Where Is Heaven?

Where Is Heaven?
Christian News, Vol. 49, No. 48, December 19, 2011


“Infinity and Beyond” is the title of a feature story in the December 5 Time. The Subtitle is “After 34 years in space and a combined 20 billion miles, Voyager 1 and 2 are poised for their greatest adventure yet.” A section from the article reproduced on page 2 of the December 12 CN shows that Voyager 1 is approaching the “Edge of solar system 12 billion miles.”

Time says “There’s no way of knowing exactly where the solar system ends, but the best guess is that it’s up to 12 billion miles from the sun.”

Time’s “Infinity and Beyond led CN to consider again publicizing Journey to the Edge of Creation of our Solar System and The Milky Way and Beyond. Creation Astronomer Danny Faulkner had a major role in these videos.

“Astronomer Says God Created the World in Six Literal Days”, the lead story in the November 16, 1998 CN had this subtitle: “Has the Hubble Space Telescope Shown the Universe is 13 Billion Years Old?” It said:

"Astronomers Peer Into the Past," a New York Times Service story in the October 26 International Herald Tribune (Paris) reports: "Two weeks ago, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of what astronomers think are the most distant galaxies ever studied. These galaxies probably formed in the first billion years of cosmic history, or more than 12 billion years ago. Such estimates are rough because they depend on cosmological models and chronological yardsticks based on the universe's being about 13 billion years old, which is controversial and subject to revision."

Dr. Danny Faulkner, one of the few Creationist Astronomers in the U.S., insisted at a lecture at Trinity Lutheran Church, New Haven, Missouri, on Saturday, November 7, that God created the world in six literal days less than ten thousand years ago.

Faulkner stressed that as a Christian and a Creation Astronomer his basic assumption is that the Bible is God's authoritative and inerrant Word. He said that it was important for a Christian to recognize the historicity of man's fall into sin described in Genesis 3 and the reality of the year-long global and universal flood mentioned in Genesis 6-8.

Dr. Faulkner received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Indiana University. He is currently an Associate Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster. His professional memberships include the American Astronomical Society, Sigma Pi Sigma, and Sigma Xi. He has conducted many nights of photoelectric observations on telescopes of aperture between 16 and 50 inches in Georgia, Indiana, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Chile. His work has been published in the Astrophysical Journal, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and Information Bulletin on Variable Stars. He is also an editor for Program Notes on Close Binary Stars, a semiannual international publication.

Dr. Faulkner's creation writings have been published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism, and Impact, a publication of ICR, the Institute for Creation Research in Santee, California. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the ICR Graduate School and a member of the Creation Research Society. He has been an invited speaker at creation conferences in South Korea, Origins 98 at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, and the 1998 International Creationism Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has been interviewed on Christian radio and appears in the Moody Institute of Science two-part video tape series Journeys to the Edge of Creation.

"Our Solar System" and "The Milky Way and Beyond”, the two-part videotape series of Journeys to the Edge of Creation, is available from Christian News for $14.00 plus postage. Dr. Faulkner served as a technical advisor for the series.

He is also the technical adviser for Voyage to the Stars and Voyage to the Planets published by the Institute for Creation Research. These books are reviewed in this issue of CN.

Dr. Faulkner accepts the statement of belief of the Creation Research Society, an organization of several hundred scientists. The statement says:

"1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true in all the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.

"2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made by direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in Genesis. Whatever biological changes have occurred since the Creation Week have accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.

"3. The great Flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect.

"4. We are an organization of Christian men of science who accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The account of the special creation of Adam and Eve as one man and woman and their subsequent fall into sin is the basis for our belief in the necessity of a Savior for all mankind. Therefore, salvation can come only through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior." Pastor Herman Otten of Trinity Lutheran Church noted that when Dr. Walter Lammerts visited New Haven some 40 years ago Lammerts told him that there should be room within Bible-believing Christian churches for astronomers, biologists, physicists, chemists, and other scientist whose research may have led then to new insights as long as they do not contradict the authoritative Word of God set forth in Holy Scripture. Lammerts commented on astronomy and the billions of years which most astronomers accept as the age of the earth because of tremendous distances stars are from the earth and the time it would take for light to travel from these stars to be seen on earth. Lammerts wrote in "The Creation Concept," an essay published in the November 18, 1963, Christian News:

"A crude analogy is that of filling a large tank with water under pressure through a hose several hundred feet long. Once the tank is full the flow immediately reverses when pressure is discontinued. No matter how long the hose, water pours out immediately at a rate determined by the tank pressure. Astronomers of the uniformitarian school would have us starting with an empty hose. Then, of course, the time taken by the water to travel through the hose would be a measure of the length of the hose. So they assume stars as beginning to shine with no photons of light connecting them with the earth or other stars. But if the stars are conceived as being created by the flow of energy into them, then as soon as they begin to shine by virtue of this accumulated energy, a reversal in flow of light photons would immediately be visible here on the earth."

Dr. Walter Lammerts' "The Creation Concept" is reprinted in this issue, pp. 7-9. Lammerts thanked CN for publishing his essay at a time when the LCMS’ official publications, including the theological journals of both LCMS seminaries, would not publish the essay because of its strong stand against evolution.

Lammerts, and the CN editor, together with some other LCMS confessional Lutherans, met with the President and Vice-Presidents of the LCMS in St. Louis at the headquarters of the LCMS in 1965. Lammerts attempted to persuade the top LCMS leaders that evolution was being promoted in various sections of the LCMS. The LCMS officials argued that the LCMS professors Lammerts said were teaching evolution as a fact were simply promoting "progressive creation."

A recent survey showed that many LCMS high school teachers are teaching theistic evolution. LCMS officials have refused to discipline pastors and professors in the LCMS who promote evolution even though the LCMS in convention after convention has rejected evolution and affirmed the historicity of the Genesis account of creation, fall into sin, and flood.

Most denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope, accept the evolutionary origin of man and the universe.