Strange Lights, Steady Faith: Part 2
In Part One, I told you I've been a pastor for over 13 years and never thought carefully about how UFOs fit into a biblical worldview. That has to change here. We're done sorting. We've looked at the cultural moment, the four buckets, and the files the Pentagon began releasing. We've named what's left after the natural explanations have done their work. The small fraction of cases that don't sort cleanly.
What comes next requires Bible work. Real Bible work. Christians who try to engage this conversation without solid biblical footing end up doing one of two things. We either flinch at the supernatural, treating the entire question as somehow beneath serious faith. Or we sensationalize it, treating every blurry video as cosmic disclosure. Both happen because we haven't done the underlying work.
This article assists that work. Three anchors from Scripture that hold steady regardless of what shows up in the next PURSUE release, the next congressional hearing, or the next viral video. Once these are set, the rest of the series can do its job.
Why Anchors Matter
When the cultural ground starts shifting, Christians have a habit of grabbing for whatever feels stable in the moment. Sometimes that's a conspiracy theory. Sometimes that's a fashionable theology. Sometimes that's a confident dismissal. But I don’t think any of those things are stable.
Real stability comes from anchors. What’s an anchor? It's a fixed point that holds you in place when the water moves. You need a few good anchors set in solid ground, and they'll hold you through any storm.
For the UFO conversation, three biblical anchors hold. They're not new. They're not anyone's clever idea. They're the same anchors the church has carried for 2,000 years, and they've held through stranger things than this. Let me walk you through them.
Anchor One: Christ Is Supreme Over Every Realm
The first anchor is the most important, and we'd better start there. Hear Paul writing to the Colossian church:
Colossians 1:15–17 (ESV): He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Read that slowly. Read it as if you've never heard it before.
All things. Not most things. Not the things we can measure. All things.
In heaven and on earth. Not just the visible world. Not just the part we can study. Heaven and earth. Every domain there is.
Visible and invisible. Paul is explicitly naming the unseen realm here. He's not leaving room for the modern Christian to quietly assume that "creation" means "the things we can photograph."
Thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. In first-century Jewish and Christian thought, these are technical terms for angelic and spiritual hierarchies.1 Paul is saying that every rank of every spiritual being, fallen and faithful, was created by Christ and exists for Him.
And then comes the closer: all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
This is the verse that defuses 90 percent of the panic before it can start. Whatever's left after the natural explanations have done their work — phenomena we don't yet understand, intelligent life God created elsewhere, fallen spiritual entities operating in deceptive ways, angels taking physical form, or some combination — Christ created it, Christ holds it together, and Christ has no rival anywhere in the universe.
There’s no scenario in which Jesus Christ is surprised, threatened, or in competition with something out there. He isn’t at the wheel of a starship looking out at an unfamiliar cosmos and wondering what He's seeing. He made every realm there is, and not one corner of any realm operates outside His authority.
The implications for the Christian are practical and immediate.
First, the Christian engages this conversation without anxiety. Anxiety is the proper response of a person who thinks the universe might contain something their God doesn't reign over. The Christian has no such concern. The supremacy of Christ means there’s no cosmic threat to His throne, no rival intelligence working from a position of independent power, no creature that exists outside His authorization.
Second, the Christian doesn't have to settle every question to remain confident. Whether the answer turns out to be one thing or another doesn't change the throne. The same Christ reigns over whatever the answer ends up being.
Third, the Christian's confidence is not in the absence of mystery, but in the identity of the One who governs every mystery. There's a profound difference. A faith that requires every question to be answered before it can rest is brittle. A faith anchored to the supremacy of the One who knows every answer is unshakeable.
The early church faced cultural moments where strange claims were being made about cosmic powers. Gnostic teachers claimed hidden knowledge about realms beyond. Roman emperors claimed divine status. Mystery cults promised secret access to the spiritual world. Paul's response wasn't to engage their categories on their terms. It was to confess Christ as Lord over every category they could name. Thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities — all of them, made by Him, held together by Him, accountable to Him.
Colossae in particular faced a specific version of this challenge. Paul wrote this letter in part because false teachers in that city were promoting a hybrid spirituality that mixed Jewish elements with mystical claims about angelic mediation and cosmic powers operating between humans and God. The Colossians were being told they needed special knowledge and special intermediaries to reach the heavenly realms. Paul's answer was Colossians 1. There is no power between Christ and the believer that He hasn't already conquered. There is no realm of spiritual reality where He isn't already Lord. Whatever the false teachers were promising, Paul said, in effect, you already have it in Christ. The cosmic powers don't need to be appeased. They're already under His feet.
That same confession works now. Whatever's in the sky, whatever's in those files, whatever shows up in the next disclosure, Christ made it or rules over it or both. That's anchor one.
Anchor Two: The Unseen Realm Is Real
Modern Western Christianity has a problem most Christians don't fully recognize. We've spent the last two centuries gradually flattening our universe. We say the right words on Sunday — angels, demons, principalities, powers — but functionally we live in a world emptied of unseen reality. The supernatural has become a category we mention, not a reality we expect.
This wasn't always so. It's not so in much of the global church even now. African, Asian, and Latin American Christians often have a far more biblical sense of the unseen realm than their North American and European counterparts. Partly because they haven't been catechized into the secular materialism that pretends the natural world is all there is. The naturalist’s universe is a modern Western inheritance, and it doesn't match what Scripture describes.
Billy Graham saw this clearly a half-century ago. In his 1975 book Angels, Graham made clear that his belief in the spiritual realm wasn't built on cultural phenomena. He wasn't moved by dramatic visitation stories. He wasn't moved by UFOs reminding people of angels. He wrote bluntly, "I do not believe in angels because UFOs are astonishingly angel-like."2 He wasn't moved by ESP making the spirit world seem newly plausible, or by the cultural fascination with Satan and demons. He believed in angels for the only reason a Christian ever needs: because the Bible teaches it.
That's the posture. The Christian doesn't take the unseen realm seriously because UFO videos are pushing us in that direction. The Christian takes the unseen realm seriously because Scripture teaches it on every page. Whatever cultural moment we're in becomes secondary to a more basic question: what does the Bible actually say?
It says quite a lot.
Listen to Paul again, this time writing to the church at Ephesus:
Ephesians 6:12 (ESV) - For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
The cosmic powers over this present darkness. The spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Paul isn't speaking metaphorically here. He's describing the actual landscape the Christian inhabits; a layered reality in which spiritual beings of considerable power operate in ways most of us cannot perceive but which Scripture insists are real.
Or hear the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 6. He's surrounded by the Syrian army while his servant panics. Elisha prays, and the servant's eyes are opened. Suddenly the servant sees what was there the whole time:
2 Kings 6:17 (ESV) - And he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
The unseen realm was there the whole time. The servant simply couldn't see it. That's a description of reality. There’s an entire dimension of God's creation populated by intelligent beings — some serving Him, some opposing Him — that operates in and around our world without normally being visible to us.
And then there’s my favorite, from the prophet Daniel in chapter 10. He's been praying for three weeks without an apparent answer. An angelic messenger finally arrives and tells him:
Daniel 10:13 (ESV) - The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me.
There was a spiritual being identified as "the prince of the kingdom of Persia" who actively opposed the answer to Daniel's prayer until another angelic being named Michael intervened. This isn't apocalyptic fever-dream. It's Scripture telling us, in passing, that the spiritual realm has its own politics, its own conflicts, and its own actors.
Christian author Mark Hitchcock framed the biblical worldview helpfully.3 Scripture identifies two categories of created beings with intelligence: humans, made in God's image, and angelic beings, who themselves divide into the faithful and the fallen. Paul writes of principalities, powers, might, and dominion (Ephesians 1:21). There seems to be rank. There seem to be order. There seems to be authority. And not all of it is on our side.
Now, a careful word here. Hitchcock's framework is the dominant biblical reading, and it serves Christians well. But Scripture doesn't explicitly close the door on every speculative question. C.S. Lewis pressed harder in his Ransom Trilogy. Could God, in His freedom and creativity, have made other intelligent beings on other worlds? Lewis didn't claim it was so. But he didn't think Scripture closed the question either. The honest answer is that the Bible names two categories of created intelligence we can be certain of. Anything beyond that is speculation, and Christians who care about faithfulness to the text are free to hold open hands on the question. We'll come back to this in Part Four when we evaluate the interpretations.
For now, the broader truth holds. Scripture takes the existence and activity of non-human intelligent beings completely for granted. The cosmos the Bible describes is not one-dimensional. It's populated, layered, and active.
More recent scholarship has explored this further. Michael Heiser, in his book The Unseen Realm, argues that the biblical worldview assumes multiple overlapping realms inhabited by intelligent beings, accessible to one another through means we don't fully understand.4 The Hebrew Bible casually refers to what some scholars call a divine council, beings called bene elohim (sons of God) in passages like Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32, and Job 1. The cosmos Scripture describes is layered, populated, and far stranger than modernity's materialist universe. Many scholars have argued that the biblical text gives us hints of stranger encounters between heavenly beings and humans: Genesis 6, the sons of God, the Nephilim. Whatever we make of that passage, and we'll come back to it next time, the broader point stands.
Here's what this means for the UAP conversation. When some UAP researchers conclude that the phenomenon appears to interact with human consciousness, or to behave in ways that don't match conventional craft, could they be describing a category we know as the the unseen realm? We're not jumping to conclusions. But we're also not flinching. We need to engage this conversation knowing the unseen realm is real, and we must refuse to be embarrassed by what the Bible teaches openly. That's anchor two.
Anchor Three: Scripture Is Sufficient
The third anchor sounds simple but does enormous work. It's the doctrine of biblical sufficiency, and it frees Christians from a particular trap we keep falling into.
Listen to Peter, writing to scattered believers under pressure:
2 Peter 1:3 (ESV) - His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.
And Paul, writing to Timothy:
2 Timothy 3:16–17 (ESV) - All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Notice what these passages claim and notice what they don't claim.
They claim that Scripture is sufficient for life and godliness. They claim that Scripture equips the child of God for every good work. They claim that what we have in the Bible is enough. Enough to be saved, sanctified, and faithful through every situation we'll face.
They don't claim that Scripture is a comprehensive cosmology manual. They don't claim Scripture answers every speculative question we could ever ask. They don't promise that the Bible will tell us whether God created microbial life on Europa or sentient beings in another galaxy.
That distinction matters enormously for the UAP conversation. Christians get nervous when they sense that an unfamiliar question might land in territory Scripture doesn't directly address. We feel like we need a verse for every scenario. We act as if our faith would be in trouble if we don't have a tidy biblical answer to "are there aliens?"
But the doctrine of sufficiency frees us from that trap. The Bible gives us everything we need. It doesn’t give us everything that's possible to know. But that's not a deficiency; it’s the way Scripture is designed.
Imagine a doctor who’s been given a complete medical reference for every condition that affects human health. The book is sufficient for medical practice. That doesn't mean the doctor needs the book to also explain how internal combustion engines work, or the rules of poker, or the chemical composition of Saturn's rings. The book is for medicine. It's exhaustive for medicine and silent on everything else. That silence is clarity about what the book is.
Scripture is for life and godliness. It's exhaustive for that. It's selective on everything else.
Consider some of the things the Bible deliberately doesn't tell us. It doesn't tell us the names of most of the angels. It doesn't tell us what God was doing before Genesis 1:1. It doesn't tell us the year, the month, or the day Christ will return. It doesn't tell us the precise mechanism of the Spirit's regenerating work in a person's heart. It doesn't tell us why some prayers are answered as we hope and others aren't. It doesn't tell us what Jesus said during the 40 days between His resurrection and ascension beyond a few summaries. Whole categories of things we would love to know are simply not in the book. And the book isn’t deficient. It's entirely sufficient! The silences are part of the design.
This reality is freeing! The Christian doesn't need to settle every interpretive question to live faithfully today. We don't need to know whether what's left from Part One is angelic activity, demonic deception, or unfamiliar natural phenomenon. We don't need to have a position on every classified hearing or every blurry video. What we need to know — who Christ is, what He's accomplished, how to live in light of His reign, how to discern spirits, how to walk with the Spirit — Scripture tells us with comprehensive sufficiency.
So we hold open hands on the speculative. And we hold closed hands on the essential.
Open hands on the speculative means we don't pretend to know more than we know. We don't claim a verse-by-verse roadmap for every UAP scenario. We don't make the Bible answer questions it hasn't chosen to answer.
Closed hands on the essential means we don't waver on what Scripture does teach. Christ is supreme. The unseen realm is real. The gospel is the gospel. The Bible is the breathed-out Word of God. These don't move regardless of what shows up in the next disclosure.
This is the posture that protects Christians from being whipsawed by every news cycle. The believer who has settled the essentials doesn't need every speculative question answered before they can sleep. The throne is occupied and the Word is sufficient! The rest is detail.
Three Anchors, One Confession
So there they are. Three anchors that don't move.
Christ is supreme over every realm: visible and invisible, terrestrial and otherwise. Whatever's out there, He made it or rules over it.
The unseen realm is real. Scripture takes the existence of non-human intelligent beings for granted on every page. The Christian doesn't flinch at the supernatural; the Christian doesn't sensationalize it either. We take it seriously because the Bible takes it seriously.
Scripture is sufficient. Not exhaustive, but sufficient. The Bible gives us everything we need for life and godliness, and that's all we ever needed it to do.
Working through these three anchors carefully was a clarifying exercise. Christ over every realm. The unseen as real as the seen. Scripture sufficient. None of this is new ground for me. I’ve taught these doctrines for years. But applying them to a question I hadn’t applied them to before reminded me how much they hold. Not because I’m sturdy, but because the Word is. Because Jesus is. The anchors hold because they’re set in solid ground.
In Part Three, we'll discover something that changes the entire frame of this conversation. The phenomenon we're trying to understand isn’t new. It's not a 1947 development with the Roswell incident, and it's not a 21st-century mystery with the PURSUE files. The world has been seeing strange things in the sky for a very long time. The Bible itself records some of them. Cross-cultural traditions remember them. And at least one secular researcher, working entirely outside any Christian framework, has come to conclusions about the phenomenon that match, to a startling degree, what a careful reader of Scripture would already expect.
The phenomenon is older than we think. And once we see that, the question changes entirely.
That's where we go next.
- Researched, compiled, and written by Pastor Ken Carlson
Endnotes
1. On the language of "thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities" (Greek: thronoi, kyriotētes, archai, exousiai), see standard commentaries on Colossians 1:16, especially F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (Eerdmans, 1984); and Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (Eerdmans, 2008). These terms appear together as a recognized vocabulary for angelic and spiritual ranks in Second Temple Jewish writings and consistently throughout Paul's letters (cf. Ephesians 1:21, 3:10, 6:12; Colossians 2:10, 2:15).
2. Billy Graham, Angels: God's Secret Agents (Doubleday, 1975; revised edition, W Publishing, 1995). The quoted passage appears in the opening chapter, where Graham establishes the biblical basis for his book.
3. Mark Hitchcock is a pastor, author, and adjunct professor of Bible exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary. His framework on the two categories of created intelligence appears across his work on biblical anthropology and angelology. The formulation cited here was recently summarized by Greg Laurie in "UFOs, Aliens, and the Last Days," Harvest.org blog, accessed 2026, at harvest.org/resources/gregs-blog/post/ufos-aliens-and-the-last-days.
4. Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham Press, 2015). Heiser develops the "divine council" framework drawing on Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32, and other passages where Scripture refers to bene elohim (sons of God) as a category of created spiritual beings.
Sources and Further Reading
On the Supremacy of Christ
• F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. Eerdmans. Standard mid-level commentary; especially helpful on the cosmic scope of Colossians 1.
On the Reality of the Unseen Realm
• Billy Graham, Angels: God's Secret Agents. W Publishing. A landmark popular treatment of biblical angelology by the twentieth century's most respected American evangelist.
• Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Lexham Press.
• C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength. The Space Trilogy. Fiction, but theologically formative on how a Christian imagines other worlds and other intelligent created beings. I referred to it as The Ransom Trilogy in the article because I heard a C.S. Lewis Institute scholar make a convincing case that very little of the trilogy actually takes place in space. And it’s woven throughout with themes of ransom.
On the Sufficiency of Scripture
• John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God. P&R Publishing. Comprehensive Reformed treatment of the nature and sufficiency of Scripture.
• Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, chapter 8 ("The Sufficiency of Scripture"). Zondervan. Accessible treatment for the thoughtful lay reader.