Charles Duke, NASA Astronaut and ambassador for Christ!

Apollo astronaut finds the answer!

By Helen Jesze, 19^th July 2019

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place…”

Psalm 8, 3 NIV

This week the world has been remembering that 50 years ago, on 20^th July 1969, human beings first set foot on the moon, taken there by spaceflight Apollo 11 with Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin. Both were Americans and Buzz was a committed Christian. He prayed and read from Genesis about the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and took Holy Communion there on the moon, with a wafer and wine drunk from a cup which his Church had given him.

Others had been in space before them; it looked as though the Russians might get to the moon first. Their first man put into space was Yuri Gargarin, and the following words were attributed to him when he returned to Earth: “I flew into space but I didn’t see God anywhere!” Christians have said, Gargarin did not go far enough! However, it was actually Kruschev who had spoken those words. He was the head of Russia’s Communistic, atheistic government and in order to keep this image, they said that Gargarin had spoken this.

Actually, Gargarin was no atheist, but a baptised Orthodox Christian and close friends of his spoke of Yuri’s firm faith in God. It is said that Anton Pervushin heard him say: An astronaut cannot be suspended in space and not have God in his mind and heart.

We never knew any of these men, but we did meet Charles Duke, a former astronaut and ‘moonwalker’, with his wife, at a conference of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship Intl. in Germany. George met him several other times and interviewed him, and “Charlie” (as he was known) wrote this Foreword in 1991, for our third book “Born to Win”:

All my life I have been a winner. It seemed that everything I tried to do turned out well. I was a winner at school, a winner as a fighter pilot, a winner as a test pilot, a winner in my military career, a winner as an astronaut. In 1972, I became the tenth man to walk on the moon. In the eyes of the world I was the ultimate winner.

In spite of all this winning, I found that I was never satisfied for very long. It wasn’t until 1978 that I discovered what a true winner really is. That year I gave my life to Jesus and began to discover that to really win, we must become the person God created us to be.

George and Helen Jesze have written a wonderful book to help us focus in on how to run the race to be a winner. You may feel like you have been a loser, but this book will help lead you out of defeat to victory. Then you will be able to say, as Paul said, “Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

“Born to Win” has encouraged me immensely as I run my race in Life. I am sure as you read, God will exhort you to become all he wants you to be.

Charlie Duke
Astronaut
Apollo 16

When giving his testimony, Charles Duke often said that when he was on the moon, he was awestruck to see Earth hanging like a blue jewel, suspended in space. It was then that he began to search for answers to the perplexities of Life. On earth again, in April 1978 after becoming a committed Christian, his shaky marriage was restored, and Charlie and his wife started the Duke Ministry for Christ.

You and I may never get the chance to go to the moon, although British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has founded Virgin Galactic, a space programme, which will be able to take members of the public into space (single price for this adventure is $250,000!), in the very near future! I won’t be booking on that, but every one of us has the chance to go to this marvellous God and be in His eternal world one day, far higher than the moon or stars, if we take this same Jesus as our Lord and Saviour! If you have never done that, do what our astronaut did, and I would encourage you to do it, TODAY!