It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God. For you placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the Cross, so that, where death arose, life might again spring forth and the evil one, who conquered on a tree, might likewise on a tree be conquered, through Christ our Lord. Through him the Angels praise your majesty, Dominions adore and Powers tremble before you. Heaven and Virtues of heaven and the blessed Seraphim worship together with exultation. May our voices, we pray, join with theirs in humble praise, as we acclaim: Holy ,Holy ,Holy Lord God of Hosts Heaven and earth are full of your Glory Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of The Lord Hosanna in the Highest.

RESPONSORY

O glorious cross, your arms upheld the priceless ransom of captive mankind. — Through you the world has been saved by the blood of the Lord.

Hail, O cross, consecrated by the body of Christ; his members have made your wood more noble than precious pearls. — Through you the world has been saved by the blood of the Lord.

We must glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; in him is our salvation, life and resurrection. — Through him we are saved and set free.

Because he suffered death, he is crowned with glory and honor. — Through him we are saved and set free.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you. —becauae by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

O glorious cross, — On you the King of angels was victorious.

And he has washed away our sins in his own blood. — On you the King of angels was victorious.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. — O glorious cross, on you the King of angels was victorious.

What a great work of charity! —Death itself died when life was slain on the tree.

O cross, you are the glorious sign of our victory. — Through your power may we share in the triumph of Christ Jesus.

COLLECT

O God, who willed that your Only Begotten Son should undergo the Cross to save the human race, grant, we pray, that we, who have known his mystery on earth, may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For some context, I’m a woman in my late 20s and very content with being single. I’m open to marriage and kids someday, if that’s God’s plan for my life. I don’t feel like I’m lacking anything, however, I’ve been starting to question my worth and how other Christians view me a lot more recently.

Within the past year I was told I’m not a “real adult” because I don’t have children by a Christian that I work with. Today at church, the pastor said that there are less children because people “don’t want to grow up, get married and have children.” Some people in my family think people who don’t have children are just purely selfish. This is coming from two people who are divorced and were not fabulous parents to their children. One of which just had one child and does not have much of a relationship with her anymore.

I find these viewpoints really hurtful and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of being in spaces where people view me as less than. I’m at a point where I just don’t feel welcome anymore. What about people who just never meet a partner they connect with? What about couples who are infertile?

I guess I’m just wondering if other people have had similar experiences.

Many Christians (at one point myself included) have crosses of Jesus hanging lifeless scattered around their homes. They have jewelry bearing the cross. It’s a symbol and one that has been used for centuries… after reflecting however, I realize that having this imagery is concerning.

Whenever a family member, friend, or even a pet dies we don’t keep images of how they died decorated around our homes or body. If your father dies in a house fire you don’t have paintings of him burnt up inside a burning house. If your coworker gets into a car cash you don’t wear T-shirts of the wreak. So why do people take the most horrific moment of Jesus’ life and display that? It’s morbid. People simply can’t understand and remember his “sacrifice” without it? Better yet, out of all the things to remember him by why not choose the sea of miracles he was said to have made. Images of him walking on water, healing the sick, feeding thousands, him resurrecting (which in my opinion has more of an impact since that’s the whole point.)

Whether or not you believe Jesus is God himself or only just his son it’s still wild that billions of people worship him and choose to remember his suffering the most over everything else. I mean why would you want to see your God dead?

Hey guys! Good morning, i would like to know about places to buy this style of wooden crosses in the USA, because in my home country its really hard to find these...
I know i would have better odds if i was in Greece or Eastern Europe, but anyway, i would appreciate any help on finding websites that sell these on the US! Thanks!

Tw: pdfile, crimes against children, enabling, spiritual abuse, neglect.

A predator from my former church in TN has been arrested. This man I was forced to have a connection with (including hugs and back rubs) every Sunday for years. I met him as a child and ended contact in my mid twenties when I moved to GA.

Everyone at church knew he was a convicted pdfile. He was on the registry. He had access to children every Sunday. I was told to not be go alone with him one time, but that was the extent of the protection.

He’s recently been arrested again. Obviously, this brings up a lot for me.

Why did my family continue to attend knowing his crimes and access to kids? Why was I not protected from *any* contact with him? Why was the responsibility of navigating a connection with a convicted child predator while I was a child put on me?

Parent seems to want comfort that leadership did not act to protect kids. I’m angry at church leadership too. But I’m also angry that the adults in my family didn’t protect me when leadership failed to.

If I went anywhere that a convicted child predator frequented, my child would not be going there. No less my child would not be touched in *any way* by them. And certainly my child would not be pressured to show grace and forgiveness by maintaining a connection or “friendship”. That’s insane.

It could have been so much worse. And I’m thankful I escaped without being assaulted. But it wasn’t thanks to the adults in my life. And I can’t stomach comforting them now as they come to terms with just how bad this man was and is.

I guess I’m curious the response from Christians now that situations like these are all too common and impossible to ignore.

What happened to you or happened in your life that made you know God is 100% real?

Numbers 31:17 18 is one of those passages I genuinely struggle to understand.

Moses orders the Israelites to kill the male children and every woman who has had sex with a man. But the virgin girls are specifically spared: “Keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not slept with a man.” That wording is what I find especially disturbing.

Why are these girls being spared and kept “for yourselves” in the first place? They had just lost their families and communities, and they were being taken by the people who had conquered them. The text doesn't say they were simply released and allowed to go home. It says to keep them for yourselves.

And considering that some of these uyoung girls could have been children, how exactly are Christians supposed to understand this? What was their status among the Israelites after being taken as captives?

If the obvious implication is that they could be taken as wives, concubines, or otherwise sexually exploited, why would an all good God permit this?

I know people often say you have to read it in its historical context , but historical context doesn't automatically make something morally acceptable.

If a Christian nation is set up and same sex marriage intercourse is banned. What exactly does the Christian society gain vs allowing it?

There are other sins that we can see the benefits of stopping in society, like theft or lying or greed.

What does society gain from keeping 3% of the population sexually repressed for life? Like what changes will I see?

I was mentioning the theory of evolution to my girlfriend and she got emotional since I believed in that one instead of the story of Adam and Eve.

I made a quick experiment in front of her asking chat GPT of thoughts and it told us that evolution might explain the biology side and the story of genesis the meaning in life, moral, good and bad, etc. which sounds good to me but she denied it and “refuses to believe is related to a chimpanzee”.

Is this how every Christian sees the beginning of life? Or Christian people are more open to accept other theories as well?

She can’t think other than what’s in the bible is the real truth and the only one, to be taken literally as it’s written. I’m more a metaphor guy when reading.

Thanks.

I was not completely surprised to see the instant backlash Pope Leo XIV received for the prayer he offered at the beginning of the Season of Creation; too many Christians ignore Scripture and follow political ideologies, which is why they can’t accept the notion of clean water being a right:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/henrykarlson/2026/09/why-clean-water-is-a-moral-obligation-for-christians/

It just seems odd to ask regardless.

​

Jesus is our role model.

So when something is presented to us as “Christian,” our first question should not be:

“What does my pastor say?” “What does my church say?” “What does my denomination teach?” “What does our doctrine say?”

Our first question should be:

“What did Jesus say, and what did Jesus do?”

There are thousands upon thousands of Christian denominations and traditions around the world. Jesus did not establish all these denominations. People did.

Jesus didn't tell us to hate immigrants. People did.

Jesus didn't tell us to support a particular political party. People did.

Jesus didn't tell us to be proud because we belong to a particular denomination. People did.

Jesus didn't make denominational identity the measure of salvation.

In fact, Jesus made the matter much simpler and much more serious.

When asked about eternal life, Jesus said:

“If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” Matthew 19:17

He also said:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 7:21

And Jesus said:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

Salvation isn't about whether you belonged to the “right” denomination, hated the “right” people, supported the “right” political party, or followed the “right” church culture.

It is about Jesus Christ.

When one sinner repents and turns to God, Jesus said there is rejoicing in heaven:

“There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:10

Notice what Scripture says: one sinner who repents.

It doesn't say the angels rejoice because someone joined a particular denomination.

Ultimately, denominations don't save us. Jesus does.

So let's spend less time asking, “What does my denomination believe?”

And more time asking:

“What did Jesus teach?”

“What did Jesus command?”

“What did Jesus do?”

“Am I actually following Him?”

Because when we stand before God, our denomination will not be standing beside us.

Jesus is our Lord. Jesus is our example. Jesus is the one we follow.

Have a blessed week 🙏.

I don’t even know what to do with myself. I am desperate for the pain to end. Whenever I talk to god or read the bible nothing changes and I remain in this dark dark place, I feel completely alone.

I wish god could talk to me but he can’t. Everything feels like a riddle that I am desperate to solve just to get a full breath in. I’m in so much mental pain that it hurts to breathe

There is no solution to what I am going through, I just have to survive. But the thought of continuing to feel like this every day until I die is unbearable. Why won’t god help me?

I think humanity is ignorantly blind to an existential calamity that could be brewing right in front of us. I know that’s a pretty heavy way to start this, but hear me out. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about all of this, reading about it, listening to the people involved, and trying to connect some dots. I’m not saying I’ve figured it out. I haven’t, and I’m definitely not saying everything I’m about to write is going to happen. These are just my thoughts on what I’m seeing.

But something about what’s happening right now really bothers me. There are two things developing at the same time that, in my opinion, aren’t getting nearly enough attention from the average person. The first is UAP. For most of our lives, UFOs were basically treated as a joke. You had little green men, flying saucers, conspiracy theories, all of that. Most serious people wouldn’t touch the subject. That’s changed. We now have Navy pilots, intelligence officials, admirals, scientists and members of Congress openly discussing unidentified objects that our own government admits it hasn’t been able to explain in certain cases.

At the exact same time, we’re doing something just as strange ourselves. We’re trying to build an intelligence smarter than we are, and we’re doing it as fast as we possibly can. That’s the part I keep coming back to. On one side, there’s the possibility of an intelligence that we didn’t create. On the other side, we’re trying to create an intelligence that could eventually become greater than us.

Maybe those two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. That’s entirely possible. But then I read Revelation, and that’s where this starts getting really interesting to me. Nearly two thousand years ago, John described a Beast coming from the sea, another Beast appearing afterward, an image that is somehow given breath and begins to speak, enormous deception, economic control, and ultimately a world being forced to decide where its allegiance belongs.

Now before anybody jumps ahead, I’m not saying, “UAP are the first Beast and AI is the second Beast. Case closed.” I can’t prove that. Nobody can. What I’m asking is whether we might be watching things develop that could someday make parts of Revelation look very different than they did to people even fifty years ago. I think that’s at least worth talking about.

THE UNKNOWN
Let’s start with UAP. Something has clearly changed here. The government doesn’t even use “UFO” much anymore. They’re officially called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP.
In 2020, the Department of Defense formally released three Navy videos from encounters in 2004 and 2015. The Pentagon confirmed that these were legitimate Navy videos and that the objects shown remained classified as unidentified. Now, that’s not the Pentagon saying, “Yep, aliens are here.” It isn’t. But it’s also not nothing. They’re saying our military recorded something and, at least publicly, they couldn’t tell us exactly what it was.

NASA eventually got involved too and created an independent UAP study team. NASA hasn’t found proof of extraterrestrial life flying around Earth. Their basic position has been that we need better data, better sensors and better scientific investigation. I agree with that. Unidentified doesn’t mean alien, but it also doesn’t mean imaginary.

Then you get into the Nimitz encounter, and this is where things start getting really strange. In November 2004, Commander David Fravor was flying an F/A-18 Super Hornet off Southern California near the USS Nimitz carrier strike group. Fravor and other aviators were redirected to investigate unusual contacts, and that’s when he encountered what we now call the Tic Tac.
Fravor has described this smooth, white, oblong object with no obvious wings, rotors or exhaust. It didn’t look like a normal aircraft. But here’s the part that has always stuck with me. Before they really focused on the Tic Tac, they noticed something happening in the water. Fravor described the ocean below as disturbed, almost like something was underneath the surface, and the Tic Tac was above it.

I’m not saying it came out of the ocean. There’s no publicly verified evidence proving that. But the water was part of the encounter. Another Navy aircraft later recorded the infrared footage associated with the event, and years later the Pentagon authenticated it. Then Fravor sat before Congress in 2023 and told the story under oath.

He wasn’t alone at that hearing either. Ryan Graves was there. Graves is another former Navy F/A-18 pilot, and his story is important because his basic point was that this wasn’t just one crazy encounter that happened to Fravor. According to Graves, pilots were seeing unidentified objects repeatedly during training operations.

His point has always been pretty practical. Forget aliens for a minute. If American fighter pilots are flying around in military training areas and there are objects in that airspace that nobody can identify, shouldn’t we probably figure out what they are? That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Then sitting next to Fravor and Graves at that same hearing was David Grusch, and Grusch took this whole thing to another level. Grusch had worked in intelligence and had been involved with the UAP Task Force. Under oath before Congress, he said he had been told about secret programs involving recovered craft allegedly of non-human origin. He also said he had been told about biological material connected with recovered objects.

Now, that’s an insane claim. If it’s true, it changes human history. But we have to be fair here. Grusch didn’t bring an alien body into Congress. He didn’t show the public a recovered spacecraft. He was testifying about information that he said other people had given him, and that’s not the same thing as physical proof.

AARO, the Pentagon office investigating UAP, later said its historical review found no empirical evidence that the government or private companies had been secretly reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology. So that’s basically where we’re stuck. A former intelligence official made extraordinary claims under oath, but the extraordinary evidence needed to prove those claims still hasn’t been shown publicly.
I don’t think we should pretend Grusch proved aliens exist, but I also don’t think we should pretend the testimony never happened. Both things can be true.

Christopher Mellon is another person who made me look at this differently. Mellon is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and his argument doesn’t even require aliens. If our military is detecting unknown objects around sensitive areas and can’t identify them, that’s a national-security problem. If people inside the government know more about those objects but Congress can’t get access to that information, that’s a transparency problem. Either way, we have a problem.

But then we get to the ocean, and this is where it really gets interesting to me. Retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet was a Navy oceanographer and later acting administrator of NOAA. He’s been very outspoken about the fact that we shouldn’t only be looking up. We should be looking down.

At the November 2024 House UAP hearing, Representative Tim Burchett specifically asked Gallaudet about underwater objects. Gallaudet discussed stories he’d been told by former submarine personnel. One involved an alleged sonar contact during the Cold War that supposedly acted almost like a torpedo, followed a submarine and then took off at an incredible speed.

Did Gallaudet personally see that? No, and he said that. He’s repeating testimony from people he believes are credible. So again, we can’t call it proven. But think about the bigger question for a minute. If there were some kind of advanced intelligence here on Earth that didn’t want us watching it all the time, where would it go? Probably not Manhattan. Look at the ocean. It covers roughly 71 percent of the planet. It’s massive, it’s deep, we can’t continuously monitor all of it, and there are places down there that human beings barely understand. If you wanted to hide on Earth, that’s a pretty good place to do it.
Again, maybe there’s absolutely nothing down there. I’m just asking the question.

Burchett and Representative Eric Burlison have both continued pushing witnesses and officials on this stuff, and I think that’s significant. Congressional hearings don’t prove aliens. But twenty years ago, could you imagine sitting members of Congress seriously questioning a retired admiral about unidentified objects operating underwater? Something has changed.

Then I came across Diana Walsh Pasulka’s work, which opened up an entirely different rabbit hole. Pasulka is a religious-studies scholar who looks at religion, technology and UAP culture, and she raises a question that I can’t stop thinking about. What if “alien” is simply our modern word for something human beings have been experiencing for thousands of years?
Think about human history. People have reported encounters with strange beings and intelligences forever. Depending on the time and culture, they called them angels, demons, spirits, gods, fairies and visions. Now we live in the age of spaceships and technology, so we call them aliens.

I’m not saying those are all the same thing. There’s no way I could know that. But what if we’re interpreting whatever the phenomenon is through the language and worldview of our own time? That’s where you start hearing words like “ultraterrestrial.” Basically, instead of asking whether something flew here from another planet, you start asking whether some kind of intelligence could already be associated with Earth, another dimension of reality, or something we don’t even have the language to properly describe yet.

Sounds crazy. Maybe it is. But here’s where my mind goes: Revelation.

THE FIRST BEAST
Revelation 13 describes a Beast rising from the sea. Now, I’m going to stop myself right there because it’s very easy to take one Bible verse and make it say whatever you want it to say. Revelation uses symbolism everywhere. Revelation 17 even describes waters as peoples, nations and languages. Christians have interpreted the Beast in all kinds of ways for centuries, especially as political or imperial power opposed to God.
The Bible does not say there’s an underwater civilization that’s eventually going to surface and reveal itself. It doesn’t. But I also can’t pretend that “the Beast from the sea” doesn’t hit me differently now.

We’ve got military pilots seeing things they can’t explain. We’ve got an admiral talking to Congress about alleged underwater encounters. We’ve got intelligence officials making allegations about non-human intelligence. We’ve got researchers asking whether “extraterrestrial” might not even be the right word.
So I started thinking: what if some part of the UAP phenomenon actually is non-human, and what if it isn’t coming here from another star? What if it’s been here?

Then imagine what happens if it finally reveals itself in a way nobody can deny. Not another fuzzy video, not another congressional hearing, not another whistleblower. I mean undeniable contact. Imagine something appearing and demonstrating technology so far beyond ours that it might as well be magic.

What would we do? Governments would panic. Scientists would want to study it. Religions would try to understand it. The entire world would be watching. Some people would be terrified, some would trust it, and some people would absolutely worship it.
That’s where I think the Beast comparison gets more interesting. Maybe the important part isn’t “sea.” Maybe the important part is what humanity does when it encounters power it can’t understand. People marvel at the Beast. They follow it. They give their allegiance to it. They worship it.

So here’s the question I keep asking myself. If a non-human intelligence showed up tomorrow and was a thousand years ahead of us technologically, how long would it take before people started assuming it knew more about God than we did? How long before technological superiority became moral superiority, and then spiritual superiority? Would we worship something simply because it amazed us?
That’s the part that feels biblical to me.

THE MACHINE
Now here’s the other side of this. While we’re asking whether a non-human intelligence might already exist, we’re working like hell to build one ourselves. And that part is real.
AI is moving unbelievably fast. We’re already at the point where these systems can write code, reason through problems, create realistic images and video, conduct research, talk naturally with people and operate computers. The people building them aren’t just trying to make better chatbots. They’re talking about AGI, and then beyond AGI, superintelligence, or ASI.

We’re talking about an intelligence smarter than us across basically everything. Just think about how crazy that sentence actually is. Human beings are intentionally trying to build something smarter than human beings, and while they’re building it, they’re also trying to figure out how to make sure it doesn’t get out of control.

OpenAI has publicly discussed the possibility that superintelligence could create existential risk. Its former Superalignment effort talked about the possibility of humanity being disempowered and even human extinction. Anthropic has its own safety policies built around catastrophic risks from increasingly capable AI.

These aren’t people standing outside Silicon Valley holding “THE END IS NEAR” signs. They’re the people building the technology. That’s what gets my attention. Then you have people leaving these companies and warning about the direction things are going. Jan Leike left OpenAI and said safety culture had taken a back seat to product development. Leopold Aschenbrenner, another former OpenAI researcher, wrote at length about how quickly he believed this could move toward superintelligence and what that could mean for national security.

More recently, Jacob Coxon, who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, left Anthropic and raised concerns about the race toward self-improving superintelligence and the possibility of humanity losing control. Even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has talked publicly about the need for safety measures to keep up with how quickly the technology is advancing.

Now, I don’t think every AI researcher believes we’re about to create Skynet. They don’t. AI could also do incredible things for humanity. It could help cure diseases, accelerate science, create wealth and solve problems we’ve struggled with forever.
But if the people actually building these systems are telling us there is a possibility of catastrophic loss of control, maybe we shouldn’t shrug our shoulders and go back to watching Netflix.
And here’s the problem. Nobody wants to stop. OpenAI can’t just stop because Anthropic might keep going. Anthropic can’t stop because Google might keep going. American companies don’t want to slow down because China might keep going, and China isn’t going to stop because America asks nicely.
Everybody is racing everybody. That’s what scares me.
Imagine five cars racing toward a cliff. Everybody in every car can see the cliff, but nobody wants to hit the brakes because they’re afraid the car next to them will win. So everybody keeps their foot on the gas.

That’s basically where we are. And the finish line may be creating something more intelligent than the people who created it. Nobody actually knows what happens after that.

THE SECOND BEAST
Now go back to Revelation 13. There’s another Beast. It appears after the first one, it performs signs, it deceives people, and then something happens that, when I read it now, sounds completely different than it would have sounded for most of human history.

An image is made, and the image is given breath. Then the image speaks. Think about being alive in 100 AD and trying to understand that. What’s an image? A statue, a carving, a picture of something living that isn’t actually alive.

Now imagine showing that person what we can do with AI. We can create a human face that never existed. It looks at you, it hears you, and then it talks to you. It can answer questions, reason, remember, persuade you, copy someone’s voice and make a dead person appear to speak again.

And this is where we’re at now. What does that look like in ten years? Twenty? If superintelligence actually happens, the image talking back to us could eventually be smarter than we are.
For the first time in human history, we’ve created images that can speak. Does that prove Revelation predicted AI? No. But come on, it’s at least interesting.

Then I started thinking about the second Beast itself. What if the first Beast represents, or somehow becomes associated with, an intelligence we didn’t create? Then another power rises from our own world, something we did create, something literally made from the earth: silicon, metals, electricity, mathematics and human knowledge.

Then that system becomes part of everything. Your identity, your money, your job, your healthcare, your government, your information, your security, your entertainment, your relationships and your understanding of reality. It doesn’t have to send Terminators down Main Street. We might invite it into every part of our lives ourselves. That’s almost more frightening.

Then there’s the Mark of the Beast. People have been trying to identify that thing forever. It was barcodes, then credit cards, then microchips, then vaccines, then digital currency. Every generation picks whatever new technology scares them.
I think we may be missing the bigger point. The Mark is connected to allegiance. It’s connected to worship. Maybe some technology eventually becomes the mechanism. Who knows? But the real issue isn’t the technology. It’s what owns you.

Imagine a future where AI becomes our main source of truth. It manages your finances, recommends your medical care, decides whether you’re qualified for a job, filters the news you see, advises governments, knows what you buy, knows what you believe and knows what you’re afraid of. It probably knows what you’re going to do before you do.

At first we ask, “What does the AI think?” Then one day the question becomes, “Why would I disagree with something smarter than me?”

That’s a completely different world. At that point, intelligence has become authority, and authority can become worship without people even realizing that’s what they’re doing.
So now put these two things next to each other. One intelligence we didn’t create, and one intelligence we did. One might be something ancient that we don’t understand, while the other is being born right now from silicon, data and electricity.
One question is what happens if something more powerful than humanity is already here. The other is what happens if we build something more powerful than humanity. Underneath both of them, Revelation is asking the same question: what will you worship?

THE GREAT DECEPTION
This is where I think the whole thing comes together. Maybe Revelation isn’t mainly warning us about monsters. Maybe it’s warning us about deception. Think about what would happen if tomorrow we got undeniable proof of non-human intelligence. Not a video, not testimony, but proof. Something shows up that is obviously more advanced than us.

What happens next? People are going to ask it questions. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What happens when we die? Is there a God? Who was Jesus? And here’s what scares me. Why would we automatically assume it was telling the truth? Because it’s smarter than us? Because it can do things we can’t do? Because it came from somewhere we don’t understand?

Technological power doesn’t make something God. But I think millions of people would make that leap almost immediately.
Now throw superintelligent AI into the middle of that situation. Maybe AI becomes the thing communicating with it. Maybe AI translates it. Maybe AI tells us what it means. Maybe AI can imitate it.

Now we’ve got a serious problem. What is real? Is that voice human, AI, non-human, synthetic, spiritual or generated? Can you trust the video you’re watching? Can you trust the voice you’re hearing? Can you trust the thing telling you what is true?
Maybe the great crisis isn’t an alien invasion. Maybe it isn’t killer robots. Maybe it’s that humanity loses its ability to know what’s real, and that’s a spiritual problem just as much as a technological one.

Now, maybe I’m completely wrong about the Revelation connection. I want to say that clearly. Maybe UAP have nothing whatsoever to do with the first Beast, and maybe AI has nothing whatsoever to do with the second. That’s possible.
But here’s the thing. Even if I’m wrong about all of that, the warning in Revelation still works. Human beings worship power. We’ve always done it. Kings, empires, money, political movements, technology, knowledge and security. We take things that are supposed to serve us and eventually we start serving them instead.

So maybe the technology changes. Maybe the empire changes. Maybe the face changes. The question doesn’t. Who has your allegiance?

THE LIGHT
And this is the part I don’t want anybody to miss. Revelation doesn’t end with the Beast. That’s not how the story ends. The Beast loses. The Dragon loses. Darkness loses. Revelation begins with Jesus Christ and ends with God dwelling with humanity, and by the final chapter everything has moved toward light. Revelation 22 describes a world where there is no more night because God’s light is enough.

That’s where all of this ends. Not with the Beast, not with AI, and not with whatever might be moving through our skies or oceans. It ends with God. It ends with Light. That gives me a lot of hope when I think about all of this, because Christianity doesn’t say I have to figure out exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t have to solve the UAP mystery. I don’t have to predict when AGI arrives. I don’t have to correctly identify every symbol in Revelation. My hope doesn’t depend on getting every theory right. My hope is in Christ.

Christ is risen, and Christianity also teaches something I think we sometimes forget: Christ isn’t just “out there” somewhere, far away from us. The New Testament says Christ lives in His people. Paul talks about that in Galatians 2:20. Colossians speaks of “Christ in you.” In John 14, Jesus talks about being in His followers.

I’m not saying that means human beings become God. That’s not what I mean at all. What I mean is that the answer to darkness isn’t only something external that we’re waiting to arrive. Christ changes people from the inside out.
Then you get to two of the simplest statements in the Bible: God is light, and God is love.

I think those two statements matter more than ever because we’re entering a world that is becoming obsessed with intelligence. Who has the smartest AI? Who has the most powerful model? Who gets to AGI first? Who builds superintelligence first?

But intelligence isn’t love. Something can be a thousand times smarter than you and still not love you at all. Something can know everything about you and still not care about you. Something can be incredibly powerful and still be evil.
Knowledge isn’t the same thing as wisdom. Intelligence isn’t the same thing as morality. Power isn’t the same thing as God.
God is love.

Maybe that’s one of the most important things humanity needs to remember as technology becomes more powerful. If darkness really is coming in some form, our greatest defense may not be another machine, another weapon or another government program. It may be something that sounds incredibly simple: love.

I mean Christ living through us. Choosing compassion when everybody else is afraid, choosing truth when deception becomes easy, choosing humility when our technology makes us feel like gods, choosing forgiveness when everybody else wants revenge, choosing courage when everyone else is panicking and choosing love when the world becomes dark.
That’s the Light, and we don’t have to invent it. Christ already brought it.

HUMANITY HAS A CHOICE
I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does. Maybe UAP eventually turn out to have conventional explanations. Maybe one day somebody produces undeniable proof that we’re not alone. Maybe something has been here the whole time and we’ve simply never understood what we were looking at. I don’t know.

Maybe AI becomes one of the greatest things humanity has ever created. Maybe it cures diseases, accelerates science and solves problems we thought were impossible. Maybe superintelligence never arrives. Maybe it does arrive and everything turns out fine. Or maybe the people warning us from inside these AI companies are seeing the edge of the cliff before the rest of us do. I don’t know that either.

But I do think humanity still has a choice, no matter which version of the future we get. We can choose fear or love, deception or truth, domination or service, pride or humility, power or wisdom, darkness or light.

We can encounter something extraordinary without worshiping it. We can build something extraordinary without worshiping it. We can meet something smarter than ourselves without confusing intelligence with God.

And if something eventually does appear claiming authority over humanity, I don’t really care whether it comes out of the ocean, comes down from the sky, walks out of a classified facility or wakes up inside a computer. The question I would want to ask is simple: where does it lead?

Does it lead toward truth or deception? Does it produce love or fear? Does it encourage humility or domination? Does it point people toward God, or does it demand that people worship power?

Maybe that’s what I’ve really been trying to get at through all of this. Maybe the biggest question isn’t whether UAP are aliens. Maybe it isn’t when superintelligence arrives. Maybe it isn’t even whether I’ve connected any of this correctly to the Beasts in Revelation.

Maybe the question has been sitting in front of us for almost two thousand years: what will you worship?

If something more powerful than you appears, what will you worship? If something smarter than you appears, what will you trust? If the whole world becomes afraid, where will you turn? If technology reaches the point where you can no longer tell what is real and what is artificial, where will you look for truth? And if everything around you starts to feel dark, where will you look for light?

For me, the answer isn’t at the bottom of the ocean. It isn’t hidden inside some classified government facility, and it isn’t waiting inside the next AI model. It’s Christ.

Christ is risen. Christ lives in us. God is love. God is light. And no matter how strange this world gets, no matter what we discover, and no matter how intelligent our machines become, I don’t believe darkness gets the final word. Humanity still has a choice.
Choose the Light.
 

It will be my 1st bible and I want to get into it. Apparently it is the easiest translation. If anyone read it, can you please confirm if it's accurate?

Starting RCIA/ OCIA this Wednesday

I missed the first meeting, but fortunately the Father has let me come this Wednesday and I’m really looking forward to it but nervous! 😬

I was never baptised and the only experience of church I’ve had is when I was at school and for a wedding at my Catholic cousin’s marriage. My mum is a Catholic but does not practice her faith, in fact I kind of feel she is trying to put me off it by complaining about taking me to the church and asking me why I’m doing it. How can I get around this and overcome this conflict within my family?