Psych and Theo Podcast
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Psych and Theo Podcast
Ep. 47 - Are There UFOs in the Bible?
Are UFOs hidden in the Bible's ancient pages? Tim and Sam tackle this fascinating intersection of modern UFO phenomena and biblical interpretation, exploring why some see alien encounters in passages like Ezekiel's "wheel within a wheel" vision, Jacob's ladder, or the pillar of fire that led the Israelites.
The discussion moves beyond sensationalism to examine the fundamental challenges of reading modern concepts back into ancient texts. Tim explains how these approaches strip away the rich theological context that gives biblical visions their true meaning. For instance, what modern interpreters see as a spacecraft in Ezekiel's vision was actually a royal chariot symbolizing God's sovereignty during Israel's exile—something immediately recognizable to ancient readers.
We dive into the concept of "Remixed Religions"—how people today create personalized belief systems by combining elements from various traditions, often incorporating UFO phenomena into spiritual frameworks. The hosts consider historical accounts of strange aerial phenomena documented throughout human history, while cautioning against interpreting these events through our science fiction-influenced perspective.
This episode offers a thoughtful balance for believers—neither dismissing all unexplained phenomena outright nor becoming fixated on them at the expense of spiritual growth. Instead, we're invited to consider how our worldviews shape our interpretation of reality and to approach ancient texts with the humility to let them speak on their own terms.
Curious about the spiritual dimensions of UFO phenomena? Join us next episode as we explore UFO religiosity and what might really be happening when people report these strange encounters.
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All right, everyone, welcome back to the Second Theo podcast, Sam and Tim here, and we have been busy. This has been a busy season for Tim and I, but we are pushing through getting these episodes out and we have a really interesting topic today, one that I think you're going to enjoy. It's kind of like a two-part series and Tim is going to illuminate our minds with this very interesting topic. It's been a topic of discussion as of late and, yeah, we're excited for you guys to tune into this and, as always, we want to encourage you guys to follow us on Instagram that is, at psych underscore and underscore Theo on Instagram, and also on Facebook, and also subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you can leave a review, that's so helpful. We enjoy reading what you guys have to say about the podcast and also when those of you guys who are listening just see us, whether it be on campus, or want to reach out and just kind of give us your thoughts on future episodes.
Speaker 1:We have a couple of topics that were suggested and we're working on that now, so hopefully you guys enjoyed today's topic. So, tim, today we're talking about UFOs, and the Bible is something that I thought we would probably never talk about. At least for my part, I never really been interested in the paranormal. This was part of the intrigue. As you brought up the topic, I'm like, huh, okay, so I think I'm going to have some questions that will come up as we have our conversation. But you've been reading a lot of books and this has been something I guess I don't know if it's been trending, but definitely a topic that you've had with a couple of people, I'm assuming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely a topic that you've had with a couple of people, I'm assuming. Yeah, it's definitely a topic that's trending and this is really a space that I'm very much interested in not from a standpoint of I'm a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, but I'm very interested in the emerging new religions of the world. There's a term Tara Burton is the researcher who coined this term. It's from her book Strange Rites, r-i-t-e-s. She coined this term Remixed Religions and it's essentially this new trend of people mixing and matching different concepts from different religions to make their own worldview. Essentially and if it sounds crazy, that's because it is, because it doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to be coherent, it's just people mixing and matching things. I mean there's religions forming around Harry Potter, for instance, and she goes into that Actual established religions.
Speaker 1:Think of them more like Like Scientology stuff, like that.
Speaker 2:No, not that established. Think of them more like online communities.
Speaker 1:Okay which I stuff like that.
Speaker 2:no, not that established. Think of them more like online communities okay, which I can see, sort of that, that nature. In fact she she says that the internet has been the catalyst for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, of people forming first this online community that morphs into a, a religion like entity. You know, with the ufo, space and aliens and all that stuff, there's been a lot of stuff coming out, a lot of disclosure stuff from the government, but the interest in UFOs and aliens and all that stuff has really ticked up a lot. With it comes questions about worldview, questions about does Christianity have room for aliens and extraterrestrials in the Christian worldview? Would that change things about Christianity if tomorrow, et showed up and said I'm from another planet and I'm a rational agent just like you guys? What do we make of stuff like that? So there's lots of those questions coming out.
Speaker 2:I think with the advent of the internet, social media and everyone's got a camera, there's more and more weird things being captured, weird phenomenon being captured. So it's not just hearsay. There's real video evidence of quote unquote paranormal things happening. That's not fake. Certainly there are fake things, yeah, but there's things that are unexplained or that at least don't fit within, like a naturalistic paradigm where you can't explain this through the laws of physics and so demands a further explanation or an explanation from a different worldview. All right, so where do you want to begin?
Speaker 1:As always, let's go ahead and define our terms. I know we're talking about UFOs and maybe what the Bible teaches on that or what the Bible perspective is on that. Let's start there. Ufos I don't know if aliens can be part of this one, but maybe what that even means.
Speaker 2:So the UFO. The term stands for unidentified flying object. That term has sort of fallen out of parlance in the modern vernacular and has been replaced with another term called UAP and that stands for unidentified aerial phenomenon okay, okay so you can see the difference there.
Speaker 2:A UFO is an object that's flying and it's unidentified, but a UAP is an unidentified aerial phenomenon, so it doesn't necessarily mean it's an object. It could just be light source or something like that. So you'll hear people nowadays say UFO, uap together. Okay, yeah, so I think when it comes to this issue of are UFOs real, are aliens real? There's lots of questions we could start with, but I think when it comes to our UFOs in the.
Speaker 2:Bible. We've been forced to answer that question by the modern culture, by contemporary pop culture, especially with shows like Ancient Aliens, and read into the scriptures, or at least to take a second look at stories in the Bible through the lens of the UFO worldview, worldview which is to say, looking at accounts in the Bible that are described as being miraculous, described as being divine encounters of some sort, divine visions, and seeing those as not as supernatural divine visions, but actually as alien encounters.
Speaker 2:That's what we're dealing with here. So when someone asks the question, are UFOs in the Bible? Or they say, did you know UFOs are in the Bible. This is what is happening is that they're reading the Bible through this modern lens. So the most famous example is Ezekiel. Ezekiel has a vision of a wheel within a wheel. Don't have time to read these passages because they're quite lengthy, but this is Ezekiel, chapter one, I believe, where Ezekiel basically has this vision.
Speaker 2:Now, those of you don't understand ezekiel is an exilic prophet. He's not one of the minor prophets, he's a major prophet, let's say, and he's part of the community that is exiled out of jerusalem. So he finds himself in captivity with the babylonians and he has this vision. He sees this incredible, glorious, like angelic figures, and then he sees what he describes as like this vehicle of some sort and it has like wheels and there's wheels within wheels. He's talking about lights around these wheels and there's eyes everywhere and it sounds kind of crazy, like wow, like, what kind of creature does he see?
Speaker 2:And people have have in the modern era read this through the lens of a flying saucer. And so they say, if you read this through a flying saucer lens, like you see, maybe this is a flying saucer. Then it starts to make sense because you have a wheel that's a saucer, maybe a wheel within a wheel. So maybe there's like concentric circles to this saucer and and it said, it has eyes all around that could just be lights all around the ring of this UFO. So Ezekiel doesn't really know what he's seeing, he's just describing it in terms that he understands, but it's really probably a UFO. That's how this argument goes. Interesting Another example would be the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud that the Israelites are led by in the wilderness out of Egypt. That it was really an alien presence that was leading them in some sort. There's nothing to go on except speculation there. Another interesting one is Jacob's ladder, that's Genesis 28. Jacob has this vision where he says he sees this stairway up to heaven and the angels are ascending and descending on this stairway.
Speaker 2:Jesus later alludes to this image and says that I'm basically that stairway on the way to heaven. But what Jacob sees he describes it as a stairway or something like that and these angelic beings going down and up on this thing and people have read that as that. Jacob doesn't understand what he's seeing. He thinks it's like a vision of heaven, but it's really probably a UFO spaceship of some sort and there's beings, alien beings that look like angels, coming down and going up into the spaceship or something like that.
Speaker 1:But see, that's so interesting because you've alluded to that fact of if that's your worldview or that's the lens that you're using. You're going to see that, but I would have never, ever thought that. But again, that goes back to what is a person, what's the lens that a person is using to interpret these passages, which I'm sure you'll get into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, there's some other examples we could get into, like Paul's vision and the book of Acts, where he encounters Christ on the road to Damascus, and the way it's described is that Paul sees the light and he hears a voice, but the people around him only see a light, they don't hear a voice, so they don't know what's going on. That's right, yeah, and paul is blinded temporarily by this thing and modern ufologists will say see, this matches the descriptions of a ufo encounter a bright light, hearing noises or telepathic speech and being temporarily wounded. Sometimes people are wounded when they encounter UFOs and that's actually a really strange phenomenon with UFO instances. There are things like that which in the next episode we'll get into some of the religiosity side of UFOs.
Speaker 2:But one more would be Isaiah's vision in Isaiah six, where Isaiah sees the throne of God. He was in the temple and he sees the throne of God, the majesty of God and these angels around the throne and he's just completely undone by this. And again an angel picks up a hot coal and touches his lips and things like that. So people say, look, isaiah is putting theological language on this, but it really matches some UFO encounters. It's still some of the similar aspects to how people describe UFO encounters today. What I've laid out for you is essentially what Ancient Aliens does the show.
Speaker 2:They would look at these passages, like the Ark of the Covenant that has a couple artifacts inside the Ark of the Covenant, and if anyone touches the Ark of the Covenant they die. And so they were like well, maybe the Ark of the Covenant held some radioactive material that was given to them by the aliens that was leading them through the pillar of cloud and fire. What do we make of this? Well, for one, there's a major problem here, and that is that these readings are anachronistic. The term anachronism means that you're reading your contemporary understanding and worldview into the worldview of an ancient text, and that's a big problem.
Speaker 2:Is it similar to eisegesis. It's a form of eisegesis. Eisegesis is like a big umbrella term for these types of things. But essentially you're taking your understanding, your modern understanding, and you're reading that understanding into the text and, furthermore, it's not allowing the text to speak for itself. Yeah, so it really is essentially saying that, no, these ancient authors aren't allowed to say what they mean or what they said isn't really what is true. Like they're not allowed to actually say things as they are.
Speaker 2:We have to now reinterpret what they true. Like they're not allowed to actually say things as they are. We have to now reinterpret what they say so that the texts aren't allowed to speak for themselves. Instead, you know, we're assuming or at least this worldview is assuming that our beliefs and the modern age, this belief in extraterrestrials, this belief in aliens and spaceships and sci-fi, like that worldview, is more credible and, quote-unquote, scientific than the religious worldview of ancient people. That's an assumption. It's like, yeah, our world, we know so much more about the world. Ancients weren't that smart. We know, we understand so much more about aerial phenomenon and flying and spaceships and all that.
Speaker 2:They couldn't understand those things and so we're going to read our modern understanding back into this text, I think it's a big problem because and we can get into this in the next episode when it comes to worldviews and religiosity and what might really be going on here is that if I assume the christian worldview is true and that what's really going on with aliens isn't actually extraterrestrials but it's spiritual in nature, then what the ancient texts are describing actually may be what they saw and that there wasn't flying saucers, because that that might be a modern phenomenon put forward by deceptive entities to deceive a modern age.
Speaker 1:And that's how I mean, that's how it works all the time right Like the more it sounds like with time and we have supposedly more understanding of something, we try to use that new understanding to interpret past events right, and especially when it comes to scripture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's always a problem like another. Another problem, I see, is when it comes to, like the story of david and goliath. Here's an example as an aside the story of david and goliath, explaining how goliath was, who he was, as a as this reportedly nine foot tall giant with armor that weighed hundreds of pounds, too heavy for a regular man to carry. How could someone like that exist, like physically? That doesn't seem possible. Well, people explain that one of two ways. Well, one he may not have been that tall and that too. Well, he might have had this genetic deformity or genetic malformity called gigantism or make someone really tall, and they got six fingers and six toes and they're really deformed. The problem with that and I see I hear christians say that a lot too the problem with that is that people with gigantism aren't built like warriors right, right.
Speaker 2:Let's just think of that yeah, they're not built like like the physique of a greek god that can take on 10 men, you know, and just kill them all in one swoop. Right goliath is described as this mighty warrior who is very fierce and strikes fear into everyone.
Speaker 2:Well, people with gigantism don't necessarily do that right so the passage is not allowing for us to just read our scientific understanding of like what a medical condition is into that story. Goliath. I like what Hugh Ross says here that if he really is nine foot tall and he's built like a warrior, we know from our human physiology that's not possible in a naturalistic worldview. So there must be something supernatural going on there and that gets into the whole worldview of where does Goliath come from, where the giants come from, and if you guys want to know about that you can look at one of our previous episodes when we get into spiritual warfare and where demons come from and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's an example of where we mistakenly read something back into the tech. We're reading a modern medical discovery back into the text as though that explains everything about that text.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:So another problem with reading like UFOs back into the Bible is that modern people think that's more respectable, like that worldview is more respectable because it fits within a naturalistic paradigm. Naturalism meaning that there's nothing outside of nature, there's no supernatural stuff, there's no gods, there's no spirits or anything like that. So what we see in the sky, if it really isn't fake and there really are like things in the sky, well then they must be extraterrestrials, they must be from another planet where they must be from some sort of like different place and space and time from us. But it all has to fit within a naturalistic paradigm. So if so, someone will see this and say well, look, we see this modern phenomenon that is perfectly compatible with my naturalistic worldview. So when I see these ancient texts, who don't have the same worldview they have have supernatural worldviews and we know that's false. So we'll just read back into these texts A naturalistic explanation, ergo UFOs or something like that.
Speaker 2:Now, some people will read. They'll explain these events in naturalistic terms, like no, they didn't see angels in the sky, they saw ball lightning or something like that.
Speaker 1:there's certainly people who do that, who don't go to the ufo route, but the people who use the ufo explanation tend to do so because they are naturalists in some way sure trying to make this fit within a naturalistic paradigm that's interesting, though, because they have to find, like a balance between the naturalistic world and then making sense of this thing that seems very unnatural or not. You know, not part of this earth, like these ufos or these uae sightings that they have, that seems unnatural. So I I'm just trying to wrap my head around. How do they make sense of that, of those two things?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean some of them posit that like there's other dimensions or they're, or like maybe they these, these are highly advanced species that have figured out all kinds of different travel and anti-gravitational and stealth cloaking and all these other things. Like you can posit all kinds of things that this advanced species is able to do that looks magical to us but might be perfectly reasonable once we understand it physically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so just a quick question on the on the visions of these that these prophets had. How do you determine whether it's something that they saw or if it was an actual vision that no one else was able to identify Meaning? Are you saying that both the vision and what they saw are real or are you saying that it was like a dream type of vision in their mind? Because just thinking psychologically here, for people who are exposed themselves, for example, to movies that are satanic or movies that are about extraterrestrials or anything like that like they'd be more prone to believe news like that Bigfoot right, for example they'd be more prone to believe that if that's what they're consuming, content wise. So I guess I could kind of make that explanation for modern day today. But in bible times, how do you distinguish between it's something that they actually saw or if it was a vision?
Speaker 2:well, I think the context is going to determine that sometimes prophetic visions are simply that their visions. Okay, like that someone, it's like a dream state or something that only the prophet sees. Other times it's, it's like a. It's not just a vision, it's a murder, it's a miracle or an appearance where other people see it as well.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Maybe here's an example I can't remember the passage cause I'm thinking of this off the top of my head but Elisha the prophet is with his servant and there's an army that comes to surround the city for an army, and they're. They're here to destroy the city and they want elisha, the prophet of god, they want to take him back because he's they don't like him and his servant's really worried. And so he tells the servant go outside and look and see what you see. And then and elijah prays to god, open his eyes so that he may see. When the prophet's servant goes out, looks over the hillside, what he sees is an army of chariots of fire. He sees the army of the heavenly hosts that are there to defend the city against this foreign army.
Speaker 2:So that's something that this servant is allowed. That's actually there, but the servant is allowed to see it, prior to which he wasn't able to see it, but Elijah asked that the Lord would allow him to see that. So that's something where it's, it's there, but you can't see it in most cases. Something like Isaiah's vision in Isaiah six. That seems to be a vision. It's Isaiah is allowed to see something. Something like Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6, that seems to be a vision. It's Isaiah is allowed to see something.
Speaker 2:He gets an appearance of the throne of God and what it's like around the throne of God. And this gets to my second point. The second problem with the UFO readings of scripture is that they almost always neglect the theological argument that's being made by these passages. They just thrust that aside and they just read into it that this was a UFO. They ignore the theological context in which these visions are described. If you just rip these stories out of their context and imagine like you're reading a newspaper and it's like Isaiah went to Jerusalem and Jeremiah well, he's locked in a pit here. And Ezekiel said he saw something strange. We don't know what that's about, but let's move on. And it's just like random factoid stories. You might think, oh, okay, that's kind of weird. But no, this vision that Ezekiel has is the start of the book and it is setting up the book of Ezekiel, the prophecies that he gives and the point of the point of that vision. So let's just get back to Ezekiel's, where this wheel we often a wheel is described in the eyes everywhere and all that what Ezekiel is describing is a Royal chariot. Michael Heiser has he's a biblical scholar, he has a great article on this If you just Google Michael Heiser, ezekiel's chariot or Ezekiel's wheel, and he has several articles and I think he has got some podcast episodes on this where he basically explains why Ezekiel's wheel is not a UFO and he goes into great detail about how this is a royal chariot that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is riding, as a king would ride his chariot into battle. And it's meant as a polemic against the Babylonians who have just captured Jerusalem and think that they're in charge and their gods are in charge, that Marduk is in charge and that Yahweh is dead and he's nowhere. This vision is a polemic against that, saying that no, god is still in control. God is the one who is all powerful and no matter what army or no matter what empire thinks that it's in control. You're not, god's in control. Same thing with Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6. It's the year that Uzziah dies, the king, and there's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of uncertainty and Isaiah sees this vision of God on his throne, he's in control. He's still the one who sets up empires and kingdoms and appoints kings and disposes of them. He's the one that's in control. So that's the theological messaging jacob's ladder. You know, jacob sees this vision. People think, oh well, it's a flying saucer and guys going up and down on the saucer. No notice that jacob?
Speaker 2:Jacob is describing this stairway that goes up and down to heaven, and if you understand the ancient Mesopotamian worldview, these stairways were connected to ziggurats. So a ziggurat is like a pyramid type structure with stairs on all four sides, and at the top of the ziggurat was usually a temple where they would offer sacrifices and they would call down the gods, and so the gods it was meant to mimic, where the gods would reside on top of mountains. So a ziggurat think of it as like a temple where the gods would reside at the top. And so the stairway going up and down the top of the ziggurat was the way to go up and down to God, was the way to go up and down to God. Okay, so it would make sense for Jacob to see angels going up and down this stairway.
Speaker 2:What he's describing, how an ancient Mesopotamian would understand that, as Jacob sees this cosmic mountain that symbolizes the ziggurat, and at the top of that mountain is God, it's heaven, and the angels are coming to and fro from earth to heaven, back down. Yeah, that's good, that makes sense. So all that to say, you know when for Christians and I know we're just really touching on this very briefly but when you hear these arguments, whether that's on the ancient alien show, which I don't think is around anymore, I don't think it's on the air ancient alien show, which I don't think is around anymore, I don't think it's on the air or you just hear people talking about it now, because now where this conversation has shifted, it's shifted into podcasts on youtube and other places where people are talking about there's those ufos in the bible, there's aliens in the bible, all they're. They're rehashing the same old arguments over and over again. So this has been something that's been ongoing, oh yeah, for for a long time.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, yeah, it's funny how it just kind of resurges after whatever amount of time. But yeah, I don't think I've ever heard all these arguments that so I'm. I mean, I'm just generally interested. Now to what they're, what they're proposing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I think for for believers, if this is how to combat it, like okay one. There's a naturalistic worldview that's being assumed like our modern understanding is more scientific and more credible than the views of the ancients. Why would that be the case? Why should we accept that at all? Why would we not let these texts speak for themselves? Just because there's similarity in terms of phenomenon doesn't mean that these ancients saw ufos yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:secondly, I would say this there there are here's where these two views are. There's some agreement or concurrence is that there are historical accounts going back thousands of years of people seeing strange things in the skies, not just in the bible, but outside the Bible as well. There's a Catholic researcher by the name of Jacques Vallée who's written lots of different books on this subject, and one book in particular is called Wonders in the Sky, and it's a study on like hundreds of accounts going back thousands of years of people seeing strange phenomenon in the sky. So the modern phenomenon of people seeing weird things in the sky is not new, but our language around it is new.
Speaker 2:The language of ascribing aliens and oh, it's a saucer, it's a spaceship and all these things. But I would caution people that that's language that we have assigned to this stuff and part of that is we're not being perfectly objective in how we use that language, because we're influenced by science fiction literature, we're influenced by hollywood, we're influenced by modern technology that we ourselves have invented. Yeah, so just because we see things in the sky that mimic that stuff doesn't mean that, one, it's it must be advanced alien tech that we're seeing that's naturalistic, and two, that that that is the same as what other people have seen in ages past right, because I'm thinking that there's that they're what they're describing.
Speaker 1:There's no corroborating evidence that that's what other people have described, or is there right, like if someone, if someone describes seeing something in the sky, it's a similar explanation or similar description that someone else has used.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think what the message that you're communicating, too, is that we got to go back to text context, context, context, right, yeah yeah, yeah, and you know, I would say this in a worldview like ours, where we, we posit that there are entities that are at least non-material in some respect, who are nefarious and who do not have our best interest at heart, but they have capabilities to deceive in this way as well, to deceive in this way as well, and so a naturalistic worldview doesn't account for that. A Christian worldview does account for that. And if we don't have, we can't just, like you know, examine a UFO. You know, and I know some people are going to say like, well, we got them in area 51, you know, you just gotta go. Like I'm challenging, I would challenge anyone Like let's just stick to what we know, not to what we hear, not to what some anonymous whistleblower or some guy that is on a YouTube channel says, just stick to what you know. Yeah, so, uh, yeah, but I would so.
Speaker 2:Jacques Vallee, his book wanders in the sky. I've not read it, but I've I've summaries of it. It's actually on my reading list to get to this year. Another one is called passport to magonia. That's another book of his. Magonia is like another word for heaven. I don't know where that comes from, but yeah, essentially it's a book about how people have. People have started to talk about ufos in terms of transcendence and taking us to heaven in some, some respects. He did a lot of research on ufo cults and particularly the heaven's gate cult, and what's so fascinating is that jacques blay did this research in the 70s and 80s before and I don't know I imagine he's probably updated his research because he's still alive. But the heaven's gate cult if you remember, do you remember?
Speaker 2:oh, yeah, yeah I remember that with the haley bopp comet in the 90s, it was flying over the earth and everyone could see it and they believed that there was a spaceship either on the other side of that comet or within it. Yeah, it was there to take them home and so they committed mass suicide yeah how many people were there, do you remember?
Speaker 1:uh, I don't remember. I don't remember how many, yeah, but yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, that was a big deal yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So jacques valet was doing research on them, okay, and as a there, as a ufo cult, wow, so they were attributing things in the sky to aliens and the aliens were the ones that were going to take them to heaven. And so that's what the passport megonia is about. Is like that phenomenon coming about. Yeah, so I would say this also the naturalistic worldview doesn't explain, can't explain all the, all the accounts that we see in history. Here's a. Here's an interesting one. This one's always puzzled me, cause I I want to go back and find the original sources to see if this is corroborated by more than one source.
Speaker 2:But in 1453, the Ottomans have surrounded the city of Constantinople and they're about to take the city. It's a dire straits. It's like the day or two before the city falls, and it is reported that this bright light appears over Hagia Sophia, the cathedral, the big cathedral in Constantinople that today is now called the Grand Mosque of Istanbul. And it's reported that this bright light appears right over the top of the dome of the cathedral and the whole of the cathedral and the whole city sees it, all the armies see it and it puts this great fear in everyone and then the light kind of ascends up and goes away and people interpreted that at the time that either the Lord's presence was leaving that cathedral or the angel that was guarding the city left the city and basically, like God, the angel that was guarding the city left the city and basically, like god was kind of abandoning the city at that point.
Speaker 2:It's reported in the historical documents that this has happened. So I think it's a really strange thing that happens. Now moderns look at that. They're like, well, it was clearly just ball lightning. Lightning appeared above the cathedral but to my knowledge no one has ever shown like that. There's been other instances of ball lighting appearing over that cathedral and what would be the odds of that happening right at that moment, like right at that time period? It just seems really strange to me. Yeah, maybe there's someone out there that's done the research I'm not aware of, I'll admit, you know if they've done that research and you know, yeah, ball lightning appears every three years, okay, but but that's an instance where something really crazy happens. Yeah, and everyone sees it, but it's really inexplicable yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:So how do you feel about, like, knowing what you know, hearing something like that, and then is that like, well, it's not too far-fetched to to believe, or is it like?
Speaker 2:well, my my, are you asking for my personal opinion? Yeah, yeah, that was so. This is pure speculation. This, I don't know, hear me out, it's just pure speculation. Yeah, I think it probably was an angelic appearance of some sort that at some points the ain't like. I do think there are angels that are are given authority to guard certain things, and I think that again, don't people don't crucify me because, like this is just speculation it does seem to me that at least the idea that there was an angel there that appeared and then left, that is certainly plausible within my worldview.
Speaker 1:Sure that there was sort of a sign of like the city's done, you know, and it's going to be overrun yeah, well, here's, and here's why I ask for your, for your, opinion on that, because I think if there's anything that I've been learning through our time together you know podcasting the episodes that we've been doing, but specifically the ones that we've been doing on the spiritual realm you've really opened up my eyes to see that as more of a reality, because I think the way that I grew up, it wasn't something that was talked about enough like spiritual warfare, like it was used as this kind of it's battling against sin, which it is.
Speaker 1:But I think the reality of understanding that this is always going on around us and not bringing an awareness to it makes you vulnerable in some ways. So that's kind of been my, my perspective, as, as we've been talking about these things, you've just kind of opened up my, my world view a little bit, more, to be open to it at least, right, yeah, because there is a resistance to it, like UFOs. Why are we even talking about this thing? Like that would be an initial reaction to that. But when you integrate how people view this in light of the scriptures and how they view today's worldview into that, it makes it interesting, it makes you consider it. So I just wanted to throw that out there because, as you're, even when you shared that, you said it falls in line with my worldview that it could be a possibility, right? So again it just goes back to what filter are we using as we interpret these events?
Speaker 2:So it's been helpful for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So just as a closing comment, I would christians don't don't dismiss like reports of ufos and things like that. Don't just outright dismiss it as like, oh, it's all just a bunch of hokey stuff. Um, because I think there, I think there is a deeply spiritual element to what's going on. Yeah, but also don't buy into everything you hear, because there's certainly this fake stuff all the time.
Speaker 2:There's hoaxers, there's misinformation and disinformation. I mean that's one of the more nefarious things in this subject is that governments are not interested. Governments are interested in keeping secret their, their weapons and new tech and things like that. So they like, if they think, oh, people are getting a little too close to figuring out what we're doing, they are more than happy to introduce false stories and fake whistleblowers and things like that to just further confuse the conversation. And we'll get into that in the next episode with some of the research that's been done by a woman by the name of Catherine Prusolka. She goes into this a little bit too how this whole subject is a morass of misinformation and disinformation. So it's really hard to know what's true and what's not, and I think that in and of itself should clue Christians into this is not a harmless subject, because there are people who are very much interested in not having the truth discovered.
Speaker 1:Right, right, it almost seems like the new shiny object that's being discussed in Christian circles, where it makes it appealing and it's very easy to just kind of go with it and say, oh yeah, you know, it just opens up this whole new space for them which could lead them, if they're not biblically grounded, to I don't know, I guess fall into the UFO religiosity, I don't know. Oh, totally yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's like any subject that is weird and interesting, intriguing, but it could take you away from your primary responsibility, which is to grow in holiness and follow Christ and to take the gospel to the world and other things like that. It could take you away from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not that it's not important to know and be informed about these things, but it's not the priority. And so many people they get so fixated on it and they become kind of weirdos. That's pretty mildly, but they actually can ruin their lives. They get so obsessed with it, it becomes an obsession and I think I would just anyone who's thinking about studying this stuff just ask yourself this at the end of my life, when I stand before the lord, how am I going to give a, give an account of myself? Like, if I stand before lord, he's like why did you spend the last 40 years tracking, tracking down ufos? Yeah, like, what, what? Like, what good was that?
Speaker 1:to do.
Speaker 2:It's like now, if I'm trying to help people who, this gets to another subject. Let's maybe go to the next episode and we'll talk about religiosity. But like if I'm a pastor and I have people in my congregation that are like I had a UFO encounter, I had an encounter with aliens, if I'm a pastor or there's pastors listening, you should not immediately dismiss that as crazy. Maybe we'll leave with that and go to the next episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds good, man. Thank you for educating us on that, and for those of you listening, subscribe to the podcast and tune into the next episode where we talk about UFO religiosity. See you then.
