What Does The Bible Say About Aliens
Youve seen the movies. Youve seen the History Channel specials.
But do they really exist? And what does the Bible have to say about aliens?
I mean, the U.S. spends $22.6 billion a year on NASA, and since its inception, our country has put $650 billion into understanding and exploring the universe beyond Earth. As humans, we are fascinated with anything beyond our imagination.
Its no surprise that we wonder how all the scientific discoveries in space impact the way we read and engage with Scripture.
The Great Compromise Of Gods People
There is a great compromise here, and highlighting it is one way of getting at the reasons for the great flood. To explain what the great compromise is, lets finish by answering three questions:
Who are the sons of God in verse 2?Who are the Nephilim in verse 4?What does it mean for us today?
First, who are the sons of God?
The sons of God may land on us as a surprising phrase, especially if we are just opening up our Bibles to the beginning of chapter 6 and havent caught the flow of chapters 4 and 5.
What Genesis has been doing in chapters 4 and 5 going back to the curse of the serpent in Genesis 3:15 is setting up a tale of two cities: the city of man and the city of God. This is, in a sense, the great story of all of history: the story of two offsprings. Remember what God said to the serpent in Genesis 3:15:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
What we saw last week was that Eve thought she got her offspring with Cain. But chapter 4 shows us that Cain actually becomes the offspring of the serpent, like the rest of mankind . Sin crouches at his door, desires to consume him, and he does not rule over sin, but rather is ruled by the serpent .
So, to put it as clearly as I can for you, in answer to our first question, the sons of God in verse 6 is the line of Seth just developed in chapter 5.
Humans Have Long Searched The Heavens For Signs Of Other Life Is There Life Out There Is There A Way To Know For Sure
Humanity is fascinated with the concept of extraterrestrial life. Many wonder if intelligent life residing somewhere else in the universe is busy watching us develop. We want to know who we are and if there is anything else out there that resembles us.
Interest in contact with aliens is not just the grist of science fiction but a real-life passion for many devoted to the search for other life forms. When a job transfer put me near Roswell, New Mexico, I soon learned of July 4, 1947, the date of an alleged crash landing of an alien ship a few miles northwest of the city. The next day’s newspaper reported that the commander of the nearby U.S. Army base confirmed that a “flying saucer” had indeed crashed into the desert the previous evening.
Rumors circulated that on board the craft had been aliens who had died in the crash. On the second day, however, the commander said the crash was simply a downed weather balloon.
Another report, released in June 1997, just days before the 50th-anniversary extravaganza staged by local residents, said that what some thought had been dead aliens were only test dummies.
You May Like: Is Weed Mentioned In The Bible
The Great Grief Of Gods Own Heart
Verses 67: And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.
Human sin grieves God. This is a very important point not to miss, and very easy to miss, because in our sin, we are so prone to take sin lightly both in ourselves and in others. We know God is big and gracious, and we may begin to believe the lie that my little sins dont matter at all the time. Even if God notices, hes ready to forgive. Thats his job.
But that sort of light treatment of sin reflects a tragic lack in the knowledge of God. To know the heart of God is to know the grievousness of sin. Those who know God cannot be cavalier about sin, because he is not . He is not indifferent to human sin. To take sin lightly is to take God lightly.
So far, we have a very bleak picture humanity depraved and God grieved and as we move to verses 14, and ask about the Nephilim, its not getting any brighter. Not yet. But there is a ray of hope in verse 8 I want us to catch and carry with us back to verses 14.
The Sumerian Bible Translation
The Hebrew Bible says that the creation of Adam and Eve was the beginning. There are detailed records of all generations, from Adam down to Jesus. These records state how old each person was when they had their children. So, if you add up the dates in the Bible, it clearly shows that the Earth is a little older than 6,000 years old.
The Sumerian version includes the birth of the universe over 13.7 billion years ago. Our scientists now estimate this to be the approximate age of our universe. How could the Sumerians have possibly known this thousands of years before our Bible was even written? They clearly state that this was told to them by those who from the heavens came to earth, or the Anunnaki.
Scientists have estimated the age of the Earth to be 4.54 billion years . This age may represent the age of the Earths accretion, of its core formation, or of the material from which the Earth formed. This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples.
You May Like: What Does The Bible Say About Jealousy In Relationships
Is This Too Much Information To Digest
The information presented herein comes from scientists and scholars presenting their findings as scientific fact rather than from religious organizations promoting doctrine or from fictional speculation. It’s for you to find your own comfort level of acceptance.
Personally, I have found religious doctrine to be immensely insufficient lacking in credibility, believable assertions, and explanations. When I first found these words, they were interesting to me but nearly impossible to believe. Once I slowly began to digest and understand this new Alien POV , the bible actually came alive. This new knowledge explained so many things in the bible from Adam and Eve to Moses and the “burning bush” on the mountain to the “virgin birth” of Christ which explains the heavenly origin of Jesus. When angels are presented as actual flesh and blood beings, the and gods who were the Annunaki rulers, the , are defined by their technology and not their magic, an entirely new picture emerges. It’s one of wonderment, hope, and inspiration.
I’ve always been one who required proof before I really believed something. If an important prediction is made, I want to know the results of the prediction. Was it right, or was it wrong? If someone claims something amazing happened in the ancient past, where is the proof?
The ruins at Gobekli Tepe are the size of a modern city.
Are Aliens In The Bible
Lets start with getting on the same page about what were talking about when we talk about aliens.
A true definition of alien is anything that belongs to a foreign territory. Someone who is not a citizen of a country they reside in would be considered an alien. In the plant and animal world, alien species to a region are often called invasive species.
If were talking about aliens to Earth, an alien could refer to any being that is not from Earth. Spiritual beings that interact with our world could be included in that group. Scripture clearly indicates these beings exist.
If you want to call angels and demons aliens, because they are foreign to Earth, then sure there are aliens in the Bible.
You are probably reading this because you want to know if the Bible teaches anything about life on other planets. So our working definition of aliens will not include angels or demons, since they are spiritual beings, not organisms.
Our working definition of alien is any extraterrestrial lifeform, foreign to earth. Starting there, the Bible doesnt have anything to say about them.
About the potential for organisms to exist somewhere else in the universe besides planet Earth, the Bible doesnt definitively say anything about that, either.
What we can be confident of is that God created the heavens and the Earth. He created the entire universe. On planet Earth, Jesus Christ came to save sinful humanity.
Recommended Reading: What Should I Study In The Bible
Catholicism: There Are Aliens But No Alien Jesus
Since 1582, the Vatican has hosted an observatory dedicated to staring out into outer space, and after more than 400 years of looking, theyre convinced that life is out there. The Vaticans chief astronomer, Father Jose Funes, has gone on the record saying that its just a matter of time before we find extraterrestrial life. And one of his astronomers, Guy Consolmagno, says that those aliens have souls.
But theres no alien Jesus, the Vatican insistsjust a planet full of heathen extraterrestrials that are all doomed to go to Hell. The incarnation of the Son of God is a unique event in the history of humanity of the universe, Father Funes said. The discovery of intelligent life does not mean theres another Jesus.
Pope Francis seems to agree, and hes ready to baptize the aliens. If tomorrow an expedition of came, the Pope has said, and one says, But I want to be baptized! Who are we to close doors?
The Heavens Declare What
According to an aside in the opening chapter of Genesis a passage about God’s creation ‘in the beginning’ of ‘the heavens and the earth’ ‘he also made the stars’ . Later on, God promises Abraham to make his descendants ‘as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore’ . We now know that there are around 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and that there are around 100 billion galaxies in the known universe. We live on just one planet, orbiting just one star, in just one galaxy .
I wonder what thoughts and feelings go through you as you consider such statistics, or look at images, like thoset taken by the Hubble Space telescope? Perhaps you find yourself naturally echoing king David’s psalm:
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
Or maybe you sympathize with Oxford chemist Peter Atkins who says:
I’ve always thought that I was insignificant. Getting to know the size of the Universe, I see just how insignificant I really am! And I think the rest of the human race ought to realize just how insignificant it is. I mean, we’re just a bit of slime on a planet belonging to one sun.
The heavens declare the glory of God the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
Recommended Reading: What Council Decided The Books Of The Bible
The Stranger Is Jesus In Disguise
Within the New Testament, which Christians read in continuity with the Hebrew Bible or The Old Testament, the most often cited passage dealing with welcoming the stranger is from Matthew 25: 31-40.
This section speaks of the Final Judgment, when the righteous will be granted paradise and unrepentant sinners will be consigned to eternal fire. Christ says to those at his right hand that they are blessed because
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
The righteous then ask,
When did we see you, a stranger, and welcome you?
Christ replies,
Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.
As Matthew 25 makes clear, the Christians should see everyone as Christ in the flesh. Indeed, scholars argue that in the New Testament, stranger and neighbor are in fact synonymous. Thus the Golden Rule, love your neighbor as yourself, refers not just to people whom you know your neighbors in a conventional sense but also to people whom you do not know.
Beyond this, in the letters written by Paul of Tarsus , often known as the Pauline Epistles, it is made clear that in Christ,
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female.
From this perspective, being one in Christ should be taken literally as acknowledging no fundamental differences in kind among human beings.
From Noahs Birth To Noahs Ark
Now, at last, we come to verses 14, to find out what is going on between this first mention of Noah at the end of chapter 5 and the return to Noah in 6:8. We need to begin by seeing that this is all one section. The break between chapter 5 and 6 in our English Bibles may throw us off. Genesis 6:1 is not the beginning of a new section, but continues the flow of chapter 5. Noah was just introduced at the end of chapter 5, and Noah will be reintroduced in 6:89.
What verses 17 do is answer the question what happened between the high hopes of Noahs birth and the rising flood waters? How did the godly line catalogued in chapter 5 lead to the destruction of the world through a global flood? Thats how verses 14 answer our question about why God flooded the world.
Recommended Reading: Who Was Lilith In The Bible
According To The Talmud God Spends His Night Flying Throughout 18000 Worlds
I would argue that this concern is misguided. The claim that God is involved with and moved by humans has never required an Earth-centric theology. The Psalms, sacred to both Jews and Christians, claim that God has given names to all the stars. According to the Talmud, God spends his night flying throughout 18,000 worlds. And Islam insists that all things in the heavens and on the Earth are Allahs, as the Koran says, implying that his rule extends well beyond one tiny planet. The same texts are unequivocally clear that human beings are special to God, who seems fairly able to multitask.
Depending on how literally you read their message, some holy texts do not exclude the possibility of alien life
Second, we dont reserve the word special only for unrepeatable, unique, isolated phenomena. As Peters says, the discovery of life elsewhere in the Universe would not compromise Gods love for Earth life, just as a parents love for a child is not compromised because that child has a brother or sister. If you believe in a God, why assume he is only able to love a few of his starchildren?
Revelation
The Bible’s View On Aliens
Aside from that one verse in the Book of Elliot where a young Jesus lured E.T. into his room with a trail of Reese’s Pieces the Bible doesn’t explicitly state whether or not aliens exist, let alone if it would be a sin to go all Independence Day on some LGMs. That said, a lack of straightforward information has never gotten in the way of biblical scholars and the quest to probably stretch a metaphor or an iffy translation a little too far.
By way of example: in some translations, Genesis 23:4 reads, “I am a stranger and an outsider among you. Give me a burial site so that I can bury my dead.” In other translations, the word “stranger” is interpreted as “sojourner,” “foreigner,” or “visitor.” In a handful of versions, though, the word “alien” is used instead, giving conspiracy enthusiasts an inkling of a handhold to grasp to while screaming, frothy-mouthed, about how Kryptonian terraforming caused the Great Flood. Sure, the translators almost certainly meant a person-alien in the same way we mean people and not little green men when we talk about “illegal aliens” today, but that’s not as much fun for anyone.
Don’t Miss: Do Not Judge Others Bible
News About Alien Life
- March 21, 2022 fromKen Ham Blog
How should we communicate with extraterrestrials if we make direct contact with some distant species? This was discussed during an event sponsored by Harvard.
- Sept. 13, 2021 fromKen Ham Blog
How evolution-believing scientists are open to aliens from outer space while a belief in biblical creation points to an alternative explanation for UFOs.
Should Climate Change Matter To Believers
Whether we are experiencing global warming or not is up for debate however, it is crucial that believers do not divide themselves over this topic. God wants the body of believers to be unified.
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought .
Each person can have their own opinion, but we must not condemn a believer if they believe in global warming, nor should we condemn someone if they do not believe in global warming. Factions, discord, and disorder are not in Gods will for His children. Whether you believe in global warming or not, do not look down upon those who have the opposite opinion from yourself.
Scientists have studied the planet and the surrounding atmosphere, which is why we should respect their work and hear what they have to say. Science attests to God, as God is the One who invented science.
Many believers believe you have to choose God or science however, God is compatible with science because God invented every atom, molecule, and chromosome. You can respect science and still be a believer. In any case, we must obey God and He tells us to be a good steward of all He has given us.
Recommended Reading: Bible Study Software For Pc