A (0:04)

It's Friday, January 30th, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, one of the most important things for us to understand about human beings made in the image of God is that one way or another we will come up with some set of religious beliefs. And you know, I'm going to argue on biblical terms that that's even true of atheists and agnostics who claim that they have nothing to do with any religious structure of thought. I'm just going to say that if you look closely at what they believe and you put together the thoughts that they put out there and then you watch their behavior. Well, it comes back to the fact that Richard Dawkins, you know, the famous evolutionary biologists in England at Oxford, who of course was one of the most vociferous of the so called new atheists, he also admits that he goes to church from time to time, including Christmas Eve services, because he likes the music. Now I'm not going to make that into some kind of Christian declaration, not doing that at all. I'm simply saying that they turn out to be more religious than they led on to be. And not only that, sometimes the religion is particularly irreligious, sometimes they make a religion out of irreligion because you can make a religion out of paganism, sexuality, just about anything. But I want to tell you about a recent obituary that has brought all of this crashing on my personal shore. The obituary is Erich Von Doniken, who died a matter of weeks ago at age 90. Now if you are a male of a certain age, you might immediately know the name Erich Von Daniken. I was a teenage boy at the time when he became one of the best selling authors in the English speaking world. And in my world he became a very popular author. He became the stuff of conversation among high school students and college students and others. And he wrote a book entitled Chariots of the Gods. And in that book he made the argument that much of what we now know as human intelligence and the achievements of human intelligence and human culture and human civilization are actually the result of aliens who came to visit and impregnated human beings and infused their wisdom and are coming back again now. Erich Von Daniken's book, the Chariots of the Gods was originally published in 1968, but in English it really exploded in the 1970s. And that's the period when I was in high school and I was in high school in the area for Lauderdale Florida, specifically Pompano Beach, Florida. And that was the marker, the western marker, for what was claimed to be the Bermuda Triangle, sometimes known as the Devil's Triangle. It was named for Bermuda, which is the northern point of the Triangle, and then about Fort Lauderdale as the southwestern part of the Triangle, and Puerto Rico as the southeastern point of the Triangle. And there were unusual phenomena there in that region. Missing ships, even missing U.S. military fighter planes during World War II. And the suggestion was that given all these unexplained phenomena, this triangle, the Devil's Triangle or the Bermuda Triangle, is a celestial portal through which extraterrestrials are visiting that would explain the phenomena. All right, so you say, who in the world would buy that? Well, Americans bought this by hundreds of thousands of copies. And it shows us something that is really important in Christian worldview analysis. But I just want to tell you that when I was a teenage boy at the time, this was big time conversation. And there were people who came to South Florida just to try to take measurements or an account of how this celestial portal might work and all the rest. Erich Von Doniken tried to explain basically all of human history and the mysteries of the universe by explaining the extraterrestrial visits. Mike Peed, writing his obituary in the New York Times, says Erich Von Daniken, the best selling Swiss author and self styled maverick archaeologist who propagated the theory that thousands of years ago, an advanced alien species visited Earth, mated with ancient humans and gave them the technology and the intelligence to erect such marvels as the Great Pyramids, died in Switzerland at age 90. Okay, so he was a 32 year old man who was managing a hotel in Davos, Switzerland. How's that? To add a little spice to the international conspiracy, he was managing a hotel when he decided that he would write this book and it became an international best seller. As the Times rightly said. Listen to this quote. With little evidence and a lot of innuendo, he proclaimed that the Egyptian pyramids could have been built only with an alien expertise. Quoting from the book, is it really a coincidence that the height of the pyramid of chips multiplied by 1000 million, 98,000 miles corresponds approximately to the distance between the Earth and the Sun? End quote. Of course, approximately carries a lot of weight there, but it's the kind of thing you look at and go, wow, that is fascinating. And by the way, how did the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids? The reality is we don't have a sufficient historical explanation. But I think most human beings understanding that question will at least wait for further evidence before declaring that it must have been extraterrestrial wisdom that brought that about. But this kind of occultism. And in one sense, that's what it is. It's not necessarily worship, but it's certainly a metaphysically occultic worldview that comes into play here. And I'll just tell you, it really took the world by storm. It took the teenage world by storm. But it wasn't just us. It was a bunch of World War II vets and others who were involved in this. Now, let me be clear. I never bought the argument. I was never tempted by the argument, but I was puzzled by the phenomenon. Why are so many people buying into this? You know, the most, let's just say, simple explanation for the disastrous flight of those military planes during World War II into the ocean is that they became disoriented, something that is not all that uncommon. But you add that together with the suggestion that there's some kind of force behind all of this, there's some kind of intelligence behind all of this, there's some kind of pattern behind all of this, and a lot of people want to buy into it. Now, looking back at the Chariot of the Gods, one of the most amazing things is that, well, it tells us something about Americans in the 1970s that they bought this book by hundreds of thousands of copies. It made so many other kinds of claims, by the way, going back to when the book was out. One of the reviewers described its prose, its writing style as, quote, early terrible. And, you know, it basically is. It is a horribly written book, but it is the compelling nature of its claims. That's what caught so much attention. And the critics just went at it feverishly. So did the scientists. One of the most famous astrophysicist of the time was Carl Sagan. And some of you know that name he said of Von Daniken. Every time he sees something he can't understand, he attributes it to extraterrestrial intelligence. And since he understands almost nothing, he sees evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence all over the planet. End quote. Okay, I have to say I enjoyed that statement. That's like the consummate put down from Carl Sagan. I do want to remind all Christians, however, that Carl Sagan would have said something very similar about those who believe in biblical Christianity. So this is the kind of scientific sneering at anyone who believes there is any kind of intelligence behind the universe. And that's where Christians want to say, we absolutely do believe in an absolute intelligence behind the universe, but it's not the intelligence of extraterrestrial alien visitors coming down through a portal. It is rather the intelligence, the infinite intelligence of the all perfect self existent God, the creator God, who is of course, the God who revealed himself in holy Scripture, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there's another trick in writing this kind of book, and that is to congratulate yourself at the onset for having the courage to write this book. Erich Von Daniken took that one step further. He said it not only took courage to write this book, he said to the reader, it's going to take courage to read it. Here's how Chariot of the Gods began. It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it. He went on making the claims that the scientific establishment and everyone else was going to be against this book. But he had decoded the ancient code, he had discerned the ancient pattern. He had put all of this together. He reviewed ancient religious texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. He made some interesting references to the Bible, including the visions of the prophet Ezekiel. He also, of course, mentioned the Nephilim. And there's been a lot of speculation about the Nephilim. They appear in Genesis 6 and in Numbers 13. And it appears they are about supernatural beings of a sort. Of course, they were created by God, who nonetheless came and mated with human women, and they produced a super race of warriors, so to speak. Again, you can look that up, Genesis 6 and Numbers 13, as one of those texts that Christian maturity says we affirm as a part of the inherent and infallible Word of God. And frankly, it is a word of warning to us and a very important part, evidently, of biblical history. But the Bible does not go on with any further evidence of, let's just say, extraterrestrial issues, other than, of course, what is clearly in the revelation of Scripture. And this includes the fact that God maintains his relationship with and his sovereign authority as creator and intervenes where he chooses to intervene in what otherwise modern people want to call natural phenomena. That includes, of course, the entire world of miracles, not to mention the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the way, looking back at Ezekiel, you know, the vision he had of fiery wheels in the sky. Erich Von Daniken said he wasn't seeing fiery wheels in the sky. He was seeing an alien invasion, which is going to cause a lot of rewriting in biblical commentaries, if true. Okay, so you say, well, this stuff, it just really can't show up these days in popular culture. We're kind of past that, but we're not an awful lot of The New Age stuff is actually connected to this kind of speculation. And there are vast numbers of Americans, evidently, who are absolutely committed, at least, they say, to the idea that there's been some kind of alien invasion in the United States. A lot of the fascination with such phenomena is tied to a larger issue of worldview and the kinds of things that Erich Von Daniken was talking about. Well, there are traces of these kinds of things throughout ancient history. You take the Babylonians and in particular, the Egyptians. And by the way, this shows up interestingly in such movies as Raiders of the Lost Ark, which traces a similar kind of. It's more an insinuation in that movie than an open claim. The Times reminds us that actor Ridley Scott, also a director, incorporated ancient aliens into his 2012 film Prometheus. But Indiana Jones is probably the clearest example of how this kind of worldview, this kind of claim, ends up in popular culture. So when Von Daniken's book was released in Germany, it became a bestseller that was beginning in about 1968. You also had it translated into English. It became an even bigger seller. In the meantime, Erich Von Daniken was writing a second book from prison. He was arrested and convicted on financial fraud charges. Fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. I mentioned he was the manager of a hotel in Davos, evidently. Well, let's just say he went to jail for that particular part of his life. But that just added to his own understanding of his own authorial courage, you know, further courage to write another book. There were some who argued that it was all a fraud. Those who were close to him said, no, he actually believes these things. Let me just point to the end of the obituary. And it reminds us of the fact that, as we're told here, Mr. Von Daniken, he at least presented himself not only as believing these things, but believing them in an absoluteness. On the 50th anniversary of the book's release, he stated, today, I know definitely that Earth, our home, has been visited by extraterrestrials in the distant past. I also know that these visitors promised our forebears that they will return to Earth. They will return. So humanity better come to grips with that thought. End quote. Okay, so that's probably more than enough on Erich Von Daniken. But here's the big worldview issue again. We are hungry for an explanation of the phenomena around us. We want the world, the cosmos that we observe to make sense. And by the way, it doesn't make sense in purely naturalistic terms. It just doesn't. And so that's why you even have an evolutionary biologist who said that it does showing up in Christmas Eve services, that that worldview just doesn't produce enough to live on. But it is also clear that throughout all of human history After Genesis 3, there have been various pagan attempts to try to explain all of these things. And one of the things to note is how many of them are rooted in some claim of a conspiracy, and in this case, an extraterrestrial conspiracy. Something's gone wrong in the world and something is out of control in the world. And the easiest way to explain that if you're not going to believe in the one true and living God, is to believe that there is some other alien intelligence behind all this. I simply want to end this part of the briefing today by saying, you know that closing statement from Erich Von Daniken on the 50th anniversary of his book, and that is about his confidence in the fact that there had been an invasion of Earth and that it will happen yet again. They're coming back. That, of course, harkens and reminds Christians of our understanding, based on the authority of Scripture, of what we are expecting. And that certainly includes the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. And Erich Von Daniken warned that his alien invasion would come with something of a matter of judgment. We know that that's just a hint of what is promised in scripture concerning the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, yet another reminder that it's either biblical Christianity, gospel Christianity, or some other religion one way or the other. Okay, let's turn to questions. Always thrilled to get questions from listeners. And this one comes from a 16 year old young lady and she is reading R.C. sproul's book. Are we together? With a few of her friends. That's a great thing. It's a book about a Protestant understanding of Catholicism and the issues involved. She then writes on the topic of Catholic and Protestant churches and compiling the books of the Bible. One picked the books while the other recognized them. However, a Catholic friend of ours has argued that it doesn't matter whether we call it picked or recognized. In the end, humans are choosing which books are canonical or not. How should I respond to this? Okay, sweet question. And a very honest question. And it's a broader question. So I'm going to go a little bit deeper and just make sure we know what we're talking about here. When there's a reference here to the Apocrypha. In the main, this refers to seven books, sometimes referred to as Deuterocanonical from the second canon that are recognized by Roman Catholics, officially by the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, by the way, in 1546, in response to the Reformation. And they're published, of course, in Catholic Bibles, and they're often found in some older Protestant Bibles or certain, for instance, study Bibles published by academic presses. And the rest, and even some of the early Bibles that were produced by the Reformation tradition included these deuterocanonical works. Over time, the standard became very clearly they're not included. And even when they were included in the printed form, they were identified as deuterocanonical or second canon, not having the same status as the 66 books of the Old and New Testament. And it took the Church a while to figure all of this out. But let me tell you why Protestants have not recognized the apocryphal books. And apocrypha means mystery, deuterocanonical, again, meaning the second canon. The reason that Protestants have pretty comprehensively, throughout time, not recognize these books, certainly in the canon of Scripture number one, they are not cited in the New Testament. There is no New Testament citation of these books, nor do they have the Gospel content of the New Testament books in particular. And because they fail in two very important criteria, they have not been recognized by Protestants. And by the way, this has not been a controversial issue. Really. It wasn't even a controversial issue in the beginning of the Reformation. And one of the reasons is that there was no great theological issue that was really located on those texts. But that does change somewhat after 1546, especially when Catholics have sought to use the apocryphal books. And they're Tobit, Judith, first and second Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. They have sought to ground teachings, Catholic teachings concerning Purgatory, and in particular, prayers for the dead in the apocryphal books. And so, again, this is a clear distinction between Catholics and Protestants. But that's not exactly the question this young woman entrusted to me. The question is, well, were these books merely picked or recognized? Now, I think in him, by the way, she had a Catholic friend say that it really doesn't matter which way you go. Well, I think it did matter to the early church a great deal. It mattered a lot to the early Church. They believed themselves to be recognizing what was authoritative, inerrant, infallible, verbally revealed Scripture. They did not believe they were picking the books. There were formal criteria, theological criteria, and there were criteria about universality. It was often called catholicity because of the Latin word. In other words, all the churches recognized the same books. Apostolicity was really important in the New Testament books. And one of the issues here that was directed on that argument directly against the apocrypha is that there is absolutely no apostolic reference to the apocryphal books whatsoever. Period. And so the Apostle Paul's really clear about citing Scripture. And just to give one example, no citation of these books at all. And on an issue like prayers for the dead, grounded in at least some claims in texts from the apocryphal books, which, by the way, the Catholic Church basically now includes with the Old Testament more or less as if parts of the Old Testament and some of them would be dated in what we now call the intertestamental period, it is believed. But this is a place where there's actually a textual disagreement over a doctrinal disagreement about prayers for the dead. And let's just say that the only possible textual reference to that, that is prayers on behalf of the dead, would be found in the apocryphal books, one in particular. So this is where it does matter. It does matter for doctrine and theology. But I want state that in both cases, just to be intellectually honest, in both cases, the Catholic Church and Evangelical Protestants would at least claim that it was recognition rather than choosing in this. The question is, who do we believe made the most faithful? Recognition, not choice. But next, a question from a lister about the Nicene Creed. And because 2025 was the 1700th anniversary, remarkable thing of the Council of Nicaea, I gave it a great deal of attention. I spoke at the Evangelical conference there, celebrating that anniversary. And one of the statements is citing a former faculty member here at Southern Seminary who said that the Nicene Creed was not inspired and therefore not inerrant or infallible. Well, you know, that's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. When we use words like inerrant and infallible, we're not talking about any merely human writing. We're not talking about any church declaration. We are talking about the Holy Scriptures and all of the Holy Scriptures. So it's a great statement from what's called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. We're referring to the Holy Scriptures, all the Holy Scriptures and only the Holy Scriptures. Does this make sense in terms of being inerrant and infallible, verbally inspired? But that doesn't mean that when you have a statement, a doctrinal statement such as the Nicene Creed, that it doesn't have authority in the Church simply because it's not directly the words of Scripture. And by the way, there are a lot of scriptural words in such of these important creeds and confessions, such as the Nicene Creed. So what kind of authority does it have? Well, rightly understood in the Church, these creeds and confessions are to be number one, of course, judged by Scripture, but they seek to be summaries of Scripture and affirmations of Scripture. And the fact is that we need shorthand statements which are found as illustrations even within the New Testament shorthand explanations of the entirety of the Christian faith in order to nail down specific doctrinal teachings. And you say, well, that's an old Catholic practice. Well, it was. It's a venerable practice going all the way back to the early Church. You knew who was an orthodox believer and who was a heretic by the fact that the heretics denied what was declared in the Nicene Creed and the orthodox faithful received it and affirmed it based upon the authority of Scripture and theology matters, doctrine matters. If you reject the Nicene Creed and you reject the statements, the words, the substance, the content of the Nicene Creed, then you declare yourself to be what all orthodox Christians a little O there would recognize as a heretic. All right, so the Reformers, well, what about the Protestant Reformation? Because the Reformation, after all, one of the famous maxims of the Reformation, one of the most famous principles, was sola scriptura, Scripture alone. But that doesn't mean Scripture alone as in we have no other statements. After all, we preach sermons and all the rest, it's Scripture as the sole final authority and the sole final authority in matters of truth and doctrine and life and everything to which Scripture is addressed. And so even the Reformers both affirmed classical creeds such as the Nicene Creed, the Nicene Constantinopolitan creed, if you want to be technical in terms of its final form. And the Reformation Church has also produced creeds and confessions. And they had to, in order to say, this is what we believe the faith is and the faith is not what falls short of these statements. And so the Church has found creeds and confessions of absolute necessity. Let me say, as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the only way I can do my job, the only way I can say to Southern Baptist, we know what the faculty of this institution is teaching is, because the founders of this school, following that long line of faithfulness, wrote into the bylaws of the institution, into its charter that every faculty member must teach in accordance with and not contrary to all that is contained within our confession of faith, Faith without hesitation or mental reservation or private arrangement with the one who invests him in office. And yes, I have said that about a million times. And some of you know that when I came to Southern Seminary, the entire issue when I was elected president was whether or not we would make those words stick. And by God's grace, I spent my adult lifetime trying to make absolutely clear we make those words stick. Here's what we know is to be taught at Southern Seminary and Boys College. Here it is in black and white, unchanged from the founding of the school and based on an entire long line of faithful creedal and confessional statements. I know who to hire and, if necessary, who to fire based upon that summary of biblical truth. So if you avoid all creeds and confessions, you're actually avoiding doctrinal accountability. Let me also say, of course, one of the main functions of creeds and confessions is not just to defend the faith and define the faith, but to teach the faith. Which is one of the reasons why I think creeds and confessions rightly find their way into Christian worship just for the congregation together to say, this is the faith in which we stand. We stand on these statements, propositions and sentences because we believe they are rightly drawn from and rightly summarizing Scripture. We believe this, all this. And nevertheless, by the way, one final word here, because this is an older Southern Baptist who wrote me this and said, aren't Southern Baptists averse to creeds and confessions? Well, if they claim sole final authority, yes. But this is an absolute slander. The Southern Baptist Convention was made up of churches that association by association virtually universally had very strong confessions of faith. This institution, the institution I lead, was established in 1859, and the confession of faith was among the very first things done before they hired a single faculty member. So anyone who says this isn't central and obvious in our tradition simply doesn't know it. Well, you know, I'd hoped to get to more questions, but those were two really big questions worthy of a longer consideration. Last week, I dealt with a different question, and it was a question as to whether or not it was right to hold a baby shower for a baby. I'm going to put it just that way. Born outside of marriage, outside of wedlock. And there were some who were saying, no, you shouldn't do that, because this mother doesn't deserve a shower. By the way, she, according to what I was told, fully repented of her sin and acknowledged it. And I said, look, the big issue here is the fact that the baby is a gift. The Christian worldview The biblical worldview tells us the baby is a gift and this should be a shower for the baby. And in this context, God's glory is going to be in the baby and in the rightful joy, the absolutely necessary joy of receiving this baby and obviously taking care of the baby as well and sharing the joy. Okay, so I answered the question. It came from a family member and then I received, I just want to say, a communication from another family member and agreeing with the answer that I had given and kindly so. And then inviting me to come to the shower, saying that it's only right that my wife Mary and I would attend. Let me just state very clearly we would love to attend this baby shower. It makes my heart happy to think of it happening and very happy to think that we would be invited. I am preaching at a Bible conference during those days, but because of this, I'm going to have that baby shower on my my mind. I'm highly honored by the invitation and I just want to tell you I pray that that baby shower is filled with the right, faithful, unspeakable joy and that baby is received as sheer grace and gift. I also appreciate it. I have to say the note that came that another brother in the family, a young man, is attending voice I'll simply say about this child about to be born, we celebrate that birth, raise that child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and I will save a place in the Boyce College class of whatever it will be for that baby. To God be the glory. Thanks again for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com you can follow me on Twitter or x by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu for information on Boyce Cobb, go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again on Monday for the briefing.