The Pentagon Just Released Its UFO Files. Here's What a New Testament Scholar Sees.

May 9, 2026

By Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnston

The Pentagon dropped 162 files today on what the government now calls "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena." Grainy infrared clips. Black-and-white specks moving across a screen. A composite sketch of a "bronze metallic ellipsoid." And a single line buried in the coverage that the headlines mostly skipped: the Defense Department itself concedes the documents show no evidence the United States has ever made contact with extraterrestrial life.

Let me say plainly what I've been telling pastors who have called me all week: I am not impressed by the imagery. If aliens are real — and I find no compelling reason to believe they are — these blurry frames are not the proof. As former President Obama himself conceded, if the government were sitting on alien bodies, "some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie."

So why is this conversation gripping the country? And why are pastors from Texas to California asking me how to preach into it?

Because the question underneath the question is not really about aliens. It is about whether we are alone. It is about whether the heavens are empty. And on that question, the Bible is not silent. The Bible is loud.

The Heavens Are Not Empty

Open Daniel chapter 7. The prophet sees the Ancient of Days seated on His throne, and attending Him are "ten thousand times ten thousand" — a number Scripture uses to mean numberless. Open Revelation. John sees myriads upon myriads of heavenly beings worshiping the Lamb. Open Ezekiel chapter 1. The prophet sees wheels within wheels, living creatures, eyes, fire, movement we cannot describe because we have no category for it.

Open Daniel 10, and read carefully. An angelic messenger arrives to Daniel and explains he was delayed twenty-one days because "the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me." A real conflict. Real beings. Real movement between realms. This is not metaphor. This is the biblical worldview, and it has been the Christian worldview for two thousand years.

So when a pastor asks me, "Do I believe there is intelligent life beyond Earth?" my answer is: of course. The Bible has told us so for millennia. The heavens are teeming with intelligent beings. We call them angels. We call them principalities. We call them powers. Scripture names them. Jesus spoke of them. Paul wrote letters about them.

What I do not believe — what no Christian needs to believe — is that little gray men are piloting saucers from Alpha Centauri to abduct ranchers in New Mexico.

Here is the established truth, and it is one the cultural elites and theological liberals will not say out loud because they have abandoned the text: we have life on Earth. That is obvious. But Scripture, taken seriously, says there are also intelligent beings — myriads, which probably means millions — in the heavens. Some refuse to take Scripture seriously, and so they are left with no explanation at all. Christians have one. Start there.

Four Categories, Not One

Whatever these sightings actually are, they fall into one of four categories, and Christians should be able to name them without flinching.

First, misidentification. Most UAP reports, when finally analyzed, turn out to be weather phenomena, sensor glitches, ice crystals, or tricks of light. Even the Apollo 17 astronauts theorized the lights they saw above the lunar surface were chunks of ice.

Second, classified human technology. Ours or someone else's. We are not the only nation flying advanced aircraft. The most boring explanation is often the correct one.

Third, demonic activity. Scripture is unambiguous that there is a spiritual realm hostile to God and to humanity, and that this realm manifests in the physical world. Paul writes that we wrestle "not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12). High places. Read that twice.

Fourth, angelic activity. The same Scripture that warns us of fallen powers also assures us of ministering spirits sent by God. Hebrews 1:14. Genesis 18. Acts 12. The biblical record is consistent: the heavens are active, and sometimes that activity intersects our atmosphere.

Notice what is missing from this list. Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Visitors from a distant galaxy who happen to look like us, breathe like us, and arrive just in time to solve our problems. That is not a biblical category. That is a Hollywood category.

The Real Danger Is Deception

Here is what concerns me as a pastor and as a New Testament scholar. The apostle Paul warned the Thessalonian church that the man of lawlessness would come "with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception" (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10). The book of Revelation describes demonic spirits performing signs that deceive the kings of the earth (Revelation 16:14).

A generation conditioned by Hollywood to expect cosmic visitors is a generation primed for deception. If the enemy of our souls — who Scripture says masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) — wanted to engineer a worldview-shattering event for the modern secular mind, what better stage prop than a sky full of unexplained lights and a culture desperate to believe in something, anything, beyond itself?

I am not predicting the second coming by Tuesday. I am simply saying that pastors who shrug at this moment are missing a discipleship opportunity. Our people are watching cable news. Our people are scrolling X. Our people are wondering aloud whether Jesus and aliens can coexist in the same universe. The answer is yes — but not the way the culture is framing it.

Where Christians Should Look

Here is my pastoral counsel, and it is the counsel I am giving every pastor who has reached out this week.

Do not sensationalize. Do not dismiss. Do not preach a sermon on aliens. Preach a sermon on Jesus, and let the empty tomb do what blurry infrared footage never will.

Because here is the difference. We do not need a Pentagon press release to verify the resurrection. We have the Shroud of Turin, which I have personally examined in Turin, bearing forensic evidence of a crucified man whose image cannot be reproduced by any known process. We have first-century manuscripts. We have the Magdalen Papyrus and Codex Vaticanus. We have the testimony of eyewitnesses who died rather than recant. We have an empty garden tomb outside Jerusalem.

The world is asking, "Are we alone?" Christians have always known the answer. We were never alone. Heaven is full. The grave is empty. And the One who sits enthroned above the cherubim has already visited this planet, in flesh and blood, in a stable in Bethlehem.

That is the disclosure that matters. That is the file that has already been declassified. It is called the Gospel, and it is available to every soul who will read it.