Would Evidence of Aliens “Shatter” Christian Beliefs?

This has the trappings of urban legend, but a news story gives the names of church leaders who were said to have attended the briefings, and they confirm that it happened.  Though, as I will explain, I don’t think the briefing was exactly as hyped.  From the Daily Mail:

Influential pastors are claiming that they have been told to prepare their followers for shocking revelations about UFOs which may upend belief in the Bible.

Perry Stone, a well-known evangelist, author and Bible teacher from Tennessee, warned that fellow pastors were recently invited to a secret meeting with US intelligence officials to prepare for the release of secret files on extraterrestrials.

According to Stone, the officials warned a small group of pastors with a large reach in the Christian community that the government was about to release reports and possibly videos of aliens and spacecraft which were not from this planet.

In the April 27 video posted to his YouTube channel, the evangelist claimed that pastors were told about the existence of ‘reptilian’ creatures, UFOs and materials from a non-human origin and ‘other things that almost sound like something out of a sci-fi movie.’

Yes, the Daily Mail is a London tabloid, but UK tabloids, while specializing in the sensational, still aspire to factual journalism, more so than American supermarket tabloids.

But Perry Stone’s YouTube, the source of the story, is real and you can see it yourself.  The impending challenge to Christianity, according to Stone, as reported in the Mail, is this:

‘You’re going to have people who are going to say if there are galaxies and there are allegedly other creations in the galaxies, then the whole creation story is a myth, and you’re going to have people that’s going to apostatize and turn from the Christian faith because they have no answer for what they’re about to hear.’

The story goes on to quote two of the ministers in attendance.  Says Bishop Alan DiDio of the Revival Nation Church:

‘It seems like a half a dozen people were gathered in an Airbnb in the mountains of Tennessee discussing an investigation that’s going on in the United States government against crimes they have committed in the process of retrieving and reverse engineering um technology from non-human intelligence.’

‘The meeting also went forward to discuss the propaganda plan that was in place leading up to disclosure,’

Says evangelist Tony Merkel: of those conducting the briefing:

‘I came in contact with these guys more than a year ago now, and I’ve been in touch with them, communicating with them, and their heart is to prepare the body of Christ for what’s coming.

‘These guys are part of, let’s just say they’re Christians in intelligence operations and they are specifically geared towards, initially, it was to gather evidence and data on what’s actually going on behind the scenes within the disclosure community.’

OK, so it wasn’t necessarily “the government” doing an official secret briefing to the nation’s religious leaders.  It was six preachers in Tennessee–all of whom are Pentecostal, End Times enthusiasts–who got together in an Airbnb with some fellow travelers who work for the government in some capacity and are worried about the UFO document dump.

The End Times connection they go on to make, according to the Mail story, is to the “Great Deception,” the Bible prophecy fans’ version of the “strong delusion” mentioned in the discussion of the antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:11.

So, being a non-dispensational, amillennial, non-Pentecostal, confessional Lutheran, I don’t put credence in any of this, though I don’t deny that there was likely a scary discussion in that Tennessee mountain Airbnb.

But do you really think that if those files prove the existence of alien life that this would, in the words of another news story about the meeting, “shatter” Christian beliefs?

I have to confess, I would love to see photos of “reptilian creatures” with extraterrestrial technology that allows them to fly faster than the speed of light so as to overcome the vast galactic distances in order to pay us visits.

I don’t see how it would challenge my faith.  If they exist, they are part of the universe that God created.

I admit that the existence of rational reptilian creatures on other planets would pose interesting theological questions.

C. S. Lewis, in his Space Trilogy, expresses the view that the inhabitants of other worlds might not be fallen.  In his science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet, Earth, because of the Fall, is the “silent planet,” quarantined by those vast galactic distances so that we cannot contaminate the rest of God’s creatures on other planets with our sin.  Then in Perelandra, Lewis depicts an Eve figure on Venus being tempted by Satan–this time in the form of an earthling scientist rather than a serpent–with the fall of that world thwarted by the intervention of another earthling significantly named Ransom.  We are told that when a planet falls, God becomes incarnate in those worlds to save them.

Lewis’s science fiction speculation helps us to understand the nature of the fall by helping us think about it from a different perspective.  It helps to imagine it, to bring it into our social imaginary, to use our new word.

But St. Paul says that the whole creation was brought down by the fall, which would include any reptilian creatures on other planets:

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. (Romans 8:19-22)

If there are reptilian creatures on other planets, God made them.  If they are conscious, morally aware, and rational–which they must be if they can devise faster-than-light technology–they must have been made in God’s image.  If they are fallen, as they probably would be, if we have the chance–if they don’t exterminate us–we should evangelize them and baptize them, unless God has already saved them by becoming a reptilian creature Himself and dying for them.

The Free Press published a conversation about UFOs with two Catholics who don’t have a problem with the idea.  One of them, University of North Carolina religious studies professor Diana Pasulka, points out that “religious people do have a category of understanding nonhuman intelligence, because obviously throughout the Bible, nonhuman intelligence is referenced: angels, fallen angels.”

Prof. Pasulka notes that Catholics have “a well-formed category for understanding nonhuman intelligence, be it extraterrestrial or interdimensional. And this is called the preternatural.”

Pope Benedict XVI has actually written about this.  His categories are natural, supernatural, or preternatural. And the supernatural is of God, things that are of divine origin, which Catholics believe in. Natural is natural: what we see is the world, science, things like that. But then there’s a category that’s called the preternatural. And the preternatural has to do with things that are not necessarily from God but are in between.

She says that the preternatural realm includes angels and fallen angels.  Another Catholic, Vice President J. D. Vance, has said that he believes the alien beings of extraterrestrial accounts are demons.  But I recall Lewis in The Discarded Image writing about belief in other kinds of preternatural beings that are neither angelic, nor demonic:  various kinds of “spirits” attested by most pre-modern cultures; the sprites and elves of folklore; the mysterious beings that haunt the woods.  Or, perhaps, that fly in the sky and cannot be identified.

What do you think?  Would evidence of extraterrestrial life shatter your faith?

You can see the material as it is released at this DefenseDdepartment website:  Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).  Here is one of the wilder videos.  (Don’t look if it might shatter your faith.)

Photo: “Actual site photo with FBI Lab rendered graphic overlay depicting corroborating eyewitness reports from September 2023 of an apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light in the sky, 130-195 feet in length, and disappearing instantaneously.”  Via Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).