Apollo 8 and God
The evening worship service in my home church on March 2, 1969 included a film, “Moon Shot,” which apparently reviewed the flight of Apollo 8 in December of 1968, or perhaps it previewed the lunar landing yet to come. Also included in the evening service were a song service, a “message in song” entitled “He” sung by Dennis Ronne, and a hymn of invitation. My Dad apparently was the featured speaker for the evening.
He is listed as “Apollo engineer”; he also was an elder in our church, a respected leader of Central Christian Church of Lancaster, California.
Subscribe to receive an email notice when I post a new blog article.
Please leave a comment on the original post.
Dad alludes to the broadcast the whole world saw. The telecast linked includes a beautiful earth-rise from lunar orbit, while the astronauts read from the first chapter of the book of Genesis. Here is Dad’s speech to the congregation:
Aren’t we proud of our astronauts for quoting scripture from space and professing their faith by prayer? In May 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper far out in space offered a prayer which was recorded on tape, which he later played back to a joint session of Congress. Here is a part of it: “Father, thank You for letting me fly this flight… for the privilege of being able… to be up in this wondrous place seeing all these many startling things You have created.” About 3,000 years ago the psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork.”
The Russian astronaut Titov while orbiting the earth reported he saw the earth hanging over his head remarked, “I couldn’t help wondering what was keeping it there.”
This is a very good question indeed for someone who professes to believe in God. Job says in Job 26:7, “God hangeth the earth upon nothing.”
We have a wonderful, all-powerful, all wise God, who formulated natural laws of this universe that are unchanging. The commentator in the film remarked that the “window” or optimum time for the mission was set millions of years ago. When we understand and apply the laws of celestial mechanics to these missions, the results are exactly predictable to the limit of our abilities to make measurements. Our God is a God of order and this universe, our solar system and our own earth, the only one of nine planets with precisely the characteristics to support life as we know it, is a demonstration of our Lord’s power—not some infinitely remote probability. The astronauts reported the earth looked like a jewel—and the moon was gray and desolate.
Yet the psalmist again says in the 8th Psalm, “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers... what is man that Thou art mindful of him?” Our God is mindful of us we know because He loved us so much that He sent His only Son to this rather small planet rotating around a very ordinary star to show us how to live in a way pleasing to Him.
Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to the Moon. On December 24, 1968 the astronauts—William Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman—read from the first chapter of Genesis while orbiting the moon and aiming their television cameras back towards “the good earth,” a transcendent experience for me and I’m sure many others who witnessed it live on TV. To read a transcript of the Christmas Eve broadcast go to http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo8_xmas.html; also included are links to audio and visual records of the historic broadcast. The first people actually to land on the moon did so on July 20, 1969, still 5 months in the future from the time of this evening worship service.
Subscribe to receive an email notice when I post a new blog article.
Please leave a comment on the original post.
