Why Do People Say Our Ancestors Are From Outer Space?

Every January at St. James Church we invite our congregation to submit questions that I then answer impromptu. This is always fun and interesting because it reveals what congregation members are interested in and forces me to reveal some of my personal beliefs and subjective opinions. Sometimes this pleases people. Other times it doesn’t.

The questions are randomly selected during the month of January to be answered publicly. You can find the videos of those services at www.saintjameschurch.com. The questions I didn’t get to in the services will be addressed here and in future blogs at www.tedhaggardblog.com. Today’s question:

Why do people say that our ancestors are from outer space?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? We’ve all met people who make us wonder if aliens are among us now!

Seriously, though, some secularists believe that because we humans are so different than other living beings here on the earth, there had to be some outside influence on human development in addition to evolution. Biblical believers, however, explain those distinctions with the creation account of Adam and Eve and the 1,500 pages of ancient accounts of God dealing with the human race.

There are biblical accounts in which the authors describe spiritual encounters which sound to some like encounters with aliens and their spacecraft. My favorite one is found in the first chapter of Ezekiel, where Ezekiel describes an encounter with God that sounds a lot like a space-ship as it would be described through the mind of someone living at that time. And what about the Genesis 6 account of the giant Nephilites, offspring of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men,” who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times, or the strange creatures found in the book of Revelation? When I was an undergraduate student at Oral Roberts University in the 1970s, a book devoted to this subject,The Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken, generated a lot of discussion.

Aliens? Demons? Angels? God himself? Visions? Spaceships? What is the Bible talking about?

Well, here is what I can tell you: the Bible is the book God has given us that includes all the material we need to understand, to some degree, the reality of his existence, the fact that he created the heavens and the earth, and that he created us in his own image.

We are also the species that is able to contemplate a spiritual world. We are spirits who live in bodies, and when we die, we will continue to exist, not within these decaying bodies, but in eternity – a different dimension. We also know that God is Spirit, and that there are also good spirits and bad spirits.

We deduce from Scripture that before human history, one-third of the angels rebelled against God and became evil spirits, or demons. Two-thirds of the angels did not rebel against God and we know them as good servants of God, who minister to us along with God’s Holy Spirit. Evil spirits continue to be rebellious, and they use their influence to distract us from the one true God, or to incite human beings to directly rebel against God. The Bible implies that the purpose of earth is for us to have a place where we can decide if we want to submit to God and believe him, or to rebel against God and believe alternative ideas.God wants us to be free to make that choice, so he allows earth to consist of conflicting influences such as the Devil, angels, demons, our own independent will, various ideas and ideologies, natural law, and of course, God’s Spirit in order to give us opportunities to make choices.

Heaven is a place where God’s perfect will is fully expressed, which is outside of our earthly realm as we know it. Hell is also a place, in the depths of the earth, which is where those who have rejected God or denied his existence go after departing from their bodies. And it is the place where the Devil and his demons will spend eternity. When the Devil led his rebellion against God, he was thrown to the earth. And one day he’ll be thrown into Hell. The whole universe did not fall, the Devil and his demons did. Hell was made for them.

The Bible reveals what we need to know in order to be reconciled to God and to have an eternal relationship with him. It does not cover details of life on earth prior to Adam and Eve, nor does it cover details of the potential of life on other planets.Why? Maybe because it’s none of our business and it might become another distraction. So your question: why do people say that our ancestors are from outer space? Perhaps it is because there might have been communication or influences from outer space—or another realm—that we are not sure of, so people make guesses.

Are they right? We don’t know for sure today, but we might know tomorrow . . . or maybe tonight.

Good question.