A former church leader has claimed hidden clues in the Bible reveal that humanity may once have encountered mysterious beings who descended from the sky.
Paul Wallis, who spent more than 30 years in church ministry, believed stories traditionally interpreted as encounters with God may instead describe contact with multiple advanced beings.
The former Anglican archdeacon in Australia reached that conclusion after revisiting puzzling passages in the Old Testament and comparing them with stories preserved by ancient civilizations.
‘I talk about ancestral narratives, and themes within those narratives that suggest our ancestors may have had contact with non-human intelligence,’ Wallis told the Daily Mail.
He claimed biblical references to powerful beings, metallic objects and devastating weapons resembled tales of ‘sky people’ found in Sumerian, Babylonian, Mayan, Chinese and African traditions.
Wallis argued that many accounts followed the same pattern: humanity survived a cataclysm before advanced visitors arrived and helped rebuild civilization.
His most provocative interpretation centered on ‘Elohim,’ a Hebrew term traditionally rendered as God, which he believed referred instead to a group he called ‘the powerful ones.’
However, his theory relied on unconventional interpretations and perceived similarities between ancient stories, rather than physical or archaeological evidence proving extraterrestrials ever visited humanity.
The former church leader said that it was the correlations between the Bible and other ancient texts that began convincing him – particularly the ‘Annunaki’ (pictured)
NASA and the US government have long maintained there is no evidence extraterrestrials have visited Earth.
During his church career, Wallis trained pastors to interpret biblical texts and eventually rose to archdeacon, a senior position directly below bishop.
He said his former role made his theory particularly controversial because ‘it’s unusual for a senior churchman’ to argue publicly that evidence of non-human intelligence could be found in the Bible.
Questions about passages that appeared confusing or inconsistent had troubled him throughout his years as a preacher.
When Wallis traced their language back to what he considered its root meanings, he became convinced that a ‘whole layer of the story’ had been lost through centuries of interpretation.
His exploration was also influenced by UFO theorist Erich von Däniken, whose work first captured his imagination when he was 11.
Wallis began rereading Genesis and comparing biblical accounts with older Babylonian, Assyrian, Akkadian and Sumerian stories.
‘I realized I was being confronted with a big question, which was, what do we do with God stories or stories that we’ve interpreted as God stories if they’re actually based on Sumerian stories of sky people,’ he said.
Paul Wallis, who spent more than 30 years in church ministry, believed stories traditionally interpreted as encounters with God may instead describe contact with multiple advanced beings
Yet parallels between ancient accounts did not establish that any documented real encounters with beings from beyond Earth. Similar narratives could reflect shared traditions, cultural exchange or modern interpretations of symbolic texts.
The word ‘Elohim’ became central to Wallis’s theory. He emphasized its plural form and believed the term’s ‘powerful ones’ corresponded to the Anunnaki of ancient Mesopotamian traditions.
However, the material he presented did not demonstrate that the two terms described the same entities.
Wallis also drew parallels with stories of feathered serpents in Mayan, Chinese and Egyptian traditions, along with narratives preserved among African and Native American peoples.
Many began with a catastrophe, such as a devastating flood, followed by powerful beings arriving to help survivors restore their environment and rebuild society.
‘When you read all these stories of these different traditions and picture what they’re telling you, because they’ve all got different names, different metaphors, different similes, but you picture them and you realise they’re all telling you to picture the exact same scene,’ Wallis said.
He believed those similarities were too specific for civilizations separated by thousands of miles to have independently created them.
Nevertheless, matching themes and images did not prove ancient writers were documenting literal technology. His argument depended on treating passages conventionally understood as spiritual, mythological or metaphorical as eyewitness accounts.
Wallis also examined 3,000-year-old Iron Age carvings in Turkey that he claimed preserved stories about events shortly after the most recent Ice Age.
In his interpretation, the images depicted advanced beings arriving and teaching agricultural science. However, no evidence he cited directly identified the figures as extraterrestrials.
Wallis applied a similarly unconventional interpretation to passages in Ezekiel and Exodus.
He viewed descriptions of a large object involving metal, smoke and fire as possible references to machinery rather than spiritual manifestations.
He claimed biblical references to powerful beings, metallic objects and devastating weapons resembled tales of ‘sky people’ found in Sumerian, Babylonian, Mayan, Chinese and African traditions (stock)
In his reading, Ezekiel was carried inside a capsule and described metallic and transparent surfaces, engine-like noise and the physical sensation of force as it moved.
Other biblical passages, he argued, described weapons beyond anything an Iron Age writer could have understood.
He highlighted the destruction of two cities by an entity called El Shaddai, another biblical name translated as God, claiming the account evoked technology capable of demolishing a civilization.
‘You’ve got references to flying craft, holes in the sky that the craft come through, noise they make, smoke they exude,’ Wallis said.
He believed translators presented such accounts as religious experiences because they did not expect to find technology in the Bible.
Descriptions of fire, smoke and journeys through the heavens, however, did not necessarily describe aircraft or advanced weapons. That conclusion came from applying a modern technological interpretation to ancient language.
Wallis further argued that later translations merged accounts of different powerful beings into stories about one all-powerful deity.
He said theologians were familiar with Mesopotamian influences on biblical stories, but ordinary churchgoers rarely encountered those discussions.
Recognizing similarities between ancient literature, however, did not establish his additional claim that the stories concerned visitors from the sky.
His theories triggered fierce opposition, including threats from conservative believers who accused him of attempting to unravel their faith. Other readers said his books offered relief after they encountered passages that challenged conventional interpretations.
Wallis ultimately argued that Christians should prepare for the possibility of extraterrestrial life because, according to his theory, descriptions of non-human intelligence were already embedded in scripture.
‘People need to be ready,’ he said.
