Does the Bible tell us if there is life on other planets?
This was Pastor Zill’s response to the inaugural “Ask Me Anything” question during the Fall 2024.
The Bible does not say if there is life on other planets.
The Bible does say that God created the heavens and the earth and put man on it and that it only became “very good” when He did create man. Gen 1:30: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Man was clearly the crown of God’s creation.
The Bible is clear that all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) and that all creation, though not sinful, groans until His return (Rom. 8:22)
The Bible is a book of salvation. John 20:31: “These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” It is not meant to be an encyclopedia or manual of everything we would like to know. Its primary objective is the salvation of sinners.
The Bible’s silence on the subject does not mean that the earth is the only place with life on it, but it also doesn’t mean that there is life out there, either.
Speculation never promises a safe landing spot regarding truth. There are some things for which we simply are not given answers.
Where God has not disclosed something, we are certainly safer, by default, to stick with what we do know, rather than count on what we do not know, or God forbid, put our faith in that which is contrary to what He has told us.
The first goal in doing theology is to confess what God “has” said, and otherwise do no harm concerning what He has not spoken to, or regarding things that appear unclear.
Having said that, based on what we do know about God and what He has disclosed to us about who He is, I do find the following views compelling:
If there is life on other planets with a soul, God would have likely told us.
If there is human life on other planets, then there would be sinners in need of salvation there too because all creation was affected by the Fall (Gen 3) and is groaning under the weight of sin (Rom. 8:22).
If there is life on other planets that does not have a soul, that changes nothing other than prove that we aren’t as smart as we think we are.
While finding life on other planets is a curiosity, it is certainly of much more interest to those who believe in evolution rather than we who confess that God created what God has told us, namely that He created life on earth ex nihilo, “out of nothing.” It did not evolve spontaneously and still doesn’t.
I do not deny that there have been manifestations of UFO’s, and that people have claimed to have seen them and maybe even been abducted by those associated with them. But the issue is not whether these things occur, but what they are.
Jesus ascended through a cloud (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-11). But what if Bedouin nomads on their camels in the desert saw this from a distance and said to one another, “Look, what is that? and “Uh, I don’t know. It must be a UFO.” Further, what if other observers only saw two angels from their vantage point and thought that they were some sort of alien life forms? Just because we don’t know what something is, it doesn’t mean that there is not someone else that does.
It is certainly possible that there are others (govt., military, etc.) who do know the answers to certain things but for whatever reason, good or bad, they have chosen to not disclose that information to everyone.
A lot of UFO phenomena does appear to be occultic in origin, which should not surprise us either as we know the devil and his evil angels are capable of deception in relation to God’s creation. After all, the devil’s great temptation to Eve was to get her to doubt God and His Word (Gen 3:1-6).