It was the trick of the demons to make men believe in gods.
The gods of the Pagans were evil — false idols. “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14). Though man believes he doesn’t believe in gods, the Fallen still seek to deceive. They still yearn for our misplaced worship. And they just walked out of a theatre showing of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Are alien sightings just demonic possessions?
“The demons of the air together with the Antichrist will perform great wonders on earth and in the atmosphere, and men will become more and more perverted. God will take care of His faithful servants and men of goodwill. The Gospel will be preached everywhere, and all peoples of all nations will get to know the truth.” (Secret of Our Lady of La Salette to Melanie [1879 Version])
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The Earth will be covered in darkness, and Hell will be loosed on Earth. The thunder and lightning will cause those who have no faith or trust in my Power, to die of fear. During these three days of terrifying darkness, no windows must be opened, because no one will be able to see the earth and the terrible color it will have in those days of punishment without dying at once…” (Blessed Anna Maria Taigi’s 1880 journal, a vision of the Three Days of Darkness)
Both of these prophecies of the end time predict, and have an eerie focus, that the sky will be a major battleground in the last days. The Blessed Anna Maria Taigi says no windows must be opened when the earth becomes dark, for to look outside, into the sky, will cause death at once.
Both of these excerpts come from writings from the 19th century. Though there are a few purported sightings of unidentified flying objects before the invention of the airplane, by far, by large, the UFO phenomenon didn’t start until the 20th century.
In 1959, the famous psychologist Carl Jung wrote Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. Instead of trying to account for UFOs as a literal reality, he opted to see them instead as a psychic aspect, a fantasy of the unconscious. “If the round shining objects that appear in the sky be regarded as visions, we can hardly avoid interpreting them as archetypal images. They would then be involuntary, automatic projections based on instinct, and as little as any other psychic manifestations or symptoms can they be dismissed as meaningless and merely fortuitous,’ Jung wrote.
There is no doubt that man’s sci-fi imagination, created by books and radio shows like The War of the Worlds, and films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, lead to this newfound superstition.
One must also not underestimate the vast changes to society by the rapid technological progress at the time. The Second World War was a war of surprises. The term foo-fighter was created by pilots to describe the unknown aircraft they were seeing. Doctor Edgar Vinacke was assigned by the U.S. Navy to investigate the effects of a pilot’s vertigo. He writes in The Concept of Aviator’s “Vertigo”: “They are largely dependent upon their own experience, which must supplement and interpret the traditions about “Vertigo” which are passed on to them. When a concept thus grows out of anecdotes cemented together with practical necessity, it is bound to acquire elements of mystery. So far as “vertigo” is concerned, no one really knows more than a small part of the facts, but a great deal of the peril. Since aviators are not skilled observers of human behavior, they usually have only the vaguest understanding of their own feelings. Like other naive persons, therefore, they have simply adopted a term to cover a multitude of otherwise inexplicable events.”
The Roswell Incident occurred on July 8th, 1947. The Air Force reported that they captured a “flying saucer”, which they retrieved after a farmer reported a crash on his ranch. Only a couple of hours later, the Army then announced that it was merely a weather balloon. The public interest in this case soon withered away.
That was until 1978. That was the year Jesse Marcel, an officer who recovered the debris on the ranch, told a journalist that the weather balloon was a cover-up.
Three years earlier, Orthodox monk, Seraphim Rose published Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. It is a masterpiece that engages with the rapidly changing religious aspect of man. In it, Rose tackles the New Age, Hinduism, the Charismatic movement, and the inevitability of Judgement Day.
He also devotes a chapter to UFOs.
“UFOs are but the newest of the mediumistic techniques by which the devil gains initiates into his occult realm. They are a terrible sign that man has become susceptible to demonic influence as never before in the Christian era. In the 19th century it was usually necessary to seek out dark seance rooms in order to enter into contact with demons, but now one need only look into the sky (usually at night, it is true). Mankind has lost what remained of basic Christian understanding up to now, and now passively places itself at the disposal of whatever “powers” may descend from the sky.”
Rose outlines modern man’s science fiction imagination. “The center of the science-fiction universe (in place of the absent God) is man — not usually man as he is now, but man as he will “become” in the future, in accordance with the modern mythology of evolution.”
It is ironic that Humanism, which began circa the time of the Renaissance in the 1300s, finds its final end in looking, projecting beyond the human. Humanists search for the extraterrestrial, in their gnostic hope that they will reveal secret knowledge, or that they will help man escape his mortality and suffering.
Aliens are nearly always described as the final end of evolution: a god.
“Among the characteristics of the “highly-evolved” creatures of the future are: communication by mental telepathy, ability to fly, materialize and dematerialize, transform the appearances of things or create illusionary scenes and creatures by “pure thought,” travel at speeds far beyond any modern technology, to take possession of the bodies of earthmen; and the expounding of a “spiritual” philosophy which is “beyond all religions” and holds promise of a state where “advanced intelligences” will no longer be dependent on matter. All these are the standard practices and claims of sorcerers and demons. A recent history of science fiction notes that “a persistent aspect of the vision of science fiction is the desire to transcend normal experience.”
Let us look at a type of UFO report — the alien abduction.
“There have been a number of cases, seriously reported by seemingly reliable people, of “abductions” by UFO occupants, usually for purposes of “testing.” Almost all evidence of these cases (if we exclude “contactees”) has been obtained by regressive hypnosis; the experience is so traumatic to the witnesses that the conscious mind does not remember it, and it is only some time later that such people agree to be hypnotized in order to explain some mysterious “time loss” in connection with their “Close Encounter” experience — the first part of which they do remember.”
As reported by exorcists, memory loss, occurring during the affliction., is a key aspect of demonic possession. One loses control of the memory.
In a research paper titled “Beyond dissociative disorders: A qualitative study of Polish catholic women reporting demonic possession”, memory loss is one of the most common experiences during a possession. “High absorption,” it says, “in inner experiences and trance-like states could also lead to memory problems. In stressful situations some participants stopped paying attention to what was happening around them and concentrated on bodily sensations or feelings.”
“Some or many of the experiences, it may be, are the result of hoaxes or hallucinations; but it is simply impossible to dismiss all of the many thousands of UFO reports in this way. A great number of modern mediums and their spiritistic phenomena are also fraudulent; but mediumistic spiritism itself, when it is genuine, undeniably produces real “paranormal” phenomena under the action of demons. UFO phenomena, having the same source, are no less real.”
…
“It is a sign of the spiritual crisis of today that modern men, for all their proud “enlightenment” and “wisdom,” are becoming once more [Rose previously recounted stories of saints seemingly visited by UFOs] aware of such experiences — but no longer have the Christian framework with which to explain them. Contemporary UFO researchers, seeking for an explanation of phenomena which have become too noticeable to overlook any longer, have joined today’s psychic researchers in an attempt to formulate a “unified field theory” that will encompass psychic as well as physical phenomena. But such researchers only continue the approach of “enlightened” modern men and trust their scientific observations to give answers in a spiritual realm that cannot be approached “objectively” at all, but only with faith.”
“And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth …” (Revelation 20:7–8)
“ … the “message” of the UFOs is: prepare for Antichrist; the “savior” of the apostate world is coming to rule it. Perhaps he himself will come in the air, in order to complete his impersonation of Christ (Matt. 24:30; Acts 1:11); perhaps only the “visitors from outer space” will land publicly in order to offer “cosmic” worship of their master; perhaps the “fire from heaven” (Apoc. 13:13) will be only a part of the great demonic spectacles of the last times. At any rate, the message for contemporary mankind is: expect deliverance, not from the Christian revelation and faith in an unseen God, but from vehicles in the sky.”
Since the sky is a place for the devil’s deception, a place for his coming “miraces”, Seraphim Rose recounts a quote by Symeon the New Theologian: “the struggler of prayer should quite rarely look into the sky out of fear of the evil spirits in the air who cause many and various deceptions in the air”
“In earlier centuries Christians were very cautious about strange and new phenomena, knowing of the devil’s wiles; but after the modern age of “enlightenment” most people have become merely curious about such things and even pursue them, relegating the devil to a half-imaginary realm”
Rose concludes, after accounting most of the alien phenomenon to demons, that “[the Christian] lives in a world that is clearly fallen, both the earth below and the stars above, all being equally far from the lost paradise for which he is striving. He is part of a suffering mankind all descended from the one Adam, the first man, and all alike in need of the redemption offered freely by the Son of God by His saving Sacrifice on the Cross. He knows that man is not to “evolve” into something “higher,” nor has he any reason to believe that there are “highly evolved” beings on other planets; but he knows well that there are indeed “advanced intelligences” in the universe besides himself: these are of two kinds, and he strives to live so as to dwell with those who serve God (the angels) and avoid contact with the others who have rejected God and strive in their envy and malice to draw man into their misfortune (the demons). He knows that man, out of self-love and weakness, is easily inclined to follow error and believe in “fairy tales” that promise contact with a “higher state” or “higher beings” without the struggle of Christian life — in fact, precisely as an escape from the struggle of Christian life. He distrusts his own ability to see through the deceptions of the demons, and therefore clings all the more firmly to the Scriptural and Patristic guidelines which the Church of Christ provides for his life.”
Do not put it past the demons to decieve humanity in such a way as appealing to their fantasies. They once appealed to our ancestors in Greece. The 2nd century Christian Justin Martyr once wrote about the Greek gods in his First Apology:
“For the truth shall be spoken; since of old these evil demons, effecting apparitions of themselves, both defiled women and corrupted boys, and showed such fearful sights to men, that those who did not use their reason in judging of the actions that were done, were struck with terror; and being carried away by fear, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods, and gave to each the name which each of the demons chose for himself. And when Socrates endeavoured, by true reason and examination, to bring these things to light, and deliver men from the demons, then the demons themselves, by means of men who rejoiced in iniquity, compassed his death, as an atheist and a profane person, on the charge that “he was introducing new divinities;” and in our case they display a similar activity. For not only among the Greeks did reason (Logos) prevail to condemn these things through Socrates, but also among the Barbarians were they condemned by Reason (or the Word, the Logos) Himself, who took shape, and became man, and was called Jesus Christ; and in obedience to Him, we not only deny that they who did such things as these are gods, but assert that they are wicked and impious demons, whose actions will not bear comparison with those even of men desirous of virtue.
Justin also tells an amazing tale of the demons, who were unable to predict Christ, but nonetheless having some intuition about who He would be from hearing the prophets, attempted to put forward their own god, Bacchus, the god of the grape (wine), after hearing from Mosesthat the Messiah would wash “His robe in the blood of the grape.” Martyr also examines the other gods (demonic idols) by this measure.
“But those who hand down the myths which the poets have made, adduce no proof to the youths who learn them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all nations where they [the demons] heard the prophets foretelling that Christ would specially be believed in; but that in hearing what was said by the prophets they did not accurately understand it, but imitated what was said of our Christ, like men who are in error, we will make plain. The prophet Moses, then, Was, as we have already said, older than all writers; and by him, as we have also said before, it was thus predicted: “There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until He come for whom it is reserved; and He shall be the desire of the Gentiles, binding His foal to the vine, washing His robe in the blood of the grape.” The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words, said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and gave out that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they number wine [or, the ass] among his mysteries; and they taught that, having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven. And because in the prophecy of Moses it had not been expressly intimated whether He who was to come was the Son of God, and whether He would, riding on the foal, remain on earth or ascend into heaven, and because the name of “foal” could mean either the foal of an ass or the foal of a horse, they, not knowing whether He who was foretold would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of His coming, nor whether He was the Son of God, as we said above, or of man, gave out that Bellerophon, a man born of man, himself ascended to heaven on his horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said by the other prophet Isaiah, that He should be born of a virgin, and by His own means ascend into heaven, they pretended that Perseus was spoken of. And when they knew what was said, as has been cited above, in the prophecies written aforetime, “Strong as a giant to run his course,” they said that Hercules was strong, and had journeyed over the whole earth. And when, again, they learned that it had been foretold that He should heal every sickness, and raise the dead, they produced Aesculapius.”
To conclude, prepare yourself for the end times. Your end-time could come today. Stay away from mortal sin. Stay in a state of grace. Pray for God’s mercy, so that you do not fall for the deception of demons.
The end times will certainly see many “miracles.”
“And except those days had been shortened, no flesh would have been saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” (Matthew 24:22)
Michael Snellen publishes Catholicism for the Modern World
