The Day Evangelical Christianity Stood Still

 
 the original film The Day the Earth Stood Still,
1951, 20th century fox, Directed Robert wise.


Some foolishness is being perpetrated upon the world of Christianity that is so nutso that I genuinely think the people doing it are insane. I first learned about it while a friend was taking me to eat for my birthday. She began telling me about a startling video done by a group of fundamentalists who claim that the true dirty secret behind the Catholic chruch is a flying saucer cult that secretly worships a space alien anti-Christ who will soon emerge on the scene as the world dictator and thus fulfill the prophesies in the book of revelation, sort of. At first I couldn't get what she was saying, then it dawned upon me. She actually thinks that the Catholic chruch is a secret flying saucer cult that believes in a messiah alien. As I began to express a certain amount of incredulity (certain extracts from the Aqualine digestive process were referenced). She assured me that had to be true becasue "they are Christian men." Who are they "they are Christian men." What do they know about the Catholic church. "They must be right they are Christian mean." I wrote this off as the kookie machinations of a woman who once answered a question about which ocean a certain town in Costa Richa was situated upon by saying "I don't know what all those oceans are doing." Then I find out from a firend that his borhter is into this stuff and it's getting big.

I feel so betrayed. After all these years of defending the gospel form atheists and trying to get people to look at the most rational side of Christianity they pull this! I feel like a parent who has taken his kid to Harvard to try and get him in, while convincing the dean that the kid is worthy to go there behind my back the kid is intimating a chimp and doing three stooges sounds. But first things first, what is this about? A blog called Before it's News, ran a stroy on March 2, 2013, "The Vatican's secret Plan for the Arrival of an Alien God."

Thomas Horn is an internationally recognized lecturer, radio host and bestselling author of several books including his newest books, Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here. He returns to Red Ice to discuss the recent abdication of Pope Benedict the 16th and the prophecy of the final pope, “Peter the Roman,” whose reign would end in the destruction of Rome. The pope of lists from St. Malachy’s heralds the beginning of “great apostasy” followed by “great tribulation” sets the stage for the imminent unfolding of apocalyptic events. According to this prophecy, the next pope will be a false prophet who leads the world’s religious communities into embracing a political leader known as Antichrist.

Of cousre it's possible that this Tom Horn is a Christian man, in which he must be right. But at this point it could still just be a group of crack pots with a wild theory (you think?). Yet there are others sounding the alarm. 

An anguished tortured website called "Now the End Begins" bellows the warning "the also shall roar out of Zion." "For Generations the Bible has warned of the coming end of days...you are living in that time."

The Pope Welcomes Space Aliens. "Highly evolved extra terrestrial life forms may be living in space and would be welcomed into the (Catholic) church - "no matter how many tentacles" Senior Vatican scientist, Brother Guy Consolmagno, speaking to the British Science Festival, said....

According to an article by Erik Van Datiken in the "Weekly World News," two dozen Roman Catholic Priests took a top secret program to train them to be ready to be missionaries in outer space, intensive training in approaches and techniques to be used in spreading the gospel in space. The article further stated that they are ready to go at a moment's notice when ordered by Pope Benedict XV1. However, the article did not address how they would get to the other worlds to spread the gospel. The "Weekly World News" first broke the story in 2004 that the priests were going to Mars and beyond and that the Vatican University's Alfonse Academy contained a secret Unidentified Flying Objects section. "This is a truly staggering development, because for the first time the Church is recognizing that human beings are not the only intelligent creatures in the universe," theology professor Dr. Rudolph Koller told reporters in Salzburg, Austria."

Fourwinds10.com
April 23, 2013
The Vatican's secret plan
for the arrival of an alien god
900-year-old Catholic prophesy 

Pope Benedict XVI has resigned as pope, just as the authors predicted he would in their 2012 bestseller “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here.” Now Thomas Horn and Cris Putnam break the greatest story of our time and expose the elitists and intellectuals who are planning to assimilate mankind under a coming 'savior,' one whom the prophet Daniel foresaw as "an alien god."

 
Needless to say there's a youtube video.

This may require a keen detective's mind, does it seem soemthing might be amiss here? I mean first of all, the quote doesn't actually say "we are ally looking for the alien messiah to come," It says life forms may be living in space and would be welcomed in the catholic chruch. What are the Catholics really saying? Are there any examples of Catholics trying to proselytize for the alien messiah? Probably this is all based upon a conference in which some Catholic Bishops discussed hypothetically how they would respond to alien life it were discovered. Catholic News Service issued a report about a "Vatican Sponsored Meeting Discusses Chances of Extra Terrestrial life,." by Carol Glatz, this was way back in 2009.

 It seems obvious the reality is that the Catholic chruch has some elements that are more forward thinking than a lot protestants and some fundamentalists are threatened by this. They are just discussing possibilities and hypothetical, dangle that in front of rabidly anti-catholic protestants and it speaks to them of something paranoid and ugly. They are threatened by the unknown. I'm threatened too. This stuff does make me feel like the native Americans must have felt the first time they heard reports of strange men in big wooden things floating in the ocean. That hardly equates to the book of Revelation. I'm not threatened to the point of concocting insane theories. On the other hand it's more important to ask why are there these segments of the chruch that are so alarmed by things that they fly off the handle this way? My friend remarked about his brother that for him Christianity has just become the rapture, nothing more. His politics are extremely right wing, he's upset about the elections.

I have been observing for several years now that evangelicals were forgetting the gospel. They have spend so long battling the accouterments of modern world and reflecting politics of by gone centuries so far back it echos faint traces of waving the bloody shirt (a controversy from right after the civil war). The xenophobic reaction to immigration, nostalgia for the old days (pre civil war south) spawned red scares and anti-communism. Fear of evolution and Darwin led to doctrines of inerrancy of the Bible, and back reading into history of position that where never there (no Church father ever talked about the five doctrines of evangelicalism). In  latter times this all gave way to republican politics, support for Reagan, the vilification of Democratic candidates. Losing the last election was so traumatic for them because they came to be tried to republican politics they were so sure that after a first term Obama would never be accepted.

The Gospel just becomes the escape clause. I'm getting out of this made house of a world. All the signs of the times point to my escape. Sings of the time never go anywhere. Everyone in every age sees them. By the way, the thing about priests going to do evangelism on another planet was literally out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," which is laden with Christian themes and symbols. (IMDb on Close Encoutners). In that film there's a scene where a long line of government people are ready to go take their place on the alien ship as hostage exchange, and a religoius figure, minister or priest lectures them on God being "out there." That's stragnely similar to the claim above that Priests have already been assigned to travel to other planets.It all just sinks into the most mundane conflict, redemption becomes escape, loving the enemy becomes hatred or pity but issues forth in demonizing the enemy. What does it mean psychologically to say our enemies have began to worship beings that aren't human. Of cousre some of those source term them "lizard aliens." So they lizard men. This strikes me as a deep demonizing tendency. They have come to see Catholics and liberals and those whom they blame for not getting their way as so inhuman that they are alien lizard men worshipers. Things are so far gone at that point that I don't know how they can be brought back, except that God specializes in the impossible.

I grew up with that kind of fear and hatred of Catholics. They were evil, their chruch was the secret empire of satan. Maybe it was a hold over from the Reformation when Protestants and Catholics were killing each other. Maybe it was living the south where everyone was an enemy if they weren't from around our neck of the woods. Maybe southern racism played a role too becuase those dark swarthy "Italians" and other such brown type people were Catholics. We had documents in our home that purported to be secret archives liberated from the Vatican and allege most preposterous BS about Catholicism. That kind of sectarian paranoia was and is going away. There was a time when Presbyterians and Baptists would have nothing to do with each other and Methodists and Calvinists were pronouncing each other to be evil. The chruch has come a long way since those days. The little group of Church of Christ half way house people with whom I worshiped when I first got saved wound up letting a Spanish methodist chruch share their building for free. That Spanish group keeps them supplied with the best Mexican cooking north of the Rio Grande. The Charismatic movement brought down all such walls. Catholics and protestants and even Orthodox marched together in the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and charismatic movement. It was right wing politics that coopted all of that with Regan. Right wing is always the paranoid wing.

My friend kept pressing me to take an interest in the video I told her that's not what I understand Christianity to be about. What did Jesus say about how people know we are his followers. I began to sing a little song the charismatics used to sing "they know we are Christians by our love." My sister is super sentimental about the old Charismatic movement. I sensed she was just about to star singing and I said "they know we are Christians because we condemn the bad guys without UFO videos?" I'm not sure if she really gets it but she quit pestering me about the video.

 
 Klatoo Nicto Barta
would you buy a used space ship from this Messiah?

IMBd The Day the Earth Stood Still
Michael Rennie, Patricia Neil