Stephen Hawking Gives Bizarre Warning About Alien Contact
Famed physicist Stephen Hawking warned the world that if aliens come calling, we should be wary of answering back.
“Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus—that didn’t turn out so well,” Hawking said in a new video.
Though the alien quip may be an easy takeaway, Hawking’s primary focus was to convince the world that space is humanity’s only option for survival.
“I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster,” Hawking says, giving the examples of a sudden nuclear war or a genetically engineered virus.
“I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space. We need to inspire the next generation to become engaged in space and in science in general, to ask questions: What will we find when we go to space? Is there alien life, or are we alone? What will a sunset on Mars look like?”
Biblically, most mentions of space deal with praising the Creator and understanding the depth of His love for us.
According to Answers in Genesis:
The Bible indicates in several places that the universe has been “stretched out” or expanded. For example, Isaiah 40:22 teaches that God stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. This would suggest that the universe has actually increased in size since its creation. God is stretching it out, causing it to expand.
Now, this verse must have seemed very strange when it was first written. The universe certainly doesn’t look as if it is expanding. After all, if you look at the night sky tonight, it will appear about the same size as it did the previous night, and the night before that.
In fact, secular scientists once believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging. The idea of an expanding universe would have been considered nonsense to most scientists of the past. So it must have been tempting for Christians to reject what the Bible teaches about the expansion of the universe.
I wonder if any Christians tried to “reinterpret” Isaiah 40:22 to read it in an unnatural way so that they wouldn’t have to believe in an expanding universe. When the secular world believes one thing and the Bible teaches another, it is always tempting to think that God got the details wrong. But God is never wrong.
Most astronomers today believe that the universe is indeed expanding. In the 1920s, astronomers discovered that virtually all clusters of galaxies appear to be moving away from all other clusters; this indicates that the entire universe is expanding.
You can think of this like points on a balloon. As the balloon is inflated, all the points move farther away from each other. If the entire universe was being stretched out, the galaxies would all be moving away; and that is what they actually appear to be doing.
It is fascinating that the Bible recorded the idea of an expanding universe thousands of years before secular science came to accept the idea.
Though the universe may be expanding, that does not mean humanity is meant to explore and conquer space.
When Christ himself talks about the end times, He deals more specifically with what Hawking says will destroy the Earth.
“So when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains,” Jesus says.
“Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. Let him who is in the field not return to take his clothes. Woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse in those days! Pray that your escape will not be in the winter or on the Sabbath. For then will be great tribulation, such as has not happened since the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be.”
