Scripture study is important and I try to study when I can but some days there isn't time for study. It is for this reason that I have a copy of the Book of Mormon at my bed side. Just before bed I will read a few verses before falling to sleep.
This past week I was randomly reading Helaman 12 and came to verse 15 where it says "it is the earth that moves and not the sun." I read it again to make sure I read it right then got to my feet and went to Rakai. I asked him who it was that discovered the earth moves around the sun. He told me Copernicus. I told him actually it was written in the Book of Mormon first!
This has been such a cool epiphany for me this week. I looked up Copernicus and learned about some of the reformers of his time. Copernicus was supposedly the first person to discover that the earth is not the center of the universe as everyone had thought. But in the Book of Mormon it is recorded that 7 years before Christ was born this was the belief. How cool is that?! So awesome.
In more study on the internet I discovered a website called blupete.com. This link will take you directly to a quick synopsis of Copernicus. This is some of the writing on that link -
In more study on the internet I discovered a website called blupete.com. This link will take you directly to a quick synopsis of Copernicus. This is some of the writing on that link -
Copernicus died in 1543 and was never to know what a stir his work had caused. It went against the philosophical and religious beliefs that had been held during the medieval times. Man, it was believed (and still believed by some) was made by God in His image, man was the next thing to God, and, as such, superior, especially in his best part, his soul, to all creatures, indeed this part was not even part of the natural world (a philosophy which has proved disastrous to the earth's environment as any casual observer of the 20th century might confirm by simply looking about). Copernicus' theories might well lead men to think that they are simply part of nature and not superior to it and that ran counter to the theories of the politically powerful churchmen of the time.
Two other Italian scientists of the time, Galileo and Bruno, embraced the Copernican theory unreservedly and as a result suffered much personal injury at the hands of the powerful church inquisitors. Giordano Bruno had the audacity to even go beyond Copernicus, and, dared to suggest, that space was boundless and that the sun was and its planets were but one of any number of similar systems: Why! -- there even might be other inhabited worlds with rational beings equal or possibly superior to ourselves. For such blasphemy, Bruno was tried before the Inquisition, condemned and burned at the stake in 1600. Galileo was brought forward in 1633, and, there, in front of his "betters," he was, under the threat of torture and death, forced to his knees to renounce all belief in Copernican theories, and was thereafter sentenced to imprisonment for the remainder of his days.
The most important aspect of Copernicus' work is that it forever changed the place of man in the cosmos; no longer could man legitimately think his significance greater than his fellow creatures; with Copernicus' work, man could now take his place among that which exists all about him, and not of necessity take that premier position which had been assigned immodestly to him by the theologians.
"Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind - for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic - religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of." [Goethe.]
So many have willingly died at the hands of those who refuse to believe or even accept the prophetic words of Prophets, Apostles and the inspiration of the Reformers. Joseph Smith asked the question, "Why persecute me for telling the truth?" Denying what he had seen would be an offense to God. And so instead they go to their death holding fast to that which they know to be true. WONDERFUL! Absolutely wonderful!
