A Missing Planet?

September 3, 2006

By: Sellers S. Crain, Jr.

    When I first heard the news last week I couldn't believe it.  They lost Pluto.  I wondered, "Now what will Mickey do?"  Then I realized they were not talking about that Pluto, but the other one, that little planet farthest from the sun.  It was first located and named in 1930.  Now they have lost it.  Well not officially.  They just demoted it from the status of a full sized planet and reduced it to a "Dwarf Planet."  I didn't think you could say that anymore.  Shouldn't it be "Vertically Challenged Planet?"  So how did a planet suddenly become a non-planet?

    Last week the International Astronomical Union, which included a TSU professor, met.  In the same week, we were informed that we may be getting three new planets.  So instead of nine (how many can you name), we would have twelve names to remember.  Then instead of increasing the number, they reversed themselves and cancelled out one.  How did that happen?  This august body redefined a planet, and poor Pluto does not qualify.  Basically, unless a celestial body is the largest spherical object in its orbit, it cannot be classified as a planet.  So Pluto has joined seven other heavenly bodies to become the eighth dwarf planet.

    What difference does it make?  Think of the years of error that have been taught.  Most of us grew up being told there were nine planets.  We learned their names and their positions in the universe.  Our school science books taught us this.  Our encyclopedias say there are nine planets and they have a diagram showing each of them in their orbit around the sun including Pluto.  Now all of these resources will have to be changed.  They were right at the time they were published.  Our teachers and our parents taught us what they truly believed to be right, but they were wrong by today's standards.  What does this say about science and the Bible?

    Jesus said, "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17), and "the truth will make you free" (John 8:32).  The truth changes not (Psalm 146:6).  If it is really the truth today, it will be the truth tomorrow.  If something was thought to be truthful yesterday and it is declared to have been wrong, it was not the truth then.  If something was thought to be scientific truth and tomorrow it is rejected, it was not the truth to begin with.  If Pluto was really a planet yesterday and today it is not considered a planet because some intellectuals changed the rules, it is still a planet.  Men do not planets make.  Only God can do that.

    What if you could not depend upon God's truth?  What if God changed His mind about salvation right after you died?  Not to worry.  God "is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).  "Let God be true and every man a liar (Romans 3:4).

Brotherly,

Sellers