JOSHUA'S LONG DAY (Continued from Page 18)
Ceylon & India General Mission Our ministry in India includes— Evangelizing Hindus and Muslims As the Lord provides, we lengthen our cords and strengthen our stakes. Address the Secretary-Treasurer 542 So. Dearborn St., Chicago 5, Illinois ßuilxü Mow
see the truth! But like most of man’s wisdom which seeks to discredit the Word of God, it fails of its purpose. In the first place, it is not true that the people blindly loved and followed Moses! Was it not Moses whom they cast out saying, “Who made thee to be a ruler and a judge over us?” To this same man they spoke in anger, “ Better to have died in Egypt than to have fol lowed you into this wilderness!” So deep was their injustice to Moses, that God at one time told Moses to sepa rate himself from the tribes, that the Lord might sweep them out of exist ence! No, this people did not love and follow Moses in blind devotion, and as they were continually calling for a new leader, they should have been satisfied with Joshua. There was no need to glorify Joshua with “myths” ; and if there had been, this account would not have sufficed. If you read the account carefully, you will see that it is not Joshua who gets the glory, but God! All through the account of this miracle, the reader is impressed with one thing which the writer strives to emphasize. This cen tral theme is not the glory of some human being, but rather the account impresses the reader with the wonder of the fact that .God would hear and an swer the cry of a man! And it is God’s power and willingness to answer prayer that is the outstanding note in this ac count! If you by a word of command could lengthen the day, how would the modern chronicler write the event? The man who did it would get the glory, and the papers would be full of the man, man, man! If Joshua needed glorify ing, this was a poor way to do it. The theory also fails to take note of the fact that the people whom Joshua led were all there when this miracle oc curred, and no fraudulent claims would serve to elevate the new leader in their regard. There are three general scien tific objections offered by the critics and we will take each in order. (Continued in the December Issue)
people recorded cycles of eclipses, both lunar and solar, many of which records have been recovered by various expedi tions. Disregarding calendar changes and dealing only with a chronology based upon solar motion, we go back to the earliest available records of the ancients and use them for a starting point. Care fully tracing up to Joshua’s day of battle from the first and most accurate of those astronomical records, we arrive at the conclusion that the day of battle was Tuesday. Then starting with the latest eclipse data of our year and reckoning our way back to that day of battle, we arrive at Wednesday. Deciding that we have made some sort of error in our conclusions, we go back and start again. We find that our first conclusion was right. When we check up from early data and arrive at this day of battle, it was what we would now call Tuesday, July 22. Then we again check over our records from the year 1936 back to the time of Joshua’s conquest, and once more we arrive at Wednesday, the twenty-second day of July. That is to say, the day of the month seems to be the same, but the day of the week is different. Figuring any way that we can con ceive, and using all of the information in the- records of chronology, we find that there is a day missing in that week. In the record the exact relationships of the various solar factors are carefully noted, and by correlating these given positions, we are able to state the time and date of this battle. Since this account does contain these solar factors, we have the confidence to maintain that it must have been writ ten by an eye-witness. No later writer could have known this scientifically ac curate combination of relative positions, until the modern science of astronomy was born. And no later “ interpolater” could have guessed this, as this rela tive position is reached just once in each lunar cycle. So the sick, feeble theory of interpolation breaks down. It was at best only a poor crutch to sup port infidelity, but even that is gone. The second objection of the critics is even weaker! Some of thtem contend that “ this story of the long day is a pure myth, invented to clothe Joshua with a superhuman character.” Their argument here is ingenious. “ The people,” they ex plain, “still felt the loss of Moses. They had loved and followed him, and had seen how God had given him miracle- working power, and they were dubious about this new and youthful leader. So to give the people confidence in Joshua, this pleasing myth was invented to make him popular.” This sounds so smooth and plausible, it is almost a shame to examine it and
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