Of Course They Landed on the Moon POST ONE

OF COURSE THEY LANDED ON THE MOON

I’ll give him a fake name – ‘Neil’. He is a composite character taken from a few people near me in life. A modern minded person, into science, philosophy and science fiction/fantasy, he is a lot like I was when I was his age. There is one crucial difference though. My friend, like many young people today, does not believe the moon landings were real. There have been books, TV documentaries and websites speaking about the issue and calling into question what was once fully accepted. The lack of stars behind the astronauts in any of the lunar surface pictures, the way those pictures were lit, the way they seemed to walk in their spacesuits, the way the shadow lines cross the ground, the waving of the U.S. flag; all these and more are given as “proof” that the moon landings couldn’t possibly be real. These have also clearly been debunked in other books, TV documentaries and websites. Those things that couldn’t happen, like the uneven shadow lines, are shown there to be everyday occurrences.

What shows those in the “against” camp to be completely incorrect and what I find fascinating about the whole debate is the incredible amount of evidence they ignore. Thousands of people were involved in the launching of the spaceships. After all these years and not one has cracked and spilled the beans, what does that say? Where did the rockets go each time they launched? They went up; if it was a fake they would have had to come down somewhere. Could you hide a 300 foot tall rocket? As my wife suggested to me in our conversations on the issue, how far would the conspiracy have had to go? Was every single Mercury, Gemini and pre-landing Apollo mission also a fake or was it just the actual moon landings? Do these same people who watch TV every day believe the satellites those TV signals come from are unreal? If the helicopter had the capsule in tow and dropped it into the ocean before it picked it up, where did it come from? There would have been thousands of people on the navy ships to see this part of the hoax. They never said anything. What about the total and complete disdain any living astronaut has for the issue. It’s entirely beneath them to even discuss it at all. If it was faked, then why have an Apollo 13 near disaster? Surely anyone who would lie to that degree would gloss things over so well that they would be seen to succeed without any problems. Not one of these points is ever dealt with by those who discount the success of the Apollo missions.

I have never doubted for one second that the moon landings were real. One thing that confirmed my beliefs over the years and closed my heart to any doubts was when I saw the video of the astronauts proving Galileo right. As a young person I greatly valued seeing this in light of being taught the story of Galileo’s persecution. What the astronauts did was to take a hammer and a feather up to the moon and drop them both at the same time. People disagreed with Galileo’s statements that all things fall at the same rate and used the feather as their example. Without air on the moon, the feather and the hammer fell at exactly the same rate landing on the moon’s surface at exactly the same time. This was not something that could be faked.

When you take all of the supposed reasons for the moon landing to be faked into account, what those who believe and promote them are really saying is not that they don’t believe, but that they can’t bring themselves to believe. It’s just too far beyond their worldview to surrender their preconceived notions.

In a way it’s not surprising that today’s youth do feel this way. The situation is the same one that we were in during the 1970’s with the book “Chariots of the Gods”. Its premise was essentially “how could those ancient peoples have built such great monuments when as far as we know they were nowhere near as advanced?” Today’s youth are well aware of the factoid that the average car has had a more powerful computer chip in it than was on the Apollo spaceship for at least the last twenty years. Therefore, how could they have done it? Your car couldn’t make it to the moon right?

The answer is simple, they were smart. I was quite adept at doing math in my head until I started using a calculator. Then I lost that skill. The entire world is the same way today. A slide rule may not be as fast as a computer, but the engineers at NASA could get the same results with it if they needed to. The kind of computers we have now were not what they had then. What they couldn’t get their computers to do, they did themselves. I’m not the first to say this but it’s something everyone should know. That is even though today’s computers are much more powerful and much smaller, they run complicated applications for processing video and picture files that the computers back then did not do. All they used those giant, room-sized computers for was number crunching. There were no operating systems to load up on the Apollo Command Module. Neither was there a mouse, printer/scanner nor a wireless router for high speed internet with their associated driver programs. There wasn’t even a monitor in the capsule the way we think of one. The display screen simply showed the numbers they needed to see. The majority of the computing was done on the ground anyway.

Computers are only as popular as they are today because they have been made so user friendly. They’re nothing more than glorified video game consoles, typewriters and stereo systems. Have you the average layman reading these words ever wrote any programs on your home computer yourself? People today take these things for granted, which leads them into error. Having been raised with them their whole lives and knowing nothing else, its no wonder young people today can’t picture the world any other way. The thing is; it was.

I know it’s true that they landed on the moon because I was there. I was four years old watching the rocket lift off live on television. I will never forget the wonder that filled my heart as I saw the great blasts of smoke and steam shoot out from the side of the Saturn V booster to a distance beyond it that was greater than its height. I remember the scene a few days later with the helicopter coming to the capsule, already in the water, and the frogmen leaping out into the ocean to gather and collect the astronauts and bring them home safely. No one will ever be able to convince me of anything other than the truth of the matter. They did land on the moon every one of those six times.

It was not my purpose to get into a major discussion on the topic of the actual moon landings. Instead rather, to springboard into why there is so much doubt among the young of today and what lessons we can draw from this controversy as it applies to the spiritual things we’re discussing here on this blog.

What about the stories of those who can say “I WAS THERE“ to seeing Jesus rise from the dead, were they fakes, yes or no? What does that mean for us today in the age where so many think they no longer need God?

Acts 1:3 says “to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” Take the example of the Lord’s appearing to 500 at once mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6. How could that possibly be attributed to mass hysteria? Note that the text here says “He presented Himself”. The crowd didn’t control the appearance.

John was one of those who saw Him many times after His resurrection. 1 John 1:1-4 says “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.”
John was the youngest disciple. He wrote these words at least 60 years later. Growing up a Jew he knew of the hopes Israel had in the coming Messiah. He knew the true God, the God of the Bible, was not the same as the statues worshipped by every other culture in the entire world.

The Lord is beyond our reality and yet here he tells us that same God came into our reality to give us life. He was an eyewitness and he shares what he knows to be indisputably true. Even more so, he not only saw Jesus he touched Him! John’s main concern is not all that Jesus did to prove Himself after He rose form the dead, but the way He lived His life during the time of His ministry when He taught so much truth, gave so many practical demonstrations of His love and reached out to save those who would reject Him.

Peter actually uses the word “eyewitness” in 2 Peter 1:16-19, specifically talking about transfiguration of Luke 9:28-36, when he, John and James were with Jesus. They saw Jesus in a glorious white light and saw Moses and Elijah. They also audibly heard the voice of God the Father. Peter wrote these words many years later. “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;"

Elsewhere Peter speaks of the “more sure word of prophecy”. In other words, even though he did have eyewitness experiences, the real proof of Jesus Messiahship is found in the prophecies of the Old Testament that the Lord fulfilled while on earth. Some of those prophecies, like how Judas would betray Him, were not ones Jesus could personally control. Here in the above passage Peter notes how those prophecies were confirmed by this supernatural encounter.