Genesis 1:14-19 “ And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.”
Gaze up into the heavens on a clear night. You will only be able to see a very small percentage of the celestial bodies God spoke into being on the fourth day of creation. Man still marvels at the vast expanse of space when, through his modern inventions, he looks out at the immeasurable universe that our God created. Some look at the universe and imagine such a wonder as being far too great for One to have spoken it into being through His all mighty power, but others know that there is no other answer. The Psalmist declared, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.” What you are looking at in the nighttime gaze is the “handiwork” of our All-knowing, All-powerful God.
Just what are you looking at in that upward gaze? You are viewing into the galaxy in which our planetary system is found; the Milky Way galaxy made up of about about two billion stars. Your eyes may fall upon our moon, that orb God created to reflect the sun’s rays back to earth during our nights; that “lesser light to rule the night.” Beyond that near orb, and beyond the stars of our galaxy, there are billions of others galaxies. Our nearest neighbor galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy, which is about 12 million trillion miles away. Such vastness is beyond our comprehension. For instance, our sun is about 91.4 million miles from earth. The sun is so large that 1,300,000 of our earths could fit into the sun. Incidentally, although the largest body in our solar system, other stars in our galaxy are much larger. The star named “Betelgeuse” is 700 times larger than our sun, and is considered to be 14,000 times brighter. Earth and her sister planets of our solar system are constantly revolving around the sun, while our entire solar system is constantly revolving through our galaxy, which is constantly spinning through space. From the Andromeda Galaxy, which is also known as “M31,” you might be able to see the Milky Way Galaxy with the naked eye, but you would not be able to make out our solar system, our sun and certainly not our earth. And, just the measurement of our own Milky Way galaxy is beyond comprehension. It measures approximately one hundred light-years across. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, and traveling at a rate of 186,000 miles per second, that one hundred light-years is a far distance.
When considering the “heavens,” one must come to grips with thoughts of origin. Did the vast universe come into being by the word and power of All-mighty God, or is this universe itself eternal. Did it begin with a “Big Bang,” and if it did, where did the material orignate that banged together? How did the “Big Bang” fall into such organized, precise and clock like perfection? When the “Big Bang” supposedly happened, and our solar system spun off into motion, are we to believe that our planet just happened to land in the exact right location from the sun, possess the perfect components to support life, and then spontaneously sprout life into being resulting in what we currently know on earth? Wow! That calls for a lot of blind faith! It also is the most pessimistic and hopeless approach to life imaginable. This leads to the motto, “...a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry....” (Ecclesiastes 5:18) What a sad way to view the marvelous gift of life from the Creator Who spoke all things into existence.
Again, if there is an All-Mighty God in heaven, the Creator Who created all things, could He not have created all of the celestial bodies in their advanced, fully developed form just as He created Adam as a fully grown and fully developed man? The answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes!” It is not necessary to believe in events spanning billions of years resulting in the material universe if one can believe God, and believe in God. “In the beginning God....”
Pastor Steve