50 Years Ago Tonight

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Christmas Eve, 1968, witnessed one of the most amazing things in history: Apollo Eight orbited the moon while Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders conducted a live broadcast.
While the image of the moon's surface was extremely grainy, everyone watching was transfixed that it was occurring at all: live television from the moon! It was just six years earlier that technology allowed worldwide broadcasts on earth.

The lunar commentary would have been spectacular enough. Then, without advance fanfare, the astronauts began reading from the Book of Genesis and it was stunning. All seven of us in our family watching the television were uplifted by those 6,000 year-old words.

In an era when you can watch continuous live HD images from the International Space Station (below),
the reading of the Bible from the Moon may not have seemed so extraordinary. Yet it was. Fifty years ago tonight. What a Christmas gift to the Earth!

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