Sunday 6 September 2009 Camp Talk by Kim

We are all made of Stardust BUT whose side are we on?
Readings: John 3:16 and Revelation 8:6-9:2
Equipment: A candle, matches and a saucer.
Who is a science-friction or Star Trek addict? Who has travelled to the stars in their imagination? Did you know that we all came from the stars; that everyone of us is made of stardust? Would you like to see some stardust?
Action: Light a candle and hold a saucer over the flame. Show the black deposit on the saucer.
What is this?..... Carbon. Holding the saucer over the flame prevented all the carbon from burning and formed a tin layer on the saucer. This is stardust!
When a star comes near the end of its lifecycle, it throws out carbon, one of the essential building blocks of the universe. When God made man of the ‘dust of the earth’, he used the same material that made the stars, and planets, and everything that we see in the starry night sky!
That is amazing to think about. Even more amazing is to think that the Bible says we shall still be alive long after our own sun has grown into a red giant, consumed the earth, and died itself. This is the promise that Jesus made in one of the best-loved verses in the bible.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life.” John 3:16.
‘Eternal Life.’ That does not mean just existing forever like a speck of stardust, it means the real you outlasting the stars in a life beyond our imagination. That is better than any sci-fi story ever written!
BUT the question is who side are we on?
Who has seen a shooting star? Who has witness the Northern Lights?

Pieces of rock from space hit the earth every day. As they enter the atmosphere they burn up, creating the brief flash of a shooting star. Some are large enough for bits to land on earth. About once every 1,000 years a rock nearly 100 metres (300 feet) in diameter strikes our planet, big enough to cause a tidal wave if it lands in the sea.
But what would happen if a really large meteor was on collision course with the earth?

Actually, it is not a matter of if but when. The last time it happened was maybe less than 4,000 years ago, around 2350 BC, a mere eye-blink in cosmic time. At that time there seems to have been a great environmental catastrophe, and civilisations collapsed. Mud-brick buildings in northern Syria appear to have been destroyed by what is described as a ‘blast from the sky’.
THE K-T EVENT
So could it happen again? The bad news is, yes, it could. The good news is that a collision with a massive asteroid, over 1km across, is more rare, happening only once in a million years. But an asteroid that size could create a global catastrophe, wiping out many species of plants and animals.
Is that what killed the dinosaurs? Around 65 million years ago they disappeared, together with about 70% of all species then living on earth. This is known as the K-T event (the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction event). Could it have been caused by an asteroid or comet hitting the earth? In 1990 came evidence that it was. A 65 million-year-old crater, 180 Kilometres (112 miles) wide, was discovered under layers of sediment in the Yucatan Peninsula region of Mexico.
It would have taken an asteroid ten kilometres (6.5 miles) wide to make this crater – big enough to cause massive global disruption.
The last book in the bible, the book of Revelation, describes some great environmental catastrophes, including what sounds like a description of the earth being struck, perhaps by a chain of comet pieces like those that spectacularly hit Jupiter in 1994.
Read Revelation 8:6-9:2
Revelation 8:6-9:2 (New International Version)
The Trumpets
Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night. As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: "Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!" The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss.

It is a pretty terrifying picture. Christians have different ideas about what it means. Some think it is a prediction of what will actually happen in the future. Some think it is using coded picture language to describe the persecution suffered by Christians in the Roman Empire.
Great War
But everyone agrees in general what the book of Revelation is about: there is a great war going on between the powers of good and evil. In the end, God will deal once and for all with evil. But each person must decide for themselves, which side they are on. Many people would prefer not to think about that decision. They bury themselves in their work, or fill their lives with TV and music and entertainment so that they don’t have to think. But just doing nothing allows the evil around us to grow.
For each one of us personally, it makes no difference whether we are hit by a twelve-mile-wide asteroid or a number 1 bus! One thing is for sure: we will each meet our own personal end sometime within the next 100 years (some sooner than others!).
If a big asteroid is headed in our direction, we won’t be able to duck it and we can’t duck the big question either: WHOSE SIDE ARE WE ON?
Questions:
1. “I believe in God the Father …” What do you think the two readings quoted tell us about the nature of God?
2. If you were asked by a neighbour or friend to sum up the message of the sermon, what would you say?