JOSHUA'S LONG DAY

Updated:  1-Nov-2009: Brethren, though the following article is rather interesting to read, it is indeed an urban-legend.  I leave it on the site because it gives us a warm feeling, feelings of hope, feelings of the almighty.  However it is indeed false and the attributions towards nasa and other "factual" information is false.  The full detail of this urban myth can be viewed here.


The following paper was read at the Victoria Lodge of Education and Research Annual Banquet on April 15, 1986 by Wor. Bro. David Brown, Past Master of Britannia Lodge 73, Seaforth.

The hailing sign or sign of supplication took its rise from the time when Joshua was fighting the battles of the Lord. It was in this position that he prayed fervently that the Almighty would continue the light of day, that he might complete the overthrow of his enemies.

That is something that every Freemason has heard and seen time and time again. And I wager that each of you has given thought as to what was meant by ‘continuing the light of day'. I expect that you have, at some time, read the account of this in the V.S.L.; however, let me refresh your memory as I take a moment to read to you as it is written in the Book of Joshua, 10th Chapter, verses 12 - 14 (Living Bible). It reads:

'As the men of Israel were persuing and harassing the foe, Joshua prayed aloud, 'Let the sun stand still over Gibeon and let the moon stand in its place over the Valley of Aijalon!' And the sun and the moon did not move until the Israeli army had finished the destruction of its enemies! So the sun stopped in the heavens and stayed there for almost 24 hours! There had never been such a day before and there has never been another since, when the Lord stopped the sun and moon, all because of the prayer of one man.'

When they speak of the sun standing still, the one and only explanation that comes to my mind is that the earth stopped revolving. But to my limited intelligence at this moment, I don't believe that is possible. I have studied quite a bit of astronomy and there is one universally accepted fact to which I concur; that is, the definite relationship of movement among all heavenly bodies. One body cannot move off course, speed up or slow down, without effecting the whole system.

You and I can relate to what would happen if we tossed a monkey wrench into a high speed news printing machine while it was running. The chain reaction would be devastating and the whole machine would probably self destruct. Likewise, using our imaginations, if it were possible to throw a wrench into the cosmic machinery; well, I would probably be quite safe in saying that the consequences would be astronomical!

So if the prayer of one man, Joshua, was answered, and it said in the Sacred Volume that it was, did the Almighty Architect stop the cosmic machinery momentarily, or did He put his hand on this little speck of a planet called Earth and stop it from turning for about a day? What do you think, Brethren?

Over the years, I have read many passages in the Holy Book that I did not understand and I would pencil a question mark in the margin. A few years later I would find myself reading the same passages and wonder why I had put the question mark there. What had happened?

First, I did not understand and then later I did. What made the difference? Obviously more light had been revealed to me over a period of time which enabled me to understand. But I must admit that there still is a question mark beside the paragraph about the sun standing still. It has been there for several years and I expect that it will remain there for some time to come.

However, a few years ago, a book was given to me, entitled, 'How to Live Like a King's Kid'. Authored by Harold Hill. Whenever I obtain an unfamiliar book, it is my usual procedure to thumb through it to ascertain if I am interested enough to take the necessary time to read it in its entirety. As I was perusing through it, I was stopped by the caption of Chapter 13 which read,'How to find the missing day'. I immediately wondered it this bore any relationship to the prolonged day in Joshua's time. I soon found out that it did.

I have a copy of Chapter 13, and without taking anything out of context, I would like to relate a portion of that chapter. But first, in order to give you a better understanding of what is ahead, I shall read what it said about the author.

Harold Hill was born in New Hampshire in 1905. Until his recent retirement he was president of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore. During World War 2, he invented the ground energizer unit used on every American airfield for furnishing power to start airplane engines. As a man, he is a blend of imp and genius who takes delight in applying the jargon of his trade to describe his Christian experience. After emerging from a lengthy bondage to alcoholism, he has become noted as a colorful and often hilarious teacher of the deep truth of Bible experience. How to Live Like a King's Kid is Harold at his best.

He says in Chapter 13 that back in the sixties, NASA began to function to carry out the President's directive to land a man on the moon. The program got into gear at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. 'I was involved from the start, through contractual arrangements with my company. Over the years, throughout the Mercury Gemini series of space missions, I visited the tracking station in Bermuda in a consulting capacity. My notebook soon became filled with much interesting data which I frequently shared when speaking to High School and College groups on my favorite subjects, Science, Philosophy, Evolution and the Bible. One of the stories I told often had to do with a part of the necessary ahead-of-time statistical preparation for the moon walk. The space scientists were checking the position of the sun, moon and planets out in space, calculating where they would be 100 and 1,000 years from now. In addition, they were looking into the trajectories of known asteroids and meteors so we would not send astronauts and satellites up only to have them bump into something. Satellite orbits have to be laid out in terms of where the heavenly bodies will be so that the whole thing won't become a head on traffic collision.

As they ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries, it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red flag, which meant that there was something wrong, either with the information fed into the computer or with the results as compared to the standards. They called in the service department to check it out. 'Nothing is wrong with the computer', the technicians said, 'it is operating perfectly. What makes you think something is wrong?' 'Well, the computer shows there is a day missing somewhere in elapsed time.', the operators said. So they rechecked their data and found no answer, no logical explanation. They were at a baffled standstill.

Then one religious fellow on the team said, 'You know, one time when I was in Sunday School, they talked about the day the sun stood still.' He just about got laughed out of the room, because nobody believed him, but they didn't have anything else to try, so they invited him to show them what he was talking about. He got out a Bible and turned to the Book of Joshua where Joshua was called to battle against all the Kings of the Amorites. For the account, they found a pretty ridiculous statement for anyone who had an ounce of common sense. It said, 'There were some of the enemy left and Joshua prayed for the sun and the moon to stand still until the Israelites had finished avenging themselves upon their enemies. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, and hasted not to do down about a whole day. ''There,’ the Christian, space man said, 'is your missing day. Go ahead and check it out.'

Well, they checked it with the computer, went all the way back to the time when Joshua defeated the Kings, and found the explanation. It was close, but not close enough. The elapsed time in Joshua's day was only 23 hours and 20 minutes, not a whole day. There was still a discrepancy of forty minutes to be accounted for. Consulting the Bible record again, they found that it did not say that the sun had stood still for a whole day, but for 'about a whole day'.

So they were still in trouble. Forty minutes became extremely significant when they are multiplied many times over the orbits. Then the religious fellow remembered something else in the Bible where it said that the sun went backward. Naturally, the other space men told him he was out of his mind, but once again they had no real choice in the matter, so they went back to the Bible and read in 11 Kings, the 20th Chapter, how King Hezekiah on 'his deathbed was visited by the prophet Isaiah, who told him that he was not going to die, but that God would heal him so he would be well enough to go to the temple in three days. Furthermore, God promised to give him fifteen more years of life on earth. That was such good news that Hezekiah could not believe it. He asked for a sign as proof that it was God's word. 'Do you want the sun to go ahead ten degrees?', Isaiah asked him.

'No', Hezekiah said. 'It is too easy for the sun to go ahead ten degrees. It does that all the time. It goes ahead every day. But how about letting the shadow return backward ten degrees? That will be a new thing and then I can believe. 'And so Isaiah spoke to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees backward.

Brethren, 10 degrees rotation of the earth is exactly 40 minutes. Twenty-three hours and twenty minutes accounted for in Joshua's day, plus forty minutes accounted for in Hezekiah's day, there was the whole twenty-four hours; the missing day that the space scientists had to make allowance for in the logbook.

I had given this account a number of times in schools and in meetings where I had been invited to speak, using it as just one example of how science is proving that some of the so-called 'preposterous' things in the Bible are true.

For further details, I refer you to a book called Joshua's Long Day, written by a Yale Uniersity professor, Dr .C. A. Totten, way back in l89O.Readingpartota book report of 'Joshua's Long Day' it said that Professor Totten computed the year, month, day and even the hour of this event, including the sequal event, the 40 minute longer day of Hezakiah. This tremendous mathematical work was completed and written up in his book in 1890, years before the computer was even a dream. He calculated that between Joshua's Long Day and Hezekiah's 40 minute longer day, there was a time lapse of 738 years.

My Brothers, if it took over seven centuries to complete the exact hours, it indicates to me that time, as we know it is of little significance in the plans of the Great Architect of the Universe. He has his own time schedule of which we have little or no knowledge.

These several points which I have brought to your attention this evening may all be found in the V.S.L., laid down for our persuit. I give it to you in strong terms of recommendation to persue it. Read it. Study it. Ask questions. When you encounter a statement that sounds ridiculous and you do not understand it, put a question mark in the margin. As time passes and when more light is revealed to you, even a 'preposterous' story like a missing day in elapsed time, will be viewed with greater understanding.

I do not profess to understand it. It states in the Sacred Volume that there is a missing day somewhere in the past. A mathematician has verified it, and now a modern computer has confirmed it, and I believe that there is a missing day. But how it was accomplished, I still do not know. I believe that we are not expected to know; at this stage. But the time will come when we will know; we will understand and the solution will probably be quite simple. That time will be when we all meet together in that Grand Lodge Above, where the World's Great Architect, in His infinite wisdom will reveal His incredible plan of life to us all.

Submitted by R.W. Bro. David C. Bradley.

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