I grew up watching the night sky from a porch swing, and I never once worried about little green men. I worried about the things Scripture told me to worry about. Turns out that may have been the right instinct all along.
Hollywood is at it again. Steven Spielberg has a new alien picture coming, and this time he isn’t selling it as make-believe. He’s suggesting the film will shake the faith of religious folks — that if intelligent life is out there, Christians will have some explaining to do. Congress is holding hearings. The government is releasing footage. Everybody wants to talk about “disclosure.”
Well, let an old country preacher disclose something.
The Bible never promised us that everything real would be visible. It promised the opposite. “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). The old creed says the same: Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. Christians have confessed for two thousand years that the universe is crowded with created intelligences that don’t show up on a trail camera, at least on mine. We call the faithful ones angels. We call the rebels demons.
Now consider what these so-called craft actually do. They stop on a dime at impossible speeds. They show up on instruments but only some pilots can see them with their own eyes. They leave no wreckage, no bodies, no bolts in a field. Eighty years of searching and we have not one piece of physical evidence — just apparitions and testimonies. And the testimonies are the strangest part. Abduction accounts read less like a science report and more like an old-fashioned haunting. More than a few folks who claimed to be taken say the whole nightmare stopped cold the moment they cried out the name of Jesus.
Friend, weather balloons don’t flee at the name of Jesus.
A pair of well-respected Catholic exorcists recently said out loud what a lot of us have been thinking: strip off the chrome veneer, and what you’re looking at isn’t an alien. It’s an ancient enemy wearing a new costume. One of them got removed from his post for saying so, which tells you something about how badly certain church officials want to keep the supernatural locked in the attic. But the apostle Paul wasn’t embarrassed by it: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).
High places. Make of that what you will.
Here’s the thing about the devil — he’s a salesman, and a good salesman knows his customer. To a generation that believed in spirits, he came as a spirit. To a generation raised on rocket ships and laboratory coats, he comes as a visitor from the stars. “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). The package changes. The pitch never does. Notice what these “visitors” always promise: a new era for humanity, salvation without a Savior, enlightenment without repentance. That sales pitch is older than Eden. It worked on Eve in a garden, and it’s working on cable news.
I’m not saying every light in the sky is a demon. Most are airplanes, satellites, swamp gas, and the neighbor’s drone. And I hold no fear about what God may have made elsewhere in His vast creation — if He populated a hundred worlds, that’s His business, and it wouldn’t move Jesus one inch off His throne. My faith doesn’t hang on an empty universe. It hangs on an empty tomb.
But when something shows up promising mankind a savior that isn’t Christ, I don’t need a congressional hearing to identify it. Peter already filed the report: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The lion has worn many disguises over the centuries. A serpent’s skin. An angel’s glow. There’s no reason he couldn’t wear a flying saucer.
So when disclosure day comes — Spielberg’s version or Washington’s — don’t let it rattle you. The Church has known about non-human intelligence since Genesis chapter three. We just call it by its right name. And we know how the story ends, because the Book spoiled it for us: the deceiver is cast down, and every knee bows — in heaven, on earth, and under the earth — to Jesus Christ the Lord.
Keep your porch light on and your Bible open. The sky holds no surprises for the people of God.
Books by Mo Hodge
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