Creationist David Rives offers biblical framework for UFOs, aliens: 'Eroding our Christian foundation'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, June 23, 2026

David Rives, founder of David Rives Ministries and the Wonders Center & Science Museum in Dickson, Tennessee, told Billy Hallowell during a recent interview with The Christian Post that he believes the Bible offers a framework for interpreting UFOs and supposed extraterrestrial phenomena.

"Here's what I believe: we're not talking about extraterrestrials. I believe we're talking about extra-dimensionals," he said, noting that such beings have become an increasingly hot-button cultural topic.

"And what I mean is basically spiritual activity, which is extremely consistent with our Christian faith; that there is such a thing as good and evil, that there is a world around us, a spiritual world that we typically are not privy to, but it is a very real world."

Rives, who is also an astrophotographer whose science museum in Tennessee is equipped with observatory-class telescopes, acknowledged that he has personally "seen some things that I can't explain."

While some unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) could be attributed to human technology, Rives said, "there is this subset, or this sub-category, not just with UAPs or UFOs, but also with alien abductions ... that simply are explained much more consistently, as a Christian, with this being the whole idea that the demonic realm is very real."

In response to Hallowell noting that Ephesians 6:12 makes clear that humans are engaged in warfare against spiritual forces, and that such could provide a context for supposed alien encounters, Rives laid out what he described as the potentially demonic intentions behind the growing cultural emphasis on UFO phenomena.

He suggested spiritual entities intending to deceive humanity could easily make use of the prevailing cultural narrative around extraterrestrials, leading them to question their creation in God's image, and, by extension, the rest of the Christian faith.

"There is this subliminal line that is being played out with this whole alien talk, and it's eroding our Christian foundation and making us second-guess, 'Well, maybe the Bible's not true, maybe it's just all aliens, and we're living in a simulation, basically,'" he said.

Rives, a creationist whose science museum is the largest in Tennessee, explained that one purpose of the museum and his ministry has been to help Christians make sense of scientific debates during a time in history when many seek to supplant God with science, which is an impulse he sees as inextricable with some of the extraterrestrial narrative.

"Our children and our grandchildren have been spoon-fed this idea that science has replaced God; that we don't need God any longer, because science and nature is all that there is," he said.

"And therefore, they've elevated Mother Nature to the very deity that has supposedly replaced God. They say, 'Oh, I'm an intellectual atheist, I don't need God.' No, you've replaced God with supernatural entities to try to make life come about from non-life, to try to make a universe come about from non-matter."

Hallowell's conversation with Rives comes amid the release of Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day," which has prompted many positive reviews from critics, though some Christians have raised concerns that it promotes the idea of extraterrestrial beings as humanity's spiritual saviors.

Spielberg raised eyebrows for comments he made days before the film's release earlier this month that many interpreted as a claim that disclosure of alien life would shake Christian faith. His remarks prompted pushback from some Christians, including a Roman Catholic priest and exorcist in Tennessee who warned the film could be "cursed."

During an interview with Hallowell last week, BlazeTV host Steve Deace, who also penned a lengthy X post describing Spielberg's film as "a direct assault on Christianity" and his "worst movie," observed that it singled out Christianity as the only religion that would struggle with alien disclosure.

Tracing the arc of Spielberg's alien films such as the classic 1977 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," which presented aliens as benevolent and inquisitive, to "Disclosure Day," which presents them as the source of humanity's salvation, Deace claimed prominent figures in the disclosure world seemingly share such a worldview, such as ufologist Steven M. Greer and Luis Elizondo, former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

"What you'll see is that inevitably, this always starts as 'scientific inquiry' and always ends up as, 'These are our deliverers, these are our saviors,' every single time [...] 'The aliens are here to save us.' They always end up with a counter-gospel every single time," said Deace.