Kerby Anderson presents a compelling argument for the view that George Washington was a devoted Christian rather than a deist. He points to Washington’s insistence on the importance of services for his soldiers, his personal church attendance, his prayer life and his commitment to the spiritual upbringing of his godchildren.

Background

What was George Washington’s view of religion and in particular of Christianity? The historical perspective used to be that Washington was a Christian and orthodox in most of his beliefs. But the modern view has been that he was a either a lukewarm Anglican or more likely a Deist.

I want to look at some new research that argues for the traditional view and against the modern view of George Washington’s religion. One book is Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of our Country.{1} It is written by Michael Novak (American Enterprise Institute and winner of the Templeton Award) and Jana Novak. Another book, written by Peter Lillback with Jerry Newcombe, is George Washington’s Sacred Fire.{2}

George Washington was born into a Virginia family of moderate wealth and was exposed to various religious activities: lessons in religion, regular prayer, Sunday school attendance, and reverence for God. His mother had a daily ritual of retiring with a book of religious readings.

By the time he was a teenager, Washington had already assumed serious responsibilities as a professional surveyor and then as a major in the Virginia militia. His adventures in the wild lands gave him invaluable lessons about the military, Indians, and the British. Years later in a speech to the Delaware chiefs, Washington said, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.”{3}

He studied the Bible as well as the writings of ancient heroes. The busts and portraits at Mount Vernon demonstrate this. There are busts of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden, and Frederick II of Prussia. In the dining room are portraits of the Virgin Mary and St. John.

Washington’s own stepgranddaughter “Nelly” Custis saw him as a religious man. She wrote this to one of Washington’s early biographers:

It was his custom to retire to his library at nine or ten o’clock, where he remained an hour before he went to his chamber. He always rose before the sun, and remained in his library until called to breakfast. I never witnessed his private devotions. I never inquired about them. I should have thought it the greatest heresy to doubt his firm belief in Christianity. His life, his writings, prove that he was a Christian. He was not one of those who act or pray, “that they may be seen of men.” He communed with his God in secret.{4}

In what follows we will look at the evidence for George Washington’s faith as it surfaced in his letters and actions as general and president.

Deism vs. Christianity

Pick up a book about George Washington written during the nineteenth century, and you will probably see that he is described as being a Christian. However, if you pick up a book written in the last seventy years, it will describe him as a Deist. Why the change?

The turning point seems to be a study by historian Paul F. Boller, Jr. entitled George Washington and Religion. His conclusion can be summarized in a single sentence: To the “unbiased observer” George Washington appears as a Deist, not a devout Christian.{5} Most historians since Boller accepted this idea and were less likely to assert that Washington was a Christian.

What do we mean by “Deism”? Deism is the belief that God is merely a watchmaker God who started the universe but is not involved in the affairs of humans and human history. One definition of Deism is that “There is no special providence; no miracles or other divine interventions intrude upon the lawful natural order.”{6}

Was George Washington a Deist? He was not. It is worth noting that even historian Paul Boller admitted that religion was important to Washington as a leader. Boller writes, “he saw to it that divine services were performed by the chaplains as regularly as possible on the Sabbath for the soldiers under his command.”{7} We might reasonably ask, Why would chaplains be important to a Deist?

Boller even admits there are testimonials of Washington’s church attendance. This is important since many historians even go further than Boller and assert that Washington did not even attend church as a mature adult.

Michael Novak admits that some of the names Washington often used for God sound Deist, but that does not mean that he was a Deist. In fact, his prayers for God’s action were just the opposite of what you might hear from a Deist. Washington believed God favored the cause of liberty and should be beseeched to “interpose” his action on behalf of the Americans. He called for public thanksgiving for the many ways in which Americans experienced God’s hand in key events in our history.

Washington used more than eighty terms to refer to God, among them: Almighty God, Creator, Divine Goodness, Father of all mercies, and Lord of Hosts. The most common term he used in his writings and speeches was “Providence.” When he did so, he used the masculine personal pronoun “he.” Washington never refers directly to God as an “it,” as he does occasionally with Providence. God is personal.{8)

If we look at the history of the eighteenth century, there were many with orthodox religious beliefs who sometimes used the philosophical language of the enlightenment. Washington was a Christian, even though he often used terms for God associated with Deists.

A Religious Nation Goes to War

There has been some dispute about how religious America was during the Revolutionary War. There was a shortage of churches and clergy (especially along the paths of westward migration). But we should also remember that this War of Independence followed the First Great Awakening.

At the first meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia (September 1774), the first motion from the floor was for prayer to seek guidance from God. But there was resistance, not because of the prayer, but because of the theological disagreements among the members (Anabaptist, Quakers, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians). Sam Adams settled the dispute by saying he was no bigot and could pray along with any minister as long as he was a patriot.{9} I have in my office a picture of a painting showing George Washington praying with men like Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Richard Henry Lee.

At the second meeting, they proposed that Washington be appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army. He did not think he was equal to the command but accepted it. He wrote his wife, “I shall rely, therefore, confidently on that Providence, which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall.”{10} At the time, Washington was the only man on the continent in uniform since no Continental Army yet existed. To the British, he was the supreme traitor, in open rebellion to the King. His neck was at risk, and the American independence depended on him.

One event that George Washington believed showed God’s providence was the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Washington and his men were trapped on Brooklyn Heights, Long Island. The British were poised to crush the American army the next day and that would have been the end of the rebellion. Washington planned a bold move and began evacuating his troops under the cover of darkness using everything from fishing vessels to rowboats. But there was not enough time to accomplish the task. When morning came, the fog of night remained and only lifted in time for the British to see the last American boat crossing the East River beyond the reach of their guns. You can read more about this miraculous event in Michael Novak’s book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding.{11}

Washington also required chaplains for the Continental Army, and personally took time for prayer. He forbade his troops under pain of death from uttering blasphemies, even profanity. He called upon them to conduct themselves as Christian soldiers because the people demanded it.{12}

Washington’s actions during the Revolutionary War demonstrate his Christian character.

First in War and First in Peace

In his eulogy for George Washington, Henry Lee said he was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” We could also say the Washington demonstrated Christian character both in war and in peace.

While fulfilling his duties as general, he came to be known as a “nursing father.” This is a biblical phrase (Num. 11:12, Is. 49:23 KJV) that appears in many of the tributes to Washington after his death. He brought together very diverse groups to fight the Revolutionary War by bridging ethnic and social divisions. This ranged from the regiment from Marblehead, Massachusetts (that included men of mixed race, blacks, and Indians), to the Virginian and southern aristocrats to the yeomen in hunting shirts from western Virginia.

One of his orders stated that “All chaplains are to perform divine service tomorrow, and on every succeeding Sunday. . . . The commander in chief expects an exact compliance with this order, and that it be observed in future as an invariable rule of practice—and every neglect will be consider not only a breach of orders, but a disregard to decency, virtue and religion.”{13}

Washington grew even more explicit as the war dragged on: “While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian.”{14}

Washington lost a great deal of money during the war by paying for things out of his own pocket and by refusing a salary. He happily returned to Mount Vernon and spent happy years with his wife. But the constitutional convention in 1787 brought him to elective office. He was elected as president by unanimous vote in 1789.

In his inaugural address, Washington said, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

He issued a thanksgiving proclamation in 1789 in which he asserted “the duty of all nations” in regard to God. His thanksgiving proclamation of 1795 proclaims there are signs of “Divine beneficence” in the world. And in his farewell address, he reminded Americans that “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.”

Washington demonstrated Christian character in war and in peace.

Washington as Christian: Pro and Con

Let’s summarize the arguments historians make about Washington’s religious faith. Those who believe that George Washington was a Deist and not a Christian usually make the following observations.

First, Washington never took communion at Sunday services. Second, he refused to declare his specific beliefs in public. Third, he rarely used the name of Jesus Christ in private correspondence and in public utterances. Finally, while he believed in God and had an awareness of Providence in his life, it all seems more like a Greek or Roman view of fate.

Michael Novak’s response to these observations is helpful. “All these objections have a grain of truth in them. Still, they are consistent with Washington’s being a serious Christian who believed that he had a public vocation that required some tact regarding his private confessional life.”{15} Novak adds:

It is not at all unusual for public men in pluralistic American life to maintain a notable reserve about their private convictions. They do not burden the public with declarations of their deepest beliefs, whose general force they trust their actions will sufficiently reveal. In the public forum, they happily give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and in the private forum, to God what is God’s.{16}

What are some of the reasons to believe Washington was a Christian? First, he religiously observed the Sabbath as a day of rest and frequently attended church services on that day. Second, many report that Washington reserved time for private prayer. Third, Washington saved many of the dozens of sermons sent to him by clergymen, and read some of them aloud to his wife.

Fourth, Washington hung paintings of the Virgin Mary and St. John in places of honor in his dining room in Mount Vernon. Fifth, the chaplains who served under him during the long years of the Revolutionary War believed Washington was a Christian. Sixth, Washington (unlike Thomas Jefferson) was never accused by the press or his opponents of not being a Christian.

It is also worth noting that, unlike Jefferson, Washington agreed to be a godparent for at least eight children. This was far from a casual commitment since it required the godparents to agree to help insure that a child was raised in the Christian faith. Washington not only agreed to be a godparent, but presented his godsons and goddaughters with Bibles and prayer books.

George Washington was not a Deist who believed in a “watchmaker God.” He was a Christian and demonstrated that Christian character throughout his life.

Notes

1. Michael Novak and Jana Novak, Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of our Country (NY: Basic Books, 2006).
2. Peter Lillback, with Jerry Newcombe, George Washington’s Sacred Fire (Bryn Mawr, PA: Providence Forum Press, 2006.
3. Novak, Washington’s God, 93.
4. Ibid., 136.
5. Lillback, Sacred Fire, 28.
6. Novak, Washington’s God, 110.
7. Lillback, Sacred Fire, 28.
8. Ibid., 577.
9. Novak, Washington’s God, 123.
10. Ibid, 64.
11. Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (San Francisco: Encounter, 2002).
12. Novak, Washington’s God, 30-31.
13. Ibid., 90.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 219.
16. Ibid., 219-220.

© 2009 Probe Ministries

Critical race theory has been in the news. What is it, and why are so many people either defending it or opposing it? How is it being introduced in the schools, businesses, and the government?

Critical race theory is a descendant of a philosophical tradition known as critical theory. It began at the University of Frankfurt’s Institute for Social Research, which came to be known as the “Frankfurt School.” The Frankfurt scholars fled to Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York in 1934 to escape the Nazis.

Critical theory traces all social injustice to inequities in power that are based unfairly on class, race, gender, or sexual orientation. In classical Marxism, the focus was on class with the assumption that the working class would rise up against the capitalist oppressors. That never really happened the way Karl Marx predicted. Instead, these cultural Marxists proposed a conflict that would develop based on race and some of the other factors just mentioned.

Assumptions and Euphemisms

Critical race theory is based on several assumptions. First, there is no absolute truth. There are only competing narratives. Second, the economy is a zero-sum game. The gain of one race is at the expense of another race. Third, individuals are either an oppressor or a victim. Fourth, America is systemically racist and must be dismantled.

There is a great deal of rhetoric and euphemisms that are deployed by practitioners of critical race theory. This includes such words and phrases as “equity” and “social justice” and “diversity and inclusion” and “culturally responsive teaching.” A word like equity might seem like a synonym for equality, but that is not the case. Proponents use the concept of equity to argue for suspending private property rights (UCLA professor Cheryl Harris) and for setting up a federal Department of Antiracism (Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi) that would have power to nullify, veto, or abolish any law that does not provide racial equity.

Because critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism, proponents define people based on their group and practice identity politics. They also look at the intersection of victim groups and thus talk about intersectionality.

You are either in power or out of power. If you are in power, you are automatically discredited. If you are underprivileged, you are immune from criticism. This also means that the claims of critical race theory are unfalsifiable. It becomes impervious to counter-evidence and thus cannot be rationally defended.

This is no small issue because the underprivileged can make demands, but do not need to make rational arguments. The assumption is that the whole system (including facts, counter-arguments, and even basic rationality) is rigged against the oppressed. This is why you often hear proponents of critical race theory making statements without appealing to evidence and why they reject anyone trying to present evidence that might dispute their dogmatic statements.

In a recent article by James Lindsay, he argues that “For Racial Healing, Reject Critical Race Theory.” He starts with a thought experiment that shows how unpractical and confusing this theory becomes in everyday life.

He says we should imagine we own a small shop (perhaps a tailor shop) where you have to assist each customer individually. You are the sole proprietor and can only serve one customer at a time. Now imagine two people enter your store at exactly the same time. One is white, and the other is black. Which customer do you help first?

If you choose to serve the black person first, critical race theory would argue that you did so because you don’t trust the black person to be in your shop unattended while you help the other customer. That means you are acting according to racist stereotypes and chose poorly.

If you choose to serve the white person instead, then you are also demonstrating your racist bias. Choosing to help the white person shows that you favor white people and consider them first-class citizens. Once again, you have chosen poorly.

Perhaps you can see the dilemma created by the philosophy of critical race theory. It is a classic “heads I win, tails you lose.” There is no right choice in this example. No matter what you do, you will always be wrong and thus be condemned as being racist. This illustration provides one more reason why critical race theory will not promote racial healing.

Into the Schools and Government

How is critical race theory making its way into the schools? Often it is introduced by activists in the local school district. But sometimes it even comes from government action.

Stanley Kurtz has been warning that the Civics Secures Democracy Act (being considered by Congress) could be used by activists and educators to promote critical race theory. The Department of Education proposed a regulation that directs grant money to prioritize applications that “support the development of culturally responsive teaching and learning.” As we have seen, phrases like “equity” and “culturally responsive” are key buzzwords for critical race theory.

Christopher Rufo has been documenting how critical race theory is already arriving in the schools. A California elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, and then rank themselves according to their power and privilege. A middle school in Missouri forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that white, Christian males were members of an oppressor class. Although he is just one investigative journalist, he has already put together a database of more than 1,000 stories.

He has also documented how critical race theory made its way into government. The FBI has been holding workshops on intersectionality. The Department of Homeland Security was telling white employees that they have been “socialized into oppressor roles.” That is why President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning critical race theory training. President Joe Biden rescinded that order on his first day in office.

Speaking out against critical race theory can be costly. Until recently, Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier served in the newly created Space Force. He was relieved from his post because he wrote a book denouncing critical race theory and Marxism in the US military. He said it wasn’t his intent to engage in partisan politics. But he wrote the book because of the Marxist ideology that he saw being taught.

A Liberal Critique

Some of the criticism of critical race theory has been coming from people who would not be described as religious conservatives. Andrew Sullivan is one of these commentators sounding a warning that this perspective is “Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism.”

He acknowledges that even trying to accurately define critical race theory is difficult because of the “sheer volume of jargon words” that may be intended to “sow confusion.” He also asks himself through his commentary whether he is accurately portraying the theory and concludes that he is not exaggerating its attack on liberal modernity. Proponents of Critical Race Theory admit that they question the very foundations of liberal society.

One example can be found in the book, Understanding Critical Race Theory. It was written four years ago and is hardly the most controversial book on the subject. That book explains that “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”

He also notes that critical race theory denies any claim to truth since “claims to truth are merely claims to power.” Secular liberals and Christians may disagree about many things, but at least they agree that truth exists and can be objectively discerned. He also critiques the idea that nothing has changed.
In other words, “slavery, segregation, mass incarceration are just different- words for the same experience of oppression.” He adds that critical race theory can also be defined by what it is not. “It is not an open-ended inquiry into buried history.”

He also explains that critical race theory is the cuckoo in the academic nest. It used to be one school of thought. Over time, though, it has thrown out its competitors and does not allow open debate.

Response to the Criticism

Educators and parents who criticize critical race theory will quickly encounter push-back and accusations. These usually come in different forms.

One reaction from proponents is that anyone criticizing critical race theory is ignorant and doesn’t understand it. A Texas state board of education member wrote that critics “have no idea what critical race theory is, what it does, who the founders are. They’ve never read a book, much less a paragraph on it.” From there she goes on to use language inappropriate for an intelligent discussion.

Many commentators have even begun to argue that critical race theory has become the latest conservative “boogeyman.” They believe right-wing politics is out of ideas (not true) and thus needs an enemy to attack. Many of the people speaking out are familiar with critical race theory and understand its potential for dividing America.

In several cases, parents have been able to find the syllabus for school courses and put them online. They find that the goal is to “develop awareness about social justice and diversity issues” and learn – about “the intersectionality of gender, race, class, and sexuality.” Required textbooks usually include Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. Instead, we are being told (as one commentator put it) to “pay no attention to the curriculum behind the curtain.”

Another reaction is to suggest that anyone opposing critical race theory wants to whitewash the past sins of America and perpetuate systemic racism in the future. One commentator assumed that critics didn’t want to talk about racial disparities because they want to normalize the behavior and allow current patterns of behavior to continue. We should talk about slavery and America’s racist past. But that doesn’t mean we have to accept the idea that this country is more racist today and riven with  systemic racism in every institution.

Professor John McWhorter believes we should “assume that when politicos and parents decry critical race theory, what they refer to is the idea of oppression and white perfidy treated as the main meal of an entire school’s curriculum.” He adds that young children should not be taught they are guilty if white and oppressed if black. And they should not be taught that “the American story is mainly (note I write mainly rather than only, but mainly is just as awful here) one of oppression and racism.”

A third reaction is to assure us that critical race theory is merely a philosophical tool and does not pose any threat to the social and political structures. That is not true. As one commentator put it, “No longer simply an academic matter, critical race theory has become a tool of political power.” It is moving through our public institutions and “driving the vast machinery of the state and society.”

One of the standard sources (Understanding Critical Race Theory) mentioned earlier “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” It then goes on to argue that “radical measures are in order” because society is so racist. When it was written, the authors may not have meant “radical” to involve riots, protests, and burning cities. But we have seen the natural result of arguing that America is systemically racist, full of white privilege, and in need of a social revolution to overturn the existing order.

While we can applaud the boldness of some, there is still a great deal of fear keeping many Americans from speaking out. A recent Gallup poll found that 77 percent of conservatives are afraid to share their political beliefs publicly. They rightly fear they will lose their jobs or get mobbed by social media. So they remain quiet.

Biblical Perspective

One of the foundational principles of critical race theory (along with postmodernism and other modern philosophical traditions) is a complete rejection of absolute truth. The Bible teaches that truth exists and can be discerned (Proverbs 30:5, John 8:32, 2 Timothy 3:16).

We should acknowledge that different groups of people might perceive Scripture differently, but that does not mean that one race has special access to biblical truth. The argument that our race (e.g., “whiteness”) colors our interpretation suggests that we can all learn from each other in the body of Christ. But the real impediment to proper biblical interpretation is our sin (John 3:19-20). Paul teaches (1 Corinthians 2) that spiritual truth can best be discovered through the revelatory power of the Holy
Spirit.

The proponents of cri-tical race theory often reject rational arguments that contradict their dogma statements about race and society. By contrast, the Bible emphasizes the mind and rational discussion.
Paul calls for Christians to “destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God” because we are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). When a secular philosophy is being promoted in society, it is our responsibility to provide an honest critique of it. Our goal should be to think biblically and to “take every thought captive.”

Critical race theory also creates division between races that is contrary to Scripture. Paul addressed the divisions in his day that could have created division within the church. He explains how Christ has
pulled down the wall of division between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14). He went further and taught that there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). There should be unity for believers and not division.

Proponents of critical race theory also propose a type of “guilt” on anyone who is identified as an oppressor merely because of their racial background. And people of this race will never really be forgiven because they will always be part of that race. By contrast, the Bible teaches that we are guilty because we are sinful (Romans 3:23, 6:23), not because of our racial status. Also, we cannot earn salvation by good works because salvation is a gift of grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). We are redeemed through Jesus Christ (Romans 3:22-24).

Additional Resources

Kerby Anderson, A Biblical View on Racism, 2020.

Doug Groothuis, “America, Critical Theory, and Social Crisis,” Centennial Institute, September 2020. America, Critical Theory, and Social Crisis – Centennial Institute

James Lindsay, “For Racial Healing, Reject Critical Race Theory,” October 19, 2020
newdiscourses.com/2020/10/racialhealing-reject-critical-race-theory/

John McWhorter, “You Are Not a Racist to Criticize Critical Race Theory”, June 16, 2021 johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/you-are-not-a-racist-to-criticize

Christopher Rufo, “Critical Race Theory: What It Is and How to Fight It,” Imprimis, March 2021.
imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Imprimis_Mar_3-21_6pgNM.pdf

Andrew Sullivan, “Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism,” May 28, 2021 andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/removing-the-bedrock-of-liberalism-826

Kerby Anderson provides an overview of the dangers inherent in Islam’s sharia law, which threatens to invade U.S. cities.

Sharia law is once again in the news. Back in 2010, Sharia (shah-REE-uh) law was in the news because Oklahoma approved a law that would amend the state constitution to prevent the consideration of Sharia law in state courts. However, a federal judge declared the law was unconstitutional.

This time the focus is on the state of Texas because of a desire by Muslim leaders in Collin County to
build a 40-acre EPIC City project. The East Plano Islamic Center and the developers have received lots of attention and at least five investigations from state officials. The project would include a new  mosque, more than 1,000 single and multi-family homes, a Muslim faith-based school, senior housing, an outreach center, commercial developments, sports facilities, and a community college.

Governor Greg Abbott posted on X that “The proposed EPIC compound in Collin Co. has serious legal
issues. A dozen state agencies are investigating it, the Attorney General will look into it, and legislators are considering laws to restrict it, as well as laws to prevent foreign adversaries from buying land in Texas.”

On one side are the developers and a Texas representative (Salman Bhojani, who is the first Muslim
elected official in Texas history) who say this is a violation of religious freedom and evidence of anti-Muslim hysteria. On the other side are Collin County residents, including a retired police lieutenant (Douglas Deaton, who testified that an Islamic enclave is already operational and has been for almost 12
years).

It is worth taking a moment to understand what Sharia law is. This is important no matter what happens in this Texas community or in others with increasing Muslim communities. American law isn’t going to be challenged by Sharia law, but we can discuss what has been happening in the Middle East and some European countries as a cautionary tale.

What is Sharia Law?

A foundational practice of Islam is the implementation of sharia into the legal structure. Sharia is a system of divine law, belief, or practice that is based upon Muslim legal interpretation. It applies to economics, politics, and society.

Sometimes the world has been able to see how extreme the interpretation of sharia can be.  Muslims have been put to death when they have been accused of adultery or homosexuality. They have been put to death for leaving the religion of Islam. And these are not isolated examples.

Christians are persecuted in Muslim countries. Each year, the organization Open Doors publishes its World Watch List that identifies where Christians are persecuted. Over the last few years, nine of the top ten countries that practice extreme persecution of Christians are Muslim countries.

Treating Jews and Christians differently under sharia law is justified in the Qur’an. For example, the Qur’an talks about “people of the book.” Sura 9:29 says, “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Prophet, nor  acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Muhammad made a distinction between infidels, who were pagans and polytheists, and the “people of the book,” who had received revelations from the prophets (Moses, Jesus). The latter group is protected in one sense because they have received these revelations. But they are also guilty because (according to Islam) they have distorted these teachings and rejected the teaching of Muhammad. Although this status was originally given only to the “people of the book,” it was later extended to other religions (Sikhs, Zoroastrians, etc.).

Because of their guilt, Islamic teaching stipulates that Jews and Christians may live in a Muslim country, but not as equals to other Muslims. Usually this means that they may not participate in the government. They may practice their religion, but with many restrictions. For example, they were not allowed to have any external manifestations of worship (procession with the cross, ringing bells).

These restrictions are another part of the verse that requires the dhimmis [historical non-Muslim subjects living in an Islamic state] must “feel themselves subdued.” In the past this has meant: (1) that they could not prevent a fellow Christian from converting to Islam, (2) that they could not erect a cross on their church building, and (3) that they must dress in a certain way that would identify them as Jews or Christians.

Finally, they must pay the jizya, which is the poll tax required from every dhimmi. In earlier times, this was a major source of income for the Muslim government from dhimmi who paid both the personal tax and the land tax.

The Qur’an teaches (Sura 2:256) that “there is no compulsion in religion.” But is that really so? It depends upon your definition of compulsion. A closer look at Islamic law demonstrates a veiled threat that many believe is tantamount to compulsion. For example, Muhammad instructed his followers to invite non-Muslims to accept Islam before waging war against them. If they refused, warfare or second-class status would follow. They would be inferiors in the Muslim social order and pay the jizya as required in Sura 9:29. If they pay it, they may live, but if they refuse to pay it, warfare will ensue.

Sharia Law and Apostates

It is difficult for a Muslim to leave the faith of Islam. A Muslim is considered part of a larger community of Muslim believers.

When a Muslim decides to leave the faith, there are repercussions in the family and community.

The family is embarrassed and will even lose respect within the Muslim community. The mosque feels it has failed in its duty and lost a member to ignorance and idolatry.

The Qur’an teaches that an apostate Muslim faces the wrath of Allah (Sura 47:25-28). Sharia law in many countries treats apostasy as the unforgivable sin and therefore punishable by death.

Many Muslim countries have laws against apostasy. Islam teaches that once you are a Muslim, you are always a Muslim. Leaving the Muslim faith can have harsh consequences, including death.

Sharia Law and Women

There is great confusion about the status of women within Islam. While it is true that many Muslims do respect and honor women, it is not true that those ideas can be found in the Qur’an. Here are just a few passages that illustrate the way women are to be treated.

According to the Qur’an, women are considered inferior to men: “Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other” (Sura 4:34).

The Qur’an restricts a woman’s testimony in court. Her testimony is worth half as much as that of a man (Sura 2:282).

The Qur’an teaches that a son’s inheritance should be twice that of a daughter’s: “Allah thus directs you as regards your children’s inheritance; to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (Sura 4:11).

Islam sanctions polygamy (with up to four wives) as well as sex- with slave women: “If we fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if we fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with them, then only one, or a captive that your hand possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (Sura 4:3).

Wives are subject to their husbands. If wives are disloyal or disobedient, the Qur’an sets forth their punishment. The husband is first to admonish them, then not sleep with them, and third to beat them lightly. Essentially, wives are subject to the control of their husbands (Sura 2:223; 4:34). The veiling and seclusion of women has been part of the Muslim culture since the beginnings of Islam. In the Qur’an, Muhammad commands his wives and daughters to draw veils around them. This has been applied to all Muslim women. The veil would allow them to be recognized but not molested (Sura 33:59).

The Qur’an teaches that women must “lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof: that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers” (Sura 24:31).

In some Muslim countries, women cannot drive, nor can they leave their home without being accompanied by a male family member. Human rights groups report that women in Saudi Arabia who
are not accompanied by a man who is either their husband or a close relative, can be arrested for prostitution or other moral offenses.

Sharia Law and the Constitution

Sharia law is very different in many respects from the laws established through the U.S. Constitution and the laws established through English common law. To prevent sharia law from being implemented in America, a number of state legislatures have bans on sharia law. Voters in other states have approved a ban that has been struck down by a federal appeals court.

Although opponents argue that these sharia law bans are unnecessary, various studies have found
significant cases of sharia law being allowed in U.S. courts. One report with the title, “Shariah Law and the American State Courts” found significant cases of sharia law in U.S. courts just from their small sample of appellate published cases. When they looked at state courts, they found additional cases in the trial courts and more in the appellate courts. A few judges are making decisions deferring to sharia law even when those decisions conflict with the U.S. Constitution and the various state constitutions.

How should we respond to the increased use of sharia law in America? One simple way to explain your
concern to legislators, family, friends, and neighbors is to remember the numbers 1-8-14. These three numbers stand for the three amendments to the U.S. Constitution that contradict the use of sharia law.

The First Amendment says that there should be no establishment of religion. Sharia law is based on one religion’s interpretation of rights. The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of any national religion (including Islam).

The Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” Most Americans would consider the
penalties handed down under sharia law to be cruel and unusual.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees each citizen equal protection under the Constitution.  Sharia law does not treat men and women equally, nor does it treat Muslims and non-Muslims equally. This also violates the Constitution.

It is easy to see why we don’t need sharia law in America.

Additional Resources

Kerby Anderson, A Biblical Point of View on Islam, Point of View Ministries, 2020.

Kerby Anderson, Understanding Islam and Terrorism, Cambridge, OH: Christian House Publishers, 2017.

Joel Rosenberg, Inside the Revolution, Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2009.

Robert Spencer, Islam Unveiled, Washington: San Francisco, Encounter, 2002.

Open Doors, World Watch List 2025, www.opendoors.org/en-us/persecution/countries/

Point of View Ministries • PO Box 30 • Dallas, TX 75221
800-347-5151
© Point of View Ministries 2025

Kerby Anderson provides a basic understanding of Islam with suggestions for how Christ-followers can share their faith with Muslims.

The second largest religion in the world, and one of the fastest growing religions, is the religion of Islam. Although we hear so much about it in the news, many Christians don’t know much about Islam and don’t know how to share the gospel with a Muslim. Whole books have been written on these subjects, but here is a short summary with recommended books so you can learn more.

Islam is a monotheistic religion based upon the holy book, the Qur’an, which its followers believe was sent by God through the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad. Additional teachings are also recorded in the Hadith.

The Five Pillars of Islam

Although the beliefs of Muslims vary, all believe in what are called the “Five Pillars of Islam.” These provide a summary of the practices of this religion.

1. Shahadah: The first pillar is recitation of the creed: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” This statement is the foundation for all other beliefs in Islam. It is what makes someone a Muslim. Those who convert to Islam are to recite the creed. It is generally believed that you must recite this creed in the presence of two witnesses in order to formally convert to Islam.

2. Salat: The second pillar is the daily practice of prayer. Muslim prayer may be done individually or in community, but the prayers are required five times each day (dawn and sunrise, noon and mid-afternoon, mid-afternoon to sunset, sunset to twilight, and from twilight to dawn).

In Muslim and Western countries where there is a mosque, a prayer leader climbs to the top of the minaret in the mosque and calls the believers to prayer. He chants in Arabic, “God is great. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Come to prayer. Come to prayer. Come to success in this life and the hereafter.”

3. Zakat: The third pillar is almsgiving, which is mandated giving to the poor and needy within society. The Qur’an requires that each Muslim give 2.5 percent of their income to the poor or to the spread of Islam. The collected funds are used for building and supporting mosques, for printing the Qur’an, and for the advancement of Islam.

4. Sawm: The fourth pillar of Islam is the fast during the ninth lunar month of the Muslim calendar.  This is significant in the Muslim calendar for two reasons.

First, this is the time when Muhammad is said to have received the first of his revelations from God. Second, it is also the time when he and his followers made their historic trek from Mecca to Medina.

During this month, Muslims in good health are required to abstain from all food, drink, smoking, and sexual intercourse during daylight hours. This month-long fast promotes the Muslim’s self-discipline, dependence on Allah, and compassion for the needy.

5.Hajj: The fifth pillar is a pilgrimage to Mecca that occurs during the last month of the Muslim year. Every able-bodied Muslim is to make a pilgrimage to Mecca once during his life. Pilgrims travel to Mecca, which is the holiest city in Islam and the birthplace of Muhammad. Only Muslims may enter Mecca.  The focal point of Mecca is the Ka’bah which is an ancient stone building (thirty feet wide and forty feet long). A black stone (believed to be a meteorite) is set in the corner. The Ka’bah existed before the time of Muhammad. He taught that their worship had been corrupted and removed the idols from the Ka’bah and instituted Muslim worship of Allah in its place.

Major Divisions of Islam

Islam is not a monolithic system. Though all Muslims draw their inspiration from Muhammad and the teachings in the Qur’an, there are many identifiable groups and movements within Islam.

The most significant division is between Sunni and Shi’a Islam. The Sunnis comprise about eighty to ninety percent of all Muslims. They draw their name from the fact that they look both to the Qur’an and to the “Sunna” in establishing proper Muslim conduct. The Sunna is the recorded behavior or example of Muhammad and of the early Muslim community. There are many subdivisions among the Sunnis, but they all identify themselves as Sunni.

Sunnis currently control the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. They adhere to the five pillars of Islam and take a strong stand on the successor to Muhammad. This leader will be the caliph who will govern Islam and provide theological direction to all Muslims, including the interpretation of sharia law. These caliphs have ruled continuously until the Ottoman Empire fell.

The other major group of Muslims is the Shi’ites. They compose about ten percent of all Muslims. They reside mainly in southern Iraq and in Iran. The word Shi’ite means “partisan,” and refers to the fact that Shi’ites are “partisans of Ali.” Ali was the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad and one of the early caliphs. The Shi’ites believe that the leader of Islam should be a descendant of Ali, whom they believe possesses a special divine anointing for this task.

A third group of Muslims are the Sufis. They seek a mystical experience of God, rather than a merely intellectual knowledge of Him. Sufi Muslims are the mystics in Islam. They believe that the soul can rise to Allah during prayer and other spiritual exercises. Although they also read the Qur’an, they read it in a different way than other Muslims. They believe that it is an allegory of our soul’s union with Allah.

Muslim Beliefs

When you are witnessing to a Muslim, it is important to remember that their beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible are very different from a Christian’s view. They may have many misconceptions, and you may have certain misconceptions about what they believe. It is therefore important to ask questions about what they believe and help them understand what the Bible actually teaches. Here are a few basic theological beliefs.

It has often been fashionable to hear people say that, “Christians and Muslims worship the same God.” It is understandable that people might say that. Both Islam and Christianity are monotheistic, even though a foundational difference is the Christian belief in the Trinity.

The most foundational doctrine in Islam is monotheism. This doctrine is encapsulated in the creed: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” Because of this strong emphasis on monotheism, Muslims reject the idea that God could be more than one person or that God could have a partner. The Qur’an teaches that Allah is one God and the same God for all people. Anyone who does not believe this is guilty of the sin of shirk. According to Islam, God cannot have a partner and cannot be joined together in the Godhead with other persons. Muslims therefore reject the Christian idea of the Trinity.

Muslims and Christians also differ in their understanding of the nature and character of God. Islam teaches that Allah is distant, transcendent, and unknowable. He is separate from His creation. He is exalted and far removed from mankind. While we may know His will, we cannot know Him personally. By contrast, Christianity teaches the fatherhood of God. Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer that we may address God as “our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). Christians can have a personal relationship with God through Christ.

Muslims also have a different view of Jesus. The Qur’an refers to Jesus as “the Messiah” or “the Christ.” But Muslims reject the idea that God could have a Son. By contrast, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. God is heard from heaven declaring, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 17:5). Also, believers are called children of God: “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God” (1 John 3:1).

Witnessing to Muslims

Muslims usually believe that the Bible has errors in it. You should be prepared to answer such objections. But you can even begin with what is taught about Jesus in the Qur’an. They accept that He is the Messiah and the Christ. And they honor him as one of the greatest prophets. In Sura 3:42-55, the Qur’an also teaches that:

(1) Mary was chosen by God,
(2) Jesus was born of a virgin,
(3) Jesus is the Messiah,
(4) Jesus has power over death, and
(5) Jesus knows the way to heaven.

The Qur’an also teaches that a proper Muslim must read the Old and New Testaments, known as the Before Books (Sura 4:136). And it teaches that those who observe the teaching of the Torah and the Gospels may go to heaven (Sura 5:6566). Many Muslims feel this gives them permission to read the Bible. You can give them a Bible and suggest they read the gospel of John.

When you witness to Muslims, be sure you talk about the love of God. Most Muslims believe that Allah is distant and unknowable. Christianity offers them the possibility of knowing God personally. This is attractive to Muslims.

A seminary conducted a survey of six hundred former Muslims who had become Christians. One of the most significant factors involved in the conversions of these former Muslims was the emphasis on the love of God and the intimacy that believers can have with God as their heavenly Father. This was an important factor in drawing these former Muslims to Christ, so make sure you talk about the love of God.

Another factor was eternal security. A Muslim never really knows whether he or she will be saved due to their good works on earth. The Bible teaches that we can know that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). We are saved by grace through faith, not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9). The bad news is that the works Muslims do will not enable them to enter into heaven. The good news is that God gave his Son so that they would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Additional Resources

Kerby Anderson. Understanding Islam and Terrorism: A Biblical Point of View. Christian Publishing House, 2017.

Ergun Caner and Emir Caner, Unveiling Islam. Kregel, 2002.

Norman Geisler. Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. Baker, 2002.

Nabeel Qureshi. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. Zondervan, 2016.

Joel Rosenberg. Inside the Revolution. Tyndale House, 2009.

Point of View Ministries • PO Box 30 • Dallas, TX 75221
800-347-5151
© Point of View Ministries 2020

Dr. Ray Bohlin looks at the science behind climate change alarmism and encourages you to be skeptical of what you hear from much of the media.

Are Human Beings Threatening All We Hold Dear through Climate Change?

The phrase “climate change” can mean very different things. It can be a rallying cry against the shameful practice of burning fossil fuels that will cause supposedly imminent worldwide disaster. The climate change bandwagon is a way to bring about global cooperation as we fight against the danger of too much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. OR, the climate change agenda is a way for scientists who are becoming increasingly political to push for a more socialistic policy on generating electricity. In this article I examine what’s really going on with the science and make an argument for not believing anything you read or hear in the regular media.

There is no longer much of a middle ground. I have addressed global warming or climate change before, and I am becoming increasingly convinced that the entire enterprise of human-induced climate change is a monumental and brazen attempt to hoodwink the global public into thinking we have jeopardized our future, and drastic action is necessary.

Essentially, a group of climate scientists have used the power of the United Nations and their own reputations as scientists to proclaim that we must cut back severely on the use of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas. This will prevent the rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere from generating a runaway global warming that will lead to droughts, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, rising sea levels, etc., that will endanger our future on the earth.

This apocalyptic vision can seem quite threatening. Scientists are objective, right? They are not going to promote something the evidence doesn’t support, are they? Well, scientists are human, and their worldview will affect their conclusions and I am convinced that some scientists are presenting a scenario of human-induced global warming that the scientific evidence simply does not support.

The supposed villain in this scenario is the gas carbon dioxide.  You might not know that this natural and necessary gas is such a bad guy according to the doomsayers!

In this next section, I investigate the history of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and the potentially negative and positive effects of increasing its concentration in the air we breathe.

What’s all the Fuss about Carbon Dioxide?

In this article I am discussing the possibility that humans, through the excess burning of fossil fuels, are jeopardizing the future of the entire planet. Previously this has been referred to as Anthropogenic (meaning human) Global Warming but is now referred to simply as Climate Change.

The evil villain in this scenario is carbon dioxide—what you get from burning coal, oil, and gas products. Carbon dioxide is known to be a greenhouse gas. No one disputes this. The relevant question remains, are humans putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, producing a warming that may not stop until the planet exceeds a livable temperature?

As I mentioned, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. This means that when sunlight hits the earth’s surface, some of that energy is radiated back into the atmosphere and captured by carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide then remits this radiation as heat, warming the atmosphere. This is a good thing. Water, CO₂, methane and a few other gases allow the earth to keep enough of the sun’s radiation and provide a cozy temperature for life around the earth.

But as we all know, there can be too much of a good thing. Many climate scientists are exclaiming that we have added too much CO₂ over the last 150 years too fast, and the resulting warming is jeopardizing the greenhouse balance.

The earth has warmed over the last 150 years by about 1 degree Celsius or 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. But is carbon dioxide to blame? CO₂ levels rose from around 280 parts per million in 1900 to 400 parts per million today. There does seem to be a correspondence. However, we can obtain temperature data for the last 4,000 years from various sources deemed quite reliable in published
documents.

The data show that the peak temperature around 1500 BC was 2 degrees Celsius warmer than today. Around 200 BC temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than today, and around AD 1100, temperatures were a full degree Celsius warmer than today. Those warmings could not have been induced by the burning of fossils fuels.

Carbon Dioxide — Part 2

Certainly, carbon dioxide levels have been increasing due to the burning of fossil fuels over the last 150 years. And the average global temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius or nearly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. But are the two linked in any way? Has the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused the temperature increase?

First, carbon dioxide is a trace gas in our atmosphere. 78% of our atmosphere is nitrogen gas and 21% is oxygen gas. The remaining 1% is mostly argon gas and CO₂ comprising only 0.04%. So, when we are told that carbon dioxide has risen from 280 parts per million around 1900 to 400 parts per million today, that means the level of CO₂ has risen from about 3 parts per 10,000 to 4 parts per 10,000. That’s not a lot of CO₂.

Second, carbon dioxide is plant food. Photosynthesis takes carbon dioxide from the air and water from the ground and uses the energy from sunlight to make the sugar glucose, the foundation of nearly all plant and animal life. The terrific book, Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know{1}, tells us the increased CO₂ means more plant growth, more food production, and increased soil moisture since the plants don’t need to keep their “pores” open as long and therefore lose less moisture through their leaves, leaving more moisture in the ground.

Third, if we use the age of the earth as estimated by the climate change community, we learn that our current level of carbon dioxide is as low as it has ever been. I don’t know how they arrive at these estimates, but published data say that carbon dioxide levels have been as high as 20 times what they are now, and temperatures were certainly not 20 times higher.

To sum up what I have reviewed above: carbon dioxide is necessary for plant growth, carbon dioxide is a trace gas and simply doesn’t have the power to alter climate by itself, and carbon dioxide has been many times higher in the past.

In the next section I address the far-fetched predictions of climate catastrophe coming our way and look at what the data says.

Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Droughts, Oh My!

One of the tactics of the climate change community is to publish and threaten that increased global temperatures will result in more severe and more frequent extreme weather events. Droughts will become more frequent and severe, local flooding will become more frequent and severe. Catastrophic storms like tornadoes and hurricanes will become more frequent and severe. Basically, any form of severe weather will only get worse.

One source said that “the impacts of climate change are expected to increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts.”{2} So, let’s look at a few. The EPA’s own drought index shows far more severe droughts in the 1930s and 1950s than we have experienced in the last 60 years. Even globally, the frequency and severity of droughts has declined as global temperatures and CO₂ increase.

Another form of severe weather that is supposed to increase are tornadoes. In 2011, Paul Epstein said in The Atlantic that “The recent trend of severe and lethal tornadoes is part of a global trend toward more storms.”{3} Well, guess what? The actual trend of severe tornadoes at F3 or above is decreasing, and overall the number of tornadoes is decreasing. In fact, 2016 saw the fewest tornadoes in the United States ever recorded. So once again, the models and extremists are wrong.

Concerning hurricanes, you need to be careful. The U.S. National Climate Assessment of 2014 stated that the intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes . . . have all increased since the early 1980s.”{4} That’s true! But if you look at the long-term trend going back to 1920, instead of just the last few decades, the trend is downward. If you look at the frequency and severity of hurricanes for the whole earth, the trend is slightly downward. And the period between 2006 and 2017 saw no major hurricanes make landfall in the United States.

Whenever a severe weather event occurs in the United States, you can be sure the media will seize the opportunity to exclaim about how climate change is increasing storms overall. Just don’t believe it.

Rising Sea Levels, Antarctic Ice and Polar Bears

In this article I’ve been talking about the threats of increasing extreme weather as a result of human-caused global warming or climate change. As I’ve tried to show, all these threats have no basis in the scientific evidence.

You have probably heard that because of the excessive warming, glaciers will melt, and sea levels are expected to rise and inundate low lying island chains and coastal communities. Simply put, NO. Sea levels have been rising for a few thousand years and the rate of increase went up way before humans began burning fossil fuels. Sea levels are rising about one inch per decade and the rate of rise is not changing.

So, what about glaciers, the Arctic ice and Antarctica? Well, Arctic ice has been receding over the last 30 years, but that will not cause sea levels to rise since that is floating ice. Some glaciers indeed have been receding, but they began doing so before humans began burning all that fossil fuel. But even as some of these glaciers recede, they are revealing remnants of forestation, proving that they had receded previously—with no help from humans. Lastly, some Antarctic ice is receding but overall, Antarctica is gaining ice, not losing it. And polar bears are doing just fine, increasing in numbers, not declining.

In closing, let me offer a few words of advice. First, disregard almost everything you read and hear in the regular media outlets. Most of these journalists or reporters have little scientific training and they are simply repeating what they have heard from extremist environmental groups whom they trust.

Second, ignore what you hear from most government officials, elected or appointed. They have bought the narrative for their own political gain and don’t likely understand the science involved.

Last, let me suggest you research two organizations for more balanced information. First, the Cornwall Alliance, a group of evangelical Christian who are concerned about the environment and accurate information. Second is a group known as CFACT and their website Climate Depot. They repeatedly attend various climate change conferences around the world and consistently stump climate change extremists.

Bottom line: I encourage you to be skeptical concerning just about anything you encounter when it comes to climate change.

Notes

1. Gregory Wrightstone, Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know 2017, Silver Crown Productions, LLC.
2. Ibid, p. 65.
3. Ibid., p. 89.
4. Ibid., p. 93.

©2019 Probe Ministries

Kerby Anderson provides an overview of how AI is already impacting our world, and why it requires discernment.

Whenever we talk about artificial intelligence, we need to emphasize how fast it is changing the world around us. Elon Musk coined a term to illustrate this speed of change. It is a “Supersonic Tsunami of Converging Exponentials.” Everything is changing everywhere at once. Peter Diamandis observes that AI isn’t improving linearly anymore. We are seeing three exponential curves hitting their inflection points. Put simply, AI is improving exponentially.

We will be the beneficiaries of this expansion. For example, intelligence is being democratized and demonetized. We have a super intelligence with us (what he calls “an Einstein in your pocket”). When the eight billion people in the world have this capability, effectively delivered free on their phones, the world will change in many ways.

Many years ago, I interviewed Jay Richards about his book The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. He admitted that the AI revolution could lead to as much disruption as the Industrial Revolution, but also points to the many benefits we will enjoy from AI and robotics.

The AI tsunami is here. The question is whether we will ride the wave or get buried by it. Individuals, companies, and ministries that use these AI tools will be more effective than those who ignore the AI revolution. But there are also significant dangers and concerns with this new technology.

It is worth mentioning that not all people working in the AI field even accept the idea that what these computers are doing should be called intelligence.  The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1956 by the American computer scientist John McCarthy. He defines it as “getting a computer to do things which, when done by people, are said to involve intelligence.”{1}

One example has been the public’s acceptance of chatbots. You can configure ChatGPT to talk. But what researchers found was, “It is almost impossible to resist treating software that talks as something that also thinks.”{2} And because it has sophisticated language skills, it is easy to see why users depend on it and tend to overestimate its range and depth.

The benefits of AI are significant. Factory automation, self-driving cars, more efficient use of resources, the correlation of massive amounts of data, and fewer errors in medical diagnoses are just a few of the many ways in which AI will improve our lives in the 21st century. But there are also concerns.

AI in the Workforce

Artificial intelligence is making work easier and more efficient. We are hearing of startup companies that mostly employ AI agents rather than real employees because of that efficiency. One example is how AI is flattening the learning curve.

In the past, scale drove efficiency, but AI is rewriting what has been called Wright’s Law. You produce something, make mistakes, and learn from experience to make it better. Knowledge came from decades of human trial and error.

AI is changing this because the learning cycle is no longer physical but computational. Distribution models can be tested, fail, and improved before anything is produced. Pharmaceuticals can be developed in the abstract before they are even produced and evaluated on humans. AI computers can write computer programs for other computers. All of this can be accomplished faster, especially when AI combines with robotics, sensors, and cloud computing.

What is missing is wisdom and human experience. Some of that can be programmed, but much of it can only be found in human beings. Robots can be found in nearly every factory. AI is being used in most companies. But there is still a place for humans.

Most Americans are not so sure. A recent Pew Research poll found that 72 percent of Americans “express wariness or concern about a world where machines perform any of the tasks done by humans.”

Andrej Karpathy is the cofounder of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla. He took the time to evaluate the impact AI would have on different jobs on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the most exposed.{3}

The overall weighted exposure was 4.9. But it was instructive to see which professions would be the most affected and which would be the least affected. Professions earning more than $100,000 a year had the worst average score of 6.7. Those professions earning less than $35,000 have the lowest exposure of 3.4.

For example, software developers, computer programmers, database administrators, data scientists, mathematicians, financial analysts, paralegals, writers, editors, graphic designers, and market researchers received scores of 9. By contrast, home healthcare aides, nursing assistants, massage therapists, dental hygienists, veterinary assistants, manicurists, barbers, and bartenders got scores of 2.

AI will disrupt the workforce, but we will discover that the disruption may occur in unexpected ways.

AI and Humans

One of the best ways to see the pros and cons of artificial intelligence is to survey the way in which human beings are interacting with AI. As one commentator put it, AI has become our counselor and companion. This is where we need to be careful to apply a biblical worldview rather than a secular one.

1. AI as counselor. Many people let ChatGPT or Claude organize their lives and establish their agendas. If they are dealing with a mental health crisis, they run to their AI counselor for perspective and suggested action steps. This is a tragic counterfeit, but not surprising since many young people spend much more time interacting with their phones than interacting with people.

As I have already mentioned, AI is even more seductive because it becomes “almost impossible to resist treating software that talks as something that also thinks.” Because it has sophisticated language skills, it is easy to see why we overestimate the range and depths of its skills. But sometimes we do see the danger.

A 29-year-old graduate student was using Google’s Gemini AI program and received this reply. “This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die.”

2. AI as companion. A sane person will remain in touch with reality. Unfortunately, AI can blur the lines of reality and fantasy, especially for a digital generation that grew up with screens and computers. AI is a counterfeit for real relationships and relational intimacy.

Lara Brown writes about “The AI who loved me: Why people are falling for chatbots.”{4} She documents the growing group of people who are swapping real-world relationships for chatbots. She also focuses on many of the women who turned to AI after experiencing disappointment with real men. One recent survey found that a majority of GenZ would marry an AI.

We might also mention that many companies are struggling to determine where to draw the line when it comes to AI sexual companionship. That would include erotic role-playing programs. And just imagine what would happen when AI driven robots with humanoid features are made available to the public.

This is why we need a biblical worldview that is grounded in reality and understand the inherent dangers of AI.

AI and Religion

What might be the relationship of AI to religion? Some applications raise fundamental questions.

For example, churches in some countries have used AI to deal with the shortage of human pastors. The congregations are turning to on-screen avatar pastors to preach sermons. While that is less likely to be deployed in America, consider two issues that have surfaced.

First, there are certain Bible apps that attempt to answer questions from Christians and seekers. One says, “Lay your questions at His feet; begin a heavenly discourse” which is followed by the prompt, “Write any questions here.” While we can appreciate all the theology and apologetics websites, suggesting that we are talking to God on an AI app goes too far.

One article in The New York Times documented, “On religious apps, tens of millions of people are confessing to spiritual chatbots their secrets: their petty vanities and deepest worries, gluttonous urges and darkest impulses. Trained on religious texts, the bots are like on-call priests, imams, or rabbis, offering comfort and direction at any time. On some platforms, they even purport to channel God.”{5}

Second, most pastors say they use AI to prepare sermons. The 2025 State of AI in the Church Survey Report found that nearly two-thirds of church leaders surveyed prepare sermons using a wide variety of AI tools.{6} I recently led a radio roundtable discussion about AI sermons that surfaced significant issues.

Pastors can use a range of AI tools to prepare a message. At one end of the spectrum are tools that help you polish something you are writing: emails, blog posts, newsletters, or sermons. Checking spelling, grammar, or historical facts can be done with search engines and software built into word processing. Using these tools doesn’t seem to raise any significant concerns.

At the other end are AI tools that essentially do all the work. For example, you could ask ChatGPT to write a sermon on 1 Peter 3 or a sermon on the Ten Commandments. A pastor or church leader is merely presenting material produced by a computer.

Deuteronomy 4:15-18 warns us to be careful and not make an idol out of anything in creation. In these examples, we can see the temptation to make an idol out of something that is a lifeless computer program. It counterfeits the original and tempts us away from God.

Biblical Perspective

The AI revolution requires great spiritual discernment. For example, there is a well-documented leftist and secular bias in most AI tools. When I first began writing computer programs and developing simulations, we often heard the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.” Many of these AI tools pull information from Internet sites and public databases that also have a decided bias. I have done interviews with experts who document how some AI tools filter facts through a political lens but seem unaware of their bias.

Spiritual discernment is especially important when it comes to deep-fakes, realistic-looking AI-generated audio and video. Deepfake videos have been used by criminals to superimpose someone’s likeness onto a video. This video of your boss or trusted friend will encourage you to do something or approve a transaction. And they have also been used to confuse voters during elections. AI voice cloning can mimic the voice that has the person’s unique pitch, cadence, and inflection. And it can even fake certain emotions (panic, urgency, distress). The voice could be an urgent plea from a child or grandchild.

Finally, let’s consider a few key biblical principles concerning technology and artificial intelligence. First, we begin with the reality that each human being is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27, Psalm 139:13-16). We have been given dominion and stewardship over the creation (Genesis 1:28, Colossians 1:16) and should reject any form of technology that would usurp or subvert that stewardship responsibility.

Second, humans are created as moral agents. Computer technology can aid us in making moral decisions because of its powerful ability to process data. But we can never cede our moral responsibility to those same computers. God will hold us responsible for the moral or immoral decisions we make (Roman 2:6-8, Galatians 5:19-21, 2 Peter 1:5-8). We should never give computers that authority.

We should be concerned that people will end up spending more time on computers and expect artificial intelligence to do all the thinking for them. AI should be a tool we master, not our master.

Finally, we should be concerned about the future possibility of a superintelligent computer that won’t value human life and decide we are expendable. There are benefits to AI but there are also threats. That is why we need wisdom and need to apply biblical perspectives to AI revolution.

Notes
1. John McCarthy, “What is AI?/Basic Questions,” jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/what-is-ai/.
2. Clay Shirky, “I, Chatbot,” January/February 2026, Yale Alumni Magazine, www.yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/6175-i-chatbot.
3. Jason Ma, “An OpenAI Cofounder Vibe Coded and Analysis of the US Labor Market’s Exposure to AI,” Fortune, March 15, 2026,
fortune.com/2026/03/15/andrej-karpathy-openai-cofounder-us-labor-market-exposure-ai-white-collar-jobs-professionals/.
4. Lara Brown, “Why People Are Falling in Love With Chatbots, Spectator World, October 17. 2025,
www.realclearbooks.com/2025/10/17/why_people_are_falling_in_love_with_chatbots_1141535.html.
5. Lauren Jackson, “Finding God in the App Store,” New York Times, September 4, 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/chatbot-god.html.
6. AI in the Church – 2025, “The 2025 State of AI in the Church Survey Report,” exponential.org/product/ai-in-the-church-2025/.

©2026 Probe Ministries

Dr. Ray Bohlin provides a Christian view on the probability and meaning of life on other planets.  From a biblical perspective, what would it mean to find evidence of life beyond this earth?

 This article is also available in Spanish.

Life on Mars?

There was great excitement in the media when a group of scientists from NASA announced they had found evidence of life on Mars. Their evidence, an alleged Martian meteorite, was vaulted to center stage, and everyone from CNN to Nightline ran special programs with interviews and video footage of the scientists and their prized specimen. President Clinton was so excited by the announcement that he praised the U.S. space program and took the opportunity to establish a bipartisan space summit headed up by Vice President Al Gore to study the future of U.S. space research. Aren’t we already doing that?

Anyway, clearly this announcement took the country by storm. Some of the scientists were embarrassingly gushing about how significant these findings were. The media frenzy was prompted by the early release of an article from the journal Science, the premier scientific journal in the U.S. The article was due out the following week, but Science decided to release it early because it had leaked out.

Here’s what the excitement was about. A group of scientists had studied a meteorite that had been found in the ice of Antarctica. Previously, it had been determined that this meteorite had originated on Mars by studying the gaseous content of glass-like components of the meteor. The gas composition matched very well the atmosphere of Mars. This conclusion seems reasonable.

So, they presumed they had a meteor from Mars. Next they looked for evidence of life on and in the crevices of the meteor. They found two types of molecules that can form as a result of life processes, carbonates and complex molecules called polyaromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. They also found shapes in the rock that resembled those of known microfossils on Earth. Microfossils are fossils of one-celled organisms which are rather tricky to interpret.

Well, what does this mean? Obviously, the NASA scientists felt the things just mentioned provided ample evidence to conclude that life once existed on Mars. However, the chemical signs could all be due to processes that have nothing to do with life, and the supposed microfossils are 100 times smaller than any such fossil found on Earth. Other groups that studied this same meteorite concluded that either the temperature of formation of the chemicals was far too high to allow life (over 700 degrees C) or that other chemical signals for life were absent. John Kerridge, a planetary scientist from the University of California at San Diego, said, “The conclusion is at best premature and more probably wrong.” But listen to the concluding statement in the paper in Science:

Although there are alternative explanations for each of these phenomena taken individually, when they are considered collectively, particularly in view of their spatial association, we conclude that they are evidence for primitive life on Mars.{1}

In plain English, there are reasonable non-life explanations for each of the evidences presented, but we just think that they mean there is life on Mars. The evidence is very equivocal and was challenged by many other scientists, but the media did not report that as fully. But maybe they are right! In fact, there is one simple explanation that is consistently ignored by media and scientists alike. If there really is, or has been, life on Mars, what could that possibly mean for evolution, and more importantly, does it somehow refute creation? We’ll look at that next.

What Would Life on Mars Mean?

Because of the recent announcement of signs of life on Mars, many people were encouraged in their belief that we are not alone in the universe. These signs are far from certain and probably wrong, but if it’s true, what would these results mean to evolutionists? Moreover, is there any reason for Christians to fear confirmation of life on Mars?

Let us assume, then, for the moment that the evidence from this Martian meteorite is legitimate evidence for life on Mars—life that at some point in the past actually existed on Mars. What would it mean?

For evolutionists the evidence is perceived as confirmation that life actually arises from non-life by purely chemical processes. In addition, evolutionists draw the conclusion that life must be able to evolve very easily since it did so on two adjacent planets in the same solar system. Therefore, even though origin of life research is actually at a standstill, such a discovery seemingly confirms the notion that some chemical evolution scenario must work. I will address this assumption later.

On the other hand, some have stated that if there is life on Mars, creationism has been dealt a death blow. They rationalize that since (1) we now know that life can evolve just about anywhere, and (2) the Bible never speaks of life anywhere but on Earth, the Bible is, therefore, unreliable. Besides, they reason, why would God create life on a planet with no humans? However, since the Bible is absolutely silent on the subject of extra-terrestrial life, we can make no predictions about its possibility. God is certainly free to create life on planets other than Earth if He chooses.

Getting back to the evolutionists’ glee at the possibility of life evolving on other planets, the real question is whether this is the proper conclusion if life is indeed found on Mars? The simple answer, inexplicably avoided by the media, is NO! The simplest answer to the possible discovery of life on Mars is that the so-called “Martian life” actually came from Earth!

Think about it this way. The meteorite that was found is supposed to have existed on Mars previously. How did it get to Earth? Well, it is hypothesized that a large meteorite crashed into Mars throwing up lots of debris into space, some of which finds its way to Earth and at least a few of which are found by Earthlings. If you are thinking with me, you now realize that the same scenario could have been played out on Earth.

Evolutionists suggest that the Earth was under heavy meteor bombardment until at least 3.8 billion years ago—about the time they say life appeared on Earth. Christian astronomer Hugh Ross states it this way:

Meteorites large enough to make a crater greater than 60 miles across will cause Earth rocks to escape Earth’s gravity. Out of 1,000 such rocks ejected, 291 strike Venus, 20 go to Mercury, 17 hit Mars, 14 make it to Jupiter, and 1 goes all the way to Saturn. Traveling the distance with these rocks will be many varieties of Earth life.{2}

Ross also documents that many forms of microscopic life are quite capable of surviving such a journey. All this is quite well known in the scientific community, but I have not seen it mentioned once in any public discussion. I believe the reason is that the possibility of life having evolved on Mars is too juicy to pass up.

The Improbability of Life Elsewhere in the Universe

I would like to address the amazing optimism of so many that the universe is teeming with life. No doubt this is fueled by the tremendous success of such science fiction works as Star Wars and Star Trek which eloquently present the reasonableness of a universe pregnant with intelligent life forms.

Inherent within this optimism is the evolutionary assumption that if life evolved here, certainly we should not arrogantly suppose that life could not have evolved elsewhere in the universe. And if life in general exists in the universe, then, of course, there must be intelligent life out there as well.

This is the basic assumption of the SETI program, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. This is the program, now privately funded instead of federally funded, that searches space for radio waves emanating from another planet that would indicate the presence of intelligent life. But is such a hope realistic? Is there a justifiable reason for suspecting that planets suitable to life exist elsewhere in the universe?

Over the last two decades scientists have begun tabulating many characteristics of our universe, galaxy, solar system, and planet that appear to have been finely-tuned for life to exist. Christian astronomer and apologist, Dr. Hugh Ross documents all these characteristics in his book Creator and the Cosmos,{3} and is constantly updating them. In the book’s third edition (2001), Ross documents 35 characteristics of the universe and 66 characteristics of our galaxy, solar system, and planet that are finely-tuned for life to exist.

Some examples include the size, temperature, and brightness of our sun, the size, chemical composition, and stable orbit of Earth. The fact that we have one moon and not none or two or three. The distance of the Earth from the sun, the tilt of the earth’s axis, the speed of the earth’s rotation, the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun. If any of these factors were different by even a few percent, the ability of Earth to sustain life would be severely compromised. Recently it has been noted that even the presence of Jupiter and Saturn serve to stabilize the orbit of Earth. Without these two large planets present exactly where they are, the Earth would be knocked out of its present near circular orbit into an elliptical one, causing higher temperature differences between seasons and subjecting Earth to greater meteor interference. Neither condition is hospitable to the continuing presence of life.

Ross has further calculated the probabilities of all these factors coming together by natural processes alone to be 1 x 10^-166; that’s a decimal point followed by 165 zeroes and then a one. A very liberal estimate of how many planets there may be, though we have only documented less than 100, is 10²² or 10 billion trillion planets, one for every star in the universe. Combining these two probabilities tells us that there are 10^-144 planets in the entire universe that could support life. Obviously this is far less than one; therefore, by natural processes alone, we shouldn’t even be here—let alone some kind of alien life form.

So unless God created life elsewhere, we are alone, and for the materialistic evolutionist, this is a frightening thought.

Problems with Chemical Evolution on Earth

The statistics given above mean that we are really alone in the universe and that there is no hope of finding intelligent civilizations as in the television program Star Trek. While it means there is no one out there to threaten our survival, there is also no one out there to save us from our own mistakes.

This observation highlights why I believe the scientific community and the media became so excited about the possibilities of life on Mars. Efforts to determine how life could have evolved from non-living matter have been so fraught with problems that it makes the possibility of life elsewhere extremely remote. But if it could be proved that life evolved elsewhere, then it would demonstrate that life springs up rather easily, and we just haven’t found the right trick here on Earth to prove it. But this just leapfrogs the problem.

But is the evolution of life from non-living chemicals really that impossible? The difficulties fall into three categories, the Chemical Problem, the Thermodynamic Problem, and the Informational Problem. These issues are presented comprehensively in a book by Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen titled The Mystery of Life’s Origin{4} and in a chapter in the edited volume by J. P. Moreland, The Creation Hypothesis.{5}

Chemical Problems are illustrated by the difficulty in synthesizing even the simplest building block molecules necessary for life from inorganic precursors. Amino acids, sugars, and the bases for the important nucleotide molecules that make up DNA and RNA were all thought to be easily synthesized in an early Earth atmosphere of ammonia, methane, water vapor, and hydrogen. But further experiments showed this scenario to be unrealistic. Ammonia and methane would have been short-lived in this atmosphere; the multiple energy sources available would have destroyed the necessary molecules and water would have broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen was scrupulously avoided in all prebiotic scenarios because it would have poisoned all the necessary reactions.

Thermodynamic Problems arise from the difficulty in assembling all these complex molecules that would have been floating around in some prebiotic soup into a highly organized and complex cell. To accomplish the task of achieving specified complexity in life’s molecules such as DNA and proteins, the availability of raw energy for millions of years is not enough. All systems where specified complexity is produced from simple components requires an energy conversion mechanism to channel the energy in the right direction to accomplish the necessary work. Without photosynthesis, there is no such mechanism in the prebiotic Earth.

The Informational Problem shows that there is no way to account for the origin of the genetic code, which is a language, without intelligent input. Informational codes require intelligent preprogramming. No evolutionary mechanism can accomplish this. Life requires intelligence.

So you can see why evolutionists would get excited about the possibility of finding evolved life elsewhere. It’s because life is seemingly impossible to evolve here. So, if it did happen elsewhere, maybe our experiments are just missing something.

Independence Day, The Movie

In the movie Independence Day, an alien battle force swoops down on Earth with the intention of destroying the human race, sucking the planet dry of all available resources and then moving on to some other unlucky civilization in the galaxy. But, those indomitable humans aided by good old American ingenuity outsmart those dull-witted aliens and Earth is saved. The story has been told many times, but perhaps never as well or never with such great special effects. The movie was a huge success.

But why are we continually fascinated by the possibility of alien cultures? The movie gave the clear impression that there must be great numbers of intelligent civilizations out there in the universe. This notion has become widely accepted in our culture.

Few recognize that the supposed existence of alien civilizations is based on evolutionary assumptions. The science fiction of Star Trek and the Star Wars begins with evolution. As I’ve stated earlier, evolutionists simply rationalize that since life evolved here with no outside interference, the universe must be pregnant with life. Astronomer Carl Sagan put it this way after he had reviewed the so-called success of early Earth chemical evolution experiments:

Nothing in such experiments is unique to the earth. The initial gases, and the energy sources, are common throughout the Cosmos. Chemical reactions like those in our laboratory vessels may be responsible for the organic matter in interstellar space and the amino acids found in meteorites. Some similar chemistry must have occurred on a billion other worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy. The molecules of life fill the Cosmos.{6}

Sagan strongly suggests that the probabilities and chemistry of the universe dictate that life is ubiquitous in the galaxy. But as I stated earlier, the odds overwhelmingly dictate that our planet is the only one suitable for life in the universe. And the chemistry on Earth also indicates that life is extremely hard to come by. The probability of life simply based on chance occurrences is admitted by many evolutionists to be remote indeed. Many are now suggesting that life is inevitable because there are yet undiscovered laws of nature that automatically lead to complex life forms. In other words, the deck of cards is fixed. Listen to Nobel Laureate and biochemist, Christian de Duve:

We are being dealt thirteen spades not once but thousands of times in succession! This is utterly impossible, unless the deck is doctored. What this doctoring implies with respect to the assembly of the first cell is that most of the steps involved must have had a very high likelihood of taking place under the prevailing conditions. Make them even moderately improbable and the process must abort, however many times it is initiated, because of the very number of successive steps involved. In other words, contrary to Monod’s affirmation, the universe was—and presumably still is—pregnant with life.{7}

The only problem with de Duve’s suggestion is that we know of no natural processes that will lead automatically to the complexity of life. Everything we know of life leads to the opposite conclusion. Life is not a product of chance or necessity. Life is a product of intelligence.

Without Divine interference we are alone in the universe and without Christ we are—and should be—terrified. The gospel is as relevant as ever.

Notes

1. Science, 16 August 1996, 273:924-30.
2. Creator and the Cosmos, NavPress, 2001, p. 210.
3. Ibid., pp. 145-199.
4. Lewis and Stanley, 1984.
5. InterVarsity Press, 1994, pp. 173-210.
6. Cosmos, Random House, 1980, p. 40.
7. Vital Dust, Basic Books, 1995, p. 9.

© 2002 Probe Ministries

Michael Gleghorn addresses issues related to reports of UFO and alien sightings.  He considers the various possible causes before closing with a biblical, Christian perspective pointing out these reports are often presented like false gospels.  At the end of the day, even an alien cannot take away from the importance of faith in Christ.

 This article is also available in Spanish.

A Tale of Two Hypotheses

It seems that almost everyone is interested in reports of UFOs and alien encounters. But how should these reports be understood? Where do these “unidentified flying objects” come from and what are they? Are intelligent beings visiting us from another planet or some other dimension? Or are UFO reports merely a collection of hoaxes, hallucinations, and misidentified phenomena? Can all UFO reports be adequately explained, or are there some that seem to defy all natural explanations? These are just a few of the questions we want to consider in this article.

First, however, it’s essential to note that most UFOs (unidentified flying objects) become IFOs (identified flying objects). John Spencer, a British UFO researcher, estimates that as many as 95 percent of received UFO reports “are turned into IFOs and explained satisfactorily.”{1} For example, the report might be found to have been a clever prank or to have some natural explanation. Planets, comets, military aircraft, and rockets (among many others) have all been mistaken for UFOs. But even if 99 percent of UFO reports could be satisfactorily explained, there would still be thousands of cases that stubbornly resist all natural explanations. These are called residual UFO reports.

If residual UFOs are not hoaxes, hallucinations, or some natural or man-made phenomena, then what are they? Most UFO researchers hold either to the extraterrestrial hypothesis or the interdimensional hypothesis. The extraterrestrial hypothesis holds that technologically advanced, interplanetary space travelers are indeed visiting our planet from somewhere else in the cosmos. Stanton Friedman, a representative of this view, states clearly, “The evidence is overwhelming that some UFOs are alien spacecraft.”{2}

The interdimensional hypothesis agrees “that some UFOs are real phenomena that may exhibit physical . . . effects.”{3} However, unlike the extraterrestrial hypothesis, this view does not believe that UFOs and alien beings come from somewhere else in our physical universe. So where do they come from? Some suggest that they come from some other universe of space and time. But others believe that they come from some other dimension entirely, perhaps a spiritual realm.{4}

How might we tell which, if either, of these two hypotheses is correct? Astronomer and Christian apologist Dr. Hugh Ross suggests that we employ the scientific approach known as the “process of elimination.” He writes, “Mechanics use it to find out why the car won’t start. Doctors use it to find out why the stomach hurts. Detectives use it to find out who stole the cash. This process can also be used to discover what could, or could not, possibly give rise to UFO phenomena.”{5}

So what happens if we apply this process to the extraterrestrial hypothesis? Although quite popular here in America, there are some serious scientific objections to this viewpoint.

The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis

In the first place, it is highly improbable that there is another planet in our cosmos capable of supporting physical life. Dr. Ross has calculated the probability of such a planet existing by natural processes alone as less than 1 in 10¹⁷⁴. You actually have “a much higher probability of being killed in the next second by a failure in the second law of thermodynamics (about one chance in 10⁸⁰).”{6} Thus, apart from the supernatural creation of another suitable place for life, our planet is almost certainly unique in its capacity to support complex biological organisms. (See the Probe article “Are We Alone in the Universe?“) This alone makes the extraterrestrial hypothesis extremely improbable. But it gets even worse!

Suppose (against all statistical probability) that there is a planet with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. What is the likelihood that such creatures are visiting our planet? And what sort of difficulties would they face in doing so?

Probably the greatest challenge to interstellar space travel is simply the immense size of the universe. One group of scientists, assuming that any alien spacecraft would likely maintain communication with either the home planet or with other members of their traveling party, “scanned all 202 of the roughly solar-type stars within 155 light-years of Earth. Not one intelligible signal was detected anywhere within the vicinity of these stars.”{7} This implies that, at a minimum, E.T. would have to travel 155 light-years just to reach earth. Unfortunately, numerous galactic hazards would prevent traveling here in a straight line. Avoiding these deadly hazards would increase the minimum travel distance to approximately 230 light-years.{8}

Dr. Ross estimates that “any reasonably-sized spacecraft transporting intelligent physical beings can travel at velocities no greater than about 1 percent” of light-speed.{9} Although this is nearly 7 million miles per hour, it would still take about twenty-three thousand years to travel the 230 light-years to earth! Of course, a lot can go wrong in twenty-three thousand years. The aliens might run out of food or fuel. Their spacecraft might be damaged beyond repair by space debris. They might be destroyed by a contagious epidemic. The mind reels at the overwhelming improbability of successfully completing such a multi-generational mission.

In light of these facts, it doesn’t appear that the extraterrestrial hypothesis can reasonably survive the process of elimination. Does the interdimensional hypothesis fare any better? A growing number of serious UFO researchers believe it can. Let’s take a look.

The Interdimensional Hypothesis

The interdimensional hypothesis holds that residual UFOs “enter the physical dimensions of the universe from ‘outside’ the four familiar dimensions of length, height, width, and time.”{10} Where do they come from? Some believe that they come from another physical universe of space and time. But this does not seem possible. General relativity forbids “the space-time dimensions of any other hypothetically existing universe” from overlapping with our own.{11} For this reason, many researchers believe that residual UFOs must come from some other dimension entirely, perhaps even a spiritual realm.

What evidence can be offered for such a bold hypothesis? Many point to the strange behavior of residual UFOs themselves. Hugh Ross contends that residual UFOs “must be nonphysical because they disobey firmly established physical laws.”{12} Among the many examples that he offers in support of this statement, consider the following:{13}

1. Residual UFOs generate no sonic booms when they break the sound barrier, nor do they show any evidence of meeting with air resistance.
2. They make impossibly sharp turns and sudden stops.
3. They send no detectable electromagnetic signals.

For example, “relative to the number of potential observers, ten times as many sightings occur at 3:00 A.M (a time when few people are out) as at either 6:00 A.M. or 8:00 P.M. (times when many people are outside in the dark).”{14} If residual UFOs were simply random events, then we would expect more sightings when there are more potential observers. The fact that these events are nonrandom may suggest some sort of intelligence behind them. This is further supported by the fact that some people are more likely to see a residual UFO than others. Numerous researchers have observed a correlation between an individual’s involvement with the occult and their likelihood of having a residual UFO encounter. This may also suggest some kind of intelligence behind these phenomena.

Finally, residual UFOs not only appear to be nonphysical and intelligent, they sometimes seem malevolent as well. Many of those claiming to have had a residual UFO encounter have suffered emotional, psychological, and/or physical injury. A few people have even died after such encounters. In light of these strange characteristics, many researchers have reached similar conclusions about the possible source of these phenomena.

The Occult Connection

Many serious UFO investigators have noticed a striking similarity between some of the aliens described in UFO reports and the demonic spirits described in the Bible. Although it may not be possible to know whether some aliens are actually demons (and I certainly do not claim to know this myself), the well-documented connection between UFO phenomena and the occult cannot be denied.

In 1969 Lynn Catoe served as the senior bibliographer of a publication on UFOs researched by the Library of Congress for the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. After a two-year investigation, in which she surveyed thousands of documents, she drew explicit attention to the link between UFOs and the occult. She wrote, “A large part of the available UFO literature . . . deals with subjects like mental telepathy, automatic writing and invisible entities . . . poltergeist manifestations and ‘possession.’ Many . . . UFO reports . . . recount alleged incidents that are strikingly similar to demonic possession and psychic phenomena.”{15} Veteran UFO researcher John Keel agrees. After surveying the literature on demonology he wrote, “The manifestations and occurrences described in this imposing literature are similar if not entirely identical to the UFO phenomenon itself.”{16} The bizarre claim of alien abduction may lend some credibility to these remarks.

Many (though not all) of those who report an abduction experience describe the aliens as deceptive and hostile. Whitley Strieber, whose occult involvement preceded the writing of both Communion and Transformation, at times explicitly referred to his alien visitors as “demons.” For example, in Transformation he described his emotional reaction to the aliens with these words: “I felt an absolutely indescribable sense of menace. It was hell on earth to be there, and yet I couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t get away . . . Whatever was there seemed so monstrously ugly, so filthy and dark and sinister. Of course they were demons. They had to be. And they were here and I couldn’t get away.”{17}

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that abduction is often physically and emotionally painful, Mr. Strieber tends to believe that its purpose is ultimately benevolent. When integrated correctly, the abduction experience can provide a catalyst for spiritual growth and development. Still, he candidly admits that he is really not sure precisely who or what these beings actually are, and he continues to warn that many of them are indeed hostile and malevolent.{18} In light of this, one can’t help wondering about the experiences related in Mr. Strieber’s books. If his encounters with aliens were not merely hallucinatory, or due to some mental disorder, isn’t it at least possible that his sinister visitors really were demons? As noted above, many UFO investigators would indeed consider this (or something very much like it) a genuine possibility.

Another Gospel?

In his letter to the Galatians the Apostle Paul delivered a stirring indictment against every gospel but that of Christ. “But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed” (1:8-9). Evidently, the purity of the gospel was deeply important to Paul.

In today’s pluralistic society a variety of gospels are being preached. And among the great throng of voices clamoring for our attention are many UFO cults. Since the 1950s a number of these cults have arisen, often around a charismatic leader who claims to be in regular contact with otherworldly beings. Interestingly, unlike the abduction phenomenon, most contactees do not claim to have ever seen the aliens with whom they communicate. Rather, they claim that the aliens communicate with them psychically or telepathically. The contactee is simply a channel, or medium, through whom the aliens communicate their messages to humankind. This method of contact is rather intriguing for those who favor the interdimensional hypothesis. As John Saliba observes, “Many contactees . . . write about UFOs and space beings as if these were psychic phenomena, belonging to a different time/space dimension that lies beyond the scope . . . of modern science.”{19}

So what sort of messages do the aliens allegedly communicate to contactees? Often they want to help guide us to the next stage of our spiritual evolution or give us advice that will help us avoid some global catastrophe. Strangely, however, many of them also want to deny or distort traditional doctrines of biblical Christianity. Oftentimes these denials and distortions concern the doctrine of Christ. For example, the Aetherius Society “views Jesus Christ as an advanced alien being . . . who communicates through a channel and travels to Earth in a flying saucer to protect Earth from evil forces.”{20} As a general rule, “UFO religions . . . reject orthodox Christology (Jesus’ identity as both God and man) and thus reject Jesus Christ as the . . . Creator and . . . Savior of humankind.”{21}

A deficient Christology, combined with an acceptance of biblically forbidden occult practices like mediumistic channeling (see Lev. 19:31; Deut. 18:10-12; etc.), make many UFO cults spiritually dangerous. By preaching a false gospel, they have (perhaps unwittingly) placed themselves under a divine curse. By embracing occult practices, they have opened the door to potential demonic attack and deception. Nevertheless, there is hope for those involved with these cults. There is even hope for those tormented by hostile beings claiming to be aliens. The Bible tells us that through His work on the cross, Jesus disarmed the demonic rulers and authorities (Col. 2:15). What’s more, for those who flee to Him for refuge, He makes available the “full armor of God,” that they might “stand firm against the schemes of the devil” (Eph. 6:11). Regardless of who or what these alien beings might be, no one need live in fear of them. If Jesus has triumphed over the realm of evil demonic spirits, then certainly no alien can stand against Him. Let those who live in fear turn to Jesus, for He offers rest to all who are weary and heavy-laden (Matt. 11:28).

Notes

1. John Spencer, ed., The UFO Encyclopedia (New York: Avon Books, 1991), s.v. “identified flying objects (IFOs),” cited in Hugh Ross, Kenneth Samples, and Mark Clark, Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men (Colorado Springs, Colorado: NavPress, 2002), 25.
2. Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998), s.v. “Friedman, Stanton Terry,” cited in Ross, et al., Lights in the Sky, 31.
3. Ross, et al., 32.
4. Ibid., 109.
5. Ibid., 34.
6. Ibid., 39.
7. Ibid., 57.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 59.
10. Ibid., 109.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 69.
13. Ibid., 69-70.
14. Ibid., 116.
15. Lynn Catoe, UFOs and Related Subjects: An Annotated Bibliography (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), p. iv (prepared under Air Force Office of Scientific Research Project Order 67-0002 and 68-0003), cited in John Ankerberg and John Weldon, The Facts on UFO’s and Other Supernatural Phenomena (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1992), 17.
16. John A. Keel, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (New York: Putnam’s, 1970), p. 215; cited in Ankerberg and Weldon, The Facts on UFO’s, 18.
17. Whitley Strieber, Transformation: The Breakthrough (New York: Morrow, 1988), p. 181; cited in Ankerberg and Weldon, The Facts on UFO’s, 23.
18. For example, his recent online journal entry, “How We Can Protect Ourselves,” (Aug. 28, 2003) at www.unknowncountry.com/journal/. 19. John A. Saliba, “Religious Dimensions of UFO Phenomena,” in The Gods Have Landed, ed. James R. Lewis (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 25; cited in Ross, et al., Lights in the Sky, 145.
20. Ross, et al., Lights in the Sky, 150.
21. Ibid., 164.

© 2003 Probe Ministries

Meic Pearse’s book The Gods of War gives great insight into the charge that religion is the cause of most war. History shows this is not true: the cause of most war is the sinful human heart, even when religion is invoked as a reason.

The Accusation

Sam Harris, the popular author and atheist, says that “for everyone with eyes to see, there can be no doubt that religious faith remains a perpetual source of human conflict.”{1} Writing for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, fellow atheist Richard Dawkins adds, “Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today.”{2} Speaking more bluntly, one British government official has said, “theocrats, religious leaders or fanatics citing holy texts . . . constitutes the greatest threat to world peace today.”{3}

War is the ultimate act of intolerance, and since intolerance is seen as the only unforgivable sin in our postmodern times, it’s not surprising that those hostile to religion would charge people holding religious convictions with the guilt for causing war.

This view is held by many others, not just despisers of religion. A 2006 opinion poll taken in Great Britain found that 82% of adults “see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree.”{4}

To be honest, religion has been, and remains, a source of conflict in the world; but to what degree? Is it the only source of war, as its critics argue? Is it even the primary source? And if we agree that religion is a source of war, how do we define what qualifies as a religion? This leads to another question. Are all religions equally responsible for war or are some more prone to instigate conflict than others? Once these issues are decided, we are still left with one of the most difficult questions: How does a religious person, especially a Christian, respond to the question of war?

When confronted with the accusation that religion, and more importantly, Christianity, has been the central cause of war down through history, most Christians respond by ceding the point. We will argue that the issue is far too complex to merely blame war on religious strife. A more nuanced response is needed. Religion is sometimes the direct cause of war, but other times it plays a more ambiguous role. It can also be argued, as Karl Marx did, that religion can actually restrain the warring instinct.

In his provocative new book, The Gods of War, Meic Pearse argues that modern atheists greatly overstate their case regarding religion as a cause for war, and that all religions are not equal when it comes to the tendency to resort to violence. He believes that the greatest source for conflict in the world today is the universalizing tendencies of modern secular nations that are pressing their materialism and moral relativism on more traditional cultures.

The Connection Between Religion and War

When someone suggests a simple answer to something as complex as war, it probably is too simple. History is usually more complicated than we would like it to be.

How then should Christians respond when someone claims religion is the cause of all wars? First, we must admit that religion can be and sometimes is the cause of war. Although it can be difficult to separate political, cultural, and religious motivations, there have been instances when men went off to war specifically because they believed that God wanted them to. That being said, in the last one hundred years the modern era with its secular ideologies has generated death and destruction on a scale never seen before in history. Not during the Crusades, the Inquisition, nor even during the Thirty Years War in Europe.

The total warfare of the twentieth century combined powerful advances in war-making technologies with highly structured societies to devastating effect. WWI cost close to eight and a half million lives. The more geographically limited Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 resulted in nine million deaths. WWII cost sixty million deaths, as well as the destruction of whole cities by fire bombing and nuclear devices.

Both Nazi fascism and communism rejected the Christian belief that humanity holds a unique role in creation and replaced it with the necessity of conflict and strife. By the end of the nineteenth century, Darwin’s ideas regarding natural selection and survival of the fittest had begun to affect philosophy, the social sciences, and even theology. Darwin had left us with a brutal universe devoid of meaning. The communist and fascist worldviews were both firmly grounded in Darwin’s universe.

Hitler’s obsession with violence is well known, but the communists were just as vocal about their attachment to it. Russian revolution leader Leon Trotsky wrote, “We must put an end once and for all to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life.” Lenin argued that the socialist state was to be “a system of organized violence against the bourgeoisie” or middle class. While critics of the Russian Tsar and his ties with the Orthodox Russian Church could point to examples of oppression and cruelty, one historian has noted that when the communists had come to power “more prisoners were shot at just one soviet camp in a single year than had been executed by the tsars during the entire nineteenth century.”{5}

So, religion is not the primary cause of warfare and cruelty, at least not during the last one hundred years. But what about wars fought in the more distant past; surely most of them were religiously motivated. Not really.

Meic Pearce argues that “most wars, even before the rise of twentieth century’s secularist creeds, owed little or nothing to religious causation.”{6} Considering the great empires of antiquity, Pearce writes that “neither the Persians nor the Greeks nor the Romans fought either to protect or to advance the worship of their gods.”{7} Far more ordinary motives were involved like the desire for booty, the extension of the empire, glory in battle, and the desire to create buffer zones with their enemies. Each of these empires had their gods which would be called upon for aid in battle, but the primary cause of these military endeavors was not the advancement of religious beliefs.

Invasions by the Goths, Huns, Franks, and others against the Roman Empire, attacks by the Vikings in the North and the Mongols in Asia were motivated by material gain as well and not religious belief. The fourteenth century conquests of Timur Leng (or Tamerlane) in the Middle East and India resulted in the deaths of millions. He was a Muslim, but he conquered Muslim and pagan alike. At one point he had seventy thousand Muslims beheaded in Baghdad so that towers could be built with their skulls.{8}

More recently, the Hundred Years War between the French and English, the American Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars were secular conflicts. Religious beliefs might have been used to wrap the conflicts with a Christian veneer, but promoting the cause of Christ was not at the heart of the conflicts.

Pearce argues that down through the millennia, humanity has gone to war for two main reasons: greed expressed by the competition for limited resources, and the need for security from other predatory cultures. The use of religion as a legitimating device for conflict has become a recent trend as it became less likely that a single individual could take a country to war without the broad support of the population.

It can be argued that religion was, without ambiguity, at the center of armed conflict during two periods in history. The first was during the birth and expansion of Islam which resulted in an ongoing struggle with Christianity, including the Crusades during the Middle Ages. The second was the result of the Reformation in Europe and was fought between Protestant and Catholic states. Even here, political motivations were part of the blend of causes that resulted in armed conflict.

Islam and Christianity

Do all religions have the same propensity to cause war? The two world religions with the largest followings are Christianity and Islam. While it is true that people have used both belief systems to justify armed conflict, are they equally likely to cause war? Do their founder’s teachings, their holy books, and examples from the earliest believers encourage their followers to do violence against others?

Although Christianity has been used to justify forced conversions and violence against unbelievers, the connection between what Christianity actually teaches and these acts of violence has been ambiguous at best and often contradictory. Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians told to use violence to further the Kingdom of God. Our model is Christ who is the perfect picture of humility and servant leadership, the one who came to lay down his life for others. Meic Pearce writes, “For the first three centuries of its history, Christianity was spread exclusively by persuasion and was persecuted for its pains, initially by the Jews but later, from 63, by the Romans.”{9} It wasn’t until Christianity became the de facto state religion of the Roman Empire around AD 400 that others were persecuted in the name of Christ.

The history of Islam is quite different. Warfare and conflict are found at its very beginning and is embodied in Muhammad’s actions and words. Islam was initially spread through military conquest and maintained by threat of violence. As one pair of scholars puts it, there can be no doubt that “Islam was cradled in violence, and that Muhammad himself, through the twenty-six or twenty-seven raids in which he personally participated, came to serve for some Muslims as a role model for violence.”{10}

Much evidence can be corralled to make this point. Muhammad himself spoke of the necessity of warfare on behalf of Allah. He said to his followers, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no God but Allah.’”{11} Prior to conquering Mecca, he supported his small band of believers by raiding caravans and sharing the booty. Soon after Muhammad’s death, a war broke out over the future of the religion. Three civil wars were fought between Muslims during the first fifty years of the religion’s history, and three of the four leaders of Islam after Muhammad were assassinated by other Muslims. The Quran and Hadith, the two most important writings in Islam, make explicit the expectation that all Muslim men will fight to defend the faith. Perhaps the most telling aspect of Islamic belief is that there is no separation between religious and political authority in the Islamic world. A threat to one is considered a threat to the other and almost guarantees religiously motivated warfare.

Pacifism or Just Wars?

Although most Christians advocate either pacifism or a “just war” view when it comes to warfare and violence, Pearse argues that there are difficulties with both. Pacifism works at a personal level, but “there cannot be a pacifist state, merely a state that depends on others possessed of more force or of the willingness to use it.”{12} Some pacifists argue that humans are basically good and that violence stems from misunderstandings or social injustice. This is hardly a traditional Christian teaching. Pearse argues that “a repudiation of force in all circumstances . . . is an abandonment of victims—real people—to their fate.”{13}

Just war theory as advocated by Augustine in the early fifth century teaches that war is moral if it is fought for a just cause and carried out in a just fashion. A just cause bars wars of aggression or revenge, and is fought only as a last resort. It also must have a reasonable chance of success and be fought under the direction of a ruler in an attitude of love for the enemy. It seeks to reestablish peace, not total destruction of the vanquished, and to insure that noncombatants are not targeted.

However, even WWII, what many believe to be our most justified use of force, failed to measure up to this standard. Massive air raids against civilian populations by the Allies were just one of many violations that disallow its qualification as a just war. As Pearse argues, “war has an appalling dynamic of its own: it drags down the participants . . . into ever more savage actions.”{14}

How then are Christians to think about war and violence? Let’s consider two examples. In the face of much violent opposition in his battle for social justice, Martin Luther King said, “be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. . . . We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process.”{15} Reform was achieved, although at the cost of his life, and many hearts and minds have been changed.

However, another martyr, German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, rejected pacifism and chose to participate in an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler, mainly because he despaired that an appeal to the hearts and minds of the Nazis would be effective.

Neither King nor Bonhoeffer were killed specifically for their faith. They were killed for defending the weak from slaughter, as Pearse puts it. Perhaps Pearse is correct when he argues, “If Christians can . . . legitimately fight . . . , then that fighting clearly cannot be for the faith. It can only be for secular causes . . . faith in Christ is something for which we can only die—not kill. . . . To fight under the delusion that one is thereby promoting Christianity is to lose sight of what Christianity is.”{16}

Notes

1. Meic Pearse, The Gods of War (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 16.
2. Ibid., 15.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 14.
5. Ibid., 31.
6. Ibid., 53.
7. Ibid., 54.
8. Ibid., 55.
9. Ibid., 134.
10. Ibid., 58.
11. Ibid., 59.
12. Ibid., 173.
13. Ibid., 175.
14. Ibid., 173.
15. Ibid., 180.
16. Ibid.

© 2008 Probe Ministries

Why would it not be better to be measured by one’s works instead of free grace?

Thanks for asking. Interesting question.

I think a clear understanding of our works and of grace would bring clarity to the difference.

What do we bring to the table in terms of our works? Consider what Paul wrote in Romans 7:18—”I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”

Consider Isaiah 64:6—”all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”

And it’s not just that our works fall short of a high standard . . . it’s that sin has so thoroughly corrupted our nature that even our most sincere, well-intentioned acts are tainted at the root. The problem isn’t just what we do but what we are. A glass that contains poison doesn’t become safe because you pour something good into it, because the contents are compromised from the start. This is why even the most moral, sincere, generous, religiously devoted person cannot earn a right standing before God on the basis of their character or effort. We generally underestimate the impact of sin. It’s not just a blemish on what might be an acceptable record; it’s a disqualifying condition. Whatever good we attempt to do still flows through a fallen nature, mixed with impure motives, self-interest, and pride we often can’t even detect in ourselves. God, who sees not just actions but the heart behind them, cannot receive that as righteousness.

Consider what Jesus Himself said in John 15:5—”Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

The very best we have to offer in our own strength and from our own efforts to a holy and perfect God counts as nothing. He is not impressed.

Compare our works to God’s grace: perfect, holy, favor and blessing and empowering we don’t deserve. He pours His supernatural life and divine energy into us! He gives us the privilege of loving Him and serving Him and others with His own power. I like to think of the difference between the power of a tiny hearing aid battery . . . and the power of the sun. That’s the beginning of the distinction between our own puny human efforts and God’s unimaginable power.

Sometimes children are provided with a pile of Cheerios or Froot Loops cereal and a string so they can make a Mother’s Day necklace for their mamas. Compare that to a string of priceless pearls and diamonds given by the world’s wealthiest man. I think the difference between our works and God’s grace is infinitely bigger than that.

I hope this helps.

Sue Bohlin

Posted June 2026
© 2026 Probe Ministries