2020-06-08
147
Article:
An Encounter with God on the Moon: Astronaut Jim Irwin’s Incredible Lunar Experience
By Clare Bruce
James (Jim) Irwin, one of the astronauts on the Apollo 15 mission to the Moon in 1971, was a believer who had a spiritual encounter with God while on the lunar surface. It was a moment that would change the course of his life.
According to journalist Mark Ellis, at one point, Irwin was having trouble setting up his equipment for one of the experiments he had to conduct on the Moon. His wife Mary explained, “[The] experiment wouldn’t erect, due to a cotter pin or something of that nature”. Irwin stopped to pray. Until then he had been a relatively nominal, half-hearted Christian – but not half-hearted enough to humble himself and ask God’s help.
After praying, “God I need your help right now”, Irwin reportedly experienced the presence of God’s spirit in a way he’d never felt before.
“The Lord showed him the solution to the problem and the experiment erected before him like a little altar,” his wife said. “He was so overwhelmed at seeing and feeling God’s presence so close… at one point he turned around and looked over his shoulder as if He was standing there.”
In a 1991 article after Irwin’s death, the New York Times reported that he would often tell church groups he “felt the power of God as I’d never felt it before” in that moment.
The Apollo 15 mission transcript (above) also shows that while Irwin was exploring the moon’s landscape with commander Dave Scott, he was reminded of “a favorite Biblical passage from Psalms.”
Speaking by radio to Mission Control in Houston, he quoted the verse: “I look unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” – before adding in good humour, “But, of course, we get quite a bit [of help] from Houston, too”.
|
|
|
God’s Call to a Life of Mission
Mark Ellis writes that Irwin was so impacted by his God-encounter, that after returning home he left his flying career behind to serve the Lord. His wife Mary says he made the decision while riding in a ticker tape parade through New York, and seeing the thousands of people lining the streets.
“God dropped it in his heart that he had a responsibility to mankind to share Jesus with everyone after that,” she said.
He resigned from NASA within the year, and established the “High Flight Foundation”, a missions organisation that billed itself as “goodwill ambassadors for the Prince of Peace.”
Irwin is quoted as saying, “God decided that He would send His Son Jesus Christ to the blue planet, and it’s through faith in Jesus Christ that we can relate to God… As I travel around, I tell people the answer is Jesus Christ; that Jesus walking on the earth is more important than man walking on the moon.”
Irwin spent 20 years travelling the world preaching the gospel, and also presenting small flags he’d taken to the moon, to the leaders of nations – as a means of opening the door to share Christ.
Irwin wrote his story in the book, To Rule the Night: The Discovery Voyage of Astronaut Jim Irwin.
Jim Irwin – prototype of Spike Tiggler
https://rhema999.com.au/an-encounter-with-god-on-the-moon-astronaut-jim-irwins-incredible-lunar-experience/
Chapter 10 The Dream (Сон)
Concepts: PARADISE
1. Collins dictionary:
According to some religions, paradise is a wonderful place where people go after they die, if they have led good lives.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/..
2.Macmillan dictionary:
Heaven, the place where some people believe you go when you die if you have lived a good life, the garden of Eden
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/britis..
3. Britannica
Paradise, in religion, a place of exceptional happiness and delight. The term paradise is often used as a synonym for the Garden of Eden before the expulsion of Adam and Eve. An earthly paradise is often conceived of as existing in a time when heaven and earth were very close together or actually touching, and when humans and gods had free and happy association. Many religions also include the notion of a fuller life beyond the grave, a land in which there will be an absence of suffering and a complete satisfaction of bodily desires.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/paradise-religion
Компонентно-дефиниционный анализ языковой единицы:
- Wonderful place
- Heaven
- Where you go after dying, if you have lived a good life
- Place of great happiness
- Eden
- Fuller life beyond the grave
- An absence of suffering
- Complete satisfaction of all desires
|
|
|
PARADISE in the BOOK
Examples:You'd have done much the same yourself. I mean, say you didn't go shopping, what would you have done instead? Met some famous people, had sex, played golf? There aren't an infinite number of possibilities - that's one of the points to remember about it all, about this place and that place.
They found a cure for cancer. Sex offenders repented and were released back into society and led blameless lives. Airline pilots learned how to save planes from mid-air collisions. Everyone got rid of nuclear weapons. When you read the paper, the newsprint didn't come off on your hands, and the stories didn't come off on your
mind. Children were innocent creatures once more; men and women were nice to one another; nobody's teeth had to be filled; and women's tights never laddered.
What else did I do that first week? As I said, I played golf and had. sex and met famous people and didn't feel bad once.
`Oh, I'll muddle through,' she said. ` The engine's good for another few thousand years.' We went shopping (I wasn't yet so lazy I wanted to stay shopping), I read the newspaper, had lunch, played golf, tried to catch up on some reading with one of those Dickens videos, had sturgeon and chips, turned out the light and not long afterwards had sex.
No, I wanted to be judged, do you see? It's what we all want, isn't it? I wanted, oh, some kind of summing-up, I wanted my life looked at.
I met Steve McQueen, for instance, and Judy Garland; John Wayne, Maureen 0'Sullivan, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Tierney and Bing Crosby. I met Duncan Edwards and the rest of the Man Utd players from the Munich air-crash.
I met John F. Kennedy and Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, President Eisenhower, Pope John XXIII, Winston Churchill, Rommel, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Roosevelt, General de Gaulle, Lindbergh, Shakespeare, Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Karl Marx, John Lennon and Queen Victoria. Most of them were very nice, on the whole, sort of natural, not at all grand or condescending. They were just like real people. I asked to meet Jesus Christ but they said they weren't sure about that so I didn't push it. I met Noah, but not surprisingly there was a bit of a language problem. Some people I just wanted to look at. Hitler, for instance, now there's a man I wouldn't shake the hand of, but they arranged that I could hide behind some bushes while he just walked past, in his nasty uniform.
`Oh.' `Heaven is democratic these days,' she said...` We don't impose Heaven on people any more,' she said. `We listen to their needs. If they want it, they can have it; if not, not. And then of course they get the sort of Heaven they want.' `And what sort do they want on the whole?' ` Well, they want a continuation of life, that's what we find. But... better, needless to say.' 'Sex, golf, shopping, dinner, meeting famous people and not feeling bad?' I asked, a bit defensively. 'It varies. But if I were being honest, I'd say that it doesn't vary all that much.'
- `Tell me about Old Heaven,' I said to Margaret the following week.
- ` I know some people imagine it's different, that you get what you deserve, but that's never been the case. We have to disabuse them.'
- `Are they annoyed?'
- `Mostly not. People prefer to get what they want rather than what they deserve. And were they... disembodied?'
- 'Yes indeed. That's what they wanted.
- `They don't take visits, I'm afraid. They used to. But the New Heaveners tended to behave as if they were at a freak-show, kept pointing and asking silly questions. So the Old Heaveners declined to meet them anymore. Then they began to die off.
`So. Well, I'm afraid - to answer your question - that the people who ask for death earliest are a bit like you. People who want an eternity of sex, beer, dregs, fast cars - that sort of thing. They can't believe their good luck at first, and then, a few hundred years later, they can't believe their bad luck.
Olympic gold medals began to feel like small change. I gave up sport. I went shopping seriously. I ate more creatures than had ever sailed on Noah's Ark. I drank every beer in the world and then some, became a wine connoisseur and despatched the finest vintages ever harvested; they ran out too soon. I met loads of famous people. I had sex with an increasing variety of partners in an increasing variety of ways, but there are only so many partners and so many ways.
`So what's it all for? Why do we have Heaven? Why do we have these dreams of Heaven?'
`Perhaps because you need them,' she suggested. `Because you can't get by without the dream. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
Характеристики концепта PARADISE:
- New paradise
- Playing golf, having sex and metting famous people
- Dream
- People have almost the same desires
- People prefer to get what they want rather than what they deserve
- No judgement
- Democratic Heaven
- An infinite number of possibilities
- Getting tired of freewill
Article:
