Welcome back to Defenders Voice. This is Dr.Paul. Thank you for joining us today. Defenders Voice is about looking at today’s world events from a Christian perspective. If you have any questions, please send me at info@doctorpaul.org. Visit my website www.doctorpaul.org to subscribe to my podcast.
Today’s question: Richard Brason goes to space. What is your response to this event?
Good question. The British billionaire Richard Branson and his crew went to the edge of space and landed safely back. We should congratulate him on his successful mission to space. It was his dream to travel to space in a commercial rocket plane and he achieved it. He founded Virgin Galactic to provide adventurous tourists with rides on rocket-powered planes to the edge of space and back. It was a marvelous sight to behold.
His space plane going into the air, then separating from the carrier ship, igniting its engine and carrying Mr.Branson and his crew into space where they enjoyed a few minutes of weightlessness. Then the plane began its return to earth and landed safely on the spaceport’s runway. It was like science fiction becoming reality right in front of our eyes.
Speaking into a camera in the plane during the return flight, Mr.Branson said, ‘an experience of a lifetime’. Later he said, “the whole thing was magical”.
Starting his life in England, he became one of the richest persons in the world with almost 5 billion dollars. If you listen to his interviews, he talks about his atheism and never say one word of thanks to God.
A generation ago, when astronauts visited the moon or the space, they would spend a few minutes praising God for his great creation of the universe. Edwin Aldrin went to moon along with Neil Armstrong. After landing on the moon, the first thing he did was to give thanks to God. He also observed the communion over the moon becoming the first person to celebrate a religious observance on a heavenly body outside Earth. After retuning to earth, Buzz Aldrin said
“I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon….”symbolizing the thought that God was revealing Himself there, too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man.”
The Bible says, in the beginning God created the heaves and the earth. The heaves declare the glory of God. Believing in the glory of God revealed in nature, astronauts praised God and thanked God for giving them an opportunity to witness His glory in the outer space.
But today’s billionaires don’t have such humility. Branson through Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos through Blue Origins, Elon Musk through SpaceX are going to outer space as a pinnacle of their own achievements. They are called the masters of the universe. They brandish their atheism and never take a moment to give God the glory for the magnificent universe he created for human enjoyment. They hold the irrational belief that universe explains itself without a Creator God.
They remind me what Lord Jesus Christ told us about a successful man in Luke chapter 16. This richman becomes so successful that he has no place to store his crops. He tears down his store houses and builds bigger ones to store the surplus grain. Then he says to himself, “I have plenty of grain; I have nothing to worry; I will eat, drink and be happy”. He never takes a moment to thank God who allowed him to be successful. He never takes a few minutes to worry about the destiny of his soul”.
Then God says to him, ‘You fool. This very night your life will be demanded from you”.
God called that richman a fool because he was so consumed by his own achievements that he never worried about his soul, or salvation or the gospel. God will call today’s billionaires like Branson ‘fools’ because they do not give God glory or do not believe the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to get saved while they still have an opportunity to do so. If you are so consumed by your worldly success that you never take time to repent of your sins and accept Jesus into your life as your Savior and Lord, God will call you the same names and will declare you poor and bankrupt from a heavenly perspective.
Let us hope and pray that they will repent and get saved before it is too late.