the final message in this current series, today's headlines and the spiritual realities behind them. We have been discussing the phenomenon of demonized civilization and the high strangeness that goes with it, and there's a good deal of that. In Noah's day, a lot of high strangeness was going on in Genesis chapter 6. Very weird situation, and yet a real one with real life and real world consequences. Same is true today. In Matthew 24, Jesus clearly promises a return to the days of Noah. And in demonized civilization, man loses his autonomy. Demonic thinking, demonic influences seize control, and those things are now directing the culture. Man not only becomes capable of the most insane, the most deranged, the most irrational thoughts, but the most depraved and degraded conduct as well. All things reflected there in just a few words there in Genesis chapter 6. What does God say of the mental state of mankind prior to the flood? Verse 5 of Genesis 6. Every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. What effect did this have? Verse 13, the earth was filled with violence. Well, we don't need to wait for antediluvian civilization to make a comeback. It's already here. The dark shadow of demonized cultures' wide and filthy wings, in all their blasphemous depravity, their tawdry vulgarity, are spreading themselves even now across the earth once again. The past is indeed key to the future. This has all happened before with very unhappy results. The antediluvian culture was the template for the last culture. The demon culture of Sodom was the template for the last culture. What last culture? The last culture before Christ returns. Similar unchecked evil will be in evidence before Christ comes back. And the result is going to be much the same as it was then. There won't be a water flood, but there will be a judgment flood. We've also been exploring some high strangeness that may well be connected with the current rise in demonic activity. We have explored together in this series artificial intelligence, UAPs or UFOs, in light of what the Bible has to say, alien abductions, cattle mutilations, crop circles, strange glowing orbs, and their connection to most or all of these phenomena. In many cases, many of these abduction cases and close encounter cases, the human involved in the encounter receives a message or messages from the alien race. Of what do these messages typically consist? Aliens often identify themselves as beings from some distant star system, the Pleiades, Orion, some other such star cluster formation. They're called Pleiadians, Nordics, Venusians, Reptilians, all kinds of names for these creatures and categories of them. They tell the human that he or she has been selected to have lead the earth into the new age of peace and cooperation with the other races of the universe. Doesn't that sound exciting? And later, he receives a mysterious invitation to meet with others like himself, who have been specially selected. These gatherings inevitably turn out to be New Age-style human growth and development conferences, pushing globalism, pushing one world government, in which these people are promised they're going to play a key role. In fact, the messages conveyed by alien beings are typical of occult, or Eastern mystical teachings and philosophies. This is a dead giveaway that those beings are not of God. Now, as I said, it's possible that some of these crafts, some of these beings are of God. I'm not going to say that they never can be angelic in nature. I don't have time to talk about it today, but this coming Sunday, I'm going on, we're going on with our study, but I do have to share with you a UFO story, an amazing UFO story, a perfectly true UFO story that would just simply astonish you, and I think reflects God's willingness to intervene. in things that happen here on earth. That's next week. I will be telling you that story. It won't take long, but it's well worth the listen. So, I say these beings, they're clearly not of God. Now, one of the best examples of the link between aliens And you know what the occult is? The occult is the satanic side of the supernatural. Anything connected with Satan's end of things. That's the occult. One of the best examples of the link between aliens and the occult comes from 1990 and the amazing true story of the Gulf Breeze 6. How many of you are familiar with this story? Raise your hand if you're familiar with the Gulf Breeze 6. Okay. I was assured that this was something or that the subject matter was familiar to everyone here and everybody already knew everything about it. Maybe, maybe not. Six army intelligence personnel, five men, one woman with top security clearances were stationed at a forward listening post in Germany. Their job decipher coded messages. They had some time on their hands, and they were wondering if there was any truth to the supernatural. So what did they do? They began playing with the Ouija board. The demon, who else, they contacted through that board, was very convincing. And he began giving them prophecies, prophecies about future events. Eventually, about a hundred of these Now, a lot of time has passed since then, and we've been able to see that the vast majority of those prophecies were false. But they didn't know that at the time. And soon these young soldiers were hooked. They believed they were truly in touch with some great spiritual wisdom. And they became obsessed with the board. The Spirit told them that their career with the army was a waste of time. They were destined for far greater things. They were destined to save the world. They must desert their posts and travel to Gulf Breeze, Florida, where they would meet space aliens who would guide them. Jesus is coming back. This is what they were told. Jesus is coming back. In fact, he's already aboard one of the alien craft in that area. However, the Antichrist is also there in that same area, and he's trying to get on board that craft so he can prevent the return of Christ. Their assignment was to locate him, the Antichrist, locate him and stop him. All six abandoned their posts. They went AWOL, they flew to Florida, they got a hotel room, and they began driving around Gulf Breeze looking for their alien contact. And you say, how could anybody in their right mind... I know, I hear what you're saying, but folks, these soldiers are not stupid. Let's face it, you don't get into Army intelligence unless you have a certain amount of what? Intelligence, that's right. But this shows how cunning, how convincing Satan is, how vulnerable we often are to his deceptions. Why we must avoid any and all involvement with the occult. And I mean anything, folks. I don't care what it is. Astrology, crystals, tarot cards, palm reading, Ouija board, anything of that nature. casting spells, nothing of that nature. Good witches, white magic. I only practice magic that helps people. Folks, there is no such thing. So, they got into this situation. Fate, however, would intervene. Again, don't know if this was God or if this was some other force at work, but they're driving around Gulf Breeze, and a policeman pulls them over. Why does he pull them over? They have a broken taillight, of all things. And when he checks their IDs, he discovers they are fugitives from justice. They are wanted by the federal government. All six are immediately arrested and sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, where they are imprisoned. They're charged with being AWOL, but then they're threatened with more severe charges, like desertion, like espionage. They were interrogated again and again. But the story between all six of them, the story never wavered. They all told exactly the same story every time they told it. And then just when they thought they might spend the rest of their lives in prison, they're suddenly released. They're given general discharges from the army. No further action was taken against them. And to this day, nobody knows why. Was this demonic intervention, satanic intervention? We don't know, but there is no explanation. If nothing else, the story shows the clear link between the UFO phenomenon and the occult, which indicates a connection with who? With demons. It also highlights, does it not, the importance of God's word and the warnings given by Jesus in passages, for example, like Matthew 24. Would you take your Bibles and turn there with me? 24th chapter of Matthew. This is page 667 in your Pew Bible. 667, Matthew 24. Verse 23. than if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Now the elect is speaking to those who belong to God. See, I have told you beforehand. Therefore, if they say to you, look, he, Christ, is in the desert, do not go out. Or, look, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Well, my friends, what does this tell us? It tells us that the return of Christ is not going to be a secret. It will be open, it will be very public, it will be seen by all. If these soldiers had simply known what Jesus said and obeyed it, they would never have entered into this ridiculous charade. We live in days of high deception, a day when people, it seems, are more than willing to be deceived in many cases. Even we, as the saints, we have to keep our wits about us. John warns of this in the book of Revelation. What does Paul warn Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3? Would you look at that with me, please? 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. This is page 801 in your pew Bible. 801, 2 Timothy 3, and verse 1. But know this, okay, so there's no doubt about it, that in the what days? The last days perilous times will come. What's perilous? It's dangerous. Dangerous times in the last days. Now let's go down to verse 12. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. When? In the last days. Those last days are going to be perilous days. And if you desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, you will suffer persecution. But evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Well, how can we avoid being deceived? Let's read on. Verse 14, but you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the what? The Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. In deceitful times, we must carefully adhere to what? To what God has said. It is the only way to avoid being carried along by the misguided thinking and the misguided opinions of our world. That very thing is happening to many Christians today. They are getting sucked in by lies. They are being deceived. And the lack of direction from the Word of God is the cause. Lack of proper instruction in our churches is what has brought us to this point. Now, is it possible that aliens could be from other distant places in the universe. Many Christians believe it is. What does the Bible say? First, let's define aliens. Aliens, intelligent beings capable of making moral choices. So this eliminates, then, animals, plants, microbes, viruses, other forms of life. We're talking about intelligent life here, capable of making moral choices. Despite all human imagination that creeps into this subject, and so much of it does, despite all of the Hollywood sci-fi films ever produced, what is the science regarding extraterrestrial life? What's the science? Is there life, intelligent life, elsewhere in the universe? Well, in recent decades, humans have sent spacecraft to observe nearly every planet in our solar system. After doing so, we've been able to rule out life in any form anywhere with the possible exception of Mars and one of Jupiter's moons. In 1976, and again in 1997, the U.S. sent three craft to Mars. Despite the desperate and overheated imaginations of some of the scientists analyzing the results and looking at the samples that were gathered, no forms of life were found, period. Now, there was a brief flurry. Oh, we think we have found fossils of bacteria. Now, I don't know how you recognize the fossil of a bacteria, but supposedly they thought they saw some. It turned out to be overheated imagination. Subsequent missions have yielded the same sterile result. Now, every so often, enthusiastic astronomers claim that they have found new planets. Yes, my friend, new planets in distant solar systems. These claims are based primarily on seeing a distant star blink off, and then a little while later, it blinks back on again. Aha! We have found a planet! How do they know? Well, because there must have been some non-star that drifted between that star and the Earth and briefly cut off the light. So now we know there's a planet there. Supposedly this proves that a planet somewhere out there must have life on it because we have now discovered so many of these planets. that it's assumed other Earth-like spheres must exist and life must have evolved out there somewhere, quote, just as it did here, unquote. This, we are told, proves that there must be life elsewhere in the universe. Evolutionists, of course, in their typically enthusiastic fashion, want desperately to find a planet like ours in another solar system to support the notion that life must and indeed could have evolved. The science, however, the science supports nothing of the kind. None of these candidates offers the slightest evidence that it is a life-supporting planet. The nearly incalculable distances between the Earth and these other planets make it impossible to know if they could sustain life. Now, if we can't know, then what are we left with? We can only speculate. Speculation is not science. It is opinion. Consensus is not science. It is shared opinion. Science, what we can observe, what we can verify, indicates that the earth alone supports life. Any kind of life, let alone intelligent life. That's what we have from science. Now, I've read a number of Christian commentators, who seem to see no problem at all with allowing for alien beings and craft to come here from other places in the universe. Whitney Hopler of Wake Up to Wonder fame clearly takes this position. Evangelist Billy Graham once said, I firmly believe there are intelligent beings like us far away in space who worship God, but we have nothing to fear from these people. Like us, they are God's creation, unquote. Some even suggest that the death of Christ was great enough to pay for the sins of the entire universe, and alien races are saved by faith in him the same as man. Now, it's difficult to imagine a more preposterous view, but that doesn't stop emotion-driven believers from embracing it. Many reason, after all, who's to say in a universe so vast that we are the only intelligent life God created, why would God waste so much space on such a small planet and tiny creatures like us? Now this is of course very much part of the popular view that the universe is billions of years old and other races of beings out there have evolved and advanced technology far beyond ours and are now able to travel quickly over many light years through portals, through different dimensions, etc., etc., etc. I told you at the beginning of this section I completely reject any such notion, that all of these phenomena originate right here on earth, and that I would explain why. That time has now come. What does the Bible say? Genesis chapter 1 lays out the order of creation very clearly. Our finite minds may have trouble grasping it all, especially given our preconceived notions to which we are constantly trying to hold God hostage. However, God will not be held hostage by our limited intellect. And he has spoken very clearly. What has he said? Look with me at Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. Genesis 1 verse 1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Okay, now how much is said here about stars and galaxies and so on, how much is said here about that? That nothing, that's correct. The earth was without form and void, darkness was on the face of the deep, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, the darkness He called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Now let's skip down to verse 14. Then God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years. Let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens, that's the sky folks, to give light on the earth and it was so. Then, notice please verse 16, then, God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, which would of course be the sun and the moon, and he made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night. to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Okay, now for some questions. According to the Bible, what we just read here, how many millions of years older than the earth is the universe? None, that's right, zero. If anything, the earth is older than the rest of the universe. Now, on what day were the sun, moon, and stars created? What day? Day four, that is correct. Does the earth exist yet by day four? Oh yeah, well before that. What purpose do the rest of the bodies in the heavens serve? What purpose do they serve? Well, they are for the accurate measurement of what? Time, very good. And they're for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. And for whose benefit? Who benefits from that information? Man does, that's right. We here on the earth. So according to the Bible, was the earth created to serve the universe or was the universe created to serve the earth? Yeah, the universe was created to serve the earth, that's right. And if this is true, if this is true, then what chance is there that races of aliens from other galaxies are millions of years ahead of us in technology? What are the chances of that? Zero. But why would God create such a vast universe in which so much space is going to waste? Well, first of all, I would answer by asking, who's to say it's going to waste? It serves the Earth, it serves mankind. And that doesn't preclude that it has other uses. But you see, there are billions of galaxies, and there are billions of stars, and there are billions of light years. All true. What of it? Folks, all of this is just so much fluff to who? God. See, the universe is physical. It's finite. God is spirit. He is infinite. He has unlimited power. He has absolute discretion. He can make it all in a day. He can destroy it all in a day. He can make it all again in a day, if He so chooses. Compared to Him, the vastness of the physical universe is as nothing. It exists by and for His pleasure only. And when He's done with it, what happens to it? Poof! Now, what about Satan? Is he free to wander the universe? You think so? Are his minions traveling here from the Pleiades or Orion? Are they coming here from the vast, deep of sidereal space? In both Ezekiel chapter 8 and Isaiah 14, we're specifically told Lucifer was cast down to the ground. That's the earth. Satan and his minions are confined to this earth. By the way, we're given a similar picture in Revelation chapter 14, excuse me, Revelation chapter 12. Many UFO witnesses have reported seeing UAPs or UFOs coming not from the sky, but up from the depths of the earth and from the sea. There is zero evidence they come from anywhere but planet Earth. This Earth is where this grand running battle between good and evil is occurring. The only other intelligent beings of which we are told, beside us in the entire universe, are what? angels, both holy and unholy, blessed and fallen. Folks, not only are we involved in this great battle, We, our human hearts, are the battleground on which this war rages. We need to be aware of what's going on around us, and that reality consists of far more than what we are able to what? See. We need to be on our guard. We need to learn to see with spiritual eyes. not only when it comes to human conduct, but with any number of other phenomena taking place in our world, we need to start seeing with spiritual eyes. A crop circle is not likely just a naturally occurring pattern in a farm field. A haunting is not just a ghost or grandpa left over or he didn't want to leave the house. A glowing orb is not just a ball of light. A Ouija board is not just a harmless board game. A UFO is not just a hallucination or one of those things. The rampant unnatural mutilation of livestock is not normal, strange, dark, misshapen creatures of the night. They are not merely, quote, as yet undiscovered species, unquote. Aliens are not an advanced race from distant galaxies, and open sin by an entire generation, flaunted in the face of Almighty God, is not just some people expressing a harmless lifestyle preference. It is for precisely this reason Paul warns us not to be deceived, not to be hopelessly naive, not to be ignorant, not to go around with our heads in the sand, because if we do this, then we are vulnerable. We need to start seeing with spiritual eyes. Ephesians chapter six, which passage we're going to want to explore in some depth this next week. Pray that you would make us ever more aware that the world is more than we know. We are more than we know. May we take events around us more perceptively. May we become far more serious about the sin in our lives. Satan wants to deceive us. He wants to defeat us. He wants to blind us to the threat that sin poses to our well-being and that of others. The angels are already in battle. May we be fit company to join them. In Jesus' name, amen.