When Time Stands Still
Every decade or so, one or two events will
occur that makes our nation stop in its collective tracks and pay close attention.
Whether it’s our fascination or the historical implications, the
phenomenon of these riveting occurrences etch an indelible imprint into our
minds that forever remain. We can tell
people the year it happened (if not the day), the place we were standing and
what we were doing when we first heard the news.
Depending on your age, you may or may not recall. But while most days expire without these time
markers, somehow these catch our eye:
Do you remember John F. Kennedy’s
assassination in 1963? The Apollo 11 Capsule landing in 1969?
The death of Elvis Presley in 1977?
The attempted assassination of Ronald Regan in 1981? The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger
in 1986? The O.J. Simpson verdict in
1995?
Different events and different responses,
but if you were up on current news, at least for a moment, the cross-hairs of our rifles aimed in unison, as time
stood still.
The nation of Israel experienced such
moments. They couldn’t help but
remember what they were doing and where they were standing when the Red Sea
parted. (Exodus 13:18), the water flowed from the rock at Horeb (Exodus 17:6)
and the Jordan River opened (Joshua 3:15). But there was a day in Israel’s history where
time
literally stood still.
In Joshua 10, Joshua, battling the five
Amorite nations, was concerned because he was surrounded and if darkness fell they would be overpowered. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun hold
its position. “And
the sun and the moon didn’t move until the Israelite army had finished the
destruction of its enemies!” (Joshua
10:13) And the sun remained in place for
an entire day.
Recently, at Green Belt, Maryland, NASA
Astronauts and Scientists were checking the position of the sun, moon and
planets out in space and where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now. They have to know this so they won’t send a
satellite up and have it bump into something later on in its orbits. 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 found
there was a day missing in space in elapsed time. A Christian man on the team remembered
Joshua’s missing day in the Bible. They
checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found that
there was a 23 hour and 20 minute gap.
(Incidentally, in 2 Kings 20:9-11, Isaiah’s word to Hezekiah reveals
where the extra 40 minutes were found.)
It’s a rare occasion when time stands
still…but someday soon, it will happen again. Christ will return and everyone’s collective
eyes will be watching and “at the name of
Jesus every knee will bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
(Philippians 2:10, 11).
Not only will time stand still…it will be
no more. Come to think of it, maybe
it’s worth knowing where you’re standing before it even happens.
Terry Risser
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014 – Terry Risser
No comments:
Post a Comment