The Verse that Shaped History

One of my favorite books is entitled "100 Bible Verses that Made America". Written by Robert J. Morgan. It is a book that chronicles historical events that were shaped by the quoting of and following of the Bible. I want to share with you Chapter 93. The day that is written about, is December 24, 1968. The text that is quoted is Genesis 1:1 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' Here is that chapter as recorded in the book...

"I remember Christmas Eve 1968. I was a high school student preparing for college in troubled times. The Vietnam War was ripping America to pieces. Campuses were battle zones, cities were burning from race riots, and the land was violent. I registered with the local draft board and wondered about my future. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been slain, Lyndon Johnson abandoned hopes for reelection, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was engulfed in teargas. In November Richard Nixon was the presidency, but the Soviet Union was threatening America on earth and in space.

In the middle of the chaos, in August, NASA made a sudden and precarious decision to refit the Apollo 8 mission to go to the moon. On December 21, the Saturn V rocket lifted off with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders strapped into a small capsule. Many within the NASA community wondered if they would ever return - experts gave the mission a fifty-fifty chance of success - and Frank Borman's wife, Susan, prepared his eulogy. Some officials worried openly that if the astronauts perished in lunar orbit, no one would ever again look at the moon - or at Christmas - in the same way. But John F. Kennedy had set a deadline to take men to the moon by the end of the decade, and NASA was determined to keep it.

The astronauts traveled faster and farther than anyone before in history and effectively won the space race. As Frank Borman gazed out the window at the receding marble of earth, he thought to himself, 'this must be what God sees'.

On Christmas Eve we all stopped our suppers and celebrations and gathered around our television sets for one of the most extraordinary moments in television - a worldwide broadcast from lunar orbit. No one knew what the astronauts would say, not even Mission Control.

At 8:30 p.m. Central, networks interrupted their programming as a grainy black-and-white image appeared on the screen. Through the static of space, Borman said, 'This is Apollo 8 coming to you live from the moon.' The men aimed their camera at the moon, at the Earth, and at the stars as they described their sights and sensations.

Then Anders said, 'We are now approaching lunar sunrise and for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you.' There was a pause, and then he began reading from Genesis 1: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.'

One of the astronauts passed around a copy of Genesis 1 taken from a Gideon Bible and read the creation account. After Borman finished verse 10, he ended the broadcast saying, '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'.

In Mission Control, scientists and engineers wept openly. We all wept. An estimated one billion people in sixty-four countries had heard the message. And all around the world, men and women and children went outside and gazed into the sky, wondering at the words and sights we had just witnessed from 240,000 miles away."

Blessings,

Pastor Jerry