Apollo 13, Part 2 - Reason Enough

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The Apollo 13 spacecraft, which included the Command Module (CM), the Service Module (SM), and the Lunar Module (LM), sat atop the towering three stage Saturn V launch vehicle. The "V" was for its powerful five F-1 engines that produced a combined thrust of ~7.5 million pounds! 

When Ron Howard released his film on Apollo 13 in 1995, it was like revisiting 1970 in my mind. The film was based on the book by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon. I kept thinking of how this life and death situation was unfolding above me in space as a teenager living in south Florida. Even though it was all over the news back then, High School graduation was days ahead, and everything seemed like a blur; the future was coming at me fast. Often I would look up into space and wonder how they were doing, and then everything faded away after the splashdown. I never read the book, Lost Moon, but the movie’s release on June 30, 1995 brought a greater appreciation of what took place up there and down here 25 years after the fact!

I connected with the movie in the sense that it happened in my generation. For me this moon-bound adventure turned life-threatening revealed the indomitable spirit of man who summoned within his spirit a refusal to fail. It was an inspirational story for all future generations of what could be accomplished through teamwork and determination in the midst of crisis. If I stopped there this would be nothing more than extolling the human spirit. Looking back, all I could do was pray for the astronauts, but I wasn’t the praying kind back then. Rather, I was just hoping they would somehow make it back home safely to their families. It is reason enough for me today to believe that God made that happen. 

Nasa. gov

Since giving my heart to Jesus less than 6 years after A13, I believe that without God's intervention into the matter, in spite of the teamwork involving a large contingency of people that included mission control teams, spacecraft manufacturers, and astronauts, et al, their steely determination would not have gotten A13 back home. Rather than succumbing to the impossible or finger pointing they worked together on the in-flight problems and refused to give up on three men confined to a crippled spacecraft. Man is capable of great things, but only if the All-knowing One allows it (cf. Gn 11:5-8; Acts 17:25). I know that doesn’t set well with secular humanism, but it is a spiritual reality played out in the physical environment. We will say more on this in our Apollo 13 series entitled “Providence.” Also, we will talk about situations that happened with A13 that would incline one to believe God was involved in preserving life.

There has always been a potential trait residing in man that reveals itself by a “thrust of curiosity” that drives him to exploration and discovery. The risks of treasure and blood are no strangers to such enterprises of a “because it is there” conquering spirit. Space was reason enough to stir the spirit. Even if some describe rocketing into space as merely a fool’s errand and a waste of resources, much benefit to mankind has been derived from pushing the envelope of our own understanding of the world around us.

Was it not the narrowest of thinking that the Wright brothers contended with, “If God had meant for man to fly, He would have made him wings.”  Who could have imagined a lunar landing less than 66 years later as a result of Wilbur and Orville wanting to take to the air on Thursday, December 17, 1903? It was reason enough for them to circumvent the law of gravity, if only for a while. From our perspective that is a quantum leap from “the first powered heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled sustained flight with a pilot aboard,” covering a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk, to safely landing a man on the moon ~238,900 miles from earth on Friday, April 11, 1969 and returning successfully to terra firma from the vast ocean of space; all hands accounted for!

This wander lust I contend is providential in nature and is reason enough to venture since the release of life from Noah’s ark after coming to rest with the subsidence of the great flood. God however, will not allow missions that run contrary to His will to succeed (cf. Gn 11:5-6). Recall the commands and covenant given to Noah in Genesis 9? Diffuse, not congregate, was God’s desire (Gn 9:1, “fill the earth”); man thought differently (Gn 11:4). Man saw the benefit of consolidation; God saw otherwise. God chose language to divide a post-flood world (Gn 9:7-8). But with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., God used persecution to drive the Jews from their homeland for rejecting Him and propel the Christians who were commanded to go into the world (Acts 1:8) but were entrenched in Jerusalem.

Whatever the reason or reasons behind the Apollo program, simple or sophisticated, good or bad, God had reason enough to allow man to penetrate space and land on the moon. If it opposed His will it would not have happened. History is replete with examples of God using the right and wrong motives of man to achieve His objectives. Whether you believe that the moon shots were good or evil, God used it for His glory yet to be revealed.

It is interesting to me that seven attempts were made to land on the moon’s surface and only six were successful. The number six is the number of man (the number six represents human imperfections or incompleteness in contrast to the number seven, perfection or completeness). Though I am not opposed to space travel, per se; I wonder sometimes if God is saying that we go no further with our manned flights into the depths of space. A permanent space station, lunar bases, and a manned mission to Mars is still NASA’s dream of tomorrow that has not gone away, only the sufficient funding of such grandiose and expensive endeavors, but is God in favor of this? 

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We are so deeply in debt as a nation one has to wonder if public perception will ever move Congress to favorably fund NASA to pursue aeronautic research, unmanned and manned space explorations as in the glory days of racing the Russians to the moon for “national security,” national pride, and for other reasons. The Soviet Union was no more a threat in that endeavor then than Russia (Russian Federation) is today in 2015; the cold war rhetoric motivated a lot of questionable things. God may be using our national debt to deter us of manned space enterprises, but I am merely speculating.

Nasa.gov

However, there is no speculation on the consummation of all things being located here on earth, and man will not be able to escape his destiny. Neither will man find resolution in outer space in continuing to propagate the sin nature of man or looking for man’s origin or finding an alternative to the dwindling resources to satisfy ravenous appetites on earth or discovering utopia in space somewhere! I know my thinking may be considered farfetched, but it kind of makes sense in light of inscripturated revelation, but I am unwilling to be dogmatic on the extent we are allowed to probe into space.

Jacob Marchio, The Milky Way

The limit of six landing may have been a warning to us, without loss of life, that man’s idea of returning to the moon or penetrating deeper into space with manned space flights were to be limited in scope, unable to reach completeness. Dismissing this idea due to a lack of funding or Murphy's Law may prove to be too pragmatic in our thinking. Again, man’s destiny was to be fulfilled on earth not in the frontiers of the dark velvet of space beyond earth’s atmosphere. Biblical revelation makes that very clear, and that's reason enough not to push our boundaries. 

I must confess that when I look up at the stars, my spirit wants to go there. Maybe because heaven is beyond the starry canopy. That's reason enough for me to take off. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and see me off this earthly pad! <><