E.T. is not going home.
On Wednesday, July 26, the U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, a subdivision under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, held a much-anticipated hearing on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency.” Unidentified anomalous phenomena, formerly known as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” is the technical term for UFOs.
Over roughly two and a half hours, legislators interviewed three witnesses: former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves, U.S. Air Force veteran and former intelligence official David Grusch, and retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor. Both Graves and Fravor gave eyewitness testimony of their experiences with UAP while on duty.
Graves told of multiple sightings while he was an F-18 pilot at Virginia Beach in 2014, describing one as an airborne “dark gray or … black cube inside of a clear sphere.” He noted exceptional behavior, such as “these objects … staying completely stationary in category-4-hurricane winds.” After leaving the Navy, Graves founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit with the “goal … to destigmatize the UAP issue and empower pilots to come forward with their accounts.”
Fravor, who also operated as a pilot, recounted his 2004 encounter with a white aircraft off the coast of Southern California. Famously described as the shape of a Tic Tac mint, the UAP mimicked the movement of Fravor’s F/A-18 before vanishing and reappearing approximately 60 miles away. “The technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had,” Fravor has repeatedly asserted.
Not So Need-to-Know
And Grusch repeated his whistleblower claims of a government conspiracy to conceal “a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program,” including the discovery of “non-human biologics,” the “misappropriation of funds,” and accusations of “administrative terrorism.” Described as “intentionally cryptic” and “vague” by USA Today, Grusch, whose testimony stems from “conversations and interviews” rather than firsthand experience, offered to share more of his “trove of evidence” in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility—that is, not in a public setting.
Interestingly, Grusch’s original June tell-all with NewsNation has been suspected of being a deliberate disinformation campaign. As Ross Douthat opined for The New York Times, “There is clearly now a faction within the national security complex that wants Americans to think there might be alien spacecraft, to give these stories credence rather than dismissal.” The congressional hearing certainly played into this theory, grabbing headlines and eliciting “gasps” from public onlookers.
In reality, the hearing revealed no new information except to officially record claims already aired on YouTube. There was an emphasis on correcting, as Fox News put it, “the government’s secrecy and overclassification of UFO- and extraterrestrial-related records that have led to mistrust from the American people, developed a stigma around the topic and created a national security issue.”
An impassioned Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee largely spearheading the congressional interest in UAPs, went so far as to declare, “The devil’s been in our way.”
Meanwhile, there was the expected pushback from the Department of Defense, whose spokesperson Sue Gough issued a rebuttal, stating that the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the current iteration managing the government’s UAP investigations, “has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”
The Truth Is Out There
The mounting public interest in extraterrestrials in recent years is certainly apparent. But where will it end up—thrown out in the archives of forgotten fads, remaining in the fringe groups of sci-fi geeks and conspiracy junkies? Or will it one day be accepted as fact?
The Bible tells us that the devil and his angels were “cast to the earth” (Revelation 12:9) out of heaven and contains multiple accounts of both these demons and God’s angels’ interactions with humankind. For example, read about the demon-possessed man of the Gadarenes in Mark 5:1–20 or the prophet Elijah’s encounters with an angel in 1 Kings 19:1–8. The Bible supports the existence of “extraterrestrial” beings, some adversaries, others allies. Check out further proof in this Bible Answers Live question.
Imagine what would happen if, one day, it becomes an accepted fact that we are not alone in the universe. The next question would be: Are these “alien invaders” friend or foe? The Bible says that “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14) and that he aims to “[deceive] the whole world” (Revelation 12:9); the Bible says that just before Christ’s return, Satan will work “with all power, signs, and lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9).
Will your new extraterrestrial buddy actually be a demon in disguise? Will he show you signs and wonders beyond your wildest dreams? Might he even convince you to fight against another alien superpower that just landed on Earth?
Does it sound far-fetched?
The Bible records, “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). “Satan … will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth … to gather them together to battle. … They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city” (20:7–9).
Jesus Christ will come again, “apart from sin, for salvation” (Hebrews 9:28). When He does, will you be His friend or His foe? That’s the question every person should really be asking. Our free Study Guide “Angel Messages from Space” is a good place to start getting answers.