Last week a friend of mine who goes to another church showed me his church newsletter and told me to read the story on the front page. I had already heard the story before but apparently this was the first time my friend had come across it and he was very excited about it. Finally science had proved the truth of Joshua's long day! For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it goes like this:
Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called "myth" in the Bible is true? Mr Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore Maryland and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development.
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, Maryland. They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in space where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now.
We have to know this so we won't send a satellite, up and have it bump into something later on its orbits. We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite, and where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down. They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards.
They called in the service department to check it out and they said "what's wrong ?" Well they found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was no answer. Finally, a Christian man on the team said, "You know, one time I was in Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still."
While they didn't believe him, they didn't have an answer either, so they said, "Show us". He got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for any one with "common sense."
There they found the Lord saying to Joshua ,"Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee." Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and if darkness fell they would overpower them.
So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That's right--"The sun stood still and the moon stayed---and hasted not to go down about a whole day!" The astronauts and scientists said, "There is the missing day!"
They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes--not a whole day.
They read the Bible and there it was "about (approximately) a day" These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes you'll still be in trouble 1,000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARDS.
The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the Book and read these words in 2 Kings: Hezekiah, on his death-bed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die.
Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said "Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?" Hezekiah said "It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees.." Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees BACKWARD! Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty three hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in Second Kings make the missing day in the universe!
References:
Joshua 10:8 and 12,13
2 Kings 20:9-11
Now of course
NASA denies this ever happened. And of course they would if they had inadvertently proved the Bible true. But let's look at this from a Christian perspective. What's wrong with this story?
Well, for starters their method for finding the "missing day" was all wrong. It was based on a secular understanding of astrology. It was based on the fallacy that the earth
moves around the sun. But the Bible says, "[God] laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever" (Ps 104:5). The earth is immovable. Therefore how can one find the "missing day" by calculating the earth's movement?
Another problem is that these NASA scientists supposedly also took into account the movements of the stars. Rev 12:4 clearly tells us that the stars are angels. Angels do not follow any set pattern of movement. They go where God sends them. When God sends them to earth on a mission (or if an angel falls from grace), we see a falling star. They may even be unexpectedly delayed in one place (Dan 10:13). They follow no set pattern of motion. So how can we hope to find the "missing day" by calculating the motion of the stars?
The Bible, the 1611 KJV, clearly states that the sun revolves around the earth (Eccl 1:5). So how does the sun's motion give a clue as to when this "missing day" occurred? It doesn't. The sun rises, circles above the earth, sets, travels under the earth and then rises again. If any part of this cycle was ever irregular at any time in the past, it would leave no discernible trace.
This story is a lie from the devil, a strong delusion, sent to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect. There is no "missing day". Gen 1:14 tells us that God set the sun place "to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." We judge the length of a day by the amount of time between sunrise and sunset. If this amount of time is greater on one particular day, then what we have is a long day, not a "missing day". For example, we have more hours of daylight at the summer solstice because the sun travels more slowly across the sky on that day. Yet we don't claim we are "missing a day" on Jun 21st, do we? Joshua's long day was just that, a long day. A miraculously long day but not a "missing day".
Furthermore, God did not stop the earth in its orbit around the sun. He stopped the sun in its orbit around the earth. Joshua said, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon" (Josh 10:12). It was the sun that stood still, not the earth.
What this story does is that it bolsters faith in secular science while cunningly undermining the Bible. Supposedly NASA put satellites in space and put man on the moon (both of which are hoaxes) because it discovered this "missing day" using calculations that contradict the Bible. I am constantly amazed at just how gullible some people who profess to be Christians are. After I read my friend's newsletter, I googled "NASA finds missing day". It took me two minutes to discover that this story is simply an urban legend that has been circling the pseudo-Christian community for decades. It amazes me how in this day and age, with the internet at their fingertips, so many people can still be deceived by such an outrageous lie and put their faith in pseudo-science. We shouldn't rely on secular science to prove the Bible. We should rely on the Bible to prove the Bible.