The Forms of Things Unknown
Early in January 2021, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified 700 files about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) aka unidentified flying objects (UFOs), according to multiple media reports. There of course was much excitement among many who looking for visitations by visitors from another civilization. Every so often when information like this comes to light questions arise about what if there is alien life would that disprove God?
In considering this we look to scripture and go to God’s Sovereignty. There is another attribute that is mentioned and assumed throughout the bible, not with the same word but nonetheless God’s Aseity (a se- Latin “from himself”) meaning He is life in and of itself is key to understanding God’s sovereignty. God sustains us as created creatures and everything in all of creation, often referred to as meticulous providence.
29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. Matthew 10:29
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Isaiah 40:26
God is a perfect being. God is also one in essence and three in person. Why is this so hard for us to grasp? We are finite, very finite and we as a Spirit with a localized body lack any cognitive ability to comprehend a being in the category of God. Humans have worked hard to use our language to lay this out, here is what Matthew Barrett said in his book: None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God. “Theses three are to be identified in eternity by certain eternal relations of origin or personal modes of subsisting: paternity, filiation, and spiration. The Son is eternally generated from the Father(filiation), and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds the Father and the Son(spiration).”
This is a mystery. Ok so back to Sovereignty. Communicating biblical reality to modern, secular people is difficult because the biblical mindset and the secular mindset come from radically different starting points. The secular mindset sees man and his rights and needs and expectations as the center. The apostle Paul calls this mindset “the mind that is set on the flesh”, which we are born with. We take it for granted until it conflicts with another mindset; the one in the Bible.
To understand the possibility of life, human life, and then other life within God’s creation we must wrap our minds around who and what God is.
25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the.. Romans: 3:25-26
The coming of God into the flesh to become the pivot point of Human History solves a deep problem that is virtually incomprehensible to the secular mindset. That is why this truth about the purpose of Christ’s death is hardly known, let alone cherished, as part of everyday evangelical life. Our Christian mindset is so distorted by natural and secular man-centeredness that we can barely comprehend or love the God-centeredness of the cross of Christ. The main reason that the cross is folly to the world is that it means the end of human self-exaltation (man is the center and measure of all things), and a complete and radical commitment to God centeredness. The cross is the death of our demand to be loved and worshipped by being made the center of creation. We are incapable of being our own god and we always fail at it.
So if we understand that God the perfect being, God the Father, God the Son, and the Person of the Holy Spirit exist outside of creation and inside of creation, as God sustains creation and us. The Person of the Holy Spirit and Christ indwells us permits us and by doing so permits us to accept that there is far more in creation that humans can ever even conceive of. So whether it be UFO’s that are real and lead to the discovery of other lifeforms or the discovery of some type of life on Mar’s or wherever God is not affected in that he would still be the sole creator.
God rules over all possibilities real or fake.
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32
God is not territorial.
However God’s other created beings, Angels and all the other entities that may exist in the unseen realm are, as best we can tell from scripture, are limited not only in their power and abilities but in territory. Satan (aka: Lucifer) must report to God in some way. As we have seen when the Second Person was incarnate, He exorcised many Demons. The Deity of Christ had and has complete authority over them and every other creature.
It has been noted that many of the sightings of UFO’s behave as do many microbes. Are some of them actually lifeforms? If some of the sightings are of an unidentified life form, we see yet again God’s vast and marvelous creative sovereignty. The government has been implicated in disinformation campaigns relating to secret programs.
Here’s what we must remember. It was not just mankind and the earth that fell under God’s judgement after the Fall but ALL of creation. The Fall of Adam in the middle east affected every inch of our earth. Since geography is no barrier to the effects of the curse there is no reason to think the judgement did not fall on all the cosmos, all the planets and the stars trillions of light years away. God governs the farthest reaches of the universe, as Judge and as Redeemer. Jesus Christ died and rose again and sits at the right hand of God as our great High Priest-Ruler. “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). The reach of his divine rule and redemption extends as “far as the curse is found.” Therefore No galaxy, no star, no planet, no UFO, no lifeform visible or invisible escapes his design or judgement in the plan of redemption.
20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 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. 22 For we know that the whole … Romans 8:20-22.
I remain a skeptic of UFO’s, there is way too much wishful thinking and outright lies and falsifications. Yet the reality of the invisible realm, the Angels, Demons and whatever else there may be should be awe inspiring and help us to fear God all the more. There is nothing in God’s universe that exists beyond his perfect providence and sovereign knowledge and nothing should shake our confidence in that.