Close encounters with biblical truth

by Pam Sheppard

February 24, 2005 (updated 4 Aug 2006 -Ed.)

What’s a Christian to do with those little gray aliens, flying saucers and the search for extraterrestrial life? Do beliefs in these things get added to the Bible in the same way that evolution and “millions of years” seem to get tacked onto God’s Word?

According to [CMI] author/speaker Gary Bates ([CMI] Australia), Christians shouldn’t dismiss these things easily, unless they want to lose touch with popular culture. Bates just completed a special speaking tour that included numerous stops in the US and Canada. “Evidence is growing that the church needs a wake-up call,” says Bates.

By God’s providential timing, Bates’ speaking tour—which included talks about the relevance of the Creation issue and many opportunities to also share about the evolution connection to UFOs and beliefs in extraterrestrial life—is another example of the many national and international media opportunities that God has presented to [CMI] speakers and authors in recent weeks.

During a three-hour late night interview on the Coast to Coast radio program (February 17) with popular host George Noory, Bates provided sound biblical answers regarding the evolution connection on this puzzling subject. During the Coast to Coast radio interview, and with numerous others that have come about since, Bates contended that aliens are actually fallen angels who are not extraterrestrial in nature, but rather interdimensional.

Immediately following the Coast to Coast radio show, this new [CMI] resource, Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection, surged to the top 100 sellers on Amazon.com. Creationist publisher, Master Books, quickly sold out of the book’s first printing of 5,000 copies.

Beliefs that UFOs are alien ships are rapidly escalating in society and are challenging the Christian worldview. The following list is a brief example of how this phenomenon has moved beyond the lunatic fringe and into the mainstream:

• The number one question in a New Scientist list of the top ten mysteries of life was “How did life begin?” The tenth most popular question was “Is there life on other planets?”

• According to an ABC News article (February 4), recent polls indicate that almost 50 percent of Americans and millions of people from around the world, believe that UFOs are real.¹

• ABC-TV’s “Primetime Live” is airing a two-hour special tonight (February 24) on UFOs. In this special, “Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs—Seeing is Believing,” Jennings draws on interviews with police officers, pilots, scientists and ordinary citizens who give extraordinary accounts of encounters with the unexplained. Jennings told the Washington Post that more than 80 million Americans believe intelligent beings from somewhere else have come to Earth. He also said that 40 million people believe they have seen UFOs. ...

• A number of Hollywood films about life in outer space, including The War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, will be released this year.

• Erich von Däniken’s (one of the largest-selling authors of all time, including the book, Chariots of the Gods, and promoter of idea that extraterrestrials visited the earth millennia ago to oversee man’s evolution) $76 million “Mysteries of the World” theme park in the Swiss Alps has attracted 440,000 visitors in its first year. Its corporate sponsors include Coca Cola, Fujitsu/Siemens and Sony. (See Who’s Transforming our society?)

In the [CMI] article about the amazing legacy of extraterrestrial (ET) populist Erich von Däniken, Bates said he is “distraught at the enormous amounts of money that von Däniken was able to raise to fund a mammoth project that discredits the God of the Bible with nonsense. His museum even has special children’s exhibits and programs to seduce young minds to the ‘way of the force’ and to steer them even further away from the Bible’s true account of the Creator who became our Savior.”

So, how should Christians respond to the growing number of people who believe that ET is out there somewhere and that aliens are fact? ...[G]et up to speed with this popular cultural issue by reading Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection, which leads readers (both Christians and non-Christians) to the conclusion that God is the real master of the universe. This book shows how the Sword of Scripture cuts to the heart of the matter and gives the hope-filled answer to real-world problems.²

We don’t want to see anyone’s faith “abducted” by the false teachings of the ET world.