Is There Life on Other Worlds?

Is There Life on Other Worlds? And I hope you will find this inspiring and informative and interesting. But the bible actually has a lot to say about it and when I am done I hope you realize it does make a difference to you where you are today, the answer to this question.

I don’t know if you have ever heard of SETI. SETI is a real organization. It is not some secret conspiracy. It is a network of scientists and SETI is an acronym for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Extra Terrestrial means outside of the terrain of our world, other worldly intelligence, SETI. And they’ve got these radio telescope stationed at different parts of the world that are trying to get feedback from space and the cosmos.

The biggest of them, and I hope I say this right, it is Arecibo Radio Telescope. It is the biggest parabolic dish in the world built right into the terrain of this sinkhole not far, it is about nine miles, from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It was built in 1963 at a cost of $9 million back then. It is basically a big parabolic satellite dish that is aimed out into space and they can move the receiver horn to different locations to change its direction and they coordinate that along with the rotation of the earth. It is composed of about 40,000 aluminum panels and it is 1,000 feet across. It covers the space of 18 acres. You can’t tell from the photograph, you can see this from Google Earth, from space. It is enormous.

The whole purpose of it, for years, now what, 45 years it has been aimed at space. They just did a $25 million upgrade on it in 1997, put a reflector upgrade on it, a Gregorian reflector to try and capture more specifically things are happening out there. And it has been helpful in science. It has helped them with receiving signals from the Voyagers and from different Rovers on different plants.

But they have been listening for radio frequencies and patterns that would tell them that there is intelligent life out there. In 45 years of listening, they have not received any messages or indication that there is intelligent life out there. I want to thank Jim Burris, who is an astronomy expert. I told him what I was preaching about this week and he shared some information with me.

One thing he said that I thought was thought-provoking, if you took the information that is on one strand of the helix of DNA, one DNA helix band from a human, and sent that signal to these radio receivers, it would be front page news all across the world that there is intelligent life. We are surrounded with evidence in this world and we have -- I mean, what makes them think the angels use the same frequency that we use? And that is the assumption.

And so some astronomers are wondering how much life is out there. Most astronomers believe there is other intelligent life out there. But they also recognize that our planet is very unique. Earth has perfect conditions for life.

There is a video series that talks about the privileged planet. It has been out for several years now. I recommend it. But it talks about how planet Earth, it is so obvious because of its location and the composition, it is all perfect for life. If our planet was just a little bit closer to the sun, nothing would survive. If it was a little further away, if it was a little bigger, the gravitational pull would crush everything. If it was further away, the water would be ice. If it was too close, it would be steam. The combination of gases and the atmosphere, the rotation, the orbit, just all of these things, even the moon, all are perfect and necessary to sustain life on this planet, which makes people wonder is there anybody else out there, is there other life out there.

I am intrigued by the history of two very interesting space projects. Well, they really are one. It is called Voyager I and II. These are two spacecraft that were sent in 1977, a lot of you weren’t even born then, and they are still going today. They are powered by nuclear batteries that will be good until the year 2025. Now my question is, if there is an energy crisis today and if we could make a battery back then in 1977 that is still going today, why don’t we start making more stuff out of those batteries. I figure they are probably dangerous. They are nuclear batteries and they are probably very expensive. But that is pretty impressive when you think about, going since 1977.

They took a lot of fascinating pictures swirling through space and one of them whipped back through by the sun again and picked up some gravitational slingshot power and shot off and they have taken pictures of Pluto and Saturn and the Rings. They have a picture of the Earth looking back through the Rings of Saturn. It is a little bitty dot, almost like a pixel, and it is our planet.

Now these spacecraft, Voyager I and II, have left the solar system. The first manmade object to ever leave our solar system. They are drifting off through interstellar space. They have onboard a gold-plated audio-visual disk that has pictures of Earth and sounds from Earth. They have whales calling and they have a baby crying and I hope they put an intelligible message on there besides just that, but in case aliens should happen to retrieve them.

If they are not intercepted in just 25 trillion miles from now, they will pass the star Sirius and that will be in 296,000 years, so I don’t know if anyone here will be aware of it. Maybe up in Heaven. Wouldn’t that be something, if you were going through space and all of a sudden you go by and you say, oh, there goes the Voyager. About 25,000 million years from now. And that is of course one of the earlier missions, very interesting.

And then of course we had the Mars Rovers want to know if we could transfer life to Mars because we are worried about global warming here. So they have sent up a number of Rovers, a couple have crashed and burned, but they have a couple that have been successful. One called Spirit and I have a picture there of Spirit that was taken this year. They are still sending back pictures of what is going on on Mars and they drive, they eek along a few inches and they snap these pictures and send them back.

It takes a long time to get the pictures to our planet, but when you look at that picture up there, I don’t know what you think, but I almost expect a rabbit to go hopping across. It looks a lot like Nevada, doesn’t it? We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars to get those pictures that probably were just taken in Nevada and they tell us they came from Mars. No, I believe it. I’m not one of those conspiracy people.

But I am fascinated by space exploration and I have told people more than one time on TV and radio, hoping somebody who works will NASA will hear me say it, I would love to be the first pastor in space if they haven’t had one already. That would be a lot of fun. You had better do something about it quick before I get too old to pass the physical. So if you know anybody.

But when we talk about doing exploration in our space, in our solar system, what you really have is a person who wants to explore the world. Picture if you will someone in bed and they have decided to explore the world and so as they are preparing for their first day of exploring the world, before they get out of bed they decide to scratch their nose. Their scratching their nose is going even farther than we go when we explore our solar system and they haven’t even gotten out of bed. They are just scratching their nose and they have gone farther in exploring the world than we go in exploring the cosmos when we to our solar system. We haven’t gone anywhere yet.

Our solar system is very small when you consider the scope of space. We have eight or nine planets, depending on whether or not you are willing to let Pluto go or not. The jury is out about whether Pluto qualifies. Around those planets we have approximately 170 moons and they are swirling around the one star that we call our sun. Well, how many stars are there?

CNN published something in their science article, July 23, 2003, here is what is says, “You ever wanted to wish upon a star? Well, you have 70 thousand, million, million, million to choose from.” You realize how big of a number that is. “That is the total number of stars in the known universe according to a study by Australian astronomers. It is about ten times as many grains of sand,” not as many, ten times as many grains of sand, “on all the world’s beaches and deserts. That is the figure 7 followed by 22 zeros, or more accurately, 76 sextillion. Calculated by a team of stargazers based at the Australian National University.”

That is interesting that they would say that because you can read in the bible where God spoke to Abraham speaking about His descendants, He said, “I will greatly multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.” So it is interesting that God compares the number of the stars to the number of the grains of sand. The astronomers in Australia say there are more stars than there are grains of sand.

When you think about how big space is, I have a series of slides. I think I showed them once before. They will just give you a little bit of scale so that you can comprehend how vast space is. Here is a picture our Earth, as compared to some of the other planets. Most of them are between us and the sun. You have Venus and Mars and Mercury and Pluto, but then to keep the scale going, let’s look at some of the other bigger planets. There you have Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. You see our Earth down there at the bottom? Just a little, bitty ping pong ball, and Mars.

But now we are going to look at our Earth as compared to the sun. So here you have the sun and I understand that you can fit approximately one million Earths. Right now the Earth on that screen, if it wasn’t for the arrow, you wouldn’t know where to look. It is just a little, bitty speck. It takes about a million Earth to fit in our sun.

Now, our sun is considered a white dwarf. It is a small sun. There are some smaller, but it is not one of the big ones. You go out in space and as we look at some of the other suns that are out there, for instances, you have Betelgeuse, which is there on your left, and Antares. You can see -- no, you can’t. Our sun doesn’t appear. It is about the size of one digital pixel on the video projector screen there, so just imagine one pixel on that screen. That would be our massive sun compared to some of the other stars. And you see these two, these are not the biggest. These are the just the ones that we observed. There is one even bigger that they have discovered now and it is called Canis Majoris, is that what it is, Steven? And that means Big Dog Star.

I understand that there are -- when we look at the stars that we are observing, we are looking at the stars in our galaxy, which is a spiral of stars swirling through space and we are in the Milky Way Galaxy. We can’t take a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy because we are in it. This is a picture of another galaxy you can see out there in space. It gives you some idea. The distance across a galaxy like ours or like this, if you traveled the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, it could 270,000 light years to get across that. It is just fabulous how big it is.

Now, this is a galaxy they figure in a galaxy, which is one of these spirals of stars. There are as many as two billion stars just in the Milky Way Galaxy. There are some galaxies out there that have hundreds of billions of stars, one galaxy. Hundreds of billions of suns. I understand in the bowl of the big dipper, when you look up at the sky at night, just in the bowl of the big dipper, there are over a million galaxies that we can see. Now, this is the observable universe. You start thinking about it and it just boggles your mind how big it all is.

Isaiah 55:9, the Prophet says, “As the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” And now you begin to get some idea. The closest star to earth is probably Alpha Proxima or Alpha Centauri. They are about four light years away, 186,000 per second. You travel that speed, think about how far you go in five seconds. It takes about eight minutes to for the light from the sun to get to Earth because it is 93 million miles away. If you travel 186,000 miles per second for four years, then you get to the first star. And think about there being more stars out there than there are ten times more stars, they said in Australia, out there than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts of the world. I don’t know who did the calculus on that, but they must have been sitting there with a calculator for a long time.

But let’s assume that is true. Four years, four light years to get to the first one. Think about how big space is. Think about the number of galaxies, the number of stars. What we have been talking about, keep in mind, we have been talking about how many stars. Those are the shining things we see out there.

Now we are talking about is there life on other planets. There is no life on the stars. The star is a fantastically hot radiation nuclear vision taking place all the time. It incinerates anything that touches it. So there is no life on the stars. The question is, are there other planets that might sustain life?

When we say there are ten times as many stars as there are grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts of the world, how many planets are in our solar system? Nine and 170 moons. And some of the moons are bigger than some of the planets, or close anyway. So you begin to think about that. What are the odds that there are other worlds out there that may have life on them? Pretty good odds. You mean the Lord put all that up there just so we could observe it with a telescope? It is just a park for us to walk through for eternity and there is no other life out there?

Now, through the ceaseless ages in the past that God, the Father, Son and the Spirit just looked at each other and the angels? I don’t think so. I believe that there is life on other worlds.

Well, let’s start at the beginning here. Who made everything? John, 1:1, Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He, the word, was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him.” By the way, some people think that Jesus was created at some remote time in past. If that is true, this verse is not true. If all things that were made were made by the word Christ, then He couldn’t have made Himself, right? He has always existed, just like the Father. “All things that were made were made by Him and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

Then you can go to Colossians 1:16, “For by Him, all things were created that are heaven, that are on Earth, that are visible and invisible.” Now, there are things in heaven that He has created and things on Earth. “Whether thrones or dominions, there are thrones in heaven as there are thrones on Earth, principalities or powers, all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things consist.” So the ultimate creator of all things that are out there were created by Jesus.

Now, there are some who believe that we have a God and our God is the God of our galaxy and there are other Gods that are Gods of other galaxies and you can eventually grow and be a God of your own galaxy. But my problem with that theory is God knows everything and if you know everything, you can’t learn anything. So the idea of a growing God is a problem. See what I am saying? And if he is all-powerful, if there are some things he does not have control over, he is not all-powerful. So God knows all things. He is all-powerful. There is one God, the Father, Son and Spirit, that resides and reigns over all of the cosmos. He is not competing with other Gods.

Did Jesus make other worlds? We know that He made this world. Hebrews 1:2, “God has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things through whom He also made the worlds,” plural.

You can read that also in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.” Worlds, not just this planet.

Now, here is a question and some of you may leave me at this point. I hope not. When did God make the other worlds? Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”

Now, I want to park right here. When I was researching this, finding out what other churches believe, a lot of churches believe that, according to bible chronology, the world, if you add up the ages of Adam and the Patriarchs, it is about 6,000 years old and I believe that. I find there is no written history before that. The oldest tree rings, there just a lot of earthly evidence that just points back to about 4,000 years B.C., approximately. That is the point when a lot of Christians believe God also made all the other galaxies, all the other observable space was made 6,000 years ago. Because the bible says the Lord made the sun, moon and stars 6,000 years ago. I don’t think they are reading this correctly.

If you understand how Jews write, how Hebrew thinks, how the bible writers write, they usually give the headlines and then they come back and give the details. That is how we do it in newspapers today. Headline, back up and give the details. The bible begins with the headline, everything that is made was made by God, the heavens, everything out there, up there and everything down here. Then the narrative goes on and describes how He made what is down here.

And I believe that if you go back 6,000 years, you are reading the account of how God made, perhaps not just our solar system, but at least the Milky Way Galaxy, which is only one of billions of galaxies. You got that? But that does not mean that 6,000 years ago is when He made all these others. I think God has had life on other worlds for an infinite amount of time. How long has God been around? Do you think he just stared at the wall? No, there were no walls. He couldn’t stare at it. For billions of years doing nothing?

God is love. When a husband and wife get married and through an act of love they procreate, they want to share the love, the want to give the love, they want to be loved. And that is what God wants. He started doing that long before He made our planet. He was still God back then. I believe He has other worlds out there, but they are unfallen. I will get to that in just a moment.

Notice in Isaiah 45:12, “God says, I have made the Earth and created man on it. This planet, its environment and man, intelligent life on it. My hands stretched out the heavens,” those are other worlds, “and all their host.” You notice he makes a separation. I made the world and the intelligent creatures here and I made the heavens and the intelligent creatures there.” Do you see the simple, the balance, the symmetry of what he is saying here?

When did he do it? You reach in the Book Job 38:6-7, “To what were its foundations fastened,” here God is reasoning with Job. He is talking about the creation of the Earth. “To what were its foundations fastened or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy.”

Who are these Sons of God that are shouting for joy when the world is being created? Well, a person might instinctively say, well, those are the angels. Well, the word Sons of God is one of those words that is sort of used many different ways in the bible, but it is usually talk to those who have been uniquely created or recreated. If you want to be a Son of God, you must go through a recreation, new heart. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called Sons of God. And we will talk more about that in a moment as well.

Genesis 1:14, “When you get to the forthy (phonetic) of creation, God says, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day and the night.” What are the lights that divide our day and night? Are they the galaxies or is it the sun and the moon? “Let there be lights in the firmament that divide the day and the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” Our days and years and our months are divided by the moon. Is anything in our seasons governed by galaxies? No. “And them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give a light on the earth and it was so and God made two great lights.” How many? It’s talking about the fourth day. “He made two great lights. The greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.”

Now, when you find that phrase “He made the stars also,” some scholars understand this to be it’s an after-fact, He is saying He also is the one who made the stars, but on the fourth day, He made these two great lights. You see how the wording is working here? He also made the stars, but on the fourth day, he made these special lights to separate the day and the night. You keep reading it and it starts to sound that way.

“God set them in firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth to rule over the day and the night to divide the light from the darkness and God it was good.” So the principle subject of that fourth day of creation is the sun and the moon and if you want, I’ll give you the stars in our galaxy. But He did not make all of the galaxies back then on the fourth day. He is talking about what happened in our neighborhood, the stars and lights that actually have an influence on earth. And even the stars that He used for navigation -- I almost said gavivation, but that would have been embarrassing -- they are probably in our galaxy.

I remember when Karen and I went to Australia and we diving on this boat that stayed a couple of nights out there by the Barrier Reef and at night, you are far away from any city and you have all this light pollution. It is so hard for the observatories, like Mt. Palomar and Mt. Diablo and even Hawaii, they get so many city lights that interfere, but we were out there far away from shore, far away from civilization. And at night when the sun and moon were down and we looked up, it was the strangest feeling because I was looking up at all these stars I had never seen before in the southern hemisphere. You just don’t see those stars. So it is like you are going through a whole new part of space that friends in Australia are use to, but I looked up there and went, this is alien, this is really surreal because I’m looking at a sky I have never seen before. And I forgot what led me to say that, but it was very interesting.

Is there life in outer space? Well, I believe there is. I think the bible teaches there is. Psalms 8:4-5, “First of all, what is man, that you are mindful of him? And the son of man, that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels.” What was made first, angels or people? Angels. At least the angels were the Sons of God shouting for joy when the world was made, right? “Man was made a little lower than the angels and you crown Him with glory and honor.”

So let us begin here. Are there extraterrestrials? Does God have angels? So you answered the question already, we know there is life out there other than life on Earth and you have angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, there are probably all kinds of different types and varieties and species of ministry and spirits that God has and different words are used we don’t understand.

On our Earth, He has no two snowflakes that are the same. So if you have a cookie cutter in your head when you think about angels and they are all exactly the same, think again. They are unique. If He has named all of the stars, he calls up the host by their name, then probably he knows all the angels names. He knows who they are.

Psalms 80:1, “Give ear, oh, Shepherd of Israel. You who lead Joseph like a flock. You who dwell between the cherubims, shine forth,” God is dwelling between two principle angels. One of them used to be Lucifer, then there is Gabriel, who is one of those covering cherubs by the throne of God now. We don’t know the names of others.

Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handywork.” Not only do the stars declare the glory of God, but I believe there are beings that declare the glory of God.

And then listen to what Jesus says in John 17, “Just before the cross, he says, ‘And now, oh, Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory that I had with you before the world was.’”

Now, if I were to ask you bring up your son and glorify him, bring up your child and glorify him, you might bring up your child and say wonderful things about them and praise them and give them glory and extol their virtues, but that only has value if others are listening. Did you get that? So if Jesus said, I shared glory with you before the world was, there have to be other intelligent beings to recognize and appreciate that glory for it to be glory.

Christ is about to be glorified before the world and that’s why He is praying this prayer. There had to be others there. It does make a difference for you and I now.

One of the most striking examples is where it talks about the Sons of God. I told you we would come back to this. Read in your bibles, go to the Book of Job, Job 1:6-7. And actually this little scenario happens a couple of times in the beginning of Job where it talks about the Sons of God. “Now there was a day when the Sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord,” this some heavenly convention, “And Satan also came among them and the Lord said to Satan,” he is obviously standing out, “From where do you come?”

Does God ever ask a question because He doesn’t know? God knows everything, right? God often asks questions for the benefit of others there that may not be all knowing. The Sons of God are not all knowing. And God asks Satan, “Where do you come from? And Satan says, I have come from going to and fro on the Earth and walking up and down in it.” So here is a meeting, is the meeting on Earth? When I tell you that I have come from my house, do I say that when I am in my house? So when Satan says, I have come from the Earth and it says the Sons of God have gathered for this meeting, who are these Sons of God?

Again, many bible commentators believe and I agree that in the same way Adam was called the Son of God, you know when it goes through the genealogy in Luke 3 it says, “And Enos, Seth was the son of Enos, who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God.” Now, they are all the sons of humans until you get to Adam, the son of, the son of, the son of, and it names all the different ancestors, human ancestors, but when you get to Adam, it says, “Who was the son, Seth who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God.”

Adam was given dominion of this world. Adam should have been the one who went to that heavenly meeting to represent Earth and its creatures, right? But Adam and Even surrendered dominion to Lucifer. So when Lucifer gets there, they say, “What are you doing here?” He says, “I have come to represent the Earth. They have surrendered dominion to me.” Those Sons of God were the leader of other worlds that were gathering probably in some other heavenly place maybe. That was before Satan was barred from the gates of heaven. When Christ came to Earth, Satan was evicted permanently from Heaven.

As a matter of fact, you read about that in Revelation 12:9, “So that great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the Earth and his angels were cast out with him.” They were cast out for sinning, right? It says, “Because you sinned you were cast out,” in Ezekiel. Why does it say in Revelation 12:12, “Therefore, rejoice, oh, heavens, and you who dwell in them.” Somebody dwells in the heavens. Who is up there dwelling in the heavens? Why are they rejoicing? Because Satan was going through the universe trying to recruit other intelligent creatures and worlds to follow him in his rebellion.

How many angels did Lucifer take with him? One-third. The bible tells us in Revelation 12 and in the same way he came to our world trying to recruit support he was campaigning through the universe. Finally God said enough is enough. They have said no and you have to understand that no means no and he was cast out. But down here, the devil found someone who said yes. So this planet became a beachhead for him to continue his rebellion against God.

That is why the heavens, the unfallen angels, the good angels and the unfallen beings, I don’t know what they look like. We see these pictures that look like ET or there are a lot of people that have these Star Trek creatures that are typically people with makeup and rubber masks on, right? God has creatures out there you and I probably can’t even imagine. I know that they are probably beautiful. Maybe some are comical. Do we have some comical creatures in this world that make you smile? None of them are scary. I don’t think these typical aliens with all the teeth and trying to scare everybody, no, these are unfallen intelligent beings and they are going to be beautiful. They are made to glorify their creator.

The bible speaks about the numberless angels. The angels are ministering spirits. They were not all created just to take care of earth. These are the armies of God it speaks of in Daniel 7:10, “A fiery stream came and issued forth from before him and thousands and thousand ministered to him, ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated and the books were open.”

This is not talking about the judgment day where the lost and saved are standing before the Lord. These are the witnesses to the judgment that is happening. Because think about it for a second. Before sin, the people in heaven and Earth were not quarantined. They could communicate with each other. This planet has rebelled. There is a lot of wickedness and filth and crime and evil in this world because the devil Lucifer spread it all through this planet.

Now, God is telling the unfallen angels and the unfallen intelligence is out there, I’m going to save them, yes, those people down there that are behaving so terribly, I am going to transform them and let them come back into heaven and reintroduce them to the universe. And they are all going, Lord, are you sure this is a good idea? I have seen some of what they have been doing there and if they haven’t seen, they have heard from the angels.

I have not been to Afghanistan, but I have heard about the war there. You know what I am saying? There are reports that come back. The soldiers, the angels, tell us what is going on. And so these unfallen beings are saying to the Lord, you are going to let them back in? God has this judgment; He says He wants to demonstrate they have been transformed. They have been renewed, they have been cleansed. They are holy.

And so that is why when the Lord comes He is giving out rewards. A judgment happens before Jesus comes. Is that right? If the bible says, behold I come and my reward is with me, that means if He is giving out saved and lost when He comes, some investigation happens before He comes. There is a judgment that happens and they are witnesses, unfallen beings that are very interested in these rehabilitated creatures being allowed back into the communion of the unfallen universe. The numbers that Daniel is looking for, you can’t find.

There is another interesting verse in 1 Kings 22, maybe I will post my notes if you are interested at the Sac Central website. Micaiah, the prophet, describes a vision. He says, “Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, I saw the Lord sitting on His throne and all the hosts of heaven standing by on His right hand and on His left.” And he is talking about Earth from heaven in that vision. He is surrounded by His armies.

Do you ever have an army that fights to defend a kingdom with no citizens? Did you catch that? You might have drifted away for just a second and what I am saying will not make sense unless you heard it. Would it make sense to have an army that fights to defend a country with no citizens? Who are the soldiers in God’s army? They are the angels. Are the only citizens what He has here on earth or are they also fighting in the defense and representing unfallen worlds? Unfallen angels represent unfallen galaxies. They are the armies of God. They are the ministering spirits. They don’t just minister to humans.

UFOs, do you want to talk about that for a moment? Are there UFOs? Have you heard my UFO story? I have a few of them. I remember one time, I am embarrassed, I was up in the hills in Covalo where you can see the sky pretty well and the family was up there and I called all the family out and I saw a UFO. I called all the family out and I said, look at that. I said, this is a UFO. I saw this circular thing that was flying and it was kind of moving around the heavens and it was closer to us and I said, kids, grab the telescope.

We all came down front and we are looking at this thing and it closer and closer and closer and pretty soon we heard, mmmmmm. It was an airplane that was flying with its landing lights, its running lights, its beacon, everything one. He forgot to turn it off. And here I am a pilot, I ought to know better. But from a distance or I don’t know what was happening with the atmosphere and inversion layers and the horizon and ions and I don’t know what was going on, but it looked really weird. The kids, at first, we all thought, what is it?

Another time I was up flying with Karen and I think she was resting and I said, Dear, what is that? As a matter of fact, I was flying between here and South Lake Tahoe and there was this great big red flying saucer. As we get closer and closer, I was scared. I thought I ought to run the other direction, but I was really curious, so I flew towards it. What is it, what is it? We are getting closer and it is shining in the sun. I said I know it is not an airplane. And I was right. It was not an airplane. It was an unidentified flying object. Someone had a party and they had one of these great big metallically colored mylar balloons that they had let go and it had found its place up in the sky where it wasn’t going to go any higher and it wasn’t going to sink. It was just sitting there hovering. From a distance with the sunlight, you know the metallic ones, they shine really bright with the sun hitting them, it looked like a UFO. And as I got closer, I thought, oh, I felt so dumb.

What about all these UFO sightings? I think it is safe to tell you this. This is the truth. You know my father was in the aviation business, as were two of his brothers. One of my father’s brothers, I won’t say his name, still alive today, worked his whole working career for Lockheed out of Burbank. I was born Burbank.

His job was every Monday to get on an airplane. He would fly to the desert in Nevada to a place called Area 51. True story. And he was part of the team that worked on, and they would fly them back on Friday, they worked for SkunkWorks, they worked on the SR41 Blackbird, they worked on the Stealth Fighter, they worked on a whole plethora of different projects. Many of them probably never got released. Some were very successful. But he had to hide that for years. He never got married to this day. His last name is Batchelor, obviously. He never did get married because it is hard to have a family where you take off Monday and don’t come home until Friday and you have to be top secret about what you are doing, but pretty much everyone knows now what was going on there. But you hear about them having hidden, a UFO went down out there in the desert somewhere and it had bodies in it.

If you want to have fun, oh, I don’t even want to encourage you to do this, get on the internet and start looking at all the conspiracy nonsense about them capturing aliens and they even have little alien babies. Some people have done some primitive photography to try to fool people.

Just to illustrate, I don’t want to get too far from my point, but just to illustrate, I have a friend up in the hills who has one of these cameras that takes pictures of nature. He sets it up by a watering hole on his property that has this very beautiful nature background. There are trees, there are rocks and there is a watering hole. It has a motion detector and whenever an animal goes by it takes a picture. So he has posted something on the web for his Sabbath school class and his friends. He said, these are my nature pictures; you ought to take a look. He knows I do a little bit of Photoshop. He sent me a picture from some movie of a Big Foot, Yeti, abominable snowman, you all know what I am talking about, Big Foot. He said, Doug, can you put that Big Foot in my nature yard? I said, let me try. It was actually, the lighting was perfect. They took this picture of this Big Foot and he is looking like, oh, no, and it looks like the camera shutter just went off and got caught. Big old hairy made-up monster. I took it and I put it in there and I took all the edges out and I did it just perfectly. It looks real. I’m tempted to share the website with you.

So he has all these kids in his Sabbath school class. He probably shouldn’t be a Sabbath schoolteacher, should he? He said, you know, you guys ought to take a look at my website. I have these really neat nature pictures and the kids are going through and they see the squirrel, there is a deer, there’s a bear, there’s another deer, look, a raccoon, Big Foot -- what? And it looks real. It looks so real. We know they are going to send that all over the internet now and they are going to say another Big Foot sighting and maybe I will get on Discovery Channel after that.

But some people have taken these things and they create these aliens and they put it on the internet and they have created all these stories. Friends, let me tell you what. UFOs are a combination of one of two or three things. Most of the time, 98 percent of the time, it is probably an optical illusion like the ones I have just described.

There may be the rare occasion where the military really was testing an aircraft and someone got a picture that looked weird. They have a couple of cases where they say, yes, it did look like a UFO. That was our first trials of the stealth bomber.

Then there is the possibility, the devil can create illusions, can’t he, and I believe there are probably some people out there that say I saw this UFO and I saw these aliens and they spoke to me. Does the devil have the power of light? Can he create illusions? Can he deceive? Can he give them messages? And you know what happens? Usually those messages are dealing with, this you have been evolved and you will be reincarnated and you are going to keep progressing and eventually you will be as sophisticated as we are. It is a very unbiblical message that these aliens ostensibly give. So, yes, I think devils can sometimes create these illusions.

Revelation 13:13, “He performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from the heaven on the Earth and sight of man.”

Acts 2:19, it is interesting, Peter says, “I will show in the last days wonders in the heavens above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.”

You know, I don’t even have time to read this you. You might look at Ezekiel’s vision. If you read in Ezekiel 1:13 he talks about this wheel within the wheel and I have heard a lot of people say, that’s UFO. It is interesting, but no, I don’t think it was a UFO. I think he was taken and shown something unique and I am looking forward to the day when that is described. It talks about their wings and their army. It is like the noise and army as it flies and it is kind of a fascinating enigma, a conundrum, about this wheel within a wheel.

Are aliens watching us? Well, some of them. The angels are watching us. You see, our planet is sick. Luke 5, there are other unfallen worlds. Luke 5:31, “Jesus answered and said those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners through repentance.”

Now, think about the implications of what Jesus said. How many people in this world have been infected by sin. What percent? One hundred percent. So when the Lord said it is not those who are well that need a physician, but those who are sick, I have come not to call the righteous, He left the righteous, but I have come to call the sick. The well are still there.

You see, this planet right now has a disease that is contagious and the only ones that can go to a hospital where there is a very contagious disease are the ones who are infected and the hospital staff. You got that? Our planet now has been quarantined from the other unfallen galaxies because we are sick. Jesus, the great physician, came into our infected environment to heal us, but he left the uncontaminated unfallen worlds safely where they were.

Why does it matter? Why does it matter that there is life on other planets? Because the devil has maligned the character of God before the universe. It is not just what is happening on Earth here. It is accusations that have been made against God and his very government and his law.

That is why he tells us in Revelation 19:1-2, “After these things, I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying hallelujah.” By the way, Revelation 19 is before Revelation 20. You knew that. Revelation 19 is before the millennium chapter. “Hallelujah, salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God for true and righteous are His judgments.”

His judgment, His justice was under attack and Christ has demonstrated here and who was the principal attacker? Lucifer used to roam freely among the other angels in the unfallen world. He maligned, he accused, he slandered God. And here, this world, is a stage, it is a theater of God’s love. And at the cross was demonstrated Satan’s love for power and Christ’s power of love. And all the universe is aware of what is happening here and they are going to declare that He is true and righteous in His justice and His judgments.

You know, it is wonderful, soon Jesus will come. Is He coming alone? Does the bible say that there is silence in heaven when He comes? When we have been purified, there is a parade coming of not only all of the angels, He says He will come with all of the angels. Who is going to take care of the unfallen worlds if all the angels are here?

Every now and then, we haven’t done it in a while, Sacramento will have an area church convocation. We want as many as possible to go to this convocation. Most churches close their doors and say if we are going to have everybody there, there will be no pastors left because they are all participating at the convocation. If all of the angels are coming with Jesus and if God the Father is there, if you were an unfallen alien from another world and you have heard about this and finally the great victory parade is going to collect the trophies, wouldn’t you want to go? I think there is going to be in that procession not only angels, but I think that he is bringing the unfallen worlds with Him. Wow, think about big space is and how glorious that will be.

And then we will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Will we need space suits made from NASA? They had better get busy if that is the case. I think that once we get our glorified bodies, our spiritual bodies, you will be able to travel the speed of thought. There will be an atmosphere around you that you can breathe, that you will have your own light. You will not have to worry about being killed by the vacuum of space or the cold of space. I don’t know how God does it, but the angels do it, don’t they? Whatever it is they are wearing, we will have, those robes of light that He gives us. And then He will take us on this incredible procession.

I love this picture by my friend Elford Lee. He said that I could share this of Jesus bringing this parade of the ransom back from Earth to heaven. It has the picture of the cross there in the back there that I always thought was a moving picture.

Now, if you said to me, Doug, what is your job, and I said, I am a king. And you said, king, king of what country? Of the country of Nebulous. I just made that up. Who lives in that country? Nobody, but I reign there. That doesn’t make any sense. That is like saying you are a politician but you have no constituents. Or an author, yeah, I am an author. How many books? I haven’t written any yet. Any readers? No, I have no books, but I am an author.

So when a person says, we are going to live and reign with Christ, you reign over something. Just think of what a privilege that is. He is going to take us, the objects of His grace, not only is He going to save us, reigning in heaven is not going to be the despot, mean kind of rule. We are going to be going through the cosmos glorifying God as ambassadors of His love, telling of His goodness because we have experienced it firsthand. So we live and reign with Him and there are these unfallen worlds.

Let me read you a quote and this is from the book Great Controversy, “All the treasures of the universe,” speaking of the redeemed will be open to the study of God saved. “Unfettered by mortality, they will wing their tireless flight to worlds afar, worlds that thrilled with sorrow at the spectacle of human woe and rang with songs of gladness at the tidings of a ransomed soul.”

So when we read in the bible that there is singing in heaven over a soul that is saved, is it just angels or are there unfallen worlds that are singing? They sang with joy at the tidings of a redeemed soul. “With unutterable delight, the children of Earth enter into the joy and wisdom of unfallen beings. They share the treasures of knowledge and understanding gained through ages upon ages in contemplation of God’s handiwork.”

Can you imagine talking to an unfallen being that has lived a million years? “With undimmed vision, they gaze upon the glory of creation, sons and stars and systems all in their appointed order circling the throne of deity.” So I am not making this theology. It is foundational to what we believe.

If you read in manuscript 155 in 1902, “Christ came to reveal to worlds unfallen to angels and to human race that God’s law, there is no restriction that we cannot obey, that He came to represent God in humanity. He met every requirement that we are asked to meet.”

There is one more parable I will close with that I think helps illustrate this. Do you remember when Jesus said in the parable of the Lost Sheep, Luke 15:4, “What man have you having a hundred sheep if he loses one of them. He does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that was lost until He finds it. And when He has found it, He lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when He comes home, He calls together his friends and says, rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost.” I say to you likewise there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance.

You know a place you can easily apply that parable? All of the infinite universe that we just described, none of those sheep fell. The Lord laid aside his divinity as the chief shepherd. He came, He left them safe and their foal, He came across the cosmos to this galaxy, to this solar system, to this planet in rebellion where Lucifer kidnapped the inhabitants. Jesus came into this world and He paid an incredible sacrifice as the Lamb of God. Not only is He our shepherd, He is our lamb, to rescue this world, this lost sheep.

When you think about how big space is, do you remember how small our planet is? Why does it matter? It tells us about the love of God. How easy would it have been for God in the scope of how big the universe is and how small our planet, it is so microscopic it is not even like an atom compared to the universe. And when this planet rebelled, God could have looked around and said, you are gone.

If He loves something that small and He would lay aside His glory and being a human to live on this little speck to save us, if you can find yourself on that speck, how much does He care about the individual? Boy, that is a big sacrifice. He left all that to save this wandering world and all of we, like sheep, have gone astray. He left the Father’s throne to save us.

How dare we, went such a might god that made so much, He is so awesome, would come to save these little specks on a speck for us to tell Him no or we are too busy. It does matter. It gives us a scope of how valuable you are to God. He is our chief shepherd.

I would like to end where started. “Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, that means every creature everywhere, I heard them saying blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne and the lamb forever and ever.” This world is that lost sheep and all of us have been wandering sheep. The question is, are you willing to come home with the shepherd.