Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1056: UFO's, Aliens, and Paranormal Experiences: Dr. Matthew Halsted

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Matthew Halsted (PhD, London School of Theology) teaches at Eternity Bible College. He is the author of Paul and the Meaning of Scripture (Pickwick) and The End of the World as You Know It (Lexham Press, forthcoming). In this paranormal podcast conversation, Matt and I talk about all the juicy stuff listed in the title. We begin with Matt's own paranormal experience with an angelic encounter when he was 14, and then we talk about UFO's, whether or not they have an extra-terrestial origin (or just Chinese baloons or whatnot), or if there's another way to interpret these phenomena (he suggests that there is). Put on your tinfoil hats, folks! This conversation is raw and real. 

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Gold Level supporters get all of this and access to monthly Zoom chats where we basically blow the doors open on any topic they want to discuss. My patrons play a vital role in nurturing the mission of Theology in the Raw. And for me, just personally, interacting with my Patreon supporters has become one of the hidden blessings in this podcast ministry. So you can check out all of the info at patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in Raw. All right, friends, my guest today is Dr. Matt Halstead. He has a PhD from London School of Theology and he teaches at Eternity Bible College. He's the author of Paul and the Meaning of Scripture and the End of the World as You Know It. He also is somewhat of an expert when it comes to

things related to extraterrestrial life, UFOs, aliens, and all that, and paranormal experiences and all that fun stuff. So this was a really fascinating conversation. So yeah, put on your tinfoil hats, folks, and let's dive in. Please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Matthew Halstead. Matt, you and I go way back. Do you remember that time I spoke at your church and I think I showed up at the hotel, which was maybe an hour from the airport, and I reached my bag. I'm like, I left my either computer or laptop with all my notes on it on the airplane. Do you remember that? I do. I do. It was like about 11 o'clock at night, I think, or something to that effect.

So we ended up going to the airport. And of course, you're in Oklahoma City. So our airport like closes at night. Yeah. And you couldn't't get it and we came back to the hotel yeah and then they told us like come back at 4 a.m when it opens again so we went back at 4 a.m oh my gosh and i think we that's when you get it right i got it i mean i had had one hour of sleep that night and i was preaching oh i know um yeah you are my church preaching that that morning yes yes yes that was i felt so bad for here you're driving all over i mean i don't know how many hours you drove and i was stressed out because i'm like all my notes are and this is i don't know what this must have been 12 years ago like i i had not like now i actually

this happened again recently i literally left my computer on the airplane i didn't find out till the next morning it was an hour away too and i wake up and i'm ready to go speak i'm like my computer's there and all my notes were on there again it wasn't on the cloud. I didn't find out until the next morning. It was an hour away too. And I wake up and I'm ready to go speak. I'm like, my computer's there and all my notes were on there again. It wasn't on the cloud. So anyway, I had that experience again. It was a little less stressful just because I've done a lot of speaking between the two incidences of leaving stuff on the airplane. But good times. And now you work for EBC where I used to teach. So we've both had our journeys. Okay, so I told you I'm an offline.

Here's the backstory. I tweeted a month ago, said, Hey, I want to have on somebody to talk about marijuana, psychedelics, and aliens. I guess I should say UFOs as a broader category, maybe. And aliens. And so I've gotten a lot as a broader category maybe and aliens. And so I've gotten a lot of feedback on who to have on. And one of the more highly recommended ones for aliens was Michael Heiser. I didn't know he was into that, but apparently he's like kind of an expert in the theology of aliens.

He's been talking about it for a long time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I remember several years ago, he and I had lunch and, you know, he had written this book called The Unseen Realm. And yeah, it's a great book. And, you know, I had all these questions about his biblical studies stuff, but we spent all of lunch talking about UFOs.

Really? And so it was a lot of fun. So, yeah, I knew he was into that because I actually, I first met him because in, I think it was 2018, I think. And, uh, I just sent him an email because, so I had had this weird supernatural experience, whatever you want to call it. And when I was a kid and, uh, I just, I largely sat on it for quite a while until about 2018, I had this like weird urge, like, I've got to figure out what this is, what did it mean? And by that time, I had either just finished my PhD or was about to. And I got to thinking is like, OK, you know, when you're in graduate school, you don't talk about

this kind of stuff. You want to be taken seriously. Right. Well, by the time I was finishing with my PhD, I thought to myself, look, I know scholars now. I know people who write books on weird stuff. And so or at least I have access to scholars now I can do that. And so I thought I needed to start reaching out to people. So I talked to Craig Keener. I talked to, I talked to Greg Boyd. And so Mike was so kind. He emailed me back and he said, yeah, man, uh, I'm pretty much known these days for as being someone who people can go to and confide in and them not hearing that they're a kook or anything. So I really appreciated that. And of course, that started lots of correspondence as well. So anyway, yeah, Heiser is legit.

Now, so at the time of this recording, he's been in the hospital under severe. I mean, he might only have a couple weeks left to live from what the diagnosis is, which is incredibly sad. And I had scheduled him. We were about to record, and three days – it was three days before when he said, hey, I'm going to the hospital.

It doesn't look good. He was so like – almost like, okay, like just like, sorry, couldn't record. Maybe if I get out, but I probably will never get out. I mean, he was just really casual about it, you know, which is kind of amazing. But so anyway, so then a mutual friend of ours said, well, Matt knows Heiser very well and has done a ton of research on this and has his own stuff. So if you can't get Heiser, you can get Matt and he's going to be – maybe you would say not as knowledgeable, but at least very knowledgeable on the topic so can we go back to that paranormal experience you had you mentioned that in the email

i had no clue um and i would yeah would love to hear it for the first time from you what happened yeah yeah so it wasn't i mean it was paranormal in the sense that you know the para part means not not normal or outside of what's normal i i think it was supernatural had nothing to do with ufos but um interestingly when you inevitably when you study paranormal events or when you of what's normal. I think it was supernatural. It had nothing to do with UFOs. But interestingly, when you inevitably when you study paranormal events or when you study supernatural events and then you you study UFO experiences that people sometimes report, there is crossover. There is interesting similarities between the structures of the experiences of each respective group. Right. It's fascinating how they just coalesce. And so,

um, so anyway, so I think that my experience is somewhat of a motivator, of course, a motivator for looking into UFOs and thinking about them, but, you know, I'm also a child of the nineties, so we had some good movies to motivate us back then too. So, uh, but anyway, about my experience. Yeah. So just the brief version, um, uh, basically I was 14 years old and I was at my grandparents' house. I stayed the night at their house one weekend or whatever. And they lived a little distance away from where we did, so it took a drive to get there. Anyway, I was there one evening.

I go to bed that night, and it was just my two grandparents and then myself in the house. I go to sleep that night, and then I have this very vivid dream, a dream of a group of people standing in a circle with the Bible in the middle of it. And I hear a voice, a disembodied voice, I have no idea where the voice came, that said something like, some people are praising the Bible. And then the same voice said immediately after that, some people are cursing the Bible. So again, the people in a circle looking at the Bible, staring at it, they're singing a Christian 90s pop song, right? It was so weird. I'm just reporting how I experienced it. And then I hear the voice. And so this is a dream. I'm outside of the circle kind of looking in. I don't know. It was interesting. Then I wake up and I'm laying on the bed, I'm in the room.

So this is no longer a dream. It's clearly contrasted with the dream. Cause I'm in the room. I see my surroundings. I see my body kind of thing. I mean, I'm not, I'm not like out of body, but I'm, you know, at the foot of the bed, between the foot of the bed and the doorway, which leads into the hallway, the door was open. There was somebody standing there in the doorway. And everything you would think an angel would look like, you know, minus some of the spectacular, you know, the halo and the wings, none of that. But in a white gown, pure white face, very stoic face, not smiling, not frowning, very peaceful, just looking at me, you know. And the next thing I know is, and this is where I,

I don't quite remember exactly what happened, but either there seems like there was some sort of transition between him moving from the doorway to right next beside me. And I think there was some sort of transition. And, uh, at that point I'm looking up at him. So I turned my head this way to look at him. And he's very close. I went back years later to that same, well, it was my grandparents' house, so I'd go there all the time. And I ended up taking pictures because I thought, you know, my grandparents are elderly. I need to take pictures. At the time, my grandmother had passed away and I wanted to get this, you know, pictures. And I was like, kind of reenacted, laid down on the bed. Like, how tall could he have been?

He had to have been very short because he was like right by my head. And for some reason, I mean, I've turned and looked at him. For some reason, I want to touch his face. I have no idea what possessed me to want to do that. It just happened. And I just raised my hand to want to touch his face. But he didn't let me. He just kind of held my hand. And he's staring me right in the face. I mean, we're like, I don't know, this far away

from each other or something. And he's just holding my hand gently. I feel the pressure of it, right? No warmth to it, no cold, just pressure, very gentle. And then he's looking straight at me and I hear a voice that says, all it says is this, Jesus is coming quickly, Matthew. And his lips didn't move. His lips didn't move at all. And immediately I find myself looking back up at the ceiling. And at this point, like all during that experience, I was never afraid, like, which it would be odd because I was, I think I was easily spooked back then about things. You know, I just, I wasn't, it was a pretty timid personality. Even today, I'm fairly timid in regards to personality. If that would have happened today, I don't know. I'd run for the door or something. I don't know.

But I was at total peace. Like it, everything was perfectly chill. And, um, but after the event, I, I did, I started to experience some sort of like sleep paralysis, which I've never had before. And I've never had since, which from what people tell me who have it regularly, um, you know, it's, it can be pretty frightening. And so I didn't have sleep paralysis when I saw what I call the angel because I could move, I could move my hand or something. I guess it was my physical hand I was moving. And so, but afterward, I just couldn't move. And I tried screaming.

I couldn't, nothing came out of my lips. I was totally paralyzed. It was very, but I could still see around in the room. Well, I don't know how long that lasted. It lasted, seemed like an eternity, but it probably was like three seconds or something. And I just get out of bed and I run to my grandparents' room. And I tell my grandmother, my grandpa had already gone to like a prayer breakfast that morning and she was still asleep. I couldn't wake her up. And so I just go back to the bed. And I immediately had this impression that this was like some sort of God thing,

like an angel or something. I was a believer, you know, so I had categories for how to think about these sorts of things. And I just remember, I was scared to death, like afterward. And so I remember praying like, God, don't let that happen again. Don't do that again. And what's fascinating though, is, um, the, I told my grandparents the next day, they were totally receptive. They're believers. Like, yeah, you saw an angel. It was just like, totally chill about it, you know? And, and so we just go through our day the next, that day, and then go to sleep again that night, wake up and we go to church. And nobody knows about this experience, like at their church by no means. So we go to church, we're sitting in the pew, the pastor gets up on the

stage and he begins his sermon with these words. He says, if I could give this sermon one title, it would be, behold, I come quickly. And I looked at my grandmother and she's like into years and I'm like, this is so weird. Like, cause this has been on our mind all day. This has been an experience that I've experienced and we've been talking about it all day. And here's the pastor just happens to be preaching on it.

And so she takes me up to the pastor and she says something to the effect, you know, God showed this young man something or whatever. And, and he just kind of did what probably a pastor would do is just pat me on the back and say, Oh, that's interesting. You know, good, whatever. And then that was it. Um, and over time, you know, I just kind of shelved the experience altogether.

You know, every year since then, I've kind of just come back to it. I was like, I wonder what that meant. And then about 2018, I just had this weird feeling, urge, like I got to figure this out. So I started talking to people about it. And I talked to people with PhDs and scholars and whatnot. And what's fascinating is I was afraid I was going to be seen as a kook. But some of these people I talked to had their own experiences. And what's fascinating about it

is there, there are similarities between, well, there's just a lot of similarities to the experience I had with respect to what other people have in terms of their experience. Yeah. For example, the, the, the communication without the lips moving, that's a token example of what happens when people encounter, you know, what they think are other beings or something. In fact, I talked to one guy who has done a lot of studies. He's a PhD. He does a lot of studies in near-death experiences. And he said, actually, Matt, he said, the fact that it was almost like telepathic communication, that's pretty normal. If it had been something other than that, that would have been unusual. And sure enough, diving into the reports, it's pretty, pretty, pretty common. The other thing too, is for me, that was meaningful. I don't

have any empirical data to like present to you or show anybody that whatever I did, I just don't, but that's okay with me. Even if nobody believed me, I'm totally fine with that. You know, it's just a subjective experience, but the best explanation I've come up with is not that it was sleep paralysis or just something that happened in my skull. I don't think it was an hallucination. I don't think it was anything demonic. I just think the best explanation is an angel of some sort, right? And because a hallucination wouldn't explain the event the next day at the church, which was so meaningful to me. An hallucination wouldn't explain that. And sleep paralysis doesn't seem to explain that either. A lot of sleep paralysis

cases are very terrifying, and this wasn't terrifying, at least as I was experiencing it. Yeah, well, anyway, there's so much more I can say about this. But last week, I spoke with Dale Allison, a New Testament professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, which he has an amazing book everybody should read. It's called Encountering Mystery. And he's had a ton of experiences. His family's had experiences. He knows people, all these experiences. And he just reached the conclusion on one experience that he's had was that, well, maybe the world's a lot different than my science teachers taught me, that there's a complexity. There's something to it that these experiences are not just what happens in a person's skull, there's some objectivity to it,

to some extent. And so, yeah, and it's not uncommon for people to have experiences to, you know, later on, to have another experience that is synchronous with the previous experience, like there's this whole category called synchronicity. I know Diana Pasolka in her book, American Cosmic, published by Oxford. She talks about synchronicity. So for me, the synchronicity was the event at church that somehow was connected to it. It was just very odd. Now, telling the story, people listening, they might think, ah, that's, I don't know,

Matt, you know, and that's totally fine. There's a level of subjectivity to it that I certainly own. But, um, I'm anyway, I'm super, I can't, I can't deny it. So is the one response people give is like, well, you're, I know you think you woke up, but you're probably still in a dream. Is that what some people? Yeah. Yeah. And that's a legitimate, that's a legitimate response. And it's something I thought about. And you would say a hundred percent, like, do you know, like there's, there was no, you know, that like you would say that's just not true or. Here's what I, I don't, I don't know how to explain it. What I will say is that I,

I felt, I felt like I was in the room. I could see the room. I had movement of some sort. What was it? Bodily movement. I, I think cause I, when I raised my hand, what was weird was when I raised my hand, I kind of saw this weird reddish trail follow my hand. That sounds so weird. I'm just telling you how it happened. So I don't know if I was like, to quote Paul, whether I was in the body or out of the body, I don't know. But I feel like, but I had sensation. I had, you know, there was vision I saw, I felt, I heard.

And there were multiple sensations. Now, the thing is, okay, I don't think I was asleep in the sense that we think. I'm like 99% confident I wasn't. If I was, if it was some version of an altered state of consciousness or some sort of—I don't think it was sleep paralysis, but I'll just say it was sleep paralysis of some sort. I don't think of sleep process, but just say it was sleep process of some sort. That doesn't at all do away with the idea that there was some sort of objective reality to it. Because, I mean, you could go the route and say that brain states equal mental states. You could say that, that all of our experience is nothing but the firing of neurons. But that's one view.

I don't buy that view. That's a materialistic, philosophical, natural view. What I think is more possible and likely is what actually Dale Ellison calls and others call the transmission ideas that, yeah, just because you need a body to experience objective reality doesn't mean there's not objective reality outside your skull, right? That the body that you have outside your skull right that that you that that the body that you have transmits things to you that you wouldn't experience without the body of course so there's no there's no doubt in my mind at least that people's experiences have some sort of physical biological explanation but i don't think the biological explanation can explain all the data yeah and anyway i don't think i mean i want clarity on the your your christian or social environment is it

like very charismatic where a lot of people are experiencing this or is it not because um yeah and i don't know if that even matters necessarily but it sounds like from you this is not um kind of what is in your soul like it doesn't seem like it was socially influenced for you to be motivated to have this kind of experience, if that makes any sense. Sure. So, yeah, I mean, I was as a kid, we were kind of in an environment that was slightly charismatic for sure. My parents, my grandparents went to a Pentecostal church. So they had categories for this. I had categories for it.

It didn't shatter any worldview. I already had ways of conceiving how this is possible, but to your larger point, which I think is a good one is that, okay, what, what point do our assumptions dictate the way we experience things? Right. So would it, would a charismatic have more, be more prone to charismatic experiences and whatnot. But here's the thing to consider. It's, It's not the case that that's always true. Especially in my experience, this was totally unsolicited. I didn't, you know, smoking anything the day before. I had been praying for this. There was no praying for this at all. There was no hallucinogen that would cause an hallucination. And this is true of many reports. People who have

these sorts of experiences, whether they're religious, supernatural, paranormal, whatever, poltergeist, you know, in most, I would say most cases, not all cases, but a lot of cases, these are totally unsolicited. They were not wanted. And in many cases, you know, there may not even be categories for understanding them. I mean, like I've heard stories of atheists having weird experience i heard a story my buddy a guy he's a phd studies near-death experiences he was telling me about an ivy league philosophy professor who saw an angel and he had no way of understanding this uh so um he had no no assumption that would spawn that event and there's other stories and

you said the angel didn't have wings no no, no, no. Well, that makes it more credible because angels in the Bible don't have wings. So when people say, oh, and I saw this angel and it had these massive wings and feathers. I mean, maybe the angels are different now than in the Bible. But there's no... And people say, what about cherubim and seraphim? I'm like, well, those aren't angels. Those are cherubim and seraphim, I think. know cherubim and seraphim are like well those aren't angels those are cherubim and seraphim right but um yeah the the spiritual beings encounter humans in the bible look like very

much the way you describe your experience i think so there's yeah it's hard to just say this is what an angel looks like in my opinion you know because you know doesn't scripture even say that we can entertain them unawareingly so yeah and so i i don't know i mean there's i think experiences like these are very complex because i don't think it's the case like philosophically i don't think it's the case that we experience anything objectively we're always interpreting things through angles through perspectives viewpoints and whatnot like so the the objectivity whether you're reading the bible or you're you're listening to this podcast you are coming at it from a particular angle that allows you entrance into the conversation. But it's not all in our skull.

Like, there is an objective reality. So, I was telling Dale this last week is to say, like, I've never really bought the dichotomy between, say, when it comes to hermeneutics, that we can just read the Bible objectively or this weird subjective relativistic approach. Those aren't the only two options, right? And so you need both. And there's a whole, you know, philosophy has dealt with this problem for centuries, right?

So, or longer. So, um, anyway, um, yeah, in my own experience, um, I think there were definitely subjective aspects. I think there was an objective reality to it. Do you have, um, with your experience or other similar experiences and then i do want to move on to ufos because i know that they're different but they're in the same broad very broad kind of category um what about like a purpose behind it like this is what i often think when i hire and i so just where i'm coming from is on paper i I'm charismatic. I read the Bible.

I don't think that stuff has necessarily ceased. And yet I also don't need to see that stuff for me to know God's active. We have huge chunks of the biblical story where God's not parting Red Seas. He's working kind of behind the scenes. Other times when he is. And so I don't need it to happen. I believe it can happen. I'm also like many maybe skeptical Americans been seeing so many abuses to that or just stuff that's just either made up or contrived or whatever. That as a very left brain person, I'm always like, I don't want to be skeptical, but I kind of am.

My main point, I guess, for me is like, what does it matter what I think? I don't go around judging people's experience at all. Yeah. And especially if there's blatant kind of contradiction with what I see in the Bible, then I'm like, I might be more skeptical. But when it does resonate with... I mean, again, I would just say your story very much resonates with stuff I see in the Bible.

So there's little room for me to be skeptical. Not that it even matters whether I believe it or not. And I appreciate it. Here's another thing why it makes it more credible is you don't feel this need for people to believe your report. I mean, you said it several times. You're like, you know. Not at all. It's a suggestive, you know.

And I think that gives more credibility. When some people so desperately need other people to believe it to me i'm like well why like why why what's the motive there's a motive there and that's yeah but i guess so my question is what it what is what do you think is the purpose behind your experience other similar experiences and why do certain people experience and not others or is that just not even answerable um was it confirmation to your faith? Was it integral to your calling or these other scholars who have had similar experiences?

Like, I'm just like, what, is it simply arbitrary? Is there something, is there a logic behind it that we just won't know? Or is there something special about the people that are receiving these experiences?

Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely not the latter. It's not the last bit. I don't think that at all. I think I, all I can do is speak for myself. I think if you were to ask that question to anybody, there would be a million different answers.

For me, what I took from it, and I spent a lot of time thinking about talking to people, and it's very personal. I won't go into all that personal stuff. But for me, I can say that that experience has helped my faith because I'm a skeptical person. I don't believe things easily. I don't even believe like, even when it comes to my Christian faith, like I'm, I'm a convinced Christian, uh, but I'm going to ask questions, like, you know what I mean? And, and so the unexamined life is not worth living. And so I want to ask those

questions. And so I'm not, And so I'm not immune to doubt. And so for me, there have been plenty of times, like my wife and I, we've talked about this. Going back to that experience was very helpful for me in my own spirituality. And the only reason it seems weird to me, I think, is because I live in the 21st century, a scientific era that needs a rational explanation or scientific explanation for everything. And quite frankly, if this had happened in the first century, I mean, you know, the Bible you've been doing, this is what you do. Like if this happened in the first century, like, you know, somebody said, Hey, what happened? Well, this angel did this for me. He's like, Oh, okay. That's cool. That's happened to me. Or I heard that happened

to grandma too. You know, but yeah, but there was not a, but they were pre-enlightenment, pre-scientific people that, you know, didn't have the prejudice against the supernatural realm, right? So anyway, so it was meaningful in that regard. It's also been meaningful. I know this sounds weird. One thing I've just taken away is that the angel or whatever he was or it was said my name. And he said, Jesus is coming quickly, Matthew. I don't know about the eschatology part, you know, but the Matthew part, it really meant a lot to me.

And even looking back, I just, God knows our names. God knows Preston's name. He knows my name. He knows our names. And there's something deeply personal about the Christian faith that I don't know. That's just what I connected to. And there are other things but yeah oh that's awesome man thank you for sharing that i didn't yeah you mentioned

in the email exchange like you've had an experience that i was like i i um i wasn't aware of that okay let's transition to yeah ufos slash aliens give us a kind of 101 what do we know i the one thing we should distinguish is between you know unidentified flying object doesn't mean aliens sometimes i still when i hear ufo i think alien but it's like well no these are aliens would be maybe part of ufos but not that doesn't mean the same thing but give us maybe a 101 like what do we yeah i don't know you can start wherever you want yeah okay great you have opened a can of worms, Preston. There we go.

No, I think, yeah, you're right. E.T., aliens, and UFOs are different subjects. There is crossover, but only because of an interpretive process. So let me explain this. When people talk about UFOs, they're called UAP now, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or Anomalous Phenomena. The reason for that is because not all UFOs that were being classified as UFOs are actually flying objects. I mean, the data suggests in recent reports, the new law that was passed by Congress and Biden this year talks about it as UAP anomalous phenomenon because some of the things that people are reporting are under the ocean.

Some of them are not flying. They're not flying. Flying suggests a propulsion system, wings and all that. But some of these things are like they don't even look like that. So are they flying or, you know, it's just really weird. It's just really weird. Now, the thing is people interpret the UFO phenomena or UAP phenomena in different ways. One hypothesis is the ET hypothesis, right, that these are extraterrestrials from name your favorite planet kind of thing. But that's just a hypothesis, okay? They're not necessarily the same thing. So when it comes to this topic, it's very important that people understand that 95% of the stuff on YouTube and, you know, you go Google UFO, I would say 90 to 95% of the stuff is just crazy. Especially prior to 2017, there was an article in the New York Times that came out December 2017 that just changed the whole conversation.

That prior to this, there was a stigma associated with UAP. Now, after that article, the New York Times published, everybody's talking about it. And when I say everybody, I mean, highly credible scientists and people in academia, you know, now you have an amazing amount of people within government or outside of recently outside of government talking about this in ways that are just I don't know what to do with it. It's just crazy. We can go into some of the things that these high profile people have said before. But but just to kind of give you a taste, the modern UFO, well, let's talk aliens for a minute. The whole alien idea is not new to the modern era. It's not new. It didn't start with Roswell. It didn't start with rumors around that place. But this was actually an idea that was talked about a lot in antiquity and really in the church even. There's a great book by my friend Paul Thigpen. It's called Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic

Faith. He's a Catholic theologian, PhD from Emory University, and he gives a great overview of the conversation in the past about alien existence and whatnot. And essentially, the idea in some sectors of Christianity was that if you say that God didn't create, or if you say there's not a plurality of worlds, that was the language they used, that there were not more worlds or that there couldn't be more worlds, then you are somehow limiting the omnipotence of God. And so, that didn't mean that they were saying there were more than one world that's occupied, but they were saying at least you have to admit the possibility of it. And in fact, Paul starts off his book really humorously.

He said, look, I know everybody's going to say I'm a kook and you're going to start making me tinfoil hats, but let me tell you something, you're going to need to make more than one tinfoil hat. And he names all the theologians and the philosophers who've talked about this topic. And so one thing I like to say is that the alien topic has not always had a stigma to it. Not by a long shot. The stigma is recent, actually. I'm talking like the last century, recent, last 80 years or so. There's a reason for the stigma because in the early days, 1950s or so, there were a lot of reports coming out. And this is established. I mean, you can look at what reporters are saying about this and even declassified documents that were really never meant to see the light of day they came out. And basically all it showed was that there were a lot of reports that people were making about seeing things in the sky.

And the U.S. government had a big concern with that because they thought this could be a national security issue. And the reason they thought it was a national security issue is not because it's aliens or not even because of the UFO. It's just their phone lines were being like, you know, uh, peltered with these reports and they were afraid, um, that maybe the Soviets could exploit that would get so bogged down with these reports that we wouldn't see an ICBM come through or something, you know? So the, the idea was to completely discredit these accounts to make people who report these accounts seem like kooks. There's nothing to it to, because if, if you can convince normal people that this is a weird, abnormal topic, they will not talk about it. They won't bring it up. And then that's why you've had

so much non-reporting of this issue, especially by military pilots, commercial pilots, because they don't want to ruin their careers. But when 2017 came about, the New York Times published an article by three journalists, Leslie Kane, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper. And basically, it was fairly sensational. They had met with a source who later became known as Lou Elizondo, who was a Pentagon official. Elizondo, who was a Pentagon official. And he said, yeah, I ran a super secret UFO study that nobody knew about. And I'm really angry that the Pentagon's not taking it seriously. I'm resigning in protest. And of course, that just made the headlines. And what's interesting, there's lots to that. And let me just say this, and I'll stop and you can ask any questions you want. But what's interesting about that is that one reason that Lou Elizondo said that was frustrating to him was that he was

trying, I think he was trying to brief the Secretary of Defense. Like there's these weird things that are happening and we need to pay attention to this. And he was never able to do that. And the reason he was never able to do it is because in his words, there were fundamentalist Christians, okay, who thought that this was satanic or demonic and we shouldn't be messing with it. And he was so upset by that because of a religious sort of prejudice that he couldn't get anything done. And that sounds crazy, but actually Senator Harry Reid, the late Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, he was the Senate Majority Leader, very powerful senator. He said the same thing that, yeah, there was pushback within the Pentagon because there were fundamentalists, his words, Christians who thought this was demonic and we

shouldn't be touching it. So it wasn't, real quick, it wasn't, I'm hearing the pushback was never the incredulous nature of the evidence. It was the potential byproduct of what would happen if people got a hold of this kind of information that was the concern well if i understand you right what do you mean like they were concerned about the information they got like um it wasn't that these claims were were not credible it was if people did find out about these these fundamentals are going to do weird stuff with their this group's going to do weird so it's it's like kind of the results of finding out about that's right that the religious people they were like they didn't want to dabble in satanism essentially right they didn't want to get into that because

their their interpretation is this all has to be satanic and and i don't they there were never really reasons given why they thought that i suspect and by the way these are highly placed uh individuals within the pentagon right these are people who see things that we'll never see right and they were saying it i definitely suspect is because they were seeing things that defied physics they were seeing things that i mean for lack of better word this is my word but that seemed like magic right and then that just turned on their spook meter and like ah we don't want anything to do with this and so lou alessandro thought that was just an absurd uh he's open to a spiritual interpretation but he he didn't want to close the door like maybe this is something else you know for all he knew maybe this is like the chinese you know or maybe it's maybe it is something exotic and out of this world but so he wasn't

claiming he wasn't claiming there's concrete evidence for aliens he was saying there's our ufos and we're not not sure whether it's something this worldly or something other worldly or whatever. He thought, okay, so yeah, when it comes to Lou on this, like at the time, yeah, he wanted to keep everything open. And even today, like, I mean, I trust what he's saying.

I don't have any reason to suspect that he's lying or anything. I think he's a highly credible individual. But his point was, yeah, let's keep it open. We have to keep all possibilities open. You know, in recent interviews, like he's made statements like it's his personal opinion. He has to speak like that because he has NDAs that he signed, nondisclosure agreements. And he could go to prison if he shares too much. But he he's said things that definitely make you think that there's something exotic about this phenomenon. That's not ours, that it's not Chinese or Russian tech.

It's, you know, whatever. And in fact, in one interview, he made this weird comment, which he's not elaborated on. He was asked, if we knew what you knew, what would our feeling be? And he said he paused and he said it would be somber, you know. And and so it was And he said, he paused and he said it would be somber, you know? And, and so it was his, he said elsewhere, it's his opinion that this, that some of this stuff was exotic material. Matt Halstead is not saying it is, I'm just saying what he's saying that it is right. And we say exotic, you mean extraterrestrial. Yeah. But I don't want to put words in Lou's

mouth, but exotic is a broader category than extraterrestrial. If you, if you, if you look at what people are saying about this, you don't get the impression that people necessarily think it's extraterrestrial, okay? You don't get the idea that this is some distant species on another planet that came here that somehow traversed a crazy amount of space to get here. Some people think it's very possible that whatever it is, the words they use is that it's been here for a long time and it could, it may be closer to us than, than ET.

That's, I know that sounds weird, but that's, that's the language that they use. Like some species living in the deep dark sea that's not coming or like what like or am i thinking two three dimensionally or no no no no no yeah that's what they're they're open to that idea in fact in that one of the cases that came out that hasn't been resolved at all was the nimitz incident of 2004 so just just briefly, yeah. So basically these pilots, F-18 pilots were out,

I think west of San Diego, quite a ways. They were off flying doing practice maneuvers and stuff. And they got a call that, I can't remember all the details. But anyway, long story short, there was something spotted down by the bottom of the, or above the ocean, about 50 feet above the ocean. And it was this 40 foot long object that had no visible means of propulsion, no wings. It looked like a tic-tac. It's called the tic-tac incident.

And it's literally hovering over the water, but it's very erratic. It's like a ping pong ball, he said, in a glass jar. It's just doing weird things, but he sees it visually. Okay. And it's hovering over the water, he says. This is David Fravor. You can find this on CBS 60 Minutes. He's done a lot of interviews. And it's hovering over water that is churning. And it looks to be a big object under the water, and it's churning. And then anyway, so he dips his F-18 down to take a closer look. And at that point, he said the thing responded to him. He thought it was intelligent. It responds to him and kind of starts mimicking and mirroring what he's doing. And then right then it just zips off at who knows how fast it went. And then he gets, he's like, it's gone.

And then he gets a radio call that says, hey, you're not going to believe this, but this thing has gone to your cat point or your your merge location where you were supposed you're supposed to be in like the next 30 minutes or something. They have a place on the map where they're supposed to fly to. Somehow it knew where to go. Right. And it was there. And so that's just one incident that he sees with his eyes. that he sees with his eyes. Interestingly enough, what the Navy was observing was, it's just absolutely, it's crazy. I don't know what to do with it, but they were observing these objects at 80,000 feet. And within a matter of like a second, like 60 seconds, it dropped to 50 feet above the water. And that, that would turn any human into soup, right? The G-forces, it's impossible, right? So whatever this is, it's really weird. And in fact, David Fravor, his own words, he said, you know, this doesn't seem like anything that we could do or make. I think he even used the phrase out of this world.

That's what he said. Like it's defined. Those are the things I keep hearing. I've done minimal, just like hearing people talk on podcasts and stuff. It's that kind of like hugely defined, all the laws of science, by that massive just drop in elevation or whatever within a second. This episode is sponsored by Camp Rockmont. Are you looking for a new screen-free adventure for your son this summer?

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Joey Dodson's going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have Ellie Bonilla and Street Hymns back by popular demand. And Tanika Wye and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry, featuring two scholars on each side of the issue.

So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side, and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintherod.com. That's theologyintherod.com. And so all the info is at theologyintherod.com.

That's theologyintherod.com. What are some of the key, like some main, most credible incidences? Because even, I mean, all this is like one eyewitness. Like there's nothing that's been like, is there anything that has like hard evidence that can be relayed? Or are we all, are all these things left up to, and i don't mean to downplay but like subjective incidences like what are some of the most credible ufo experiences or uap uh into your mind yeah yeah yeah i think the tic tac is one of them i got a couple more but the tic tac one and the recent navy ones have been i i deem them highly credible because these are people who are trans servers uh they have every reason to not talk about this because it could ruin credibility. And I mean, it's my opinion.

I think they actually saw something. What that is, I'm agnostic. I don't know. But I definitely think they saw something. OK, so a couple more cases. One occurred in 1997. It's the Phoenix Lights incident. This is really interesting.

I don't have any opinion about what it was. But basically what happened was is over Phoenix one night, I think it was around March 13th, March something, 1997. The Phoenix was just overblown with all these lights. And I think it spanned multiple days. But the one day that was most interesting is that it was this massive craft. I mean, I don't remember how long it was. Football is that there was this massive craft. I mean, I don't remember how long it was. Football size long is what the witnesses say, like football field sized, multiple football fields.

And it was just massive, like creeping over the city. And if you look on YouTube, you just see a bunch of lights in a triangular formation. But witness reports, and we're talking thousands of witness reports, you know, they all saw it. And many of them said, I mean, we could have maybe thrown a rock at it. It had solidity to it. It wasn't just lights, right? And it created such a, you know, just a big media frenzy, I guess. And so long story short, the, even the governor of Arizona wanted to know some information about it. And he, uh, but what was funny is he actually, he made fun of a press conference. He made fun of all the witnesses. He was like, uh, you know,

you guys are taking this way too seriously. It's not a big deal. And he later though, years later, apologized for that because he said the truth is, and he didn't let anybody know this at the time. The truth is he saw it too. And he has no said the truth is, and he didn't let anybody know this at the time, the truth is he saw it too and he has no idea what it was. But he didn't want to say anything about it. And he apologized because he, I mean, for all intents and purposes, he wanted to keep everybody calm, but I think a lot of people ended up feeling like kooks too. But it turned out he actually saw it too and he's like, I don't know what it is. It's so weird and he couldn't get any answers. Um, another case, which is, this is, this is a crazy incident, but I think it has a

lot of merit to it. Um, this happened in, um, I think it was in Zimbabwe. Uh, it's the aerial aerial school incident. Yeah. There's actually a recent documentary about it. It's pretty fascinating. So basically what happened is it's a private Christian school, pretty large school. I believe it's Christian school. A bunch of young school kids are outside playing. We're talking second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth graders. They're outside playing and the teachers are

inside the building for a staff meeting and all the kids are just outside playing. And this happened, I think, in the 90s. And all of a sudden, the teachers hear a commotion outside. And they these kids just they're very distraught. They don't know what something happened. And they're they're just terrified in a sense. And they're amazed at something they saw. I just, they're terrified in a sense, and they're amazed at something they saw. Long story short, these kids claimed to see a craft that had landed with beings coming out of it, walking around, staring at them.

And they didn't quite look human. They looked humanoid, but they didn't look like people. And these kids, you know, drew pictures of it. They were asked all these questions. And if you watch the documentary, you can really get the sense of their sincerity. You know, a lot of researchers point to this case because they say, you know, kids have no reason to lie. Many of them have never heard of UFOs. You know, it's just a weird experience that they had. And interestingly enough, this got the attention of a BBC reporter and even made the news made its way to Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who was who was a well-known psychiatrist, an award winning author. And he flies over there and he, I mean, he just finds them absolutely credible. And, and he, he did a lot of, a lot of studies on abduction cases and

basically his, his opinion, um, the people that experienced abductions and especially these young kids, there's nothing mentally wrong with them. Like these are legit experiences that they're having, you know? And so, yeah, I, I find the aerial case interesting because they're young kids and, um, the probability that they're all lying and they're all lying to tell the same thing and that they have not changed their story after 20 something, 30 years, you know, and some of them, like the story just changed their life. Like their, their, their life is on a different trajectory now. It just, it was shocking to them. And so I, I give that a high probability, whatever it was. Um, the Phoenix license, interesting case. And then of

course the Nimitz. So those are my top three, I think. Um, you know, when you talk to people about this, when I started talking about my experience, it was funny because the people that I, that heard it, you know, I would talk to you about, they were like, I've got to tell you something. I got to tell you something. And anyway, one person had this experience and, uh, he, a highly educated person, very smart person, a trusted person. He claims to have seen a UFO as well. And I believe him. I think he actually saw something, uh, that really shook him up. Uh, you know, and he, he's had another, a couple other experiences that he's had too. And he initially, he told me, he's like, it really, it really affected

his Christianity such that when the 2017 article came out about UFOs, he was off on a business trip and he saw it come up in the hotel lobby and it just messed him up for a week because he had had these experiences to kind of cause him to question his Christianity. because he had had these experiences too, kind of causing him to question his Christianity. And so for me, I can't emphasize just how much, how important it is for biblical scholars and theologians, confessional ones especially, to be talking about this because you may not know it,

but there are a lot of people who've had experiences that they don't have categories to think about. They don't understand. And I think it's important that we come alongside, not least for pastoral care. And I mean, more recently, I feel like there are more and more ufo reports coming out right or what's in the last since the since the 2017 article um yeah is there just more and more especially of these like aerial objects define all laws of physics is that um yeah that's absolutely correct because the 2017 article really helped reduce the stigma.

And pilots, not only are pilots feeling more comfortable talking about it, but there actually are official channels within the government. Like the Navy came out and said, we want you to start talking about this now, and you're not going to lose your job. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, I think, in that regard. So, yeah, the stigma has been reduced. In fact, the New York Times, the New York Times has published some interesting things since the 2017 article, too. I mean, comes from the same authors of that original piece. And, uh, they quote Harry Reid saying that, you know, it was his belief that, that the U S has material in its possession. Right. And he kind of pushed back against that once it came back out, but the reporter said, no, we're, we're standing by the, the article, um, for sure. But that, that aside, um, even in that same article, they quote, um, a gentleman by the name of Eric Davis,

he's a physicist, he's worked with the government and stuff. And, and, um, he even made the comment, he said, uh, on the record, he's never, he's never backtracked on this, that he had even recently given, uh, members of Congress a briefing about off-world vehicles, not made on this, that he had even recently given members of Congress a briefing about off-world vehicles not made on this world, not made on this planet kind of thing. And what's fascinating to me, I'm not saying that's true. I've not seen any evidence to suggest that that's true. But what is true is that there are highly credible people saying these things are true, right? Let me give you another example. Christopher Mellon, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence at the Pentagon.

And in a very recent blog post, he makes a statement. He said, I've talked to highly credible people who believe that, credible people in the government is what he said, who believe that we have materials in our possessions, which is fascinating to me. And I'm not saying that's true. I'm not saying any of that is remotely true. What I'm saying is that it's true that these people are saying it's true. And I just don't know why people aren't talking about this anymore. It's really interesting the media is not picking up on that. Even to the point that Congress, in its recent bill, the National Defense Authorization

Act for 2023, in the bill, like seriously, people need to go read this. It basically tells the Secretary of Defense, we as Congress, we want to know about all of your UAP activity, even the stuff, and they use language like, we want to know if you've been reverse engineering. Like, that's a term in the bill. Have you been reverse engineering? We want to know if you've been reverse engineering. That's a term in the bill. Have you been reverse engineering? We want to know all that stuff. And I mean, this is stuff like out of science fiction. I mean, that's a term everybody uses in fiction.

But my question is, why does Congress think it's plausible to use that sort of language? Apparently, they think it's plausible that there is something out there that they want to know about. Yeah, I just think that's fascinating. I don't know why more people aren't talking about it, to be honest with you. I'm not saying it's true. In terms of the origins of the UFOs, as I hear you talk, I'm thinking of four different possible origins. Number one, aliens from other planets. Number two, Russian-Chinese that's somehow is beyond our imagination um number three could be spiritual could be something not from a different planet but from a different spiritual

realm kind of like your angelic encounter um and number four is kind of i don't know this i don't even know how to articulate it but something other something deep in the sea, something that defies material, immaterial realms, or that's not necessarily otherworldly, but is also none of the other three options. Is that, am I, are there others I'm missing or are those, is that the best way to think about it? Those are all the things that, those are all the things that people are talking about. Yeah. If you talk to Chris Mellon, you know, the, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, he, he seems to think that this is definitely not U.S. tech. It's not Russian tech. I mean, he was in charge of looking at all this stuff when he was at the Pentagon.

So he doesn't think that's what it is. Other people do think that's what it is. There are credible people who think, no, this is just man-made kind of stuff. And all of those options, I think, can be on the table. I think the most interesting for me is i don't buy the et hypothesis it's very it's possible but the universe is just so big unless there's like some i just don't see how it's possible that somebody could like come here right uh and traverse you know billions and billions of light years it's possible i'm not a physicist so maybe there's some science

that i don't understand but but i think the most intriguing one is probably number four to me, the other category that you mentioned, that maybe it's not ET, it's not human. Is there another category? And this is where I think perhaps the Christian tradition can come into play a little bit. Let me say something about that. But before I do, let me just recount how even the scientific community might be thinking about this too. There are many scientists who don't buy the ET hypothesis, but who do believe the UAP phenomena is real. Some scientists, such as Gary Nolan at Stanford, recently was interviewed and he was tossing out all sorts of possibilities because he was actually working with the CIA. I mean, he's very public about this.

CIA came to him and said, hey, you're an expert immunologist. You know how to do MRI scans like nobody else can. And so we want to come to you because some of our pilots have been seeing UAPs and they're coming in contact with them and they're having brain damage, essentially. We want you to tell us what's going on. And he thought it was a joke. He's like, oh, this is a joke. He's like, they weren't joking, right? And so since then, he's been involved in UAP's talk. His name's Gary Nolan, Stanford University. He, in a recent interview I was listening to, he made this comment.

He said, this could be a very terrestrial explanation, almost like a different civilization that we just can't, haven't noticed, or maybe it's like an offshoot sort of thing. I'm not, again, I have to reiterate to the audience, I'm not saying this. Yeah, no, no. Gary Nolan at Stanford saying this, okay. He's not saying that's true. He's saying it's possible. And I found that interesting because if you look at Christian, some people in Christian tradition, there is a category like that. So, think of Jerome, Saint Jerome, an important ancient scholar in our Christian tradition. If you read his treatise, The Life of Saint Paul, it's a treatise about the Desert Fathers, essentially. You know,

he talks about, in the story, he's talking about the father, the desert fathers. And there's a part in there where he said one desert father, some sort of beastly figure that was intelligent, but it wasn't really like an angel. It wasn't really human. It was just like this different beast. I think he calls it a monster, but it's funny. The monster actually gave some praise to Christ that he met, but Jerome tells it like it's real, like it's a true event. And I'm not saying Jerome's right, but I am saying that Jerome thought it could be right, or that, well, Jerome had a category for thinking about this topic. He's not the only one. C.S. Lewis wrote a book, I think it was his last book, called The Discarded Image. I highly recommend people read it. And basically, it's a synopsis of the medieval mind. Like what are the medieval, what was their worldview? And so he talks about their view of the heavens and he talks about what all they thought existed in the heavens. And then he talks about their view of the earth. What's

in the earth? What's man and what is man's soul? But then there's a chapter wedged between these chapters, a chapter called the Longevi. And it's a word for the long livers or the fairies. The medievals believed in fairies, the elves. And he's very cautious. He said, don't think fairy in the sense of the insect that you see in cartoon. But these are multiple different sizes. They're rational, but they're non-human. They're not necessarily angelic. Okay. Um, the medievals didn't know how to process. And so that's like a third rational species that, you know, that exists somewhere between heaven and earth kind of thing. And okay. Now what's funny is he's telling this story and he's talking about how big were they? What were their size? Well,

medieval thought this medieval thought that, and then just out of nowhere, he says, you know, I knew somebody back in the day she said she saw one and she said it was like the size of a child and he just kind of goes on and he tells it as if he like believes it like this is part of his argument somebody's personal experience with this humanoid non-human thing which is fascinating i'm not saying that he's right i'm not saying that his friend actually saw one but i'm saying that c.s lewis seemed to be okay with entertaining a category for a third rational species well jerome and lewis are those are pretty big names um and where my mind went and i guess i need to give my non-tinfoil hat

caveat that i'm just thinking about not suggesting anything i mean i know nothing about this um do you know how many emails that you're going to get and emails i'm going to get take a number this is water yeah yeah but yeah and just so everybody knows matthew's office is filled with a bunch of looks like mush mushrooms so no just kidding yeah just kidding kidding kidding next to the into your right books nothing but theology um you know where my mind went just as like is there anything in the bible that could possibly be interpreted along that fourth option you're talking about and i immediately went to the nephilim and and the men of renown you have according to the best interpretation i'm not going to get into why i believe this but i mean it's just it is renown, you have, according to the best interpretation, I'm not going to get into why I believe this, but I mean, it's just, it is the best interpretation. You have angelic beings having sexual relationships with females and producing some kind of offspring.

Whether they're the men of renown and the Nephilim or men of renown and there's also this Nephilim, we're not totally sure. Flood wipes them out. But then in Numbers 1333, the spies come in and they say there's nephilim in the land same word and and i think it's um is it josh no judge uh deuteronomy two and three a reference to like giants this is what when michael heiser was on my podcast several years ago okay you have references to kind of they're not they're not called not human but they're just what does that mean there's giants like and this is like yeah they're in a conquest era or yeah i mean we're talking like 1500 bc this isn't like you know genesis 1 to 11 stuff

so i mean there are and some people say you know ezek 1, some people say he was either on crack or saw alien beings. I mean, he's clearly seen cherubim, you know. Right. Exactly. Yeah. He didn't see a UFO. Yeah. So, I don't know.

Like, is there could be a window into even biblically exploring other beings that are not simply animals nor humans? And where'd they go again i thought the flood wiped them all out but why why do we see a reference to nephilim in the land maybe that's a general word could be general word for like wow these people look really big you know they're like six four instead of 511 or whatever or i don't know it's interesting that's the same word that word is very rare in the old testament. But I guess by one of my many skeptical responses, haven't we exhausted creationers or not? Other pockets in this world that no human has ever been or there could be civilizations living that satellites can't identify or something?

I know in the depth of the sea where there's stuff we don't... We have not even... I don't even know. I think even sonar and stuff, we don't right we have no not even i don't even know i i think like even sonar and stuff we can't really know exactly what's at the very very depth of the sea or maybe under the crust of the i don't know that's a good on the on the nephilim stuff like um yeah i do think the best evidence supports that the ancient jews thought in the exact same way that you thought like there's there's definitely a third sort of species that's created made you know uh through the through the union of spiritual beings and humans right that that's yeah i think that was one of the only things that jews unanimously

believed in the first century and that's that's without that was like it was genesis 6 was like the john 316 of first century judaism they when Peter and Jude referenced that passage with that kind of Jewish interpretation, it's, yeah, that is the best interpretation of that passage. Oh, I agree. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that those would be UFOs, modern UFOs, but it does give Christians a category through which they can maybe interpret these sorts of things. a category through which they can maybe interpret these sorts of things. The thing I would say about the Bible is that, you know, a lot of Christian response to these stories, you know, there's several responses, but one is, well, they can't be real. They have to be demonic or they're just not true because the Bible doesn't say anything about aliens, right? The ET can exist because the Bible doesn't say anything about it. But at the end of the day, that's not a very good argument because it's not a good argument because it's an argument from

silence. The Bible doesn't tell us everything anyway. It doesn't tell us that the sun is, what, 93 million miles from the earth. It doesn't tell us a lot of scientific facts. And so we don't need to make those sorts of arguments. There could be lots of things out there that we don't know because we don't know about from the Bible because the Bible doesn't tell us. But secondly, we shouldn't be presumptuous to think that God would tell us all of his dealings anyway. I mean, why do we think that God has to let us in on everything initially? Why can't God and why doesn't God allow us to make discoveries scientifically? That seems to be the way he works in many instances anyway. So I think my passion, my heart in all of this is, I am agnostic with respect to

the origin of UAPs. I think it is increasingly hard to deny the reality of UAPs, you know, given a lot of things. But let's just, I always want to think ahead. I always want to be thinking and you know, what would happen if there was an announcement or a discovery? What would this do to the Christian faith? And, uh, objectively, I don't think it would do anything negative to the Christian faith. I think the Christian faith can, can accommodate whether it's a third rational species or ET or whatever.

I think it could definitely accommodate that quite well. And there's been work on this by scholars and theologians. But I guess from a pastoral perspective, we do need to talk about this because if there is ever an announcement that we're not alone in the universe, I want Christians to have been ready to think about this. And I don't necessarily think Christians are. I'm in evangelicalism, broadly speaking. I don't know how good of an evangelical I am, but nonetheless, that's kind of where I am. I don't want them to lose their faith over something like this. There's more things that we know, but we just don't need to do that.

It's interesting. The Brookings Institute, which was a think tank in the 1960s, wrote a paper about, you know, this sort of thing. And their advice was, if there was ever an announcement of E.T., that this could cause social religious disruption in some extent. And it's an interesting article, 1960s Brookings Institute. You can go to Brookings.edu and read it. I encourage everybody to do that. And there was concern initially, and perhaps still is, that this could cause some sort of disruption. So, yeah. So, if I heard you right, you said the ET slash aliens extraterrestrial, you find that not credible much at all, like as far as an origin?

Yeah, I don't. I don't because i mean it's possible but not real quick not for theological reasons like the story of scripture it would completely conflict with that that's where that's what i've always heard is like no the story i mean what would that do to jesus and redemption of humanity and people created in god's image and like um it would interrupt the story too significantly for it to be theologically possible. Do you find that argument credible or do you think it's...

I don't think the discovery of ET would mess any of that up. I don't think it would change us as being image bearers of God. I don't think it, even when it comes to redemption, can ET be redeemed? And there's been work done on this by theologians. But I think, yeah, I mean, there's lots of options. I mean, for one, who says E.T. has fallen, right? Maybe they haven't fallen. Maybe they haven't sinned against God, right? Perhaps they have. And so could God redeem them? And the answer is yes. But how could he redeem them? Again, there are researchers, scholars talking about this. And, you know, Paul Thigpen in his book I mentioned earlier, ETI and the Catholic Faith, he talks about how he draws a lot upon Thomas Aquinas. And Thomas basically said, you know, God didn't have to redeem humanity via the incarnation.

It wasn't necessary in that sense. He could have chosen a number of different ways of doing it. And so Paul Thigpen argues, well, okay, if Thomas was thinking about E.T., then it's reasonable to think that he would also say, well, God could redeem E.T. in a way different than an incarnation. Perhaps God has a different way of redeeming them. Okay. And that's kind of a Thomistic approach. You know, he's convinced that that's the case. One option too, is that maybe, you know, the Christ as, you know, the incarnation here on earth was sufficient to cover all of creation. There are texts in Romans 8, there are texts in Colossians that seem to suggest kind of that

cosmic Christ view that what happens here impacts all of creation. That's disputed though, by some scholars and theologians, of but um but you know in terms of like what does all creation mean in romans aid and in colossus so you're you're the ufo is not being et for you is more practical it's like the vastness of the universe what are the odds if there were they would travel even know to travel to this tiny little planet on the front you know like um unless they had some tech that they can sense other life forms on in the universe and they had the physical ability to fly billions and billions of miles or whatever and because they already had identified

us from a some alien version of the hubble space telescope or something. Yeah, I mean, who knows? It just seems, you also have the time factor. I mean, the time it would take to get here. Like, okay, so by the time E.T. sent us a signal and said hello, by the time we got that, that civilization could be dead and gone, right? Because it takes so many years for that to get here. And then by the time we respond back, we'd be dead and gone.

So it's not just space, but space and time are intricately linked. So you have the time factor too. It's possible that it's, you know, ETs out there, but I, it, you know, would we even, would we even know, you know, uh, David, I think David Wilkinson wrote a book on this topic. He's a scholar and he's, you know, he's very skeptical about us being ever being able to know about ET and being out there. At least he's not convinced, but here's the other problem. Like the, the, the view I said that was pretty attractive is the third, the third rational species view, the fourth option you mentioned. And well, here's the problem with that view though. If that's the truth, how did we miss it for so long? Right. How did, how have we, If that's the truth, how did we miss it for so long? How have we?

Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I talked to a physicist last week, a respected physicist who works at CERN occasionally. In fact, he was at the large Hadron Collider thing. They have a big lab in Switzerland. And he was there when we were talking. And I asked him that question.

I was like, OK, would the physics i asked him that question i was like okay does the would the physics support this idea that there's a third rational species living under our nose that we've never detected ever before and i told him about the c.s lewis stuff you know and he his his response as i recall initially it was let me think about it you know and and then he said actually you know it's it's super low in probability it's like it's possible but probability wise it's just i don't see how it how it would be actual and then he stopped and he said but you know there is that thing about the garden of eden right like you know if you take that the garden as a literal location you know where did it go you know and how you know is it

somehow invisible under our nose? Or, you know, you know, when you when you think about evangelical views about the Garden of Eden, the idea is that it's it's hidden from us, you know, and we can't go there to partake of the tree of life. But it was a physical place. It was had physicality. You know, it was a real place. place. And so his thought was, well, he kind of backtracked a little bit, sort of, and like, well, you know, as a Christian, you know, he thought maybe it is possible, but he wasn't willing to say it's probable at all. So that's the problem with that third rational view. You know, how did we miss it? Here's the thing. Here's the thing on that. Perhaps we haven't missed it. Okay. Perhaps we haven't, because maybe these are where the stories come from. Maybe that's why C.S. Lewis gave credence to it. That's why Jerome gave credence to it.

Well, okay, Dale Allison in his Encountering Mystery book published last year, he makes this statement at some point in his book, something to the effect of, well, maybe we believe all these things because people have actually experienced these things, right? So I don't know. I think the UFO mystery is a genuine mystery. You know, I don't know what to do with it. I, in terms of a conclusion, I think anybody who says they know what it is probably doesn't know what it is, you know, and maybe, uh, psychedelics is a pathway forward to discover what the truth is. That's the thing that they're talking about and i know next to i know nothing actually about psychedelics i think i know more about like barbie dolls and psychedelics but but nonetheless uh but but yeah i mean well that's that that is the art i i i hearing more and more

people say yeah that that it opens your mind up to an actual other worldly realm that's not just you're you know on some kind of trip whatever but like you're actually entering into a different realm or something again i have no altered state 100 not endorsing that 100 not even saying that's true i'm just saying what people are saying and right anyway i think the most interesting thing with respect to ufo and that comes from um it's just an off-the-cuff comment made by former cia director john brennan i think he was i think he served under obama if i remember right i can't remember but he was asked in an interview he was like hey what do you think about ufos and he kind of chuckled and and he makes his statement

he said you know i think some of the ufs that we'll be seeing, you know, might constitute a different form of life. It's possibly that it constitutes a different form of life. And I found that really interesting. Um, and people like that talk about these things. I think they, they, they're trained to choose their words very carefully. And, uh, I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think, I think that Christians at the very least, we need to figure out what sort of categories that we can biblically operate in that would keep us biblically faithful. We can't entertain heresy, right? But what biblical categories can we operate in that should something happen and there's an announcement made or whatever,

that our Christian faith can accommodate that. But more importantly, here's the thing. We need to be talking about this, whether or not an announcement's ever made, because there are people in, you know, the pastors who are listening to your podcast, there are people in those churches who've had experiences that they can't understand. And, you know, do we have a theology to back it Um, or at least to account for some of that. So it's important that I think we educate ourselves on this topic for sure. Well, Matt, thank you so much. You've given us, I mean, more, I always say this to my guests, you've given us a lot to think about, but man, you've given us a whole new, uh, universes, universities to contemplate maybe,

but thank you so much. I love your candidness, your honesty. And I mean, you're such a thoughtful guy. I'm sure there's other people, some YouTubers I could have had on that would have been happy to explore this topic and it would have been

maybe as careful or thoughtful. So thank you so much, Matt. It was great seeing your face again. And yeah, best of luck to you. Thanks, man. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.