Editor’s Note: This Article is a preface to a meeting being held at the Woodbine Inn and Restaurant on Saturday, July 29th. The organization MUFON aka the Mutual UFO Network is holding the meeting.

In 1633 A.D. an astronomer named Galileo became the subject of an inquisition by the Catholic church. The issue was his discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Earth being at the center of the solar system and everything else revolving around it. At the end of what was actually a legal trial in his day, Galileo ended up spending the rest of his life under house arrest.

More than 300 years passed before the Church admitted that Galileo was correct and cleared him of heresy. It is easy for us to accuse these church authorities of being ignorant and short-sighted. However, we would do well to remember that this was the real and active church of his time. These were real, actual Christian leaders.

In our time it has become the norm to see fantastic discoveries such as new planets in solar systems on an almost daily basis. These planets are dozens of light years from Earth. Many of these “worlds” fall into the realm of what we consider habitable planets. As of the date of this article, scientists have discovered at least 1780 planets beyond our solar system. At least 16 of these are in the habitable zones around their stars. So far, we have observed only 4% of the stars currently visible to us. This means that 96% of the sky is still yet to be explored using current technology. What wonders might we find in the not-too-distant future?

I feel it necessary to clarify that I, the writer of this article, am absolutely and unquestionably certain of my belief in God. Further, I happen to also be a Christian and a believer in the Bible as the word of God. However, I find no issue or conflict between my faith and the knowledge of what true science is revealing to us. I believe that we should also honor the beliefs of other individuals of other faiths as well.

Looking back to the example of Galileo, I believe that we find our religious leaders of today putting “blinders” on their eyes to keep from having to deal with discoveries of today’s scientific world. We would do well to recall that pluralism or the plurality of worlds theory was supported by such familiar names of history as astronomer William Herschel, politician John Adams and scientist Benjamin Franklin.

Today we face new evidence being trickled down regularly regarding the existence of what we call extra-terrestrial life. Recently a former government official named David Grusch, came forward as a whistleblower revealing that the US government is in possession of “a number” of crashed extra-terrestrial crafts and that we are reverse engineering these crafts in order to build advanced crafts of our own. Grusch specifically stated that these are craft of non-human origin. He confirmed that we have “space craft from another species”. Reports on the number of these craft range from just under a dozen to over 122. Several tapes of UFOs have been released by the government showing crafts of various shapes trailing our ships, airplanes, and even flying over our military installations. Congress has planned hearings on the UFO issue. Well-known members of congress such as Marco Rubio are taking this very seriously. In a recent interview, Mr. Rubio revealed that there are numerous other whistleblowers who have come forward.

I believe that religious leaders of our day need to give serious consideration to this subject. When we ignore these issues, we do so at our own peril, and we endanger the faith of others in our world. We should, as stated in 1Peter 3:15, “… be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh… “. If not, will future generations look back at us and shake their heads at our level of blindness as we do while looking back at the church in the day of Galileo? The time will come when everything we KNOW and everything, we THINK WE KNOW will change in just the space of one day. Will we be ready? Or will we simply look the other way and in the face of absolute proof and claim that it is not real? History will judge us, and God will judge us.