligent alien life exists just doesn't work.
But what about bacteria? Right? What if one of the spacecraft sent to Mars,
for example, discovered bacteria? Does the Bible's 'big picture' allow for that possibility? Yes, it does. It's really unlikely, but God creating bacteria
elsewhere wouldn't violate Gospel doctrines. But any microbes on Mars would likely be a
result of human contamination. We know that spores that originated from Earth
exist in our outer atmosphere.
Scientists have suggested that microbes carried
within rocks that are blasted off the Earth could maybe get to Mars. Yeah. Professor Paul Davies said there's no scientific
reason why bacteria deep in a specimen of rock would not survive the journey. He said it is not just speculation to say
that rocks from Earth could reach Mars, because rocks identified as definitely Martian in
origin have been found here on Earth.
So, the obvious mechanism for this is a major
impact by a comet, which blasts rock particles at high velocity in all directions. Some of these particles would break free of
Mars' gravitational field and later be potentially swept up by other planets, including Earth. There's evidence of large impact craters on
Earth, so there's no reason why this could not have happened in reverse. Right.
And then there's the possibility that prior manmade probes originating from Earth 'seeded' it there. And we'll be right back with even more things
to consider. The vigorous promotion of evolution as established
fact is causing many Christians to question the biblical creation account. And some non-Christians won't consider Christianity because they believe the Bible has
been disproved by science.
That's where Creation magazine comes in! Creation magazine is a family friendly publication
packed with cutting edge science that supports the Bible, presented in an easy to understand
format by some of the leading experts in their fields of study. Visit creation.Com to subscribe today! Welcome back. We titled the show this week, "The Christian
response to Aliens and UFOs". As Christians all of our thinking in every
area needs to be based on Scripture.
If people don't begin with what God tells
us about Himself and the nature and purpose of the universe they'll end up having huge
gaps of ignorance in their perception of reality. And what you said makes sense, right? If you want to know how to do something that
you've never ever done before like some electrical work around your house or you want to fix
up an old car or something, you seek out instructions to learn how to do those things, right? And it would be best to get instructions from
experts in those areas. God is the ultimate expert. If you want to know the answers to questions
like, where we came from, what's life all about, what happens after we die, what our
goals in life should be or, today's topic for example, is there intelligent alien life,
go to God.
Now, some of you might be saying, "well, I
have doubts about God's Word being accurate." That's why CMI exists! As a Christian ministry our primary goal is
to edify believers, to build up the church. We do that by providing answers to questions that many people have about the accuracy of God's Word. And people have a lot of questions about the
creation account in Genesis. They do, yeah.
Today we've been talking about aliens and
summarizing research done over many years by our staff to explain that subject within
a biblical framework. So what's the conclusion? Since the Bible is God the Creator's communication
to us, His creation, and we can deduce from His Word that there is no alien life, then
no intelligent alien life will ever be found. So, programs to look for intelligent life elsewhere are a waste of money and time and resources. Right.
We can come to these conclusions. Could there be microbial life on Mars, for example? Sure that's a possibility. Just like evolution, aliens make for some
good science fiction. But aliens don't exist and evolution never happened.
That's right. We should also mention the "Alien Intrusion" movie that was in theatres earlier this year, in 2018. It answers the question, if there's no such
thing as aliens, what exactly are people experiencing? OK, if it's not aliens coming from great
distances, what is going on there? When they have these abduction experiences,
what's actually going on? But do aliens really not exist? Well, we could say, there is 'alien' life,
but not in the way that most people would think. Of course, there is alien life.
God, and angels, but we can think of God specifically. I mean, God is not human like we are, as we
already explained. We're going to do a show in a couple of
weeks on 'What is the image of God?' Tune in and watch for that one when it's released. But, there is alien life in that sense.
And just like SETI and those programs Search
for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and so on, what they're looking for (and NASA's
Origins program), what they're looking for is answers to the big questions of life and,
if there's aliens on other planets, well then, they'll have the answers. Well, yeah, in a sense they're right, aliens
do have the answers to where we came from, what the purpose of life is, and what happens
after we die. But the alien that we're talking about here is You mean the ones that abduct you on a spaceship? No, no! It's not those! It's the God of the Bible. God has communicated to us and He's told
us exactly why He made us, what the purpose of life is, and, most importantly, what happens
after we die.
All of us are going to live for eternity, aren't we? That's right. And there're decisions that we need to make
now, before our time is up, that affect where we're going to spend eternity. Yeah, I mean, if people spend more time in
the Word of God instead of researching the universe to try and find answers to their
questions, I think they'd come out with a lot better answers. Yeah, and spend less of the tax-payer money too That's what we're trying to do as a ministry,
is to focus people's attention on Scripture, and get us thinking with that as a foundation
in every area of life.
If you skip the first section of the Bible,
you don't get why we're here and how everything started, and so on. That's what our ministry is all about. Creation Ministries International, Creation
Magazine LIVE!... In this TV show we base a lot of the content of the show on previous
magazine issues from Creation magazine.
If you want to see a sample of that magazine,
there's a free digital copy online that you can page through. Go to creation.Com/free-mag. If you like it, subscribe. There's ways to do that online.
Or look up the address information for our
seven offices around the world, and you can subscribe to that magazine. We'll be back next week with a different topic..
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