#23
I heard someone say recently that men probably do live on Mars, and that our Earth is just their insane asylum.
In 1564 Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy. The Great Cathedral with its Leaning Tower Baptistery was built in 1063. On my several visits there, amid the tourist traps, I could only imagine Pisa at the time Galileo was a child looking upwards to the heavens. Now we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of his development of the telescope in 1609. My old military telescope with its wooden legs will not compare with the famous Hubble telescope now in orbit which has predicted that the edge of space is over twelve million light years in the distance.
Think of the billions of dollars that the US government has spent exploring space. Now, even India, still with the death wagons that go through the streets each morning picking up dead human beings who were born and have lived their entire lives and now have died on the streets, is reportedly sending men into space and spending millions on space exploration. Even Communist China, where four families share one kitchen and one bathroom (I saw this on one of my 3 visits to China since the reopening in 1976), are shooting men into space and have great desires to colonize the moon. My passports have been stamped in 157 countries of the world. In many of these small, poor police-state countries human beings still carry jugs of polluted water long distances from creeks and rivers just to survive. The scientific community, and those who stare into space, or travel in expensive vehicles though space, have yet to discover much new about space then the five words found in God's Word "And he made the stars". We call ourselves a 'Christian' nation and there are 'do-gooder' persons around the world.(Almost all world poverty is below the 30th parallel) People do what they do because they believe what they believe. When can we believe that the world's wealth would be better spent relieving the poverty of human beings... At least to the extent of clean water.
No telescope could possibly have seen the Heavenly Host who proclaimed our Savior's birth (This means the only one in the world that can save the world from ourselves) on that cold Bethlehem night 2000 years ago (I spent Christmas Eve in Bethlehem in 1964, it was very cold). The poorest of the poor, shepherds too poor, too deprived, to be allowed into the temple where the sheep they were guarding would be sacrificed. Held in such low regard they could not even give testimony in court and had probably never had a bath. But, they were witnesses to the greatest event in the history of the world. The wise men, participants in this event did not have a telescope but they "came to worship him" , whereas today's scientific crowd would have come to worship the star.
Long ago, when I could see a little with my left eye which God conveniently left for me after the war, visiting St. Peters and astonished by the beauty of the angels in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, I know without the shadow of a doubt that we are still "surrounded by angels". Several times in my life I have experienced the presence of angels in human beings as well as in protection. The most vivid, which i do not mind sharing, was late on a Sunday afternoon attempting to return home before darkness. I should have stopped driving long before I did but we all hate to give up our independence. Even with a small amount of vision in one eye during the daylight as long as I could see the white lines on the highway I could do pretty well as long as I did not try to pass anyone or do anything else requiring good vision. As it got increasingly dark and I was still about twenty miles form home I began to panic. I thought I saw a taillight ahead of me but just before I drove under a large 18-wheeler the steering wheel to my car turned and I went around the truck back into my lane without the car ever slowing and putting me into any danger. For those in Christ, the angels protect us in war (wartime trenches are full of such behavior), in the treatment room (both doctor and patient), the playground, and any other place of danger.
On this 400th anniversary of the development of the telescope there are visions which Galileo could never have conceived. "without vision the people perish"-Proverbs 29-18
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