One Long Missing Day and the Cry of the Skeptics

SPECIAL NOTE:

This feature subject contains material at the center of much controversy concerning NASA consultant Harold Hill’s claim of a missing day. Neither endorsing nor discrediting, GodSaidManSaid is simply declaring the controversy.

It is so much more exciting to win than to lose. God’s position for His children is that all things happen for our good—for the perfecting of our souls and for our eternal benefit. Romans 8:28:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Even tribulation works for our good. Romans 5:3-5:

3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

In all situations, a true believer wins, and his or her spoken confession is such. Death is the ultimate evil to the world, but to the believer, it is coronation day. I Corinthians 15:54-57:

54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Choose Jesus Christ and win! Click on to "Further With Jesus" on this website for how-to information. NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Joshua 10:11-13:

11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.

12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

GOD SAID, II Kings 20:8-11:

8 And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the LORD will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of the LORD the third day?

9 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?

10 And Hezekiah answered, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.

11 And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.

MAN SAID: The “miraculous accounts” recorded in the Bible are simply the ranting of mere men—the weavers of fairy tales. Only simple-minded, uneducated people believe these absurd stories.

Now THE RECORD. Could it be? Could the sun and moon have actually stood still? Is there any record of such an obviously miraculous happening? You can be confident of this one thing: the Bible is a reliable history book even in its most bizarre accounts.

A visitor to GodSaidManSaid recently asked a question concerning the popular story in Christian circles that was related by Mr. Harold Hill. The story was in regard to the missing day. This following article is a reprint from the Yellville, Arkansas, Mountain Echo (March 26, 1970), which was reprinted in a feature published by the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute:

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, MD, and a consultant in the space program related the following development: "I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts checking the position of 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 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 a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong, either in the ’info’ 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 "It’s perfect.’ The IBM head of operations said ’What’s wrong?’ ’Well, we have found that there is a day missing in space in elapsed time.’ They scratched their heads and tore 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 didn’t believe him, but they didn’t have any other answer so they said ’Show us’. So he got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for anybody who has ’common sense.’ There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, ’Fear them not; I have delivered them into your 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 him. 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 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 day was 23 hours and 20 minutes—not a whole day. They read the Bible and there it said ‘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 be in big trouble 1000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. Well, this religious fellow also remembered somewhere in the Bible it said the sun went backwards. The spacemen told him he was out of his mind. But they got out the Book and they read these words in 2 Kings 20: Hezekiah, on his death-bed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah, who told him that he was going to die. Hezekiah did not believe him and asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said, ‘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 return backwards ten degrees.’ Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees backward! Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! 23 hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings make the missing day in the universe.” Isn’t that amazing! Our God is rubbing their noses in His TRUTH. That’s right.  [End of quote]

Later, an investigation was undertaken by Washington Post religion editor William Willoughby. He could not establish Hill’s credibility. According to Willoughby, Mr. Hill was contacted and again asserted the credibility of the account but said he couldn’t locate the documentation.

Mr. Hill did later respond in chapter 13 of his book, How To Live Like A King’s Kid. The following excerpt is from Hill’s book that was reprinted in "Christian Evidences" at www.grmi.org. Hill writes:

Later, someone sent me a clipping . . . saying I had admitted the whole thing was a hoax. Shortly thereafter, numerous religious magazines, some of them Christian, began repeating the false "retraction" and apologizing for their original participation in the rerun of the article. Not one of them ever checked with me as to the truth or error of the article as originally published. For the record—the report is true, the retraction false. . . . The whole sequence of events has demonstrated to me how prone even Christians are to believe a lie instead of the truth.

Mr. Hill’s contested account of the missing day is certainly not the only account that testifies of this miraculous event.

Charles A.L. Totten was a professor of military science at Yale University from 1889 to 1892. He was a man of considerable credibility and is listed among "Who Was Who In America." He was a prolific writer. One of his features in particular was an article titled, "Joshua’s Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz." Mr. Totten claims proof positive of the missing twenty-four hours. His computations are based upon a creation date certified by the British Chronological Association. The head of the association was Premier Chronologist Jabez Bunting Dimbleby. Dimbleby published an almanac dubbed, "All Past Time." The claim of the British Chronological Association is that it can account for every day of time to the first day of creation. The date asserted as the first day, keeping the lunar and solar calendars aligned, was the autumnal equinox, September 22, 4,000 B.C., which was a Monday. Of course, God began creation on the first day of the week which is Sunday. So, where is the missing day?

According to Mr. Totten, we should consult Joshua and Hezekiah. According to those who researched the writings of Mr. Totten, his work is quite technical. I personally have not reviewed it firsthand. (Those wishing to do so should contact Destiny Publishers of Merrimac, Massachusetts.) As in most cases, there are those who line up against Totten’s conclusion, but few if any who can measure up to his level of investigation. But one who does measure up is Immanuel Velikovsky.

Immanuel Velikovsky lived from 1895 to 1979. He was a psychiatrist by trade and authored many books including Worlds In Collision, which may have been his most controversial written work. He was esteemed by the New York literary world as one of the greatest men of all time but much of the scientific community considered his work to be pseudo-scientific.

The preface to Worlds In Collision reads:

Worlds in Collision is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet earth participated too. The historical-cosmological story of this book is based in the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material.

At the time Worlds In Collision was published, Gordon A. Atwater, curator of the Hayden Planetarium, had this to say, "The theories presented by Dr. Velikovsky are unique and should be presented to the world of science in order that the underpinning of modern science can be re- examined...I believe the author has done an outstanding job." [End of quote]

Velikovsky’s research did not center on astronomy or chronology but his assertions of the missing day were founded on the ancient records of civilizations past. Some of these accounts follow, which were the heathens’ attempts to understand this miraculous event.

∙ The ancient Greeks attribute to Phaethon the disrupting of the sun’s course for a day.

∙ Another ancient account attributes the stopping of the sun and moon to their false god, Bacchus.

∙ The legend of India tells of the pious lamentations of Arjouan over the death of Chrishna which caused the sun to stand still.

∙ The antiquities of China, Peru, and Babylon record the account of one long day.

∙ Herodotus reports that the Egyptian priests showed him their ancient temple records in which was found the account of a day that was twice the natural duration.

∙ Author David Nelson recounts the following: "Chinese history speaks of Yao, their king, declaring that in his reign the sun stood so long above the horizon that it was feared the world would have been set on fire; and fixes the reign of Yao at a given date, which corresponds with the age of Joshua the son of Nun.

If one side of the world records a day when the sun stood still, creating one long, intense day, then other civilizations should record a long night, and they do. The following excerpt is from Velikovsky’s book, Worlds In Collision:

In the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan—the history of the empire of Culhuacan and Mexico, written in Nahua-Indian in the sixteenth century—it is related that during a cosmic catastrophe that occurred in the remote past, the night did not end for a long time.Sahagun, the Spanish savant who came to America a generation after Columbus and gathered the traditions of the aborigines, wrote that at the time of one cosmic catastrophe the sun rose only a little way over the horizon and remained there without moving; the moon also stood still.

One of the world’s greatest historians, Flavius Josephus, wrote in his book, Antiquities of the Jews, the following:

Joshua made haste with his whole army to assist them,
and marching day and night, in the morning fell
upon the enemies as they were going up to the seige;
and when he had discomfited them, he followed them,
and pursued them down the descent of the hills.
The place is called Beth-Horon; where he also understood
that God assisted him, which he declared by thunder and
thunderbolts, as also by the falling of hail larger than usual.
Moreover, it happened that the day was lengthened that the night
not come on too soon, and be an obstruction to the zeal of the
Hebrews in pursuing their enemies; insomuch that Joshua took
the kings, who were hidden in a certain cave at Makkedah, and
put them to death. Now, that the day was lengthened at this
time, and was longer than ordinary, is expressed in the books
laid up in the temple.

The world certainly certifies God’s account of the missing day. The skeptics clamor for an explanation on how such a thing could occur. The obvious answer is that it was a miracle that defies natural understanding. Noah Webster’s definition of miracle: "In theology, an event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a deviation from the known laws of nature; a supernatural event. Miracles can be wrought only by Almighty power, as when Christ healed lepers, saying, "I will, be thou clean," or calmed the tempest, "Peace, be still." [End of quote] It was simply a miracle. Stopping the sun and the moon was a miracle. How did God create the heavens and the earth out of that which is invisible? How did God create DNA or your brain or eyeball or hang the sun and moon in space upon nothing? The answer is: It was simply a miracle.

Skeptics claim that the Bible is simply the ranting of mere men, but the skeptics are those who are ranting and raving in their state of denial. They must cling to their fool’s gold, for if these miraculous interventions actually happened as described in the Bible, then there is a God of the Bible who also created all things and the skeptics will be forced to stand behind their blasphemous connivings before an angry God, and that right soon. GodSaidManSaid recommends repentance and surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ while there is still time, for one day "time shall be no more."

GOD SAID, Joshua 10:11-13:

11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.

12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

GOD SAID, II Kings 20:8-11:

8 And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the LORD will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of the LORD the third day?

9 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?

10 And Hezekiah answered, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.

11 And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.

MAN SAID:  The “miraculous accounts” recorded in the Bible are simply the ranting of mere men—the weavers of fairy tales. Only simple-minded, uneducated people believe these absurd stories.

Now you have THE RECORD.



References:

King James Bible

Christian Evidences, "The Long Day Of Joshua," www.grmi.org/renewal/Ric hard_Riss/evidences/7longday.html

Nelson, David, The Cause and Cure of Infidelity, New York: American Tract Society, 1841, pp 26-27

Newman, R.C., PhD, "Joshua’s Long Day & The NASA Computers," Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute

Rimmer, Harry, The Harmony of Science & Scripture, William B. Eardmans Publishing Co., 1940, pp 269-270

Velikovsky, I., Worlds In Collision, MacMillan Company, 1950

www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovsky/worlds.ht m

• Go Further With Christ
• Email To a Friend
• Comments or Questions?