[Nearly 27 years ago, in August 1996, I wrote an article entitled “Life on Mars OR How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zargon”, which appeared in a hard-copy edition of my Diakrisis Journal. I was responding to an announcement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that an alleged discovery had been made about the possibility of life on Mars, and also the media responses to it. I just came upon this article in my archives and so I reproduce it here as it is still relevant, if not even more so today, as this whole subject area builds up – see this 2022 link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/05/ufos-america-aliens-government-report ].

THE REALM OF CALCULATED DISINFORMATION reached an all-time high on August 7th, 1996, with the announcement that a piece of a meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1984 holds some proof that there has been life on the planet Mars.

The official press release (#96-160) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) claimed that “a research team of scientists at the Johnson Space Center and at Stanford University has found evidence that strongly suggests primitive life may have existed on Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago”. Although NASA administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, had put out his own press release (#96-159) the previous day stating, “I want everyone to understand that we are not talking about ‘little green men’”, that is most certainly how the story shaped up subsequently in the media. The front page of almost every U.K. newspaper on 7th August 1996 contained copious details of this ‘discovery’, with headlines such as “Life on Mars — Official” (Daily Mirror). The Mirror article then stated:

“A tiny fossil will today be held up as proof of life on Mars and the key to unlock the mysteries of the Universe. The amazing discovery…could prove the existence of alien life-forms. It may well lead to a rewriting of the Big Bang Theory of Earth’s beginning and help to explain where the human race came from. The fact that we are descended from Martians is also a staggering possibility.”

Other articles made similar connections; and it wasn’t long before the media recognised that “the prospect of life on Mars threw religious groups into turmoil” (The Times, 8/8/96), under the headline “In the Beginning, did God also Create Aliens?”  Although nobody was promoting the fantasy-style ‘little green men’ of ‘Dan Dare’ comic strips, they were seriously suggesting that this ‘discovery’ virtually assured the existence of genuine extra-terrestrial beings (ET’s). Even the normally sober Daily Telegraph (7/8/96) stated:

“This discovery will back the suspicion of many scientists that the kind of self-replicating chemical processes that can cross the watershed between the inanimate and the living are more common than we think, making alien life inevitable.”

Since the initial announcement of the ‘discovery’ of this alleged fossil from Mars, the excitement has hardly abated. Even President Clinton held a special press conference to announce that he would launch an armada of spaceships

“which will reach out into the cosmos and build on the epoch-making breakthrough the find represents… Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined. I am determined that the American space programme will put its full intellectual power and technological prowess behind the search for further evidence of life on Mars.”

As if that wasn’t enough, it was then announced that the Vice-President of the U.S., Al Gore (who is known to hold Pierre Teilhard de Chardin-influenced New Age views), will chair a special “Space Summit” in November 1996.

However, is this ‘discovery’ really an “epoch-making breakthrough”, as Clinton suggests? Surely, the whole affair is the biggest load of codswallop since the 1912 Piltdown Man hoax in (in which that “father” of the New Age movement, Teilhard de Chardin, also participated, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man )! There is not the slightest proof that this rock ever came from Mars and, supposing that it did, there is no proof whatsoever that it contains evidence of primitive life-forms there. One sentence in the Daily Telegraph article is a dead give-away concerning the wishful-thinking nature of this yarn: “A meteorite that fell to Earth after POSSIBLY being ejected from Mars MAY bear the first traces of life elsewhere in the universe”. This is how propaganda is done! Gullible people do not see the “possiblys”, the “mays” and the “maybes”, the “coulds”, the “strongly suggests”, and the “mights”. Their spongelike brains only drink in the other bits. What we have here is a science-fiction version of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’! Like the ‘Hundredth Monkey’ speculation of the New Age biologists, this entire Martian scenario is a modern myth involving a plethora of precarious conjectures concocted by the PR guys from Wishful Thinking, Inc. Never has so much been surmised from so little by so many!

The primary reason for the publication of this paper in this edition of the Diakrisis Journal is that this event is of gargantuan importance for Christian belief and warrants a serious response from someone with clout in the Ekklesia. I do not have that clout. Ever hopeful though, for the past few weeks, I had been composing an article for the mainstream Christian press on the subject of ET’s and UFO’s and their relation to the present-day Church scene. For the last forty years, there has been an increasing occurrence of alleged UFO sightings and, more recently, encounters with alleged ET’s — often involving abductions of people reportedly for physical examination and bizarre medical experiments, including interference with their reproductive organs and the extraction of semen and ova. These reports have now become too widespread and regularly experienced, even by normally stable people, to be swept under the carpet and ignored.

Many university-based organisations are continually scanning the heavens in the hope of discovering ‘life out there’. There is the Californian S.E.T.I. Institute (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence); the Planetary Society project at Harvard (headed up by Carl Sagan); and the Serendip project at the University of California in Berkeley (chaired by the author of ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’, Arthur C. Clarke). It has also recently been revealed that the U.K. Ministry of Defence (M.o.D.) employed a civil servant called Nick Pope between 1991 and 1994 to investigate UFO sightings and handle policy on the subject. In a recent letter to the New Age style ‘Nexus’ magazine, Mr. Pope revealed:

“My brief was to evaluate the phenomenon, looking for any evidence of a threat to the defence of the U.K. I started my tour of duty as a sceptic, but became convinced that a small percentage of UFO’s were indeed extra-terrestrial in origin”. [Nexus magazine, Vol.3, No.5, August-September 1996]

In June 1996, Nick Pope’s book ‘Open Skies, Closed Minds’ (Simon & Schuster) was published, exposing, in Pope’s own words, “unauthorised penetrations of heavily defended airspace by structured craft of unknown origin, whose technology is considerably in advance of our own” [Ibid]. This book received much advance publicity in the media, and there is a great deal of information now being revealed on the subject in newspapers and on T.V. UFO’s and abduction by ‘aliens’ are suddenly the flavour of the month. Alien abduction was even the subject of a ‘phone-in’ on a recent Breakfast T.V. show; and the lines were jammed with abductee callers!

What could all this mean? How are we to respond to this ET hysteria? It is my contention that the announcement by NASA on August 7th represents a major part in the strategy of the New World Order concerning the way that revelation in this area is handled. I believe that for some years there has been deliberate drip-feed leakage on this subject to the world’s population with information that the powers of government reckon it is currently able to handle. In my book, ‘The Serpent and the Cross’ (K. & M., 1994), I made the following statement:

“The increasing number of UFO sightings has nothing to do with genuine extra-terrestrial civilisations, but is part of an ongoing strategy of the ‘powers of darkness’ (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12), under the direction of their ‘prince of the power of the air’ (Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 2), who are engaged in convincing the minds of the gullible that ‘something out there is trying to contact us’. To those whose minds are attuned to such contact, demonic beings will actually manifest themselves as benign ‘extra-terrestrials’ who wish to offer help to humanity — an offer that will, if it presents itself more openly, be avidly received as the influence of the New Gnosticism develops in world culture. If it can be ‘proven’ that ET’s do exist, and that they are on a ‘higher plane’ than the inhabitants of planet Earth, this will go a long way towards vindicating the claims of the Neo-Gnostics, as well as establishing the suppositions of the New Physics and the evolutionary theories of secular humanism. If this was to be supplemented by an alleged scientific ‘discovery’ of the secret of the ‘life-force’, the way would be paved for some truly cataclysmic changes on this planet. We should not be at all surprised if these developments occur in the near future as part of the advancing strategy of the powers of darkness to discredit the Gospel, debunk the Bible, and eradicate the concept of a transcendent Creator God. The world will then be ready to believe the Lie which Satan has always sought to perpetuate, and the global conditions will be in place for the revealing of the ultimate Man of Lawlessness (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 3-12).”

Alan Morrison, “The Serpent & the Cross; Religious Corruption in an Evil Age”, K & M Books, 1994

And elsewhere in “The Serpent & the Cross”, I drew some sobering conclusions from the facts:

“It is also surely of some significance here that Javier Perez de Cuellar –– Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1982-1992 — is reputed to have been abducted by space-aliens on 30th November 1989. [Independent on Sunday, 2nd January 1994, p.10]. Perez de Cuellar has persistently refused to speak about this experience. However, in response to an enquiry about the matter from the Prince of Liechtenstein — a leading world authority on UFO’s — he did not deny that it had occurred [Ibid]. Whether or not this event really happened, its public disclosure through the international media could easily be part of a softening-up process designed by ‘security agencies’ to prepare people to accept the idea of a relationship between alien beings and world government leaders. Is it possible that the putting-out of films such as ‘E.T.’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ have also been part of the same information-feeding process, in preparation for an announcement of the ‘real thing’? Admittedly, this is speculative; but there are a number of comparable intelligence reports which claim that there has been some mysterious involvement of alleged alien beings (which genuine Christians would identify as demonic entities, fallen angels) with a shadow world government since around the time that the United Nations was formally set up in 1948. I have also seen a number of documents propounding the conceit that the human race was originally the product of an experiment in genetic engineering by an advanced race of ET’s from another world. Religious writings such as the Bible, Koran, etc., are said to contain a record of their ancient deeds, while the world religions themselves have been based on the teachings of the ET messengers which ‘they’ sent (e.g., Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, etc.) to prepare us for the time that the truth about all this could be revealed, and their ‘Great Teacher’ could finally come to earth to lead mankind into the next world-era. As a further twist in this strange saga, on 2nd December 1993, a quarter-page advertisement was placed on p.7 in the International Herald Tribune, by a French journalist who claims that ETs took him to their planet, gave him the name of Raël, asking him to spread the message that these beings will soon come back to earth, and that an embassy must be built for the occasion. Even the Oxford University evolutionary biologist, William Hamilton, has proposed that our planet may be a zoo controlled by extraterrestrial beings, who have ‘planted the seeds of evolution on Earth hoping to create interesting, intelligent creatures.’ Every now and then, Hamilton speculates, they see things not working very well and ‘so they insert a finger and just change some little thing. And maybe those are the miracles which the religious people like to emphasise’”. [Reported in an article entitled ‘Evolutionary Faith and the Cosmic Zoo’, by Carl Wieland, Creation Ex Nihilo, Vol.15, No.4, September-November, 1993. This was a review of an article in Time, January 4, 1993, entitled ‘Science, God and Man’, in which William Hamilton’s views were sympathetically reported, and he was referred to as ‘one of the great scientific minds of our era’]”. If this fiendishly clever idea — which has so far only been purported in academic and Neo-Gnostic circles — was to be developed into a full-blown global strategy, then we would be caught up in the most intensive spiritual battle yet, involving deception on a universal scale. It is not at all beyond the bounds of possibility that demons posing as “highly evolved beings” from another world will be involved in the massive deception surrounding the revealing of the Antichrist, whose “coming is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders” (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 9). Such a scenario could easily be part of the ‘strong delusion’ which will be energised shortly before the time of the End among those who would rather believe the lie than love the Truth (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 10-11).”

Alan Morrison, “The Serpent & the Cross: Religious Corruption in an Evil Age”, K & M Books, 1994

That was what I wrote in my book a few years ago. People readily dismiss Christ and the Bible but gladly accept the idea of life on Mars and other nonsense. They are learning to “stop worrying and love Zargon” (a play on some words from a film title). The key to all this lies in our understanding of angels, which are the only unearthly beings (ET’s) revealed in the Bible. Prior to the Fall of our first parents at the beginning of history there had been a great apostasy among the angels, resulting in a vast number of fallen angels (identified as demons in Scripture) who were determined to undermine and usurp God’s work with His human creation. The leader of these demons is known in the Bible as ‘Satan’ (from the Hebrew for ‘adversary’) or, in the New Testament, ‘the Devil’ (Greek: diabolos, ‘slanderer’). After the Fall, the remainder of human history — and the central theme of the Bible — has involved a cosmic struggle between these powers of darkness and the works of God which involve redeeming His creation.

In Old Testament times, this struggle was centred on the coming incarnation of the Son of God, the Christ. After the Lord had announced to Satan that a human being would come who would destroy him (Book of Genesis, chapter 3, verse 15), the fallen angel devoted himself to preventing its occurrence, which we see in the Bible as happening all the way from Cain down to King Herod. However, the atoning work of Christ on the cross and His subsequent resurrection and ascension represented a complete triumph over the powers of darkness (Gospel of John, chapter 12, verse 31; Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verses 7-10; Letter to the Colossians, chapter 2, verse 15; Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 8). It is a singular fact that every act of Satan throughout history to oppose God his Creator has been an abject failure, rebounding ultimately on himself, and leading to his own eventual judgement and eternal punishment (Book of Revelation, chapter 20, verse 10).

However, in spite of that victory over the fallen angels, their evil work is not yet over. Since the time of the ascension of Christ, the Gospel has had to be proclaimed throughout the world (Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, verse 45-51). So far, at this point in 1996, this has taken almost two thousand years; but there will come a time when that work will be complete and Christ will return to the Earth with the good angels, and then the Final Judgement will take place. Throughout this Gospel Age, alongside the work of salvation (with divine permission) there has been continual harassment from the fallen angels — an increasingly frustrated demonic realm (Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 12) — as they seek to oppose the Lord’s ongoing work (Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 17). This harassment involves works of deception and subterfuge, and the Bible shows that this will increase in intensity as the end of the age approaches, gathering global government and world religions into their doomed, earthbound, pseudo-utopian vision (Book of Revelation, chapter 17, verse 17; chapter 20, verses 7-9), preparing the way for the appearance of the Antichrist as the ultimate Man of Lawlessness (Second Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 3-9). Surely, the UFO/ET scenario unfolding on Earth today will provide a major platform for the staging of this world-wide demonic subterfuge.

The recent statement by NASA concerning ‘life on Mars’ is the next major stage in the softening-up process which has been happening during the past thirty years to acclimatise the world to receive the Big Announcement: “They’re here!” Surely we will not have long to wait for this. The NASA ‘discovery’ breaks the ground in a non-threatening but very effective manner, by enabling us to accept the hypothesis that there is ‘life out there’ while at the same time ‘proving’ that it is possible for it to ‘come here’. After all, fossilised micro-organisms are hardly going to cause an Orson Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ kind of panic across the globe! — but they do prepare the ground nicely for the next stage: the Big One.

There is no doubt that demonic discarnate entities have become increasingly active in the religious life of this planet in the past century. I would include in this not only the ‘Ascended Masters’ and other ‘spirit guides’ of the New Age but also the apparitions at Medjugorje and similar religious manifestations. I believe that these diabolic beings are behind the increasing accounts of UFO sightings and ‘abductions’ by ET’s. In fact, I am inclined to believe reports which suggest that ‘alien’ entities (demonic elements) have been colluding secretly (wittingly or unwittingly) with governmental powers for some years, but they could not be officially announced because the population has not been ready for it. It is doubtful that the M.o.D.’s UFO-watcher, Nick Pope, could have published his book prior to the present year’s deliberate leakage of UFO revelations. Surely, it would previously have had a ‘D-notice’ slapped on it before it saw the light of day. However, a generation of ‘friendly alien’ space movies, coupled with announcements such as that given by NASA on August 7th, are ‘respectabilising’ the entire concept of UFO’s and ET’s, readying the world for some eventual ‘Big Announcement’.

What is the significance of all these ‘revelations’ to Christian belief? Surely, the implications are enormous, as even the media has been quick to recognise. For example, the Daily Mail on August 8th, devoted five pages (including the front page) to this ‘discovery’ under the headline “Is this the proof of life out there?”, stating — under the heading “We need a rethink, say churches” — that “theologians were grappling yesterday with the spiritual ramifications of the discovery”. How on earth could they be “grappling” to understand something which is plainly demonic in origin. This is what the mainstream religion of “Christianity” has come to. There is no doubt whatsoever that genuine bible Christianity and the idea of a personal God will be claimed to be redundant, divisive and even destructive to progress on this planet. After all, if the human race is the product of an alien experiment, what need is there for the God of the Bible? The man Jesus Christ will be explained away as an avatar from an extra-terrestrial civilisation who came to announce the cataclysmic occurrences on earth which would precede his return with his ET buddies (the angels, in their worldview) from the other civilisation at the end of the age. All the New Age accounts of the transition into the Age of Aquarius provide a remarkable caricature (sanitised of its prophecies of divine judgement) of what the Bible says will happen when all hell breaks loose as the end of the age approaches. (To aid the liberals, the New English Bible even obligingly says: “With these things, the birth pangs of the new age begin” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 8; Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, verse 8)!

So where does all this leave the Church? Well, the mainstream denominations of the false church will no doubt be completely bowled over. Their teachings and their denial of biblical truth have already been laying down the red carpet for the coming Antichrist. At a time when there is a real need for a serious apologetic to be raised against what I call ‘scientistic mythology’, the responses to this latest yarn from ecclesiastical sources have been dismal. But then the mainline denominations hardly have any remnants of true Christianity left to defend. So don’t expect any theological responses to UFO’s from that department. One spokesman from the Roman Catholic Church pathetically said: “There is no proof yet, but if there were then it would cause some sort of rethink. But we will wait till they contact us”. [The Times, August 8th 1996, p.3. Article by Religion Correspondent Ruth Gledhill, entitled ‘In the Beginning, did God Create Aliens?”] What a copout! A Church of England spokesman responded in a similarly ineffectual manner by saying: “We believe that God created the whole universe, so I don’t think there could be a problem”. [Ibid.]

Even the Evangelical Alliance — which has already ‘wandered away with the fairies’ in its support for another modern antichristian delusion, the ‘Toronto Blessing’ — could only offer some fence-sitting waffle about there being “no conflict between science and Christianity”. [Ibid.] Such a statement (which sounds like the kind of buzz-phrase one learns on an Apologetics-by-numbers course in a liberal theological college) is entirely irrelevant in view of the fact that the majority of the scientists seeking extra-terrestrial life are not at all devoted to the discovery of truth, for they revel in anything which appears to contradict the Bible and delight in making arrogant assertions of mere hypotheses, as if they already were proven truth. We can certainly say that there is no conflict whatsoever between TRUE science and TRUE Christianity. Regrettably, both of these are becoming increasingly scarce as we approach the close of the twentieth century. Someone needs to inform the undiscerning Evangelical Alliance that there is a world of difference between scientistic mythology (which has its origins in the subjective, prostituted thoughts of scientists) and scientific fact (which is firmly rooted in objective truth).

The very heart of the matter today is the radical conflict between atheistic or pantheistic scientists and biblical truth. One only has to examine the leading edges in genetics, obstetrics, astronomy and the ‘new physics’ to see that there is an all-out war on the teachings of Scripture which will someday come to a head. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the true Church — that is, genuine simple disciples, clinging to the cross, worshipping God, extolling Christ, preaching the word, and eschewing the corruptions of the world — will be utterly marginalised by all this UFO bunkum and the other discoveries which will shortly come to light; and our gatherings will be ridiculed as dangerous sects which refuse to cooperate with these supposed “beneficial discoveries of our times”.

It should also come as no surprise that the world’s media was so obliging in this circus, with headlines such as ‘Life on Mars — Official’ (Daily Mirror, 7/8/96), or ‘In the Beginning, did God Create Aliens?” (Times, 8/8/96), or ‘If the Aliens do Decide to Call, We’re Listening’ (Times, 12/8/96). The bulk of the media across the world today is controlled by a few huge conglomerates which are essentially lackeys of the New World Order. So NASA’s little finger twitches about micro-organisms and we have banner headlines four inches tall: LIFE ON MARS! — and an article in the Times (12/8/96) states ,“Once dogged by the crackpot image, the search for alien life has become credible”. It is extraordinary how the world will reject the Christian Gospel as a childish myth, but yet it is so ready to accept a scientistic fable about fossils from Mars!

Surely, the primary reason so many people avidly lap up this garbage is because they know inwardly that, if true, it would utterly undermine the veracity of the Bible and the theological foundations of Judeo-Christianity. The National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) is hoping to achieve what Darwinism has been unable to do during a whole century of frantic propaganda. Back in 1974, NASA engineer Joseph Blumrich wove similar conjectural fantasies in his book, ‘The Spaceships of Ezekiel’ (Bantam). The space research community, along with covert organisations such as the Central Intelligence Agency, are riddled with people who have a New Age/occult worldview and for whom the ‘discovery’ of extra-terrestrial life represents the fulfilment of a dream.

Some readers may think all this is just the crazy ramblings of an overactive imagination. But these attempts of the demonic realm to cause havoc through deception and infiltration are confirmed in the Scriptures (Book of Genesis, chapter 6, verse 2; Book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 17; Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12; First Letter of Peter, chapter 5, verse 8). Nearly twenty years ago, some discerning Christian authors had also realised the demonic nature of UFO’s and ET’s. In the preface to an excellent book on the subject, it is stated:

“Now more than ever before in history, we are in the midst of religious warfare. Although it comes in various disguises in order to conceal the fact of war, a wide variety of cults and all forms of humanism are at war with Biblical faith. We cannot begin to understand the world of our time apart from the fact of religious warfare… The authors conclude that the UFO phenomena are real; they are demonic and they are totally anti-Christian… The UFO mythology is a radical denial of God and of Scripture. We are given an alien view of man and the universe, and we find also that those who give themselves to this view and to the occult manifestations are marked by a disintegration of mind and even of body. Clearly UFO’s are not a harmless concern nor merely an amusing case of superstition” [Clifford Wilson and John Weldon, Close Encounters — A Better Explanation (Master Books, 1978), pp.iii, v & vi.].

Frankly, there is no place for ‘highly evolved ET’s in this universe. The concept of ‘advanced aliens’ arriving on this planet to lead us into the next phase of human civilisation is incompatible with Bible teaching on the future course of history. Such beings could not be the good angels, as some have claimed, for they would never promote false teaching. The idea of ‘advanced aliens’ rescuing the human race is also radically at odds with Bible teaching on creation and redemption. The Fall of our first parents not only brought corruption to the life of planet Earth but also to the entire universe (Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verses 19-22). The atonement and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ are the central and axial events in the history of the cosmos, the transformation of which is not dependent on an invasion of ‘god-like’ aliens but on the eschatological glorification of Christ’s disciples and followers of the one true God (Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 21). Our hope for a perfect civilisation does not lie in this world but in the world to come (Second Letter to Peter, chapter 3, verse 13). The new universe will not be ushered in by a weird breed of beings from outer space which are never mentioned in the Bible, but by the creative power of the mighty God of Scripture (Book of Isaiah, chapter 65, verse 17).

Finally, let us remember that although God’s people have nothing to fear from all this, it is important to be informed. Discerning disciples of Christ will keep a watchful eye on future events, as the build-up to the ‘Big Announcement’ develops. If the claims that I have made in this paper are for real, then the world could well soon be entering Satan’s ‘little season’ and the closing phase of this evil age will then be upon us. Ultimately, these desperate tactics of the demonic realm are tremendously affirming to our faith because they provide confirmation of so much Bible prophecy! Rest assured that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs solely to the Lord Jesus Christ, whose return to the earth to bring judgement, gather His people, and transform this fallen world is the event towards which everything has been inexorably moving since the beginning of history.

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Alan Morrison,
Derbyshire, UK,
14th August, 1996

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 1996, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]