Do you believe in Jesus and UFOs? If you do, I want to know how you reconcile the two.
My earliest memories in life are singing church hymns praising God, the Holy Spirit, and the Messiah. My family attended a small Southern Baptist church in Louisiana, and at Christmas, we celebrated angels, prophets, disciples, miracles, and the virgin birth of our Savior. The mysteries of the stories were fascinating, charming, and puzzling. I flatly accepted the teachings, just as I believed in Santa Claus, flying reindeer, and elves.
Still, I always had questions. I vividly remember badgering my mom about life’s origins, inconsistencies in the Bible, and statements I heard from an energetic pastor behind the pulpit. Even then, I detected Mom agonizing between giving me pat answers or sincere responses of her own doubt. Somehow, she always found the right comforting words to ease my inquisitive and irritating self.
So, I plodded along in childhood, mostly accepting the “truths” from my mentors, until I saw the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The year was 1977, with me eleven years old when the movie released two weeks before Christmas. While celebrating Advent, I walked into the Twin Cinemas in McComb to see the much talked about fictional alien movie. I walked out stunned, never having thought of aliens as compassionate, inquisitive, and peaceful. But a Hollywood movie opened my eyes to the real possibility that we were not alone in the universe and that perhaps extraterrestrials were watching us, even interacting with people on our planet. Hooked, I became interested in Ufology. I did not abandon my Christian faith. To the contrary, I am a committed believer and regularly worship with like-minded people. My church, however, allows me room to question even the most fundamental concepts of what it means to be human, including our belief systems. In that context, I often ponder whether we are alone in the innumerable galaxies, and I have concluded that we are not.
Which leads me to the recent release of a documentary called The Age of Disclosure. Dozens of credible witnesses verify sightings of UAPs, known as unidentified aerial phenomena. These persons are reputable scientists, government officials, and academics. They all confirm that our government harbors non-human technology and biological specimens from UAP crashes. The United States government now admits that secret programs exist which study UAPs, including one called The Legacy Program. Long-classified documents reveal decades of clandestine work by researchers and engineers engaged in reverse engineering of the technology discovered. Profit and power motivate these initiatives, often disguised behind disingenuous assertions that humanity is not ready to know the truth. Do I sound like an X-Files groupie? Sure. But the evidence leads me to this hypothesis.
Our Judeo-Christian culture is the bedrock of Western civilization. In the Bible Belt, Christians annually reflect on the Christ child and his second coming. Jews await the human Mashiach to gather Jews in Israel and rebuild the Temple. Religions of all kinds worship and believe in deities who will save humanity. Meanwhile, observations, discoveries, and theories of alien activity suggest harmless, benevolent, and altruistic behaviors. Theoretically, an advanced species could have destroyed the planet, yet there have been accounts of UAPs mitigating the environmental impact of human-caused disasters. One might espouse that the religions of the world and discoveries of alien life are not mutually exclusive. Until we gain more knowledge in this life or an afterlife, I plan to joyously sing Christmas carols in worship and simultaneously marvel at the mysteries of faith and the universe. The truth is out there.
