The very universe declares the glory of the Lord. Read the inspired writings of
David:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes
out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Psalm 19:1-4 NIV
Pause for a moment and ponder the boundless expanse of the universe. Do so and
you will catch a fleeting glimpse of His unlimited glory! In the words of David,
"The universe declares it." God's creation is not limited to the earth but
encompasses even the unknown universe. He arranged the stars of the heavens with
His fingers. (See Psalm 8:3.) For most of us, it is difficult to comprehend the
vastness of the universe.
Beside our sun, the nearest star is 4.3 light years away. So that this number
does not remain just a figure, let's expound on it. Light travels at the speed
of 186,282 miles per second-not per hour but per second. That is roughly
670,000,000 miles per hour. Our airplanes fly approximately 500 miles per hour.
The moon orbits roughly 239>000 miles from the earth. If we traveled by plane to
the moon, it would take nineteen days. But light reaches there in 1.3 seconds!
Let's continue. The sun is 93,000,000 miles from the earth. If you boarded a
jumbo jet today and traveled to the sun, your journey would take over twenty-one
years! That's nonstop too! Where were you twenty-one years ago? That's a long
time. Can you imagine flying that long without a moment's break in order to
reach the sun? For those who prefer driving ... well, it couldn't be done in a
lifetime. It would take roughly two hundred years, not including any gas or rest
stops! Yet light travels this distance in a mere eight minutes and twenty
seconds!
Let's leave the sun and move on to the nearest star. We already know it is 4.3
light years from the earth. If we built a scale model of the earth, sun, and
nearest star, it would be as follows. In proportion, the earth would reduce to
the size of a peppercorn, and the sun would become the size of an
eight-inch-diameter ball. According to this size scale, the distance from the
earth to the sun would be twenty-six yards, which is only a quarter the length
of a football field. Yet remember, for a scale airplane to span that
twenty-six-yard distance, it would take more than twenty-one years.
So if this is the earth's and sun's ratio, can you guess how far the nearest
star would be to our peppercorn earth? Would you think a thousand yards, two
thousand, or maybe a mile? Not even close. Our nearest star would be placed four
thousand miles away from the peppercorn! That means if you put the peppercorn
earth in San Diego, California, the nearest star on our scale model would be
positioned past New York City and into the Atlantic Ocean a thousand miles out
to sea!
To reach this closest star by airplane would take approximately fifty-one
billion years, non-stop! That's 51,000,000,000 years! Yet light from this star
travels to earth in only 4.3 years!
Let's expand further. The stars you see at night with the naked eye are one
hundred to one thousand light years away. However, there are a few stars you can
see with the naked eye that are four thousand light years away. I wouldn't even
attempt to calculate the amount of time it would take for a plane to reach just
one of these stars. But, think of it; light travels at a rate of 186,282 miles
per second, and it still takes four thousand years to reach the earth. That
means the light of these stars was first released before Moses parted the Red
Sea, and has traveled a distance of six hundred severity million miles every
hour without slowing down or ceasing since, and is just now reaching the earth!
But these are only the stars in our galaxy. A galaxy is a vast gathering of
usually billions of stars. The galaxy in which we live is called the Milky Way.
So let's expound further.
The closest galaxy to ours is the Andromeda Galaxy. Its distance from us is
approximately 2.31 million light years away! Imagine, over two million light
years away! Have we reached the limit of our understanding yet?
Scientists estimate there are billions of galaxies, each of them loaded with
billions of stars. Galaxies tend to group together. Andromeda Galaxy and our
Milky Way are part of a cluster of at least thirty galaxies. Other clusters
could contain as many as thousands of galaxies.
The Guinness Book of World Records states that in June 1994 a new group of
cocoon-shaped clusters of galaxies was discovered. The distance across this
group of galaxies was calculated at six hundred fifty million light years! Can
you imagine how long it would take to cross such a vast distance by airplane?
The Guinness Book of World Records also states that the most remote object ever
seen by man appears to be over 13.2 billion light years away. Our finite minds
cannot even begin to comprehend distances this immense. We've yet to glimpse the
ends of the galaxy clusters let alone the end of the universe. And God can
measure all this with the span of His hand! To top it off, the psalmist tells
us, "He [God] counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. Great
is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite" (Ps. 147:4-5).
Not only can He count the billions upon billions of stars, but He knows the name
of each one! No wonder the psalmist exclaimed, "His understanding is infinite."
Solomon said, "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the
heaven of heavens cannot contain You" (1 Kings 8:27). Are you getting a greater
glimpse of His glory?
Excerpted from The Fear of the Lord by John Bevere, Charisma House 1997, p.
24-27. Www.charismahouse.com
Used with permission.
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