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Science and the Scripture
Good Morning, Everyone! I don't claim to be a substitute for Bones, and I won't try to become Bones II during his hiatus. Whenever folks who are doing the work and ministry of the Lord (or the "Boss," as Bones refers to Him) for a long continuous period, they need a break. Even Jesus, when He ministered during his 3 1/2 years, had to take breaks and get away from everything in order to be alone with His Father. That said, Bones, enjoy your break! Enjoy your time alone with the Lord, and may you be refreshed in your Spirit as never before!
Now, to the subject at hand. For most of you, this will be somewhat of an introduction to me, but I'll try not to get too windy and bore you to death with unnecessary details.
Virtually all of my growing-up years were spent living in Eskimo villages as the oldest of two sons of missionary parents. My father, Alvin Capener, was someone who lived faith in shoeleather. He lived a continuous and consistent life of faith, frequently accomplishing what everyone else said was impossible. Dad used to say to me, "Son, get the word "impossible" out of your vocabulary. There is no such thing for a person who walks with the Lord Jesus Christ."
That said, and without going into lots of extra detail at this point, I grew up knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. He was an ongoing part of our household, our daily lives, our daily conversation, and our daily experiences. I was nine years of age when the Lord specifically called me into ministry, and I have lived my life in some kind of ministry ever since. In the 53+ years that have passed since the Lord called me, I have spent 25 in pastoral ministry and all of my years in some area of pioneering ministry.
Because of the pioneering aspect of my life, I've never been one to "pass the hat" when I needed finances to accomplish anything the Lord directed me to do. From my early youth, I have been gifted by the Lord in the realm of mathematics, science, engineering -- and specifically electronics. Just as the apostle Paul had a "tent-making" trade to support himself when he wasn't preaching, I've had a "tent-making" trade to take care of my family's needs: electrical and electronic engineering. Since the early 1950's, I have been in radio or television broadcasting working both sides of the microphone and the camera.
During the early 1960's, upon being released from active duty with the Army, I took a break from my broadcasting "career" to go to work for NASA doing research and development at the Lockheed Missiles & Space Corporation laboratories in Sunnyvale and Palo Alto, California. We were doing design work on the computers that governed the Mercury Space Capsules and the Agena rockets that carried them into space, as well as making preparations for the day when man would take his first trip to the moon.
I guess I would call those computers pretty rudimentary. They performed some basic calculations during flight, but most of the calculations were performed in advance by an ENIAC the size of a warehouse. My Dell laptop can run circles around that old ENIAC and perform computations that warehouse-sized monstrosity couldn't even begin to take on.
When we started working on the plans to put a man on the moon, we had to plot the earth's rotation, it's path in space, the moon's rotation and path, along with time calculations in order to project speed and time of arrival for the astronauts where the moon was supposed to be once they departed the earth. Understand that we had lots of help from the Griffith Observatory, the Palomar Observatory, and numerous other astronomical records and sources. We had to plug in every variable we could think of where it related to time and space. Things went along swimmingly until we started re-calculating and re-checking our numbers. We couldn't get two sets of calculations to come out the same. There was always variation -- enough so that the astronauts arrival was either around 24 hours ahead or 24 hours behind the moon's arrival at that point in space.
It drove everyone in the labs nuts until one day during a discussion over lunch (and our usual games of chess) one of the engineers said, "Hey guys, I remember in Sunday School hearing about Joshua. He commanded the sun and moon to stand still for a day until their battle against the Amorites was accomplished." Even though some of the scientists and engineers in the lab weren't Christians and had no background in the Scripture, it rang everyone's bell. Because the Hebrew word in Joshua 10:12 is "yom," denoting a 24-hour day, we plugged those 24 hours into the computations and re-ran the numbers.
What do you think happened? Did it work? Nope. But almost! We were lots closer. Instead of being some 24 hours out of sync, we were now 40 minutes out of sync. Exactly. Everybody was scratching their heads, saying, "OK, we're almost there. But, what did we miss? Where are the 40 minutes."
It didn't take long for someone to remember the ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz. Maybe you remember it. In Isaiah 38:8 (as well as 2 Kings 20:11), we read about Isaiah's promise to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah had asked for a sign from the Lord that he would be granted another 15 years to live per his prayer request. Isaiah told him he could have his choice of 10 degrees forward, or 10 degrees backward on the dial of Ahaz. The sun would either set another 10 degrees, or go backwards by 10 degrees. Hezekiah's response was, "It's no big thing for the dial to go forward. Let it go backward. Make the sun come back up by 10 degrees."
There it was. 24 hours times 60 minutes equals 1440 minutes in a day. Divide that 1440 minutes by 360 degrees on the sun dial and you have four minutes per degree. 24 X 60 = 1440 / 360 = 4 X 10 = 40 minutes. The 40 minutes were entered into the computations. The computer went to work and produced an answer. The computations were run and rerun and rerun and rerun, over and over and over again. They came out exact every time! The variations were gone. The answers were consistent. The numbers were something we could depend on for all future calculations in making preparation for space travel.
Anybody, therefore, that thinks Scripture is unscientific just hasn't been in the scientific/scripture loop. I have. It works! Every time!
NOTE: A similar story to this one has appeared throughout the years and been attributed to a whole host of different folks and differing circumstances. Snopes has debunked most of the stories that have appeared. I cannot speak to the differing stories that have appeared throughout the years, other than to say that this experience is mine. I worked at Lockheed's R & D Labs in the early 1960's, and these are the events as I recall them happening with the scientists and engineers at that time.
Have a blessed day, folks! The best day of your life.
--Regner
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
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