NASA’S Perseverance rover made a perfect landing on Mars on February 18 after a six-month, 293 million mile journey. The fifth rover to land on Mars, the $2.7 billion vehicle is about 10 feet long, 9 feet wide, 7 feet tall, and weighs 2,260 pounds. Powered by a nuclear generator, it has a slew of scientific instruments, including a camera with a zoom telephoto lens that can take high-definition video, panoramic color, and 3D images. The rover also carries a little helicopter drone called Ingenuity with which NASA will attempt to scout the planet’s landscape. Perseverance is a sign of the times biblically in two ways. First, its technological ingenuity is a fulfillment of the prophecy of the increase in knowledge in the end times (Daniel 12:4). Second, the evolutionary mythology that drives NASA today is a fulfillment of the prophecy of end-time skepticism (2 Peter 3:3-6). Chris Carbery, CEO of Explore Mars, said, “Perseverance is attempting to answer one of the biggest questions in the history of humanity: Is there life elsewhere in the solar system?” This objective is based on evolutionary presuppositions that deny the Creator in spite of overwhelming evidence that the universe did not create itself. Evolution is based on the ridiculous idea that everything came from nothing, life came from non-life, intelligence arose from non-intelligence, and incredible complexity was an accident. “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:3-7).
(Friday Church News Notes, February 26, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)