Mission to Mars Discovers Origin of Life on Earth
By Thomas Horn
The movie is “Mission to Mars.” The year is 2020, and NASA sends Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) with a crew of four astronauts to the red planet. While exploring strange geological formations on the martian landscape, the truth about the Face on Mars and the origin of mankind is discovered.
Families will appreciate the values depicted in the film, and the absence of language and nudity (a rarity today!) is appreciated. Unfortunately, Mission to Mars perpetuates the popular New Age dogma that humanity began as an alien experiment.
Director Brian De Palma admits, “Mission to Mars is set in 2020 because that’s the date the experts predict we should have a manned landing on Mars.” Some believe when we do go to Mars we may discover evidence of past alien presence. A 1,500-foot-high Sphinx-like face, and several pyramid shapes have already been photograpged in the Cydonia region by the Viking Mars probe.
WHAT NEW AGE UFOLOGISTS BELIEVE
A growing doctrine within the New Age Movement claims that the origin of the gods, and the human race as we know it today, is the direct result of extra-terrestrial “UFO” activity.
In the introduction to his bestselling book, CHARIOTS OF THE GODS?, Erich von Daniken, who, it might be argued, is one of the fathers of the New Age Movement as it relates to ufology, said:
I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extra-terrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these “strangers” annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens.
As was illustrated in the Hollywood films Contact, and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Erich von Daniken’s hypothesis took America by storm in the 1960’s with the proposition that mankind was possibly the offspring of an ancient, perhaps ongoing, extra-terrestrial experiment.
New Age ufologists like Daniken assert that the Sphinx, the Pyramids, and the mythologies of ancient cultures may be evidence of an encounter with other-worldly beings. They claim that ancient men would have considered space travelers as gods and would have recorded their arrival, their experiments, and their departure, in hieroglyphs, megaliths, and stone tablets, as a “supernatural” encounter between gods and men.
Mr. Daniken continues:
While [the] spaceship disappears again into the mists of the universe our friends will talk about the miracle—”The gods were here!”….they will make a record of what happened: uncanny, weird, miraculas. Then their texts will relate—and drawings will show—that gods in golden clothes were there in a flying boat that landed with a tremendous din. They will write about chariots which the gods drove over land and sea, and of terrifying weapons that were like lightning, and they will recount that the gods promised to return. They will hammer and chisel in the rock pictures of what they had seen:
Von Daniken also claims that the odd appearance of some of the gods as depicted in various hieroglyphs (human-like creatures with falcon heads; lions with heads of bulls, etc) could be viewed as evidence that “aliens” conducted experiments of cloning and cross-mutating both ancient people and animals.
Some people accept this part of Daniken’s hypothesis as a humanistic alternative to the Biblical account of creation. It’s uncertain how many people believe such a theory, but a full eighty percent of Americans claim they believe in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Some, like the 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult that committed suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California and believed they were being summoned by a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet, subscribe to an eerie amalgam of mysticism and conventional religion.
Not suprisingly, the growing interest in UFOs and the paranormal has given birth to a host of popular movies like “Mission to Mars.”
IF THEY EXIST, WHO ARE THEY?
Some believe a portion of UFO activity is real and demonic. Hal Lindsey states, “I have become thoroughly convinced that UFOs are real….I believe these beings are not only extraterrestrial but supernatural in origin. To be blunt, I think they are demons.”
In Angels Dark and Light, Gary Kinnaman says, “I am fairly convinced that….UFO sightings are the manifestations of angels of darkness. My main reason for thinking this is that UFO sightings have never, at least to my knowledge, led a person closer to God. In fact, most UFO experiences have just the opposite effect.”
Associate professor of psychology Elizabeth L. Hillstrom points out that a growing number of academics support the conclusion that UFOnauts are synonymous with historical demons. In her informative book, Testing the Spirits, she writes:
From a Christian perspective, Vallee’s explanation of UFOs is the most striking because of its parallels with demonic activity. UFO investigators have noticed these similarities. Vallee himself, drawing from extrabiblical literature on demonic activities, establishes a number of parallels between UFOnauts and demons….Pierre Guerin, a UFO researcher and a scientist associated with the French National Council for Scientific Research, is not so cautious: “The modern UFOnauts and the demons of past days are probably identical.” Veteran researcher John Keel, who wrote UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse and other books on the subject, comes to the same conclusion: “The UFO manifestations seem to be, by and large, merely minor variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon.”
It’s easy to believe that demons are involved with “flying saucer” activity. Evil spirits can manipulate energy and matter, and the theological terms, “Transmogrification” and “Poltergeist” (“noisy ghost”), imply that spirits can make lights go off and on, doors bang, icons bleed, and saucers fly.
But if a portion of “flying saucer” activity is demonic, what nefarious purpose is served by the stealthy nature of UFO phenomena?
The answer is diabolical. UFO-ism seems to be aimed at preparing the earth for an extraterrestrial “visitation of the gods,” and, more importantly, at changing our religious beliefs. This occurs in two ways: First, from a technological standpoint, UFO sightings challenge the claim of human superiority and dispute our unique role in the universe. We are made to feel shallow, undeveloped, unenlightened. Second, from a religious point of view, extraterrestrials bring a message (as reported in hundreds of abduction cases) of easy universalism and New Age mysticism including dialogue of humans “on the verge of extraordinary telepathic and technological growth.”
Benevolent E.T.s profess to watch over us and promise to appear at the appropriate time to assist in our next big evolutionary, spiritual, and technological step forward. To prepare us for their coming, popular movies like Mission to Mars, bestselling books, cultural trends, and religious ideas, focus the earths masses on “help from above,” and New Agers smile and explain “It’s okay, they’ve been here before” and “Don’t worry, ancient men simply described flying saucers in terms of demons, angels, and gods, because they didn’t understand what they were seeing.”
In other words, New Agers believe that space vehicles manipulating the laws of physics by suddenly appearing, disappearing, and operating anti-gravitationally, were assigned “god” or “angel” status by sincere but ignorant prophets, and that Ezekiel’s living creatures will return someday in their wheels “in the middle of a wheel” providing explanations of our origin and solutions to our problems.
WERE WE VISITED IN THE PAST?
Such New Age claims of extraterrestrials visiting the earth in ancient times and interacting with men is biblically and historically true. Where Christians differ from New Agers is in the definition of who these creatures were and what they were doing.
In the Interlinear Hebrew Bible we read:
The benei Elohim saw the daughters of Adam, that they were fit extensions. And they took wives for themselves from all those that they chose…The Nephelim were in the earth in those days, and even afterwards when the benei Elohim came in to the daughters of Adam, and they bore to them—they were Powerful Ones which existed from ancient times, the men of name. (Gen. 6:2,4)
The benei Elohim were “extraterrestrial” angelic creatures also known as “watchers,” “sons of God,” and “rephiam.” They visited the earth during antiquity and used the daughters of Adam as “fit extensions” or instruments through which they extended themselves into the physical world. They sought to corrupt the bloodline of Adam, to deceive the human race, and to prevent the birth of the Messiah. They represented themselves as “gods,” and their offspring, the Nephilim (“fallen ones”), attempted to exterminate the people of Yahweh.
WHAT ARE “THEY” UP TO NOW?
We know that the rapture of the Church will be accompanied by “…fearful sights and great signs…from heaven” (Lk 21:11). Perhaps Satan is contriving an “alien invasion” to explain the disappearance of so many people at once! If eighty percent of the population believes in the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence, wouldn’t this be a powerful form of deception? And since New Age theology produces a growing belief among some contemporary church groups that flying saucers will be the method “God” uses to retrieve the Christian community during the Rapture, couldn’t the UFO sightings phenomenon play a part in the great deception that will pervade the earth following the Rapture?
We read in 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12:
And then shall that Wicked [one] be revealed….whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders….And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness [emphasis added].
The world authorities remaining to make up the governments of the Antichrist will need an explanation for those taken in the Rapture. People from around the world will be missing! Now imagine: If the Rapture was followed by hundreds of “space craft” landing on earth piloted by creatures who appeared to be advanced humanoids, couldn’t these beings claim to have removed the Christians into some kind of high-tech “rapture,” and simultaneously present their leader (antichrist?) as the messiah? Couldn’t they point to ancient mysteries, megaliths, pyramids, and perhaps the Face on Mars, as proof of an ancient visitation of planet earth?
If evidence of an alien “civilization” is discovered on Mars in 2020, will it shake your faith in Biblical Creation?
By Thomas Horn