A Familiar Story

I’m sure if I mention the name Chicken Little it conjures up images of a farm animal that is running in fear about the impending doom of earth. If you don’t know about this children’s story here is more on it from a Wikipedia article:

Henny Penny", more commonly known in the United States as "Chicken Little" and sometimes as "Chicken Licken", is a European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries,[1] and "Henny Penny" continues to be referred to in a variety of media.

The fictional account has been around in many forms:

The story is listed as Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index type 20C, which includes international examples of folktales that make light of paranoia and mass hysteria.[2] There are several Western versions of the story, of which the best-known concerns a chick which believes that the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head. The chick decides to tell the king and, on its journey, meets other animals which join it in the quest. After this point, there are many endings. In the most familiar, a fox invites them to its lair and then eats them all.

Apparently Chicken Little needed to protect himself and others from the closer enemy than the one from the heavens. And that line is foreshadowing, but I digress now.

Another Asteroid

Every so often we’re told about an asteroid hurtling towards earth that could cause an extinction level disaster. I’m sure you’ve heard about Apophis that was thought to hit earth in 2029 but now seems to have decided to come much later as we’re told in an article about it from the BBC:

Earthlings can breathe a sigh of relief after US space agency Nasa confirmed the planet was "safe" from a once-feared asteroid for the next 100 years at least.

Nasa had deemed Apophis to be one of the most dangerous asteroids to Earth after its discovery in 2004. Close calls in 2029 and 2036 were predicted and later ruled out. A slight threat still remained for 2068. But now Nasa has dismissed that threat based on new analysis of the asteroid.

"A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility any more, and our calculations don't show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years," Davide Farnocchia, a scientist who studies near-Earth objects for Nasa, said in a statement on Friday.

If you are into tracking asteroids NASA actually has a website just for you:

The following table summarizes by object the potential future Earth impact events that the JPL Sentry System has detected based on currently available observations. Click on the object designation to go to a page with full details on that object. Sentry is a highly automated collision monitoring system that continually scans the most current asteroid catalog for possibilities of future impact with Earth over the next 100 years. Whenever a potential impact is detected it will be analyzed and the results immediately published here, except in unusual cases where we seek independent confirmation. It is normal that, as additional observations become available, objects will disappear from this table whenever there are no longer any potential impact detections. For this reason we maintain a list of removed objects with the date of removal.

So far NASA doesn’t see any threat now, but others think one object is of concern.

3I/Atlas Is Coming

The conspiracy world is full of talk about this interstellar comet as many have termed it. It is labeled as 3I/Atlas and there is at least one science scholar who thinks it is more than a comet as we read in an article from USA Today:

One thing about 3I/ATLAS is for certain: It's definitely not from Earth's solar system.

But what exactly is the intriguing interstellar object discovered speeding through our cosmic neighborhood? Most astrophysicists widely agree 3I/ATLAS displays all the telltale signs of an icy comet. Now, a trio of researchers led by Avi Loeb, a controversial astrophysicist from Harvard University, are positing a very different theory: What if 3I/ATLAS isn't just some random space rock that arrived in our solar system by happenstance but an intelligently controlled alien spacecraft? Even the authors of the research paper positing the wild idea aren't fully sold on it, but – hey – extraterrestrial visitors are always fun to think about.

Just do you know ATLAS is an acronym which stands for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System so now you can show how smart you are about such things. Anyway, it’s predicted to whiz by us on October 30th but it won’t come that close since it will be 130 million miles away from earth. But what if it isn't a comet at all but an artificial spacecraft that can change course to come closer? One man thinks that’s not out of the question:

The three researchers, who most prominently include Loeb, recently published a paper speculating about whether the object could be "hostile" alien technology.

Loeb is famed for encouraging astrophysicists to have an open mind about extraterrestrials, but his theories and research often rankle other scientists in the field, who push back on some of his bolder claims. He is cofounder of the Galileo Project, a research program at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics dedicated to the search for extraterrestrials.

"This hypothesis proposes that our cosmic neighborhood is dangerous, filled with intelligent civilizations that are hostile and silent to avoid detection by potential predators," Loeb wrote.

Not everyone buys his cautions:

But experts who spoke to science news website LiveScience cast serious doubt on Loeb's sensational theory.

"Any suggestion that it's artificial is nonsense on stilts, and is an insult to the exciting work going on to understand this object," Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford who was part of the team that simulated 3I/ATLAS's galactic origins, told Live Science.

Still that isn’t stopping those who, like Mulder in the popular TV series The X Files, think the truth is out there and it’s definitely of the intelligent life species. Should Christians be worried about this and is it in Bible prophecy?

Strange Events In The Skies

“Then there will be strange events in the skies—warnings, evil omens and portents in the sun, moon and stars; and down here on earth the nations will be in turmoil, perplexed by the roaring seas and strange tides. 26 The courage of many people will falter because of the fearful fate they see coming upon the earth, for the stability of the very heavens will be broken up. (Luke 21:25-26, TLB)

Jesus spoke these words in response to His disciples who asked what would be the signs just before He returned again. To be certain they are quite ominous. The signs in the sun, moon, and stars” are pointing to literal cosmic disturbances: darkened sun/moon, meteor showers, unusual celestial phenomena (see Rev 6:12–13; Joel 2:31; Isa 13:10). But that won’t stop some from taking those unusual celestial phenomena to mean more than asteroids like Wormwood or the like. I like how a commentary on the topic from the Bible Hub explains this:

The book of Revelation is replete with imagery of celestial signs. Revelation 6:12-14 describes the opening of the sixth seal: "And when I saw the Lamb open the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake. The sun became black like sackcloth of goat hair, and the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, like unripe figs dropping from a tree shaken by a great wind. The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place." These apocalyptic signs underscore the cosmic upheaval accompanying the final judgment.

I’m certainly not ruling out some alien looking activity, but I don't believe that we’ll see that either now or in the future. Anything out of the ordinary can be explained by scientific phenomena or demonic activity. But one thing I can tell you is that our reaction shouldn’t be one of fear:

In prophetic literature, heavenly signs are frequently linked to the theme of divine judgment and the hope of redemption. They are seen as harbingers of the coming Kingdom of God, calling believers to vigilance and faithfulness. The anticipation of these signs encourages a posture of readiness for the return of Christ, as emphasized in passages like Luke 21:25-28: "There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among the nations, bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the surging of the waves. People will faint from fear and anxiety over what is coming upon the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to happen, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Chicken Little did look up to the skies but misread the falling acorn as impending doom and acted accordingly. Dare I say that many people are doing the same thing now? Let me just tell you that even if the sky is literally falling there isn’t a thing we can do to make ourselves safe from it. Nothing at all. The best preparation is getting your life right with God and living a righteous life, one worthy of making it to heaven. Fear is off the table folks. Faith isn’t.