Mr. Lamb was always one of my favorite teachers. He was a science teacher, a basketball coach, and the junior high principal combined into one person. He was a gentle sort of guy and always enjoyed a good laugh. Sometimes at the expense of his students.

I remember one occasion when he received a good laugh while scaring the liver out of his seventh grade class, which I happened to be in. We were studying the planetary system. Mr. Lamb began this particular class session by going to the green board, which strangely enough was called the "black board." It was many years before I discovered why we called the green chalk board a "blackboard." Things like this go through the minds of seventh graders.

On the blackboard, Mr. Lamb drew the entire planetary system which surrounds our sun. Meticulously, he coordinated the size of the sun, the size of the various planets, and their relative distances from one another. As he drew this model on the board, he lectured to us while we were taking notes to remember the names of each celestial body surrounding the sun.

It was easy for me to remember Earth and Pluto. Of course, we live on Earth so that wasn't hard to forget. And Pluto? Well, it was the outer most celestial body and it was named, or so I thought, for that stupid Walt Disney dog character. I could imagine Pluto looking something like that stupid dog. He told us to memorize the names of the planets in the exact order which they appeared, from the sun to the outermost heavenly body, because we were going to have a test to prove our knowledge of the planetary system.

When Mr. Lamb finished his neat diagram, he asked us to take a sheet of paper and copy his model. He told us it would be easier to memorize if we drew one for ourselves. As we were drawing, he began to tell us about how the planets made various revolutions around the sun. He told us that some planets took much longer than a year to make a complete revolution around the sun. Pluto, for example takes about 248 years to make a complete revolution. That would make it a very slow dog by earthly standards. He also said that Pluto had a moon which was even bigger than itself. He was giving us a lot of odd, strange, and curious information about the planets.

During the course of his lecture, Mr. Lamb began talking about how the orbits of the planets were unstable. He told us how the Earth was revolving around the sun in an orbit which takes it increasingly closer to the sun. In a very elaborate description of Earth's orbit, he told us that our planet would move closer and closer to the sun until it bumped into the sun and burned up. I don't remember exactly how long he said it would take for this event to occur. Seems like he said about ten million years or so, give or take a couple of years.

By this time we were sitting on the edge of our seats, totally mesmerized by what the professor was teaching. Just the thought that the earth would bump into the sun and burn up was frightful. Never mind that it would take ten million years to do this. We were beginning to get scared because we had no comprehension of how long ten million years was. He was describing how the earth would get hotter and hotter and the people, along with all the inhabitants of Earth would be burned to a crisp. The birds flying in the sky would have their feathers scorched off and fall to the ground. The tall trees would come next, being burned from top to bottom. Finally the intense heat would reach the ground and all the ground beings would catch on fire and burn to an absolute crisp, It would be the ultimate "big burn." Ten million years and the earth would burn to a crisp.

You can't imagine the intensity which the class had going in their hearts over the prospects of being in the "big burn." Somehow we had imagined that we would live ten million years and see this event with our own eyes. Hearts were palpitating like crazy all over the room. Finally Carolyn Burke could take it no more. She blurted out, "Mr Lamb!! Do you mean to tell us that the earth will really bump into the sun and we'll all be burned up?!!"

"Yes," was his reply, "in about ten million years..."

"Then we'll all die??" exclaimed Carolyn.

"Yes," he said in that typical quite tone of voice he often used. He had us thinking that it would be the day after tomorrow and we'd still be here to experience this burn-out of the planet Earth. I'll admit that I was thinking in the same terms as Carolyn. All sorts of thoughts ran through my mind. I could just see the birds falling out of the sky with scorched feathers. I could see entire forests burning with animals running wildly here and there trying to locate cover and finding none. I had heard my preacher talk about the end of the world and I envisioned that it was about to happen in just a few days. I didn't think I was going to even get out of the seventh grade before the big burn happened. I was scared spitless. I think Carolyn was too. In fact, I think the whole class was filled with fear.

As the class drew to a close, Mr. Lamb quietly told us that ten million years was a very long time. And none of us would be around to see the big burn anyway. Few of us had thought of it in those terms. I think we all breathed a massive sigh of relief. I know I certainly did.

Once in a while I still think about Mr. Lamb's "big burn" story. I chuckle inside and think how scared we were to think that ten million years would pass in just a few days.

I told this story at Mr. Lamb's funeral. Then I read 2 Peter 3:10-12 "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!" (NAS)

My thoughts are that perhaps we ought to be prepared for the "big burn." It probably won't happen day after tomorrow, however. But then, the way Mr. Lamb told it, it just might...