An article this week in the Jerusalem Post caught my eye, telling as it did a story about Uri Geller, a self-described “psychic” who has claimed at various times during his 40 year career in entertainment to have telekinetic powers, to be in communication with extraterrestrial computers and to have been deposited on earth by a spaceship which traveled 53,000 light years for the purpose. Geller, who was born in Tel Aviv two years before the foundation of the State and was wounded while fighting with the IDF Paratrooper Brigade in the 1967 Six-Day War, is one of Israel’s more well-known international celebrities that Christian supporters of Israel have probably never heard of, but stories about him tend to be interesting and/or amusing.
The story in this week’s JPost was about his theory regarding the recent behavior of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which was launched by NASA in 1977, recently left the outer boundary of our solar system and, defying all the expectations that the scientists and engineers who designed and built it had, is still broadcasting radio signals which can be picked up here on earth. Since it left the solar system, the signals it’s been sending back have changed, but according to the NASA scientists quoted in the JPost article, there’s nothing mysterious about the change in signals. They said that it is to be expected that since Voyager 1 left the solar system, it is being subjected to different levels of radioactivity than what exists inside the solar system. This, and perhaps other changes in the physical conditions outside the solar systems, would explain the difference in what the probe is broadcasting back to earth.
But Uri Geller isn’t buying that. His theory about what’s going on is that an alien species is using the probe to attempt to send messages back to earth, but we can’t understand the messages because, as he says in the article, the aliens “are so advanced that they can easily create these glitches and send messages that are difficult for NASA to decipher.”
The article doesn’t say if anyone has asked Geller why aliens would purposefully send a message that us earthlings would find difficult to decipher, but it does go on to explain that there are several radio transmissions which have been picked up here on earth that originated out there in the cosmos somewhere and which are believed by tens of millions of people all over the world as being attempts by aliens to communicate with us.
This article is just one of many news reports from around the world indicating a growing interest in the subject of aliens and UFOs. These subjects have long been discussed mostly on the fringes of society, with TV shows like “X-Files” and several movies presenting it as entertainment while celebrities like Geller, for whom hints of eccentricity are part of the “act” that they present to the public, make dippy sounding claims about aliens and such to attract attention/revenue to themselves.
But paranormal phenomena in general and so-called “alien abductions” and UFOs in particular have become more of a mainstream topic of late, with even the US Congress recently holding hearings regarding reports of contact with UFOs, mostly by military personnel and civilian airline pilots.
All of this raises serious and somewhat disturbing questions for Believers, but also some opportunities.
Although the eccentric and nonsensical ravings of an attention-starved celebrity like Uri Geller are easy to dismiss, the rising number of people who are giving serious attention to these issues is yet another indication of the growing levels of demonic activity and deception in this world as we draw close to the end of the Age. On the other hand, the fact that a growing number of people are seeking explanations for things they can see and/or sense are going on in the physical world but which they can’t discern a natural and/or cognitively rational explanation for, means that they are more likely to be open to discuss subjects that they might have been less open to in the past.
That means, for the first time in the lives of many people, being willing to discuss the Gospel of the Lord God Jesus Christ. That’s the opportunity that is presented to us by the growing popularity of all this stuff my late mother would have called “looney toon nonsense.” It’s probably not the opportunity that most of us would have wanted to utilize, but no one ever picks the season of history they live in or the opportunities that present themselves in a given season of history.
Therefore, in my humble opinion, Believers should try to take advantage of the opportunity this phase we’re going through offers us to have discussions with people we know who have never given much thought to “what’s out there” to share the Gospel with them. It might be the only opening some people ever give us.
That’s what I’ve got for you this week brothers and sisters. I hope it blessed someone.