Charles Xavier was confronted by Lilandra Neramani, the leader of a religious group known as the Church of Shi'ar Enlightenment, who worship a God known as the Phoenix. Lilandra claims that the Phoenix God is the force that created life itself, first creating the stars, planets, as well as everything else in the universe. Many millennia later, the Phoenix created life-forms on those planets and watched them grow and prosper. However, as time went by, the civilizations grew more advanced and sophisticated, and soon became jealous of the Phoenix. They wanted its raw, unimaginable, and limitless power for themselves. Soon after, the inhabitants of the planets waged war upon the Phoenix, trying to control it, as well as its power. They amassed a great army, bringing together a hundred civilizations. But the Phoenix fought strongly for thousands of years until the life-forms found a way to imprison it since it could not be killed. But as conventional methods could not imprison it, they created a vortex to suck in the asteroids and planets around it, creating a spherical cage, but at a cost—the Phoenix would be trapped in it forever. As the millennia went by, the Phoenix Force's cage began to evolve; oceans formed, mountains rose, plants grew and life-forms began to sprout upon it. Soon those life-forms evolved into humans and the cage in which the Phoenix resided became known as Earth. The Shi'ar Church believed that the Phoenix was the very core of the planet.