My Experience with God’s Cosmology

“Where is heaven” ?

“Where is heaven ?” My little neighbour and I were playing in her courtyard when she suddenly asked me where the sky is. What an easy question! In this beautiful summer day, the sky was of a beautiful blue and the sun was shining. Thinking she was teasing me, I spontaneously pointed my finger up to the sky and said: “Here !” At this innocent age there is little place for mockery so I simply gave my answer. We were in 1985 and life was so innocent.

« Ha ha ! False ! » she then pointed her finger downward, and said “Heaven is here !” I looked completely bewildered, so she kept teaching me “The earth is like a ball, so heaven is all around it, it is here, here, here and here! » she said, while pointing successively into all imaginable directions.

I would have thought she was kidding, but she looked very serious and so much smarter than I. How could I have missed such an apparently obvious knowledge about our earth ? She was still five years old and in kindergarten, while I was already learning to read and write at primary school. Her mother and brother were also around and confirmed her bold assertion. In just a few seconds, my whole reality of the world around me was struck at it’s root, and it felt like half of humanity was suddenly walking upside down. Was I the only one to have missed this reality, and how could I look so ignorant while heaven had always been just above me?

At lunch, I brought back the question to my parents and brother. To my amazement, they confirmed the new truth, so I imagined digging a big hole into the ground and coming out on the other side of the earth, where people from distant countries were living – according to a European myth, I thought it was China, while it would have rather been in the Pacific Ocean, east to New Zealand. In my child’s mind all this was so puzzling, but as children do, I didn’t try to contradict this new understanding anymore, since not only my neighbour’s family had agreed with her, but my own parents and brother were of the same mind.

“Is it round or is it flat” ?

“What do you think, is the earth round …or is it flat” ? We were in 2016. As suddenly as thirty-one years before with my little neighbour, an apparently very simple and unexpected question struck my ears. Pastor Adrian and Brother Ben had come to France for a camp meeting we had organised, and we were spending a few days home to fellowship and prepare for our trip to Italy, where we had planned to visit the Waldenses’ mountains and schools. Right then I didn’t link this moment to the one of my childhood, but I can’t avoid the connection between the two now, as I look back ten years later.

Having asked his question, Adrian was looking straight to me while smiling. Of course we all knew the earth is a globe, didn’t we? So I answered playfully: “The earth is flat, look !” And like three decades before pointing my finger up to the sky, I now simply put my hands on the obviously flat floor of the living room. He then said: “Are you sure?”. We both laughed. Wasn’t it flat after all, at least under our feet? This I could simply demonstrate, but of course we, grown up adults, all knew it only seemed thus. At least this was what I thought. Little did I know that like my little neighbour of my childhood, my brother was seriously attracting my attention on a long-held belief which he had recently questioned for about a year. Interestingly, our human pride makes it easier for us to force our understanding against our senses to conform with the majority than the other way around, so Adrian didn’t push this question further at that time. After all, I had given the expected answer, so why discuss more ?

On our way to Italy

Two days later we were on our way to Italy, and the question came back from another angle. Ben and I were on the back seats while my wife Elisabeth was driving. As we were talking on different subjects, Adrian attracted my attention to the sun and said it looked to be close and inside the heavens. This was new to me, as since my childhood I had been used to renounce my senses as to the sky, the sun and the shape of the earth in favor of the knowledge of those who knew better because of their learning. At that very moment I looked at the sun outside the window. I was struck to see how the sun indeed looked very close and its rays were forming a large triangle with the earth under it. For some reason, it looked especially close at that moment, even my wife had the same impression and still remembers it.

But how could someone renounce over thirty years of his worldview just like that ? l thus came up with numbers of objections, as most of us do when confronted with a new paradigm that shutters long held beliefs. Yet it was clear that Adrian’s mind was set on this new path and as his brother in the faith having already translated several of his books, I couldn’t just ignore it and consider him to have some weird ideas. Here I must underline that my initial path toward a new and unpopular understanding of cosmology found two strong supports in my relation with my pastor and above all with my God.

One could say I was under influence, but aren’t we all under influence when we believe the mainstream view in any subject? Didn’t my little 5 years old neighbour influence me to believe something I would have promptly validated as foolish if others had not supported her view? So my prayer is to always choose God’s influence to walk in the streams of His own life. Like Paul, I want to let Christ live in me: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.” Gal. 2:20. At every stage of our Christian lives, God invites us to renounce ourselves and submit to Christ who loved us and gave himself for us.

While in the Waldensian Valleys

Adrian could easily testify that I was like many of us today, proving all things and confronting them with all I had been taught up to that day. At some point Ben looked at the sky and said it was blue because of the water above, which seemed so weird and so straightforward at the same time. As we now were in the Waldensian mountains of Italy, Adrian attracted my attention toward God’s Word, which clearly tells in Genesis that God created the Sun and the Moon on the fourth day and “set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth” (Gen. 1:17).  He also pointed me to a verse in the book of 1 Chronicles which says: “The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.“ 1 Ch. 16:30

Now the discussion took a new dimension which I had not seen coming. I was no more discussing with human beings like me, but was personally faced with God’s Word. For many years I had always taken the Word of God as my final authority on any question, and the truth about God had been a great test which my wife and I had passed through that blessed protestant principle: Sola Scriptura. I knew my choices were directly affecting my wife and children, and if I were to allow the Earth to stop spinning and be staying at rest under a firmament covered with water, I had to react quickly to the promptings of the Spirit. Too much delay could confuse them as to my sincerity with God’s Word and cause them to reject the light sent by God.

That evening, Elisabeth and I went in our room and as we were sitting in bed I considered once more the Bible verses presented to me before saying: “So our earth is at rest, if the Bible says so it must be true.” Elisabeth humbly welcomed the breath of God’s Spirit as we considered once more 1 Ch. 16:30: “The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.”

 We then felt God’s peace taking a new dimension as we prayed to our Father in haven, thanking Him for sending us this truth, and fell asleep on our stationary home. Suddenly everything had stopped spinning in every directions, no humans were walking upside down and the Sun, Moon and Stars were close to us in the firmament. God felt closer and we knew our path was getting even more narrow than it was, but it didn’t matter to us, we safely rested in the Word of God.

Back to France

    In his wisdom, God brought to us this subject while we didn't have any access to the internet, since we were in Italy. Friday came fast and we travelled back to France where we slept in an hotel room. Sabbath we had meetings at Mornex, and once it was over we came back to the hotel. Honestly, I couldn’t wait to see what the internet and YouTube had to say about the flat earth belief. As soon the lights were turned of, I took my laptop and went online to dig deeper and consider the different arguments on each side of the question. It was the beginning of several weeks of intense research and comparison of scientific arguments on both sides. It was a blessed time to research this issue, as YouTube algorithms weren't yet biased and gave all the good videos available on the subject, while proposing even more. It was also special to research this in 2016, as it was just the year before the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 Theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg October 31 in 1517. My approach was to look for the very best arguments in favor of the globe model, and then face them with the best arguments on the side of the flat earth community until I felt satisfied the weight of evidence fell on the side of God’s Word.

Other memories

While growing up, at School, I had always been strong on the creationist view of the world, basing my belief on Genesis 1. At eight years old, I had already defended my creationist view in front of the teacher and the whole class, which had irritated my teacher to the point of her becoming red with anger. Again at seventeen, I had prepared a whole expose to show how the evolutionist view was weak and had said before all that I believed the biblical creationist view. Even alone in face of the whole class, I didn’t care what they thought, as I knew the Bible was true.

Interestingly, I had prepared my expose from an Adventist book intitled “Evolution or Creation” written by two men, one of which was Elder Henri, whom I later had the privilege to meet in 2008. That day I offered him “The Foundation of our Faith” by Pr. Allen Stump which I had just translated. After reading the book, he became a Father and Son believer and participated to our camp meetings with excellent presentations. He even baptized Elisabeth and I the in name of Jesus the 24th July 2021.

  When confronted with Genesis 1 on the subject of cosmology, I immediately understood it was very similar to the question of creation versus evolution, except I had learned the heliocentric model with my physics teacher, while it had been my biology teacher which had taught me the Darwinist view – all this with very scientific garments. Thus I clearly saw that the six days creation, biblical cosmology and the Sabbath were all linked together in the biblical account of Genesis 1.

  I also remember at age 19 having seen a school manual for children’s Sabbath’s School, illustrating the six days creation. On the second day, it said: “God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. ⁸ And God called the firmament Heaven.” (Gen. 1:7).  I was puzzled as the drawing didn’t show clouds in the sky, by which I had always tried to make sense of the “waters above”, but there was like a compact mass of water illustrated all around the earth. I wondered how this water could stay in the sky, as I had no concept of a solid firmament. So I reasoned that this water had somehow stood in the sky before, and fell to the ground at the flood. Here again, a solid firmament makes so much more sense.

Last but not least

  Last but not least, when searching the cosmology subject on the internet, I found out that one of the most popular flat earth map had been drawn in 1891 by Alexander Gleason, an early Adventist flat earther, and recognized the map! Guess why? My first grade teacher at primary school had used this very map to teach us the very first time about our world. We identified the ice in the middle and all around the inhabited continents. Actually, I can’t remember any globe model of the earth during these first two years with this teacher at elementary school. The first globe model earth I saw was a Christmas gift my brother received, maybe the very year I had been puzzled by my neighbour’s new cosmology. It was made of plastic with an electric lightbulb inside, which made it look beautiful in the night.

  Of course, many more questions would rise as to Bible verses, Spirit of Prophecy quotes and scientific arguments, but as far as we were concerned, the battle was won on the heliocentric lies that evening. That’s why I’ll keep this article short and won’t enter into all the details of the cosmology conflict on a larger scale. Our prayer for all those who will read this article is that you may keep an open heart and a willingness to consider everything before positioning yourself on any new teaching that comes your way. Who knows? A blessing might be sent you by God!