Thought for the day
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty". Rev 1v8.
"I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore", Rev 1.18
Thoughts from Apollo 10
Apollo 10 commander Tom Stafford on the way back from his mission around the moon in May 1969 preparing for the Apollo 11 mission:
"We are kinda out of town for church today", adding he would like to suggest some Bible readings. His recommendations were Psalms 8, 122 and 148 and Isaiah 2 verse 4.
Psalm 8: "When I consider They heavens the work of the Fingers, the moon and the stars...praise he Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all ye stars of light".
Isaiah: "And he shall judge among nations. and rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall thay learn war any more"
Thoughts from Wesley
Do all the good you can;
By all the means you can;
And all the ways you can;
In all the places you can;
At all times you can;
To all the people you can;
As long as ever you can;”
John Wesley 1703-1791
The world is round!
"When God made the Earth He hung it upon nothing" Job 26-7 (2100-1700 BC)
"It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the Earth" Isaiah 40.21 (739-701 BC)
How did they know the Earth was round?
Because God made the Earth and He spoke to Job and Isaiah told them so!
Reminder:
2100-1700 BC
739-701 BC
People then thought the Earth was flat and they would fall off if they got too close!
The special Earth
The most special thing about the Earth has nothing to do with its position in the universe. At Christmas, Christians celebrate the fact that God the Creator visited this planet in human form - a tiny baby in Bethlehem. “So the word became human and made his home among us”. To God, this planet is the most important object in the universe, the very centre of His love. Jesus made Earth His home for 33 years but he came so that all who put their faith in Him can have a better home when this life ends. He said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms...I am going to prepare a place for you”. Privileged as we are on this special planet, there will be certainly be no place like home.
Science fiction
People who believe in billions of years past and future are prone to science fiction. The Bible says that “the day of the Lord will come when the elements will be destroyed by fire and the Earth and everything will be laid bare. This will happen much sooner than many expect but unlike the secularists scenario of doom, there is a definite hope for the Earth. Christians put their confidence in God’s promise of a “new heaven and earth, the home of righteousness”. Earth’s final sunset will usher in the dawn of eternal day for all whose faith is in Jesus Christ, Creator.
Message from the Sky
The Earth’s population is now over 6.6 billion people. Finding moments of solitude where we can gaze at the silent night sky is increasingly difficult. If we were able to steal away to a spot where the only sound was our heartbeat and the only sight the canopy of stars, we could hear a message from the heavens. Alone under a canopy of stars we could hear a message from those heavens - the noiseless testimony of God's breathtaking creation. We could hear from the heavens as they "declare the glory of God". (Psalm 19v1). We could watch in amazement as the sky "shows His handiwork" and we could listen as "day unto day utters speech", that fills our minds with the unmistakable awareness of God's splendid creation. We could marvel through the night as the firmament shows in unmistakable splendour and the knowledge of God’s handiwork. Our creator tells us to "be still and know that I am God". A great way to do this is to spend time admiring His handiwork in the heavens. Then we will certainly know that He is God.
Beyond amazing
Pioneer 10 and 11, aswell as Voyager 1 and 2 are heading way out of the solar system and into deep space. Thirty years after its launch, Voyager 1 is travelling at over 38,000mph and is nearly nine billion miles away from the sun. Space achievements such as this are mind-boggling but this is absolutely puny when compared with what God has done. It would be like hearing someone brag to an architect of the Empire State Building that he had travelled to the second floor. We have barely begun to explore the vastness of God's creation. Every small step by mankind should put us in absolute awe of God's power and creativity. While we have just left the realm of one small star with a spaceship, the Creator of the stars "calls them all by name". Exploring the universe is amazing but exploring the God who made it all is beyond amazing.
Tim Furniss is available to visit churches to give a testimony of his conversion, linked to his personal space stories.
Epilogue
"The first 52 years of the Space Age have seen Mankind making its first tentative steps into a minute part of the Universe.
Not putting a big toe into the void to make sure it is not too cold before wading in gently but plunging in, crash-bang-wallop, thanks to the Cold War and the Space Race between the Former Soviet Union and the USA.
Today, we have the curiosity, desire and imagination to continue to explore but no longer the commitment, the money or the technology. The first phase of space exploration has ended.
Our first steps have seen remarkable advances and feats.
But with all this progress, mankind may have lost something more important than discoveries in space. Humility.
At a time when more people believed in creation than the theory of evolution, Albert Einstein wrote, "We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages.
"The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written.
"The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is.
"That seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent being toward God. We see a Universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand those laws.
"Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Such humility has been all but lost in our scientific community".
We have gained a lot of knowledge since Einstein but today that humility has not been "all but lost". It has been lost.
Today, God is no longer in the loop.
Human wisdom rules. We know best! If we do we are making one heck of a mess of it.
Scientists are making some incredible assumptions that are being accepted as fact by a gullible public.
The assumption that creation is a myth and evolution is fact. Evolution is a theory that has not been proven. There is actually more scientific evidence for a creation - such as DNA which is a wonderful example of "in their own kind."
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we look millions years into the Universe and still see an mature and active cosmos. Where is the evidence of the Big Bang? Actually, in the book of Job written about 4,000 years ago, you read: "God spreadeth out the heavens"!
We found something else on our first steps into the Universe.
We discovered a tiny planet in the vastness of space, the tiny Earth, like a jewel on a cushion of black velvet. “the circle of the Earth, hanging upon nothing” as described in a Bible passage written about 3,000 years ago, when humans thought that the Earth was flat and stood on a pillar.
What the moonmen came back with was a memory etched in their beings, of a beautiful, fragile planet in the vastness of space, so small that an astronaut could cover it with his thumb held at arms length.
The message for us today is not to forget that "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth - and the He created life “in its own kind".
An awe of a creator God would make us appreciate what we have on Earth much more, our uniqueness in the eyes of God and also to appreciate the glory of the heavens.
Without giving God the glory for the heavens and the Earth that He made, we will never do justice to our destiny in space - and our access to it may even be closed by own human fallibility and blindness - for example, space debris, a growing barrier to space which like the Tower of Babel may stop us from reaching the heavens.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth".
Just scratching the surface
Voyager 2 is leaving the solar system and heading for the region of the star Sirius - the brightest star in our skies - arriving in 352,000 years.The furthest object to have been detected in the Universe is 13,200 million light years away. It took the Apollos three days to reach the moon but it would take 440,000 million years to reach the Andromeda galaxy, which is just visible with the naked eye.
Bible on the moon
Dave Scott, the commander of Apollo 15 laid a copy of the Bible in the moondust of Hadley Base during the 4th manned landing on the moon. The Bible is still there.