Formerly known as Faith Beyond Belief
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Aliens are amongst us, or else they aren’t. It depends on who you are willing to believe, because one fact remains undeniable, the public has never been provided with incontrovertible proof. For example, two weeks ago the police in Las Vegas, Nevada received reports of two unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAPs) falling from the sky. Shortly thereafter a caller told the Las Vegas police, “There’s an 8-foot person . . . and it has big eyes and it’s looking at us.” The caller claimed to see two beings in his backyard, “100% not human,” and he finished with “I swear to God this is not a joke, this is actually—we’re terrified.” But no video was provided, which is surprising to me, considering the Instagram world in which we live.
Over the past few years reports of UAPs (formerly known as UFOs) have been coming at us with increasing frequency (see here, here, and here) leading to suspicions that either aliens are getting ready for a grand arrival, or that the increased number of reports, including reports of recovered bodies and space vehicles, are yet another attempt to stampede the public into accepting more government oversight. These are likely not the only choices, but as a Bible believer I can state with certainty that the truth is not out there, or hidden inside one of the hangars found in Area 51. Instead, the truth is in God’s book, the Bible, and in so many words it tells us that we need not fear an alien invasion. Instead, we need to be ready to stand before the living God to be judged “according to what [we] have done” (Rev. 20:12).
To be clear, I believe a fair reading of the Bible can only lead to one conclusion. The coming of Christ to earth, along with the manner of His coming, makes it impossible to take seriously the idea of sentient beings created on other planets. When our first forefather Adam sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17; 3:2; Rom. 5:12-14) he brought into play an unprecedented event that I am prepared to claim could never happen again—anywhere. Adam’s sin made the salvation of humans utterly dependent upon the life and death of God’s eternal Son, who, although eternally divine, became man (John 1:14), and so was and continues to be God and man, one person with two distinct natures forever (Rom. 9:5; Luke 1:35; Col. 2:9). All our hopes for eternal life with God depend upon this God-man’s perfect holiness, perfect sacrifice, and glorious resurrection.
Try to imagine the same event happening elsewhere. Try to imagine, for instance, that God filled another planet with life, much as He has done on Earth. On this imaginary planet, God formed other creatures, who may, or may not have looked like us, and breathed into them the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). Would that being, into whom God’s very life had been breathed, not also be created in His image? Btw, don’t get bogged down with finding God’s image in the human form. Because God is Spirit (John 4:24), His image is found, not in our shape, but in our souls. But moving on, think about the possibility that the first of that planet’s image-bearers also sinned. What would happen then?
Remember, God only has one Son, and he’s already lived, died, and risen on Earth. What’s God going to do if sin is found on another planet? Does He have another Son to be another Saviour? Taken as a whole the Bible teaches that the Trinity is perfect and complete, as is. In other words, throughout the universe, or, for the sake of argument, the multiverses, there is only one, unchanging God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit. And because there can only be one God, He would necessarily be the one God of both Earth and Zog, or whatever those other image bearers call their home world. But God has only one Son. And that Son is now one with us. He has committed himself to humanity, forever. Who, then, will come from the Godhead to become one with the Zogonians, to die for their sins and rise for their justification (Rom. 4:25)?
Would God consider saving the Zogonians without an atonement for their sins? In the words of St. Paul, “May it never be.” Because justice is the same everywhere in the universe, this would destroy the very nature of God. On the other hand, would God be prepared to allow the Zogonians to develop in sin, to become quite possibly supreme in intelligence and wickedness, only then to travel across the void to wipe out the race for which Christ died? I sincerely hope you find the thought impossible to entertain. But you ask, what if the Zogonians never sin? What if they develop into a perfect, sinless race of beings who never need to be reconciled to God? What if their entrance into heaven is based on their own righteousness? Okay, but consider this, when the redeemed humans and the unredeemed Zogonians stand together before God, the Being sitting on the throne will be one of us, not one of them. To me, that would be as fraught with difficulties as the idea of the Zogonians’ eternal wickedness.
I hope you can see by now that thanks to the incarnation of the Son of God, there really is no room in the universe for any sentient race other than ours. Thus, no aliens have come, or are coming, either to befriend us or to destroy us. The Christian position regarding aliens, then, is a parody on Christ’s words to Thomas (John 20:29). To a world that fears what may come through the skies we say, “Blessed are those who, with spiritual eyes, have seen the first coming of the Lord and believed. To such people no heavenly visitation need be feared.” And to those who refuse to believe the testimony of the gospels we warn them, not to be afraid of imaginary aliens, but rather to fear the coming of the very real day, “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (II Thess. 2:7-8).
