Need to spend more public funds looking for aliens from outer space?

The BBC reported the following:

15 February 2020

The head of one of the US’s national observatories says the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe needs to be taken more seriously.

Dr Anthony Beasley told the BBC that there should be greater government support for a field that has been shunned by government research funders for decades.

His backing for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti) marks a sea change in attitudes to a field regarded until recently as fringe science.

Dr Beasley made his comments at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle.

The director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville in Virginia said that it was now “time for Seti to come in from the cold and be properly integrated to all other areas of astronomy”. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51223704

Notice a report last year related to the US Navy and UFOs:

May 1, 2019

The U.S. Navy has drafted a procedure to investigate and catalogue reports of unidentified flying objects coming in from its pilots. But the service doesn’t expect to make the information public, citing privileged and classified reporting that is typically included in such files. …

The Navy’s recent decision to draft formal guidelines for pilots to document encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena comes after the revelation in late 2017 that the Pentagon ran a secret “UFO” office that spent $22 million over five years to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats.” Funding for the office, known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, officially ended in 2012, though operations continued.

Among other things, the program resulted in the release of footage from the cockpit cameras of military aircraft, which appeared to document oval-shape vessels that resemble flying Tic Tacs.

Reports of curious sightings from military aircraft aren’t new. During World War II, Allied military pilots witnessed unexplained objects and fireballs that they dubbed “foo fighters.” A number of official government investigations looked into such phenomena in the postwar period. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/UFO-information-not-expected-to-go-to-general-13810876.php

The above will undoubtedly trigger more comments by UFO believers that they exist, the US government knows that they exist, and that there is a conspiracy to withhold that information from the general public.

Many Protestants have historically believed that the USA is a “Christian” nation. And while many do claim to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, notice a report that even more Americans seem to believe in aliens than Jesus:

According to a National Geographic survey, 77 percent of all Americans “believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth”, and according to a recent Harris poll only 68 percent of all Americans believe that Jesus is God or the Son of God.

That means that the number of Americans that believe that UFOs have visited us is now greater than the number of Americans that believe what the Bible has to say about Jesus Christ. With each passing year, the frequency of UFO sightings seems to keep increasing, as does the number of movies, television shows and video games featuring aliens and extraterrestrial life. It is almost as if the population of the planet is being primed for something. http://www.altheadlines.com/more-americans-believe-aliens-have-visited-earth-than-believe-that-jes-13253491/

Of course, most Americans do not truly know the Jesus of the Bible, they know of/about Him.

Now, if “aliens” mean spirit-beings like demons, then I too believe that they exist because the Bible teaches that (e.g. James 2:19). But I do not believe that was the intent of the question in the survey by National Geographic.

The Bible is clear that angels and demons have visited the earth. We read this in both the Old and New Testaments.

The Bible is also clear that Jesus will return (cf. Acts 1:11).

Many believe that aliens have visited the earth–and some of those they have considered to have been aliens and/or apparitions have been demonic.

This afternoon, Pocket recommended the following article:

After decades of searching, we still haven’t discovered a single sign of extraterrestrial intelligence. Probability tells us life should be out there, so why haven’t we found it yet? …

Aliens do exist; they’re just all asleep.

According to a research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, extraterrestrials are sleeping while they wait. In the paper, authors from Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic argue that the universe is too hot right now for advanced, digital civilizations to make the most efficient use of their resources. The solution: Sleep and wait for the universe to cool down, a process known as aestivating (like hibernation but sleeping until it’s colder). Originally published on July 17, 2017, by Slate. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-theory-on-why-we-haven-t-found-aliens-yet?utm_source=pocket-newtab accessed 02/15/20

No, that is NOT the reason they have not been found. The reason is that humans are ignoring the evidence of the Bible. Not that outer space aliens are asleep.

Because few understand the truth about Jesus, church history, and biblical prophecies, many will not recognize Him when He returns–nor He they–even those who have called Him ‘Lord’:

13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matthew 7:22-23).

Jesus’ teachings will be alien to many, and most will fight against Him.. To learn more about how Jesus expected His followers to live check out the free online booklet: Christians: Ambassadors for the Kingdom of God, Biblical instructions on living as a Christian. To learn more about lawlessness, check out the free online book: The Ten Commandments: The Decalogue, Christianity, and the Beast.

Jesus will return with what many may consider to be an alien army:

13 He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. 15 Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. (Revelation 19:13-15)

The vast majority of scientists, religious, and everyone else on the earth then will not accept Jesus when He first appears for the second time.

Of course, the idea of UFOs, etc. is not new. Here are two items that the old Worldwide Church of God published related to them back in the 1970s:

ENCOUNTERS OF THE WEIRD KIND: THE ELUSIVE UFO

Are we earthlings being visited by extra-terrestrial beings in mysterious UFOs? Millions of Americans apparently believe so. In fact, according to a Gallup poll, the majority of Americans believe that UFOs — unidentified flying objects — are real and “not the figment of people’s imagination.” Moreover, some 15 million Americans claim to have actually seen a UFO.

In a recent survey of members of the American Astronomical Society, an impressive 53 percent said UFOs “certainly” or “probably” should be investigated further and another 27 percent said “possibly” there should be further investigations.

Few subjects generate more fascination than the hotly debated contention that UFOs represent some form of alien intelligence.

Actually, strange and mysterious objects have been seen in the skies for thousands of years. Even the prophet Ezekiel reported seeing an awesome “wheel within a wheel” that has served as an oft quoted precedent for unusual sightings in the heavens.

“The appearance of the wheels and their work was… as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them : and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up” (Ezek. 1:16-19).

Ezekiel’s description has often been interpreted as a vision of a “portable throne” of God, complete with representatives of the angelic host.

Whiff of Paranoia

Yet the modern UFO era did not really dawn until just after World War II when Kenneth Arnold, an Idaho businessman and pilot, described a formation of disklike objects skimming through the sky “like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.” From that early account came the term “flying saucer.”

Since that time, UFObia, UFOria, and UFOlogists have proliferated at an amazing rate. Not even veteran pilots are immune. In fact, at one point baffling and ominous reports of “flying saucers” observed over air bases grew so worrisome that the U.S. Air Force launched a full-scale investigation. …

Scientists today generally believe there is a high probability of life on other planetary bodies beyond our solar system. In accepting the evolutionary hypothesis that life on earth arose from random combinations of molecules (which presumably ultimately produced man himself), it has become fashionable, even chic, to believe there must be many abodes of intelligent creatures throughout the universe.

Few scientists, however, accept the idea that UFOs represent visitations by extraterrestrial beings. “We are sympathetic to the view that life may exist on many planets scattered throughout the universe,” state the late Dr. Donald H. Menzel and Dr. Ernest H. Taves in their recent book The UFO Enigma. “But it does not follow that our earth is being visited by extraterrestrial spacecraft.” According to Menzel and Taves, the tremendous distances involved mean that interstellar travel would be enormously difficult for any would-be space travelers, “no matter how advanced.”

But if scientists are optimistic about the chances for life elsewhere in the universe, fundamentalist Christians have generally felt threatened by the prospect of life on other worlds. If extraterrestrial life exists, what happens to the uniqueness of man as a specially created being in the image of God? And how would one understand the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Did Jesus die on other planets too? To many fundamentalists, UFOs are far more likely to be angels or demons than life forms from other planetary systems.

“It would seem to me that if there are any flying saucers or UFOs penetrating earth’s airspace, they must be satanic in origin and must be carrying out the program of Satan for these last days,” concludes Dr. Hart Armstrong, president of the Defenders of the Christian Faith.

Yet, perhaps surprisingly, people who are classified as “religious” in the broad sense are actually the most likely to believe in extraterrestrial life and look forward to contact with such creatures, according to a recent study by research psychologist Dr. Paul J. Lavrakas. (Gongsley R. ENCOUNTERS OF THE WEIRD KIND: THE ELUSIVE UFO. Plain Truth, September 1978)

Demonic manifestations are real and some have considered them to be demons. It is not that God could not have any type of life off the earth (the angels, for example, have been to heaven and very likely have been to various planets), but His word does not discuss anything that sounds like a coming encounter with physical beings from other planet.

In an article titled YES There Is Life Out There!, the old Worldwide Church of God also published the following:

Extraterrestrial life consists of hundreds of millions of angels, seraphim (described in Isaiah 6), cherubim, and at God’s throne a variety of spirit beings, including the 24 elders — and of course God on his throne and Jesus Christ who sits now at his right hand (Heb. 1:3). There are at least two high-ranking cherubim or archangels, Michael and Gabriel, who oversee God’s throne.

God created this vast universe with its galaxies, the stars (suns), the planets and their moons and, in the midst of it all, a beautiful blue and brown jewel in the universe, swaddled in clouds ‘of white, glistening against the blackness of darkness — the planet Earth. On earth, God created all physical life forms that exist. The crowning glory of creation is mankind — made in the very image of God the Creator.

The Bible nowhere reveals even the slightest hint any other creation of physical life exists anywhere else in the universe. (Kelly R. Plain Truth Magazine November-December 1983)

Here is something from the late Pastor General of the old Worldwid Church of God:

Widespread occult interest has been both hailed as a breakthrough in knowledge and as a modern retreat into superstition. Some laud the occult as the only real hope in an age of technology and materialism; others lambast the occult as the most evil sign of the end of the age. …

There is one area of reality we have not heretofore discussed at any great length. This has to do with the existence of spirit beings called demons. In Christ’s day there were those who were possessed by demons (Matt. 8:16, etc.), or by evil spirits. Today there exist certain spiritist sects which are involved in a conscious effort to contact “higher beings,” or “aliens,” and who are constantly looking for ever greater signs and wonders. This kind of spiritism is often little more than an open invitation to demon-possession. (Armstrong HW. The Occult Explosion, booklet, 1974).

And we have seen alien religion(s) and more studies about aliens in the 21st century.

The Continuing Church of God is put out this sermon on its ContinuingCOG channel:

1:09:40

Alien Beliefs and the Return of Jesus

Surveys show that the vast majority of Americans believe in UFOs and aliens from outer space. Could there be any truth to reports of paranormal visits? What about the work of SETI? Are there one or more beings watching the Earth? Are we part of a ‘galactic zoo’? What do Roman Catholics, Protestants, and others believe? Are there many ‘UFO religions’? Does the Bible teach anything about this? What about visits from angels and demons? What about various apparitions? What about signs and lying wonders? Has Satan inspired prophecies to get people to fight against Jesus? Might the returning Jesus be considered ‘the Antichrist’ or possibly an attacking alien? Will the nations fail to recognize the returning Jesus and fight against Him? Dr. Thiel addresses these issues and more.