“What about UFOs?”

Steve Brown:
What about UFOs? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love. work, live, lead, marry, parent evangelize, purchase and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I don’t know, have you ever seen a UFO.

Pete Alwinson:
I have not.

Steve Brown:
I have.

Pete Alwinson:
You have?

Steve Brown:
I really have.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. I believe it.

Steve Brown:
I’ll tell you about it in a minute.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay.

Steve Brown:
You know, I was a kid.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
But it was real. There were a little green men. And the spaceship landed and they all came out and one of the little green men said to the other one, what are you doing? And he said, I’m looking for little green women. That is so bad.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
I am so sorry. I repent of that Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright. Well, okay. Accepted.

Steve Brown:
That’s Pete Alwinson. He comes in on Fridays and we answer questions together. And we’re not going to just make fun. We’re going to take that question seriously. And by the way, we take all of your questions seriously. You can ask your question anytime you want, 24 7, by dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE. And you can record your question. We often put your voice on our phone lines and on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
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In Canada it’s

P.O. Box 28060

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Or you can e-mail us at [email protected]. And if you can help us financially, please do. I promise we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. And we’ll use it for the glory of God. And we also recognize that some of you simply can’t help financially, but you can pray. So, if you’d pray for this ministry, we would appreciate that. And as I said, we’re, we’ll use your gift for God’s glory. We are part of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada, both organizations assure and affirm that Pete and I are good looking and wise and that our monetary practices are ethical. Pete, before I go on anymore. Would you pray?

Pete Alwinson:
We need to now, for sure. Father, thank you for the fact that we can come into your presence right now. Thank you, that our identity is so wrapped up in what you have done in creating us and Jesus, what you have done in recreating us. Holy Spirit, how you have taken the work of Jesus and placed it in our hearts, so we honor you. We ask that Lord at the end of this week, you would lift us up and restore our bodies and souls. We’re tired. We’ve been working hard and we come into your presence now, so thankful that you’re in charge and you always have been. That you’re not surprised by the things that have come into our lives. And that you are the resource that we need for salvation and for life, so we honor you. And Lord Jesus, we ask that you would prepare our leaders, even on this Friday, continue to prepare them for church this week-end. Whenever we worship, we ask that you would give our worship leaders, our pastors, our teachers, our priests, those that work with our kids, you give them wisdom. And, and, and, and gospel power as they promote and teach your Holy name, through your word. We have some time now, Lord, to do some Q&A, we have a lot of questions and pray that you would be the one Holy Spirit to take these answers and apply them where they need to be applied. So we love you, because you first loved us. And we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I would like an opinion on the theology on the unidentified aerial phenomena, the government classification for UFO’s.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s it. I was waiting for a little bit more insight into what he was asking.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
You know, I was kidding at the beginning when I said that I did see one, I think there phenomenon going on that don’t have any explanation. And of late we’re getting, even from the government, a release of some information that hasn’t been before. What are the theological implications of that, Hugh Ross, who we often have on our talk show and is kind of our science guy that we go to a lot. He’s an astrophysicist, and he says there are no UFO’s. He says that’s the old demonic. And, he gives a lot of Biblical reasons for that. And I don’t know if I totally agree. I can just say, I don’t know. And it’s okay to say, I don’t know. And I don’t know if the Bible has much, Von Daniken had that book that he wrote a good while ago about how the archaeology of Egypt and other places, even found in Israel reflect beings from outer space. But I think by and large, that’s nonsense. So we’re kind of in the dark.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, we are, really, interesting. I thought you did believe in, life on other planets and so.

Steve Brown:
Well, you know, I’d like to say it’s cause it’s science, but it’s not, I just love C.S. Lewis’ science fiction trilogy, where he goes to another planet and all that. I just thought that was really good cool. And Lewis said that the earth is the dark planet, because it was the one that needed to be redeemed. But on other planets, they never had a fall. And so, they don’t need the redemption. I think that’s an intriguing thought, but it’s certainly not one I could defend Biblically.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. No. And, that was perhaps his perspective as well as a means to continue to teach

Steve Brown:
Oh, exactly, of course it was, that’s what

Pete Alwinson:
Biblical truth. So that’s why he does that. Yeah, I, guess I would say I’m not persuaded, that’s the first time I heard Hugh Ross’s view on that.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
It is either that there actually are, cause there are phenomena. I mean, we’ve seen them

Steve Brown:
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Pete Alwinson:
on the news. There are phenomena, but they could be demonic and they could be from other countries using technologies, to try to spy on us. But it seems like our technology is the most advanced, so we would figure that out.

Steve Brown:
Do you. How does this affect how you live?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, it doesn’t affect me in any way, now if they start lazoring us or shooting down on us, it’s going to change the way I live. I think, you know, the, the deal is, is that the Bible doesn’t seem to give us any indication that there’s life on other planets. And that the anthropic principle is that this planet is hospitable for human life and was designed just for that. And there’s one savior, and I think that’s the key.

Steve Brown:
And Hugh Ross makes a very good case when he talks about it. He talks about how precise this earth is and that if it removed just a little bit, there would be no life.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That it’s fragile. And that it has to have a creator that created this just the way it is. And that’s not true in other places. So, I don’t know, but I’d have to have Hugh here to give a better explanation than that. Frankly, we’re just talking, cause we don’t know. Right?

Pete Alwinson:
We don’t know. We don’t know, but we’re interested.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. We’re interested.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s not going to shake our faith.

Steve Brown:
No, not at all. This is an interesting e-mail question. Does God know what we’re going to do currently? And in advance?

Pete Alwinson:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
Yes.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I mean he’s omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. The Omnis right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah. You know, people, there are people that say, yeah, he knows, but he didn’t cause it. Well, then that means you’re a determinist, because if he knows, can it be any different than what he knows and if he knows, and it can’t be any different than what he knows, then that means it’s already determined and you’re a determinist without God.

Pete Alwinson:
There you go.

Steve Brown:
There you go.

Pete Alwinson:
Philosophically, there you go. I mean, that’s a dead end street.

Steve Brown:
And you know, one of the things that you have to say, whenever you answer, I think a question like, is that are men responsible? Are they free? Yeah. The Bible teaches that too. And those truths don’t fit our nicely defined Aristotelian thought forms.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And we have to be careful, because we’re talking about God here and something a lot bigger than we understand or can understand.

Pete Alwinson:
That is so true. And the Bible has a broader language for this, when we talk about the will of God, he’s got the decretive will of God, what he decrees, will happen. The permissive will of God, what he permits to happen. So, there are many different elements to the will of God and all of that is wrapped up under it sovereignty. And we just don’t know how it all works together.

Steve Brown:
But he’s good.

Pete Alwinson:
He’s good.

Steve Brown:
And you know, that’s a great comfort to me, to know that somebody is, you know, what scares me about government and church and international affairs is that those are ruled by people whom I’m afraid don’t know anything more than I do. And that scares me to death. But if I knew that above all of that, there was a God who knew exactly what he was doing and how to do it. That gives me great comfort.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Listen, this is, I have a problem with eternal hell. What do you think? I think that’s scary.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I, and you know, in there all kinds of surmise, there are different views of Scripture, English evangelicals look at it different than American evangelicals and Bible believers. There are books written about it, that go one way or the other, but bottom line, if you’re a universalist, you probably don’t believe the Bible. And if you don’t want to be a universalist, then you’re probably not a Christian, but in fact, hell is dangerous and it’s real. And it means being lost and the Scriptures are clear about you not wanting to go there and you don’t have to.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. Because Jesus is the answer. He’s our Redeemer. I think it’s a good way of putting it, Steve and it’s there, hell is a reality that has to be a part of understanding the justice of God and the judgment of God that comes. What we have to do, is we have to present that, because it is a reality. Even though there’s dimensions of it that we don’t understand.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true. I, I found, I liked C.S. Lewis. He wrote a whole chapter on the hell in The Problem of Pain, which is very, very in your face. And then he wrote another book called The Great Divorce, which was a different view of eternity and how hell is a place of eternal death, and you know, and I guess that God has not given us the specifics of the temperatures in heaven or in hell or the flowers in heaven or the quality of the gold in the streets. All of those things are by and large necessary metaphors to say, you don’t want to go there and you don’t have to, because of Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s good. That’s good. Very important.

Steve Brown:
Well. We’re out of time. We don’t don’t even have time to sing Just As I Am.

Pete Alwinson:
And, I thank you for not.

Steve Brown:
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