On April 12, 1961, a young Russian cosmonaut stepped in front of the cameras, as he was about to board his spacecraft, Vostok l, for what was going to be man’s first voyage into outer space. Yuri Gagarin announced, “Now I go to meet nature face to face in an unprecedented encounter.”

For the next several hours, Gagarin encountered nature in a way that no man had done before, far beyond the reaches of the clouds, to a place bordering on the infinite. He had an awesome responsibility to chronicle for mankind what existed outside the Earth’s realm and man’s control.

Upon his return to earth he remarked, “Now I know that God does not exist, because I was there and I didn’t see him.”

Less than one year later, John H. Glenn entered his spacecraft, Freedom 7, in America’s attempt to beat the Russians in the race to space. He brought a Bible along with him. As he peered through the small window of his capsule, he looked out on the enormity of the universe and on the delicate fragility of our own Earth. He felt the presence of the “Hand of Almighty God” as he recited from the first chapter of Genesis.

Two men, with identical experiences, unprejudiced by anything that had gone before them. One saw God, the other denied His existence.

In reality, only one of them can be right because there can be only one answer to the question: Does God exist?