"Beam Me Up Scotty, There Is No Intelligent Life Down Ere" Series

QUESTIONS FOR GOD

“Beam me up Scotty, there is no Intelligent Life Here”

Psalm 8: 3-9

We are in our 3rd week in this series of messages I have titled Questions for God. During the month of December I invited you to submit questions that you wanted answered and told you that I would look at these questions and see what the Bible has to say about them. The first week we looked at the question, Jesus when are you coming back? Last week the question was Lord how can I overcome worry? One thing if for sure your questions have a lot of variety. Today’s question is twofold: Lord is there life on other planets? Definitely a tough question.

So we begin this morning with a question for you. How many of you believe that there is life in another universe? And before you answer, I want to clarify that I am talking about intelligent life. Mars has shown signs of water, for instance but that’s not what we are talking about? So how many of you believe there is intelligent life in other places besides earth? How many of you believe there is intelligent life in Florida? Debatable, huh?

I want to show you a couple of pictures from my childhood. Is that kid cute or what? But really I want you to see the next one. I went to bit of trouble to get this one yesterday. It is a picture of me and two of my friends …taken in 1968. What happened is that we decided to try to photograph a flying saucer. This next picture shows the flying saucer. We thought the picture was good so we walked down to the newspaper office and showed them and they agreed to come print the picture…..on the front page by the way. We were celebrities for about two days. One of my loves as a child and for my friends as well was astronomy. Several of my friends had telescopes and so we spent many a night looking at the moon, a few planets and also looking for flying saucers. The first flying saucer ever reported was supposedly seen in 1952. My best friend still tells the story of seeing a flying saucer come through our neighborhood and swooping down to where he could almost touch it. The problem is my friend lied a lot. Just saying. But these have been reported for years. So what does the Bible have to say about it?

We go first to the OT. And we quickly look at 3 passages.

(1) Genesis 5: 24. The Bible says (NLT) “Enoch lived 365 years,

walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him.” Can you imagine…just walking along and God took him. He has been labeled as the first astronaut.

(2) 2nd Kings 2:11. “As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” This was the 2nd astronaut.

(3) Ezekiel 1. It’s a lengthy chapter but let me point you to a few verses. V. 4 Ezekiel is speaking and he says, “I looked and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north-an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal.” He goes on to speak of living creatures that were present and then look at verse 27. Now you have to admit that is a strange passage of scripture. Who is he speaking of? Where did he come from and why is he there? This is one of those passages where the writer actually tells us. He doesn’t leave us guessing. I love it when the Bible does that. Look at verse 28. Read. This is the appearance of the Lord and it was when he called Ezekiel to prophesy. Based on what we know of the scripture it is safe to say these passages have nothing to do with flying saucers/UFO’s.

Other religions teach this. Two examples. (1) The Mormon faith. They knock on your door most likely on occasion. The Book of Mormon says that, during His visit, Jesus Christ healed their sick, taught them His gospel, blessed their children, and called twelve disciples to organize His Church in the Americas. The book of Mormon, by the way is referred to as another testament of Jesus Christ. The problem with that is that the Bible teaches there would not be one. When the scripture was closed in 90 AD, that was it. And we are told clearly in the book of Revelation that we are NOT to add anything. But the Mormons have. And what they have added in their book does not agree with this book.