In this movie, we learned of a space mission that I had never heard about before. It was the mission of Apollo 8 which occurred the week before Christmas, culminating on Christmas Eve, 1968. The crew consisted of 3 men, Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders, who for the first time in history, orbited completely around the moon. This mission (which was really 10 orbits in a span of 20 hours) was broadcast live on TV. In this broadcast, for the first time in history, they showed footage of the moon and video of what earth looks like from the moon, locating specific geographic features and even commenting that California looked overcast. They described the surface of the moon as looking like grayish-white sand, and at one point they lost contact for 45 minutes as they crossed around the back side of the moon. A photo they took, a color photo of the Earth rising over the moon, became famous.
One moment on the mission, however, stood out above all the rest. And this was when, while in the ninth orbit around the moon, the crew began to read from the book of Genesis to all those listening and watching the broadcast. How marvelous and surprising it must have been to hear these words of God spoken while seeing this footage of the moon and Earth. It was a view that no man has seen before, the closest anyone had ever come to seeing Earth and space from the perspective of God... how incredibly moving to witness.
I can’t believe I had never heard of this famous mission, and I am so glad that I now know about these 3 amazing heroes. When I was watching, I was surprised and overjoyed at the wonder of God, His creativity, His limitless power so clearly seen when contemplating the vastness of space. I can’t do it justice, so you will just have to watch this video of the live footage from 1968. Remember, this was before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. This was before you could enter in your location on Google and have a satellite locate you within seconds. This was before Photo Shop. This was a first. Then to hear over that picture, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth…”
PS...There are lots of videos on You Tube of this footage. Many of them are set to music with more modern images of space than the original footage. I put the one that was the original. Although it is not nearly as impressive as our photos and videos of the moon and earth today, it was what they saw and heard in 1968.
Here is a story done by Fox News on the 40th anniversary of the mission.
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