The First Broadcast from the Moon

 On this day, Christmas Eve, in 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit our nearest neighbor, the moon. Astronauts Frank Borman (Commander)  Jim Lovell (Command Module Pilot), & William Anders (Lunar Module Pilot) undertook this historic journey to make their marks in history and pave the way for the actual landing on the moon by Apollo 11 the following year.  

Apollo 8 crew from left to right Lovell, Anders, Borman

On their ninth orbit, the crew began their second television broadcast from the cabin of the command module.  Each took a turn to describe what they were seeing and experiencing. Borman reportedly said it was ".. a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing". Once these comments were complete, Anders stated the crew had a message to share with the people of Earth. 

Each read a portion of the creation story in Genesis with the following transcript:

Bill Anders

We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.^[*]

Jim Lovell

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.^[*]

Frank Borman

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.^(*)

It is hard to imagine how fast and far we have fallen from the ability to give God credit publicly and in conjunction with a government agency like NASA while broadcasting to the entire world. To be an astronaut you had to be elite, an upper echelon in intellect and decision making. Not all were Christians, but it is clear here in this case at least, these 3 men were humbled by their mission. They realized the impact on humanity this program would have and thus used it as a platform to give God the glory. May we all learn from this and repeat it.

Merry Christmas

Apollo 8's reading of Genesis

(*) Woods, David; O'Brien, Frank (December 27, 2008), "Day 4: Lunar Orbits 7, 8 and 9:" The Apollo 8 Flight Journal  NASA History Division

How Powerful is the Omnipotent One?

 While doing some research on the scientific basis for the existence of God, I came across a document originally written by Peter W. Stoner some time ago (Science Speaks, Online Edition), and has been revised since it's original publication. In the article, Stoner explains the mathematical likelihood of the 13 events of Creation being correctly recorded in the right order and explains the importance of this sequence being in the correct order, and how it confirms what scientists have since discovered. (I find the latter rather humorous) 

He then goes on to explain the power that is in the suns of the universe and it really stopped me dead in my tracks to reconsider my opinion of God, and ask- "Just HOW powerful is He?"

All believers probably say much the same thing that He is all powerful, knowing, present etc. He knows the stars by name (Psalm 147:4) and the hairs on my head are numbered (Matthew 10:30).  These are concepts that we are familiar with and are not hard to appreciate, that is, until you start to try to appreciate just what these passages imply. Have we actually thought about how much power there must be in our God? 

But now, let me share what Stoner wrote about the power of a sun:

    "The sun is a great power plant. If you were to mark off one square yard on the sun you would find it is giving off 70,000 horsepower of energy continuously. There are 10,000 times the square yards of the Earth on the sun. (For comparison's sake, the sun releases the equivalent of 2,700 Little Boy atomic bombs of 15 kt of TNT every second.)

This is a tremendous amount of energy, and "there is still enough energy for the sun to continue to burn for another 5 billion years." Is that power? Indeed, but consider now, there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Multiply our impression of God by 100 billion. But how many is 100 billion? "If you were to count 250 stars a minute, day and night, it would only take you 1,000 years to reach this number." Now that's power.

Lest we forget, the Milky Way is but one of many galaxies. How many? Perhaps a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) galaxies to consider. And there will be a host of planets in each of those solar systems represented by a star, each with mass and velocity, traveling through space at fantastic speeds. All this motion and mass contains kinetic energy which had to be created and set in motion somehow.

I think this properly, or at least minimally, begins to put into perspective the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:18 ".. all power is given unto me."