Dear Editor:
To Jonathan, Tana and staff members: Fiction?? Fact?? Trivial?? Came across this and thought it interesting. YCN viewers, and you, may find it otherwise:
Near 50 years ago, Green Belt Maryland astronauts checked planetary positions in future years.
The information was necessary, when sending long-lived objects into orbit, to forestall potential collision. This complex data was fed into a computer and repeated stoppages ensued. No equipment fault was found. Detailed study revealed an unaccounted for one-day time lapse in program calculations.
One team member recalled a time in Sunday School when the teacher talked about the sun sanding still.
He found a Bible passage (Joshua 10:12-14) where the Lord said: “Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.” Joshua feared when darkness came he would be overpowered by the enemy around him. Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still. “The sun stood still and the moon stayed — and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”
The astronautic team thought the program could then account for the missing day. Further study indicated a day in Joshua’s time was 23 hours and 20 minutes — 40 minutes short! It had to be accounted for — orbital error, in later years, would be intolerable.
Another team member recalled a Bible passage (Kings II 20:8-10) about the sun going back. Hezekiah, when on his deathbed, was visited by Profit Isaiah who told him he would not die. Hezekiah, unbelieving, asked for a sign of proof, and was asked, “Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?” Hezekiah said a better sign would be for the shadow to return 10 degrees. Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the shadow was brought back 10 degrees!
Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes. The 23 hours and 20 minutes in Joshua plus the 40 minutes in II Kings makes the missing 24 hours the space team entered in their program as the missing day they needed to account for!
Yellowstone County News subscriber, William W. (Bill) Everling
St. Paul, Minnesota
