Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called a ‘myth’ in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, president of Curits Engine company, Baltimore, Michigan, and a consultant in the space program related the following development:

"I think that one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Michigan. They were checking the position of the sun, moon and planets out there, where they would be 100 and 1000 years from now. We have to know this so that we don’t send a satellite up and have it bump into something later on in its orbits. We have to lay out the orbit 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 halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong, either in the info fed in it, or with the results as compared with the standards. They called the service department to check it out, and they said, "It’s perfect".

The IBM head of operations said, "What’s wrong?" "Well, we’ve found there is a day, missing in space in the elapsed time." They scratched their heads and pulled their hair. There was no answer... One religious fellow in the team said, "You know, one time I was in Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still". They did not believe him but they didn’t have any other answer, so they said, "Show us".

He got a Bible, and went back to Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement, for anybody who had common sense. 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 could overpower him. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still. That’s right. ‘The sun stood and the moon stayed.....and hasted not to go down, about a whole day’.

Well, 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 time was 23 hours and 20 minutes - not a whole day. They read the Bible and there it said, ‘....about a whole 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 be in trouble 10,000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found, because it multiplies many times over in orbits. Well, this religious fellow also remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went backwards.

The space men told him that he was out of his mind. But they got the Bible and read these words in 2 Kings 20:10. Hezekiah, on his deathbed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah, who told him he was not going to die. Hezekiah did not believe him and asked him for a sign of proof. Isaiah asked, ‘Do you want the sun to go ahead ten degrees.’ Hezekiah said, ‘It is nothing for the sun to go ahead ten degrees, but let the shadow turn back ten degrees backward. Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes. So 23 hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings, make the 24 hours that space travelers now have to log in the log-book as missing day in the universe."

(October 10, 1969, the following article appeared in "Evening World", a newspaper in Spencer, Indiana.)