I listened to this article in youth group on Tuesday. What do you think about it?
Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called myth in the Bible is truth? Harold Hill, president of Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, MD., and a consultant in the space program, related the following story.
I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, MD. They were checking the position of the sun, moon and other planets out in space where they would be 100 years from now.
We have to know this so we don’t send a satellite up and have it bump into something later in its orbit. We have to lay out the orbit in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be, so that the whole thing will not bog down. They ran the computer measurements back and forth over the centuries and it came to a halt.
THE COMPUTER HAD STOPPED and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong either in the information which had been read in to the computer or with the result as compared to the standards.
They called in the service department to check it out and said, “It’s perfect.” The IBM head of operations said, “The trouble is, we have found a day missing in space in the elapsed time.” They scratched their heads and pulled their hair. There was no answer.
One of the religious fellows on the team said, “You know, one time in Sunday School, they talked about the sun standing still.”
They didn’t believe him but they did not have any other answer. So, they said, “Show us.”
He got his Bible and went back to Joshua:
“Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hands; there shall not a man stand before thee.”
Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and, if darkness fell, they would overpower them. Joshua asked the Lord to make the sum stand still. (Joshua 10:12-13)
“Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon,” And the sun stood still and the Moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go down about a whole day.
That’s right; the sun stood still, and the moon stayed – and “hastened not to go down about a whole day.
Well, they checked the computers going back into time when that event happened and found it was close – but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua’s time was 23 hours and 20 minutes – not a whole day.” They read the Bible and there it said,”. . . about a whole day.” These little words in the Bible are important. But they were in trouble because, if you can’t account for forty minutes, you will be in trouble 1000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found; it can be multiplied many times over in orbit.
Their religious buddy reached back into his memory and recalled that somewhere in the Bible it said that the sun went backwards.
Again they doubted his words, but they got down in the Bible once more and, in II Kings 20, they found these words.
Hezekiah on his death bed was visited by Isaiah who told that he was not going to die. Hezekiah did not believe him and asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah asked, Do you want the sun to go forward 10 degrees? Hezekiah said, “It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return back 10 degrees. Isaiah spoke to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadows back 10 degrees.
Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes. The 23 hours and 20 minutes in Joshua plus the 40 minutes in II Kings made the missing 24 hours in space. Space travelers now have an entry in the log book accounting for the missing day in the universe.