Battle Over Space Bibles

A battle over space Bibles that has been going on in Texas and Oklahoma for years. But I will explain that in a moment.

One of the main thrusts of this ministry is to show people that the Bible is, in fact, the Word of God. The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so the man (or woman) of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). There is a mountain of evidence to support the truth of that statement. However, that does not mean that the bound paper book you have printed in English (or any other language) is sacred even if it has a black cover. It is the message that is sacred, not the physical book.

A group calling itself the Apollo Prayer League placed hundreds of microfilm Bibles on Apollo 13 to go to the Moon. The disaster on Apollo 13 prevented it from landing, and it only orbited the Moon and returned the Bibles to Earth. On the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell carried 100 of the Bibles to the surface of the moon and returned with some of them. Through a complicated chain of events that you can read about here, John Stout, a retired NASA chaplain who lived in Texas, gave some of the “ Lunar Bibles” to an author named Carol Mersch who lives in Oklahoma.

Stout’s adopted son brought legal action to get the Bibles back. Through suits and counter-suits the case went all the way to both the Texas and Oklahoma supreme courts. In the meantime by court order, the Bibles were locked up in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, vault. The state of Texas finally withdrew its suit on May 4, 2017.

As I read about the battle over space Bibles, a thought came to mind. If we could get people as excited about the message contained within those books as they are about the physical microfilm books, we might be able to solve some of the world’s problems.

Reference: Austin American-Statesman, May 4, 2017, page B8.
–John N. Clayton © 2017