Reflections on the Moonwalk Anniversary

Forty years ago, two men stepped onto the powdery surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong, first down the ladder, uttered those historic words about a small step for a man but a giant stride for mankind. The second astronaut stepping down was Buzz Aldrin, a Montclair, New Jersey native, star football player and suddenly a global celebrity.

After the astronauts’ return home, my family stood with the wildly cheering crowds as Buzz paraded down the Montclair streets in the very town where I had previously served as a pastor for five years. A native son had broken the space barrier and returned to tell about it. Buzz later slid into deep depression and alcoholism. Perhaps he felt like Alexander the Great, who, after attaining a world empire at a young age, wept because he had no more worlds to conquer.

Several years later, and in profound contrast, another moon-walker would return to earth with even higher vistas in mind. In 1976, Jim Irwin, a member of the Apollo 15 crew and the eighth man on the moon, sat before our broadcast microphone and shared his stunning recollections on “The Word And the World”. He had brought back the Genesis Rock, thought to be one of oldest articles in the universe since it came from the moon’s mountains. Its retrieval was made possible because his mission had the first access to the famed moon rover a kind of glorified dune buggy.

Irwin talked of a sense of the presence of God, so intense, he said, that if he looked over his shoulder he felt he might even see God. Jim shared that many of his fellow astronauts had expressed similar feelings while on moon.

He went on to organize a special Gospel outreach known as High Flight. I have one of his personally signed ministry business cards on our radio studio bulletin board, and I am humbled to think that the hand that signed that card was the one which reached out and picked up the Genesis Rock.

I can’t be dogmatic about this, but perhaps the contrast between Aldrin and Irwin lay in an obscure church service Irwin attended as a boy. He and his mother were walking one Sunday evening on the west coast of Florida when they passed a little church holding a revival service. They went in, mostly out of curiosity, and heard the timeless message that God loved the world so much He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for our sins and give us eternal life. Young Jim and mother walked forward on the invitation and accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. That decision was life-changing and history-altering, for that boy grew up to be a famed astronaut, and, when his space flight days were over, he flew even higher, telling countless audiences how to be reconciled to the maker of Heaven and earth through a personal relationship through Christ.

Jim Irwin had two heart troubles. One was solved when he received a new spiritual heart through Christ. The other, a heart murmur first detected while he was on the moon, finally took him out of this mortal life and home to the third Heaven that the Apostle Paul saw in II Corinthians 12:2 and where Irwin was cured forever of the earthly hazard of physical defects.

On this 40th anniversary of that first moonwalk, Jim would know no higher joy than if, through reading this blog, someone would respond to Christ, who said, “Come to me you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28)

This earth and the heavens are temporary. While discovering the glories of God’s creation is intriguing, it will all pass away with a loud noise and fervent heat as the Bible predicts (II Peter 3:10–12). In the future, believers will receive new bodies for a new Heaven and a new earth, and we currently live with God’s comforting promise, “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).

Dave Virkler