Jesus Christ, the Real Extra-Terrestrial

Out in the desert of Arizona, there sits an ultra modern, gleaming glass structure. It looks like a giant spaceship from another galaxy that has just landed. It is called Biosphere 2, and it is the mother of all science projects.

Biosphere 2 was built about six years ago. It covers three acres and cost over $100 million to build. It was designed to teach us more about life on this planet by creating a completely self-contained and self-sustaining environment that was sealed off from the outside world.

No air, no water, no food, no waste products were to be exchanged with the outside world. All the energy, the food, the oxygen, and so forth would be produced within the system. They planted more than 3,000 different species of plants in order to grow food and recycle carbon dioxide. All the waste products would be recycled. Biosphere 2 was to be a system that scientists call a closed loop.

So it was that on September 26, 1991 eight volunteers, four men and four women, stepped into the glass dome and sealed the door behind them. This was going to be their home for the next two years.

It was thought that Biosphere 2 would simulate a manned space flight to a distant planet. Such a journey would take years, and a crew of astronauts would have to take everything they needed along with them. They would be operating in a completely closed system—a closed loop just like Biosphere 2.

Now as it turns out, the Biosphere project was something of a failure. Even though scientists learned a lot from it, it didn’t really accomplish what it set out to. It wasn’t really a closed system. Scientists discovered that there was a significant amount of atmosphere leaking out through the joints in the glass panels.

And the air quality inside the dome gradually began to deteriorate to the point where they had to pump more fresh air in. One of the eight volunteers developed some medical problems and had to be taken out. The food they had to eat was lousy and they were all sick of it.

But the most interesting thing, from my point of view, was what happened to the people. These eight volunteers were all highly motivated individuals who were willing to give two whole years of their lives to living exclusively in the dome. Before they entered, they were enthusiastic about working together as a team. But once they got in there, and the novelty wore off, they began to have some interpersonal problems. There were arguments and disagreements. Turf battles. Bitterness and resentment began to build. Cliques began to form. Some of the participants even stopped talking to some of the others.

All of which is very revealing. Because it shows that not only are there scientific challenges involved in building a closed system that can sustain human life, there are even greater psychological and spiritual challenges involved in getting those human beings to live together in peace and harmony.

But of course, that’s what human history has already taught us. Human beings have been living on planet Earth from time immemorial. And although during that time we have gained a great deal of knowledge about our environment—about how this closed system we live in seems to work—we have not been able to improve our relationships with each other to any significant degree.

You only have to read history to realize that. The first writings we know of came from the land of Sumer in Mesopotamia, around the year 4,000 BC. Little clay tablets inscribed with funny wedge-shaped markings. What do they tell us? They tell us about wars, and conflict, bloodshed and slavery. They tell us about people not getting along together.

How much different are things now, 6,000 years later? Do the names Bosnia, or Rwanda ring any bells?

Times really haven’t changed here on planet Earth. Although we live in a beautifully intricate, delicately balanced ecological system, we simply can’t seem to get along with our neighbors.

There’s trouble in Paradise. There is an demon in the loop. In the words of the cartoon character Pogo, “We’ve found the enemy… and it is us.”

One of the recurring themes of great literature down through the ages is that there must be an answer to this problem, and that answer must come from somewhere outside the loop.

You read Greek mythology, and it tells you about superhuman gods who came to earth from their home on Mount Olympus. You watch movies like Cocoon, or E.T., or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and you keep running into this idea that somewhere, outside the loop, there’s somebody who has an answer for the problems of mankind.

On the island of Puerto Rico, in a place called Arecibo, there is a large valley shaped like a bowl. This valley is 18 acres in area. It has been completely paved over and lined with radar-reflecting aluminum panels. Strung by wires over the valley, from one rim to the other, are sophisticated radio receivers. This valley has been made into a huge dish antenna, pointing to the heavens; the largest radio telescope in the world.

This telescope, which is funded by the United States government, is searching the electro-magnetic spectrum of deep space for evidence of intelligent life on other worlds. Are there radio signals out there which would indicate that somebody is talking to us? And if they are talking to us, what are they saying? Do they have a message for us? Could they possibly have the answer that will help us to defeat this evil in ourselves?

The irony of all this is that one of the most ancient and revered documents in human history has already revealed the answer. The Bible states in no uncertain terms that Yes, indeed, planet Earth has been visited by intelligent life from another world.

A messenger has come from outside the loop. An intelligent being came from beyond the solar system, from beyond the galaxies, from beyond the quasars, which are the most distant objects we know of in the universe. He came from beyond the universe itself. He came to planet earth and he brought us the answer.

But we didn’t recognize him. Because he didn’t come in a spaceship. He didn’t come down in a blaze of flashing lights, riding a Chariot of the Gods. He didn’t come wielding a light sabre; a conquering Jedi knight who came in the name of the Force. He didn’t land at Edwards Air Force Base or Cape Canaveral.

No, he came quietly to a pre-industrial, pre-scientific world. To a backward country of farmers and fishermen and shepherds. He came quietly and without any fanfare. He came as a baby.

Have you ever stopped to realize that Jesus was here on earth before he was born? He arrived on planet Earth nine months before his birthday. He was here all that time in his mother’s womb—the product of divine conception. He grew from a single cell to an embryo to a fetus, just like you and I did.

But he was no ordinary unborn child. He had a heavenly father and an earthly mother. His father lived beyond the stars. His mother, a humble Jewish girl, lived in Nazareth.

The story of the Virgin Birth is such an unlikely story. If you or I were going to make up a myth about a man who came from heaven to visit planet Earth, we would certainly not begin that story by having this individual born of a virgin. I mean, who would believe that? We would probably have him come a more conventional way, a more believable way, like in a spaceship, or through a time warp, or something.

Yet the Bible, seriously and reverently, records the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin. It’s one of those things that is so unlikely that it has the ring of truth. Nobody would make this up. Christianity is a religion you could not have guessed.

So Jesus was both human and divine. He was an extra-terrestrial, but he wasn’t an extra-terrestrial. He came into this world the same way we all did. He wasn’t an alien. He was a man, a bona fide human being, of flesh and blood and personality and feelings. But he was a human being who didn’t come from inside the loop. And that’s the key.

One day a father and his son were walking though the woods. Along the path was an anthill. The ants had diligently built up this little mound by taking individual grains of sand and placing them neatly around the entrance. They were in the process of going about their business, entering and leaving the anthill. But the boy, not looking, scuffed over the anthill with his shoe.

Immediately, the anthill became the scene of pandemonium. The ants thought that they were being invaded, so they put their disaster-preparedness program into action. The worker ants hurried around inside, gathering up the eggs to escape through a back door. The soldier ants rushed to the entrance of the destroyed anthill to fight the invader. The Secret Service ants closed ranks around the queen and hustled her toward an emergency exit.

The little boy and his father looked on, fascinated by all this frantic activity. And the little boy said, “I wish I could tell them that it was just an accident and they’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The father thought for a moment and said, “Son, if you wanted to get a message to those ants, there’s only one way you could do it. You’d have to become an ant yourself and go down there and tell them the truth yourself.”

That’s what Jesus did when he came here to earth as a man. He came here to communicate with us in terms that we could understand. He shared in our humanity, he came into the loop, so to speak. And he came into the loop with an important message from God.

When Jesus was born that first Christmas 2,000 years ago, he himself was the answer to the problem of our evil. But so many people have misunderstood that. Let me see if I can illustrate it for you.

Everyone probably spends Christmas morning the same way. You unwrap your presents. But how do you spend Christmas afternoon? Well, if you’re like me and if you have kids, you probably spend Christmas afternoon assembling the toys that your kids opened that morning.

A lot of toys come in boxes that have those big words printed on the side - words that strike fear and dread into every father’s heart - SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. That’s why, on Christmas afternoon, you find yourself sweating over a 10 page book of detailed instructions that was written in English by some technician who lives in Taiwan.

A lot of people think that Christianity is something like that. They believe that Jesus came to give us a gift, but it’s a gift that requires some assembly. It’s free, but it requires a lot of our effort to get it together and get it to work properly. And because they think of it like that, they miss out on it entirely.

Have you ever stood and watched a salesman demonstrate the latest work-saving kitchen gadget? You see these demonstrations at the Allentown Fair.

Let’s say that there’s a salesman up there with some gizmo called a Veg-O-Matic. He shows you how the Veg-O-Matic is going to absolutely revolutionize your kitchen. You can slice with it. You can dice with it. You can even use it to cut julienne fries.

And this guy always has a smooth presentation with a little humor mixed in. He cuts up oranges, and he slices tomatoes with blinding speed. And he even tells jokes while he’s doing it. And he finishes up his presentation by telling you that if you buy the Veg-O-Matic today, he’ll throw in a set of steak knives for free.

So you bite. You buy a Veg-O-Matic. You take it home with visions of julienne potatoes dancing in your head. And you know what happens, don’t you? In your hands, that stupid thing doesn’t work very well at all. About all that you end up julienning are your finger tips! So you throw your Veg-O-Matic in the cupboard where it just gathers dust.

A lot of people have the same experience with Christianity. But I want you to know that this is not why Jesus came into the loop. This isn’t the answer that he brought us. Jesus did not come to sell us a product called Christianity that would enhance our lives if we could figure out how to use it properly. He did not come to give us an interesting toy that would fascinate us if only we could put it together right.

He came here to live his life in us. He didn’t come here to give us religion, and then leave. He’s here today because he came to stay. He came from outside the loop, but now he’s in the loop. And he’s committed to staying here. He’s right alongside of us, and he wants to live in us. And the way that that happens is if we invite him in.

And when we do invite him in, he starts working on that problem we’ve got - that problem of evil. First of all, he takes away the ultimate consequences of the problem. He does that right away; he gives us eternal life. Next, he goes to work on the causes of the problem of evil, namely, our own selfish pride. And he starts working on our character, and weaning us away from our addictive dependence on self and teaching us how to depend on Him. He starts teaching us how to really live.

Almost exactly fifty-four years ago, on Dec. 8, 1941, the United States entered the Second World War. What many Americans don’t realize is that the United States was entering a war that had already been going on for over two years, fought by countries like Great Britain, Australia, and Canada.

A year and a half before Pearl Harbor, Hitler had already invaded and overrun Poland, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway. These countries had sunk into a dark night of Nazi terror. The lights went out all over Europe.

But during those dismal years, a resistance movement began to grow. Rather than accepting the rule of the Nazis in their homeland, small groups of freedom fighters banded together to do whatever they could to harass the enemy. Winston Churchill got on Radio Free Europe and encouraged them—he told them to set Europe ablaze.

These little groups of courageous men and women met together at night, after curfew, at risk of their very lives. Many of them were caught, tortured, and executed. They listened to the BBC on radio sets that were forbidden by the Gestapo. They received coded instructions from the Allies on these broadcasts, telling them, perhaps, to find out how many troops were in a certain region, or when a particular U-boat left port. When Allied airmen were shot down over Europe, these freedom fighters hid them and protected them from capture when they could.

As the years of the war dragged on, their number grew. Even as the enemy was tightening his grip of terror on the continent of Europe, the resistance movement was gaining strength. The freedom fighters were looking forward to the day when the Allied armies would invade their continent and throw out the Nazis, and they were actively working to hasten that day.

They were living in Europe, which was very much a closed system, but their hearts and their hopes were focused outside of Europe, from whence their deliverance would come.

There was a limit to how much information could be passed over the radio between England and occupied Europe. There were times when the best way, indeed the only way, to contact the resistance movement was in a face to face encounter. And to do that, you had to send in somebody from outside the loop.

So every now and then, and especially as D-Day grew closer, the Allies would drop a special agent into Europe. Flying in ultra-quiet aircraft, these special agents would parachute into France. They were disguised as French civilians. They spoke French fluently. They had all their French identity papers. They were not Frenchmen, but they became Frenchmen in order to help the French.

These agents carried special communications to the resistance movement. They would teach them to gather information for Allied intelligence. They would show them how to sabotage the enemy more effectively, perhaps how to lay a satchel charge on a bridge, or how to booby trap a railway switch. They were helping them to prepare for the great invasion that was coming that would finally bring them freedom.

Do you see the spiritual parallels? Here we are on planet Earth, living in a closed system which the enemy, for the time being, has control over. Where is our help going to come from? Is it going to come from inside the system? No. We’ve been looking here for thousands of years and haven’t found the answer.

Our only hope is if somebody from outside the system, outside the loop, could come in and help us, teach us what we need to know, and stay here and show us how to do it. And that is precisely what Jesus Christ did. He came from outside the loop and became one of us.

And he’s still here today, living in the lives of those who’ve trusted him. He wants to help you get ready for the great invasion that is coming, when the enemy is going to be thrown off this planet and his long reign of evil is going to come to an end.

Are you a freedom fighter? Have you joined the resistance? That little baby that was born 2,000 years ago wants you.