Scripture tells us that Christians will fall away (Thes. 2:2-4[1]) and stop walking in God’s old paths (Jer. 6:16[2]) before the Antichrist is revealed. We surrendered the doctrine of earth being the immovable center of the universe in the 1680s. Galileo’s telescope showed him Jupiter’s moons orbiting Jupiter. He declared that the earth orbits around the sun even though the Bible tells us that the earth cannot be moved (Ps. 93:1[3])!
[1] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 3Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. II Thessalonians 2:2-4
[2] Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Jeremiah 6:16
[3] The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved. Psalm 93:1
My 2nd grade science book told me the earth went around the sun. It had a diagram showing all the planets in elliptical orbits around the sun.
When I worked for NASA, we put the center of an orbit wherever was most convenient. When spacecraft orbited the earth, we did our calculations from the center of the earth; when orbiting the moon, we calculated from the center of the moon to simplify the math.
Knowing we can do the math from any origin we choose, I didn’t know that whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth goes around the sun was an issue. The physicists which whom I worked knew that it doesn’t matter what place is chosen as the center of any orbit:
“We know that the difference between a heliocentric (sun-centered) theory and a geocentric (earth-centered) theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance.” Sir Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology, A Modern Course, (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman & Co., 1975) p 416 [emphasis added]
Knowing that what goes around what has “no physical significance,” I didn’t know that geocentric versus heliocentric orbits was a church issue until a pastor asked me to find what the Bible says. How do we do that?
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:2-3
Jesus expects us to accept His Word with childlike faith because He doesn’t lie either to adults or to children. The Bible says much a child can’t understand, and much I can’t understand, but anything a child can understand is true as a child would understand it.
How would a child understand:
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. Ecclesiastes 1:5
A child who hadn’t yet been taught what “science, falsely so called (1 Tim. 6:20)” says about how planets move would say that the Bible says that the sun goes around the earth. Top-flight scientists say that all motion is relative so it doesn’t matter how you define planetary motion. The paper explores the scientific definition of motion, then explains that what top-flight scientists say lines up with what the Bible teaches.
