Is the Pope Looking for ET?

The Telegraph posted a pic yesterday (obviously mocked up) on the article “The Vatican joins the search for alien life” which had the a caption of the Pope asking the creature from Alien if it had accepted Jesus as it’s Savior.  It seems they have changed the picture caption, though.

It seems the Vatican hosted a scientific conference on the study of life beyond earth, aka astrobiology.  According to the MSNBC article “Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life”, it was a 5 day conference gathering together various scientists to discuss the topic.

[Rev Jose Gabriel] Funes [astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory] said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

The author of the Telegraph article, Tom Chivers, wrote:

For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.

Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God “made man in his own image”.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ’s role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth’s Christ be universal?

The debate of the spiritual impact of life on other planets is likely to go on.  However, I find the likelihood of finding life, let alone intelligent life, on other planets highly unlikely.  While space exploration has certainly allowed us to discover many things, and more than a few of them with practical terrestrial applications, the Bible is amazingly silent on such a topic.

When we look at the universe and square it with what the Bible really says, though, it shouldn’t be surprising that no life would exist on other planets.  Mr Herbert W Armstrong often wrote about the wasteland that is space.  It is in a state of decay and destruction.  Why?  Because it was likely a war zone thousands of years ago.

However, what I find most amazing is the search for intelligent life “out there” continues, when in fact mankind has ignored very real signs of other life forms who have not only communicated with us but have visited us!  One even came to the earth, lived as a human being for 33-1/2 years, taught others about how to live and died for us.  Yet, many would scoff and reject such evidence.

When you consider the message that that Being brought us, it seems even more amazing that people so readily either mangle the message to bits or dismiss it entirely.  That message was that we could become spirit beings who would never die.  Even better, we could become part of a great family.  We could become literal children in that family.  God created human beings to reproduce Himself!

In the beginning, God created fish after the fish kind, cattle after the cattle kind, birds after the bird kind, etc.  However, when He created Adam and then Eve, He created them “in our image, after our likeness”.  “In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”  He created two beings just as there were two beings in the God family.  God the Father wants to grow His family!

Yet, there are other beings as well.  Some work for God, while others work against God.  These enemies of God would hide the truth.  Fortunately, they will not be able to forever, and that is part of the Good News as well.

Jesus has revealed Himself once, and He will do so again.  However, this time it will be in power and glory.  He will join all of His brothers and sisters together at that time, and this family will jointly rule the earth for 1,000 years.  Peace will come upon the earth at last, as the enemies of God, known as Satan and his demons, will be banished for that time, and God’s Law of love will rule instead.

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  1. From a radio "show prep" service I just read:

    E.T. phone Rome. 🙂