Many books have been written and many movies made about aliens visiting earth and what we would thing of them. In some, aliens are assumed, usually incorrectly, to be violent and dangerous and here to conquer us or kill us. In others, we Earthlings are depicted as stupid people who assume, to our ultimate regret, that the aliens are nice, friendly folk come to cure cancer and end poverty. It all makes for great entertainment, whether realistic or not. What I haven't seen though is a book or movie devoted to the impression we give aliens about Earth and it's people.

    If aliens had visited us during the wild west period, there impression of us would have been of a primitive and barbaric people who can't resist fighting with each other and killing each other. Suppose those aliens gave us the benefit of the doubt and decided to come back at a later time to see if things had improved. So they return during WWI when pretty much all of the people in the “civilized” parts of the world are engaged in trying to kill each other. The aliens leave vowing to return again at a future time. They return during WWII and we are at it again. So what impression do they have of Earthlings now?

    But what if they didn't visit during those times. What if they came between major wars, would the results have been different, the impression we made any better? Probably not. In the past 150 years or so there has hardly been a day when a war wasn't going on somewhere in the world. Besides the wars, we have criminals preying on others, teenagers attacking, sometimes even killing, other teens to get there jackets or shoes. Shoes and jackets that are not one-of-a-kind, but can be purchased as the stores by anyone willing to earn them with work. We have drug pushers willing to kill people by the hundreds for profit, even if those people are their customers, and now they are joined by the big corporations selling cigarettes and genetically modified crops that have not been proven safe.

    No, I don't thing the aliens, if there really were such things, would get a great impression of the people of Earth. And would they decide to exterminate us, as almost happened in the classic science fiction movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, or would they figure if they just leave us alone a while longer, we will do it to ourselves? And if they come back twenty years from now, will they find that we have finally succeeded in our continuing efforts to destroy ourselves?

    And now for the real question: do you think God and His angels are getting a better impression of us than those aliens? I don't see much reason to think that they are. But with Judgment Day staring us in the face, we have very little time left to correct that impression.