The first day of Epiphany is traditionally called the King’s Day where the church remembers and celebrates the visit of the wise men, who saw the starry heavens declaring the glory of God, and followed the poetic message to seek the King in Bethlehem. We’ve begun a bit of a family tradition for commencing this season of epiphany by watching The Star of Bethlehem, a documentary movie about one man’s quest to make sense, astronomically, of the Bethlehem Star using NASA’s amazing computer program that can calculate the exact position of the stars on any given date. Essentially Frederick A. Larson, the host of this movie, delineates the known astronomical possibilities for the star, considers the nine scriptural clues, eliminates most of these through reasoning, makes a hypothesis, and works with the computer-generated program to see whether his hypothesis is legitimate. He notes that the wise men, from the star, were impelled to inquire after a (1) king, (2) born, of (3) Jews.
What “message” was in the stars that could compel them to look for these three clues? Essentially, within the time frame that Larson was hypothesizing, there is a rare triple conjunction of Jupiter, the “king planet” and Regulus, the “king star”, within the constellation of the lion (think Lion of Judah). He points out certain scriptural prophecies regarding the Messiah’s birth that seem to contain strong astronomical allusions. Frankly, what Larson finds as he plugs in the dates into the program is stunning.
Perhaps even more stunning to me was the more obvious, documented facts that Larson brought to my attention on another astronomical subject in the scriptures. Do you recall Peter at Pentecost when the wild crowds were accusing them of being drunk because the disciples were suddenly able to speak in the languages of other people? Well, in the midst of this chaos Peter quotes this –I thought– rather peculiar verse from Joel about a blood moon and tells the crowd that they know these things (about Christ) are true because of what Joel the prophet said about a blood moon and that they’ve seen it with their own eyes. Larson informs us that a blood moon wasn’t just bizarre “prophet talk”. That was a known term for a lunar eclipse. And when you plug in all the data about months, weeks, days, and hours that are given in the scripture about the time of Christ’s crucifixion, you can see the computer-generated re-enactment of what was going on astronomically during the exact hour of Christ’s crucifixion and watch the lunar eclipse that was indeed happening. A blood moon. As a side note, I was reading along in another book earlier this week, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and lo and behold, it mentions a Dionysius the Areopgite who was born in Athens, who studied astronomy in Egypt and made very particular observations on the great eclipse which happened at the time of the Savior’s crucifixion. He was later appointed a bishop of Athens and martyred under the second persecution under Domition in A.D. 81. This is just history…the good stuff I missed by primarily getting the book-shaped agendas that were presented to me for my classroom education. Grrr.
So, the movie ends with a little extra clip at the end. A sort of “by the way this is an interesting side note”. If you were to stand on the moon and look at the earth, at this sin-ridden world at that very hour of the eclipse, guess where the eclipse is happening… in the heart of the constellation of the Ram. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Coincidence? Maybe. But my God, Jehovah, created the heavens and earth and all of their glorious coincidences with them, and he ordains that every bit of this world proclaims his glory. And they do. But after watching this movie, I think perhaps, they were saying it more clearly than I ever anticipated.
All right, so just because I am a very forthright person I will say this. Several people have watched this movie and loved it. But, one friend of ours fell asleep during this movie. (I scolded, naturally.) And, Nathanael who just turned seven told me this year, in his sweet little Nathanael way, “I used to think this movie was kind of boring. But now I think it’s really interesting.” Last year’s astronomy course justified. Ha!!! If you’re local and want to borrow this flick at the risk of feeling like you are taking your own short astronomy course (especially at the start of it), we’ve got it and would love to share. Or you can buy it at Amazon for $12 or research the details of his findings at this link:
Anyone with great arguments for or against the astronomical data within this dvd, please engage us–we’d be interested in hearing more.
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