Our Universe

When, away from the city lights, we look up at the night sky, we are humbled by the immensity of what we see. We see the stars, so many stars we can’t begin count them. Astronomers tell us that there are hundreds of billions of stars. Even more astoundingly, they tell us that some of the stars we can see are actually galaxies of stars, each one consisting of hundreds of billions of stars. These are very far away, far outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

We see from this that stars are not just scattered around in space but are grouped together in galaxies. We see also that galaxies appear as distinct, separate entities readily distinguished from one another. This shows us that the universe has order.

If we imagine ourselves traveling in a space ship at the speed of light (186,000 miles/second), we would see our galaxy diminishing in size and eventually appear to us as a single star. It would be surrounded by other points of light, each of which being a galaxy of stars. It might appear to be our usual night sky but we would actually be looking at a galaxy of galaxies, hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one consisting of hundreds of billions of stars.

The assumption in the above is that what we see as true in our telescopes may also be true on a larger scale. In other words, we know that some entire galaxies appear to the naked eye as simple stars. If we were to move far away, well outside our own galaxy, so far that it appeared to us as a single star, our sky would then be filled, not with stars but with galaxies that appeared to us as stars.

How many times could we repeat this process and with each step further away be able to see a hundred billion times as many stars? Is there no end to it? Is it infinite? Very simply, we should know the answer: it may be truly infinite and never end! Why? It is possible because the God that created it all is, in His very being, infinite! Just as there is no end to the infinite God, so there need be no end to His extremely orderly creation.

This is the God we worship or, some of us foolishly, so very foolishly! fail to worship and instead deny His existence. Are you such a person, so foolish as to believe that this huge but highly orderly universe created itself? Really? Or is there a greater Being, an infinite and eternal Being that created it?

Isn’t it just exactly such a Being the Bible gives us? This book has survived, virtually without change, for thousands of years. Were the ancient, supposedly primitive, peoples wise and well-equipped enough to produce such a work without divine assistance? Hardly! The only answer is that the Bible is truly the Word of God, a word we must respect and obey!