One Giant Leap For Mankind

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One Giant Leap for Mankind July 24, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com

A brief glimpse into the next generation of space exploration.

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f you think the Bible has little or nothing to say about the connection between man and our

limitless universe, you’re not alone. Evidently, while sifting through centuries-old Bible translations and Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, translators who produced the English Bible for King James in 1611 had a hard time discerning the unique relationship man has with the cosmos. For the record, the King James Version is the most reliable English translation of the Bible. But it’s not perfect. And it gets off to a shaky start in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” A more accurate wording would have been, “In a beginning.” The beginning of John’s Gospel actually predates Genesis 1:1. Added to that, Job 38 reveals that when God made the foundations of the Earth, the angels had already been created. Therefore, in THE beginning, God and the Word existed before all else (John 1:1). Then they made the angelic realm, including the magnificent archangel Lucifer. Then “God created the heavens[it should be plural] and the earth.” This original creation of the material universe could have happened tens of thousands, maybe even millions or billions, of years ago. Now verse 2: “And the earth was without form, and void …”—meaning utter confusion and desolation. And the word “was” actually means to become. In other words, the Earth HAD BECOMEdesolate and without form. God didn’t make the Earth that way to begin with (Isaiah 45:18). It became that way. The question is, how?

The Angels That Sinned Few people grasp the fact that long before God ever created mankind, ANGELS inhabited the Earth. The Prophet Ezekiel wrote about an “anointed cherub” who initially covered God’s throne and was later assigned to “Eden the garden of God” (Ezekiel 28:13-14). This is a reference to Lucifer, who, as the Prophet Isaiah adds, became dissatisfied with his position of rule on Earth and ascended to God’s heavenly throne in a rebellious and unsuccessful attempt to overthrow his own Maker (Isaiah 14:1314).

The Bible says Lucifer, whose name God changed to Satan, drew a third part of the heavenly “stars” away from God—indicating that one third of the angels joined his rebellion and, in the process, became demons (Revelation 12:3-4, 7). Jude 6 says these sinning angels “kept not their FIRST ESTATE, but left their own habitation.” Their first estate, or habitation, was Earth. But they forsook their Godgiven responsibilities on Earth and their universal sin, as 2 Peter 2 reveals, resulted in universal destruction over all the Earth and undoubtedly throughout the entire universe.

Uncovering Biblical Facts Recently, Peggy Noonan likened the sad demise of America’s manned space program to a change in American psychology over the past three decades. “Once, we saw ourselves as a breakthrough people,” she wrote, “a nation with a mission to push beyond ourselves. Now, in the age of soft narcissism, we just circle ourselves.” True. But there might be another reason why we took our eyes off the goal, so to speak. President Kennedy’s challenge, after all, was for America to land a man on the moon and to return him safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s. On July 20, 1969—mission accomplished. By the time Apollo 12 landed on the moon, just four months after the first lunar landing, many people already had a hohum attitude about moonwalks. Conquering new frontiers is one thing—and it is sad to see Americans turn inward and lose their adventurous spirit. But what will another trip to the moon reveal that six previous visits and the Word of God, not to mention the naked eye, haven’t already uncovered? The moon is lifeless and empty. And besides Earth, so are the other planets in our solar system. On July 20, 1976—seven years to the day that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon—an unmanned spacecraft touched down on Mars. A little more than an hour after touchdown, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, together with Ambassador College, began broadcasting the first-ever live shots taken of the Martian surface. Herbert W. Armstrong witnessed the event with more than 1,000 people inside Ambassador Auditorium. The spectacular pictures, greeted with thunderous applause at JPL, showed a very similar surface to what the world had viewed seven years earlier from the moon—except that the mixture of powder and rock had a reddish hue to it. Besides that, the photos revealed another barren and lifeless planet—unwittingly uncovering facts revealed long ago in the pages of a book most scientists neither accept nor understand!

The Rest of the Story Prior to the creation of humankind about 6,000 years ago, the Earth, like other planets and moons in the cosmos, was in a state of lifeless ruin and decay. Genesis 1 reveals that the Earth was in total darkness and completely submerged in water, as a result of the angelic rebellion. The Bible doesn’t say when this happened. What we can discern from the biblical and fossil records is that before the creation of man, before Lucifer led his rebellious charge, cold-bloodedREPTILES—many of

them enormous—roamed the surface of the Earth. These reptiles did not evolve into warm-blooded mammals. They were destroyed during the Earth-wide catastrophe brought on by angelic rebellion! So, Genesis 1:1 describes the original creation of the entire universe. In verse 2, after what might have been a million-year lapse, God then re-created the surface of the Earth only in order to sustain warm-blooded human beings (see also Psalm 104:30). Why? Because God intended to

REPRODUCE

HIMSELF! (Genesis 1:26).

And for what purpose? To restore God’s loving rule on Earth first before using that family government to expand His creative handiwork out to the farthest reaches of the universe! There is too little space to cover all the biblical passages that directly connect the universe to your awesome human potential. (For those who want more, The Incredible Human Potential is an absolute must-read.) The high spots: God says He will eventually put “all things” under man’s subjection (Hebrews 2:8). Moffatt correctly translates that same Greek word as “universe” in Hebrews 1. Here again, King James translators couldn’t quite wrap their minds around the awesome magnitude of what God is offering to man. Notice also Romans 8:19: “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” Creature is yet another gross mistranslation that reflects narrow-mindedness of men who do not understand the plain truth of God’s inspired Word. God, through the inspired pen of the Apostle Paul, was not talking about some obscure creature—rather the vast expanse of the universe, with its millions of suns, planets and galaxies. God’s entire “CREATION”! The Revised Standard Version translates the passage correctly: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation [the vast universe] was subjected to futility [as a result of the angelic rebellion], not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (verses 19-21). If you keep reading, you learn that the entire universe is pictured as a mother about to give birth— groaning in travail, eagerly longing for the birth of God’s own children—who will then breathe life into and restore beauty and creativity unto the multiple billions of lifeless and desolate planets that now exist throughout the universe! • Stephen Flurry’s column appears every Friday. To e-mail Stephen Flurry, click here. Please note that, unless you request otherwise, your comment may appear on our feedback page. To read more articles by this author, click here.

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