Joshua's Long Day

sdowney717 said:

Jude quotes from the book of Enoch.
Is Jude a lie also if Jude uses it as a reference?

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And in Acts Paul quotes from Greek poets who were idolators:

Acts 17:28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’

Does that make idolatry right?

Of course not.

Jadis40 said:

The Book of Enoch is nonsense. Stars are not angels. They're not spiritual beings. They cannot fall from the skies. And yes, they are non-sentient objects.

Paul quoted Greek poets, that doesn't make them authoritative. The Book of Enoch isn't either.

Also, the earth is mobile. It rotates on its axis once every 24 hours as it revolves around the sun in 365 days.

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You say stars can not fall from the skies.
Jesus says the sun and moon will go dark.
Jesus says the stars will fall from the skies.
All of the host of heaven, sun moon stars get transformed.

Joel 2:10 The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:

Joel 3:15 The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.

Matthew 24:29
[ The Coming of the Son of Man ] “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Revelation 6:13
And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.

You say the earth moves,
God says the earth is fixed immovable, except by Him.

Psalm 93:1New King James Version (NKJV)
The Eternal Reign of the Lord
The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty;
The Lord is clothed,
He has girded Himself with strength.
Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved.

Psalm 104:5
You who laid the foundations of the earth, So that it should not be moved forever,
1 Chronicles 16:30
Tremble before Him, all the earth. The world also is firmly established, It shall not be moved.

Psalm 96
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns;
The world also is firmly established,
It shall not be moved;
He shall judge the peoples righteously.”

God says the sun and moon stood still, which meant they were moving, then He stopped them. And obviously God started them moving again.

Habakkuk 3:11 The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear.

Only God can move the earth out of her 'fixed' place, wherever that is....

Isaiah 13:13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

Isaiah says the sun moon stars will all go dark when Christ returns and men will be few on the earth since all the wicked will be burnt up and destroyed. And the earth shall remove out of her place at that time. All these words are in agreement with Christ's teaching.
Isaiah 13

6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.

7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: 8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.

13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

While some might say this prophecy is only for Babylon, Babylon is also of the power of the world as Peter says about the church in Rome that they were in Babylon.
1 Peter 5:13 New King James Version (NKJV)
13 She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son.

Babylon is also mentioned many times in Revelations and is referenced to the evil spiritual rulership power of the age of the world, which God is destroying. At times, scriptures within chapters have dual purpose for that time and a future time. Anytime you are reading of the 'Day of the Lord', you are also reading of the Day when He returns, the second coming.

I don't take the statements of the stars and constellations not giving their light as literal. I take them as figurative or poetic language. Since the sun is a star and the moon reflects sunlight, I don't take those statements as being literal either. Same with the earth being firmly established and the earth being God's footstool. Those aren't literal statements. They're also poetic.

Yes, the sun will complete its life cycle in another 5 billion years, but it will still produce light, albeit as a white dwarf star.

Jadis40 said:

I don't take the statements of the stars and constellations not giving their light as literal. I take them as figurative or poetic language. Since the sun is a star and the moon reflects sunlight, I don't take those statements as being literal either. Same with the earth being firmly established and the earth being God's footstool. Those aren't literal statements. They're also poetic.

Yes, the sun will complete its life cycle in another 5 billion years, but it will still produce light, albeit as a white dwarf star.

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Christ is going to dramatically return and spoke of these things as signs that will come with observation, men seeing this will be seeking to hide themselves from Him and in terrible fear for the things coming upon the earth. Christ through God is going to intervene and seriously shake things up totally and miraculously. Supernatural events will override the natural order of things.
If Christ spoke so strongly with certainty about what will be experienced by the people of that time, why doubt it?

JesusAddicted said:

Hi! I was reading the Bible and I got a question about that day when Joshua said
„Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” I don't have a problem believing that God has done this for people of Israel, I've read some scientific evidences about this, even people from other countries have noticed that long day. But I can't understand one thing: if the Earth stopped, how everyone and everything remained on the planet? I mean, according to the laws of physics, if it will stop, we would be litterally "launched" into a fly at a great speed (which we don't feel now because of the gravity).
Can you explain this? ...

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Colossians 1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Context: vs 15 Christ, vs 16 Christ creator of heaven & earth, vs 17 Christ holds all things together.

Ok, the simple answer to your OP is:

He stopped everything, earth, sun, galaxies, the universe itself = EVRYTHING!

AJTruth said:

Colossians 1:15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Context: vs 15 Christ, vs 16 Christ creator of heaven & earth, vs 17 Christ holds all things together.

Ok, the simple answer to your OP is:

He stopped everything, earth, sun, galaxies, the universe itself = EVRYTHING!

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Goddidit fallacy.

An interesting passage can be found in Herodotus' Histories, Book II, chapter 142:

"Thus far went the record given by the Egyptians and their priests; and they showed me that the time from the first king to that priest of Hephaestus, who was the last, covered three hundred and forty-one generations, and that in this time this also had been the number of their kings, and of their high priests. Now three hundred generations are ten thousand years, three generations being equal to a hundred. And over and above the three hundred, the remaining forty-one cover thirteen hundred and forty years. Thus the whole period is eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; in all of which time (they said) they had had no king who was a god in human form, nor had there been any such either before or after those years among the rest of the kings of Egypt. Four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to experience; twice he came up where he now goes down, and twice went down where he now comes up; yet Egypt at these times underwent no change, either in the produce of the river and the land, or in the matter of sickness and death."

Note the last part - four times the sun moved aberrantly. According to Herodotus, in the 11000 years that the Egyptian priests claimed to have recorded, the sun did not follow its usual path four times. This however was not accorded any special significance, as it seems to have had no effect on Egypt. It seems to have been treated as an oddity to tell tourists, like Herodotus.

Now a number of things are possible here: its a tall tale told to the gullible; Herodotus misunderstood; or perhaps they are legitimate observations garbled in translation. The time period stated seems improbably long.
Regardless, taken in conjunction with the legend of Joshua at Gibeon and the shadow retreating elsewhere, it is at least interesting as potential corroboration or at least a similar tale. Perhaps two relate to these biblical events, whatever astronomical event actually occured then, and the other some other fantastical phenomenon unrecorded. We'll never know as we currently only have Herodotus' account of these solar wanderings.

Another theory I see ommitted in this discussion is the theory that it refers to omens.

In Assyrian texts we see conjunctions of the full moon and the rising sun treated as dark and foreboding or as good depending on their positions. This is related to the use of lunar calenders by most near eastern peoples. Some of these are essentially impossible such as reverse eclipses, but others just rare. It is similar to ideas of Fasti and Nefasti days found in Latin peoples based on calender and celestial bodies. Before our modern calenders, these were poorly correlated, so a lot of significance was often placed in incongruent risings of the moon and such.

The biblical text interestingly mentions the position of both the sun AND the moon. Why mention both? It can be argued that it is referring to Joshua asking for an omen to strike fear in the Amorites. By this logic, it didn't really 'stand still', but referred to a position within a set of astrological considerations. This is supported by the Assyrian texts which also use terms like 'stand', 'rest' or 'lying' when mentioning such omens. This is similar to how modern astrology may say the sun is sitting in aquarius or whatever, not literally assuming a static sun.

Of course the problem here is that we only know of these omens from late assyrian texts, so Joshua would greatly have predated our earliest mention of them, but it is possible this was a common near-eastern belief before they had been written. Still, an alternate explanation to keep in mind, I would think.