When I responded, with a list of catastrophes that would necessarily occur if the rotation of the earth was stopped or reversed, I sent a copy to NevermoreR to ask if he knew how long it would take for the Mediterranean to wipe Israel and Joshua off the face of the earth (or for any of the oceans to obliterate the continents to their east as the mass of seawater continued to move while the earth stood still).

      By return E-mail came his reply which was so much better than my own that it is included below. I thank WhyDiAlone and NevermoreR for the grist for the mill.

or all you scientists out there and for all the students who have a hard time convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible...here's something that shows God's awesome creation and shows that He is still in control. Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called "myth" in the Bible is true? Mr Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, Maryland and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development.

I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland. They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in space where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now. We have to know this so we won't send a satellite up and have it bump into something later on its orbits. We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite, and where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down.

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 called in the service department to check it out and they said "what's wrong?"

Well they found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was no answer.

Finally, a Christian man on the team said, "You know, one time I was in Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still." While they didn't believe him, they didn't have an answer either, so they said, "Show us".

e got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for any one with "common sense." There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, "Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee." Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and if darkness fell they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That's right- "The sun stood still and the moon stayed---and hasted not to go down about a whole day!" The astronauts and scientists said, "There is the missing day!"

They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes-not a whole day. They read the Bible and there it was "about (approximately) a day"

These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes you'll still be in trouble 1,000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits.

As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARDS. The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the Book and read these words in 2 Kings: Hezekiah, on his death-bed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof.

Isaiah said "Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?"

Hezekiah said "It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees. "Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees BACKWARD!

Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty three hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in Second Kings make the missing day in the universe! Isn't it amazing? God is Truth!

References: Joshua 10:8 and 12,13; 2 Kings 20:9-11

Forward this to as many people who would think this is equally as cool.

JIM VOSS, SSgt, USAF
NCOIC, Personnel Programs

r. Harold Hill, late of the Curtis Engine Company (no longer in existence, either one of them), was not a consultant to the space program. He was the president of the Curtis Engine Company who held a contract to perform maintenance work on several diesel engines at both the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and NASA's Cape Canaveral Launch Facility in Florida. Mr. Hill was an electrical engineer whose company was contracted to repair and maintain diesel powered electrical generators. Suffice it to say that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is most likely not in the habit of sharing the results of computer simulations with a subcontractor unaffiliated in any way with those simulations.

When contacted by the reporter Willaim Willoughby of the Washington D.C. Evening Star, writing the story up for his "Washington Perspective" column of August 8, 1970, for verification of his claim, Mr. Hill conceded that he had not witnessed the event in question himself but had received it on what he considered good authority. Though Mr. Hill could not recall the source of the account he had received from another, and claimed that he had either lost or misplaced his notes on the matter, he maintained that the story was true in it's details. Mr. Hill would go on to publish his own account in his book "How to Live Like a King's Kid" (Plainfield, NJ, Logos International) pp. 71.

The story of scientists finding evidence of Joshua's "Missing Day" predates not only NASA, it predates Mr. Hill himself. The story Mr. Hill relates is only a variation of a story related by a Mr. Harry Rimmer, in his book "The Harmony of Science and Scripture" (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1940) pp. 269-270. Mr. Rimmer, in turn, was himself only offering a variant of a story first told by Charles A. L. Totten, in his book "Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz: A Scientific Vindication" (New Haven, Our Race Publishing, 1890).

his "true account" of scientists finding Joshua's long day is over one hundred years old now, Mr. Hill appears to have simply transposed it from the mathematical constructs of Sir Edwin Ball, Professor Pickering of Harvard, Professor Maunders of Greenwich, and Professor Totten of Yale to the computational calculations of NASA. Oddly enough, in the same book that contains his unique account, Mr. Hill published a review of Totten's book in an appendix.

NASA has only one facility in Greenbelt, Maryland and it is the Goddard Space Flight Center. Their website address is http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov, they can also be reached for verification at the following phone numbers:

(202) 296-2000 Information Center Personnel Locator
(202) 286-7918 Inspector General
(202) 286-0730 Freedom of Information Act Office
(202) 286-8103 General Student Information Center
(202) 286-6695 National Space Science Data Center

"They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets...." is partially true. We do compute the locations of objects in space, in order to reach them, not to avoid "bumping" into them. Asteroids never pass close enough to the earth to pose a problem and meteors are far too small to track individually. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration did not appear very concerned about "bumping" into objects in space when it launched the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft which both passed through asteroid belts unscathed, having never come close to "bumping" into anything.

hey ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries and...." Why such a simulation would be run backwards to attempt to find the locations of objects in space thousands of years ago is never mentioned. Presumably we are to assume that such an exercise was necessary for some unexplained reason. To locate objects in space at any particular time one must take their present positions and extrapolate forward or back, as no one is in a position to tell us exactly where our Sun was located prior to the "long day" in question, it is quite impossible for us to know, or a computer to calculate, that a day is obviously missing.

"Well they found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time." As I have pointed out above, there could be no "missing day" found as there is no way to confirm the location of celestial objects prior to the event. Extrapolating backwards from current fixed positions would not yield a "missing day" unless one was predisposed to find one and insert it into one's calculations.

As our solar system, and the universe at large, is not geocentric, our Sun is relatively fixed in space, it is the Earth that moves (rotating on it's axis, and orbiting the Sun). Our Moon rotates on it's axis and orbits the Earth. The Earth rotates as a result of gravitation, specifically the gravitation that exists between the Earth and the Sun, for the Earth to stop rotation for any period of time, gravitation between the Earth and the Sun would have to cease.

Whether the story of Joshua is true or not, it cannot be verified through computational extrapolation.

For [the sun or a shadow to go backwards], the Earth would actually have to change the direction of it's rotation, again implying a suspension or cessation of the gravitational pull of the Sun.

t is disheartening to see that even our noncommissioned officers in the United States Air Force are not above verifying obviously fallacious anecdotes before forwarding them on to an unsuspecting public. As Staff Sergeant Voss is in the Air Force, the armed force most closely related to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, it would be relatively easy for him to make the necessary calls to verify this story before forwarding it.

I have the honor to remain,
Respectfully yours,

Mark D. Stein
nevermore@detenebrae.com
nevermore@lan2wan.com