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Amazing Facts

Joe Crews

Astronomy and the Bible

How would you like to take a journey into deep space, traveling at the rate of 186, 000 miles per second?

That would take us 11 million miles in 1 minute.

I'll return in a moment to talk about the amazing sights we'll see on such a trip.

Hello, this is Joe Cruz of the Amazing Facts broadcast, Facts Which Affect You.

Today I'd like for us to turn our attention to the mighty miracle of the universe as revealed in the heavens above us.

So often we plot our way over the earth, hardly lifting our eyes to the incredible beauty that appears nightly in the skies overhead.

We spend too much time under great cities where there is so much light we can't even glimpse the beautiful stars.

Everyone should spend some time alone in the country watching the majestic march of the constellations from dusk till dawn.

No thinking mind could ever after that question the existence of God.

Did you know that every astronomical observatory is a fulfillment of a scriptural command?

Notice this interesting text in Isaiah 40, verse 26.

Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number.

He calleth them all by name, by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power, not 1 faileth." Oh, how often we've heard the foolish ranting of unbelievers, evolutionists, and skeptics.

Modern textbooks also loudly proclaim that scores of theories are trying to explain the universe and that they have the answer.

But few of these people or textbooks take God into account at all.

Chance and blind nature are given credit for all the complicated operations of our wonderfully balanced world.

Friends, it's hard to believe that men of intelligence and education can take some of the positions that are now held by so-called evolutionistic scientists.

In Proverbs 3, 19 we read, The Lord by wisdom hath established the earth.

Now let me tell you that we owe our lives to that wisdom of God that set the forces of nature in operation.

Our fate is not hinging upon some lucky accident of arrangement in this world of ours.

We have already found out that the moon is just the right distance from this earth to make the tides useful.

If the moon and earth were closer together, the tides might come up and actually submerge all the dry land areas.

If the atmosphere was thinner over our head, the meteors could come crashing through and do terrible damage to the surface of the earth.

There are thousands of examples which reveal the fact that this universe was designed and engineered by some marvelous intelligence, and not the least of these is the miracle of the stars.

In Psalm 91, verse 1 and 2, we read, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.

There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.

Only a great mathematician could have ordered the numberless stars to take their place in the vast heavens above us.

Actually there are only 2 or 3000 stars visible to the naked eye, but there are thousands, millions, billions, trillions, just quadrillions of them beyond that.

In fact we are appalled by the vast numbers and distances involved in the expansive universe of God.

Yet, with all the created heavenly bodies, God knows the name of each 1.

Psalm 147, verse 4, he telleth the number of the stars, he calleth them all by their names.

Now for a few moments today, let's take an imaginary celestial journey, sightseeing through Starland.

We'll not go by jet, because that's much too slow.

We'll travel on the wings of light, which means that we'll be speeding along at 186, 000 miles per second.

By the way, traveling at that tremendous rate, we'll be able to circle the Earth 7 times in a single second.

In 1 minute's time, we can travel 11 million miles.

We'll start at the Sun, the center of our own solar system, which is 93 million miles away from the Earth.

You know, if some great giant could stand on the Earth and put out his arm to touch the Sun, it would take a hundred years for him to know that he had been burned according to the speed of nerve impulses traveling through the body.

Now just think of the immensity of that sun, friends.

It's 1, 300, 000 times larger than our earth.

If the earth could swell up to become the same size as the sun, and man should grow up in the same proportion.

That gives an idea of just how fantastic the sun is in comparison to the earth.

But now we are ready to begin our journey.

Remember that the vehicle is a beam of light.

We're going to travel in 1 year's time 5, 881, 807, 810, 620 miles.

This is the yardstick of travel in space.

It's a distance that we'll be able to travel in a year going at the amazing speed of 186, 000 miles per second.

So we start out from the Sun now to make this imaginary journey.

Actually there is no star within 1 light year of our sun.

In fact, the nearest star to the earth is 4 and one-third light years away.

That means it will take us 4 and one-third years to get there, even though we travel on a beam of light.

It takes 9 years for us to reach Sirius, which is 1 of the brightest stars in our sky, 47 years to travel to the North Star, 160 years to reach Arcturus, and 750, 000 years to reach the nebula of Andromeda.

So leaving the sun, at the speed of light, we pass that nearest star in 4 and one-third years.

Suppose we open up the throttle now and actually travel 1000000 times faster than light.

Can you imagine, friends, what we're speaking about now?

We'll actually be going a million times faster than 186, 000 miles per second.

Well, at this rate, we'd be able to shoot forward into space, passing by great gaseous nebulas and systems much too vast for us to even comprehend.

After months of travel, we would reach the nearest galaxy to our Earth, which is the great nebula of Andromeda.

It would take 4 months to just pass through it, going a million times faster than light.

But still we go on until time and space just seem to merge into 1.

Every few years we would pass an island universe, and after a hundred years traveling at a million times the speed of light, we would come to the limits of our telescopes.

In other words, we would reach the edges of space as far as man has been able to see it through his most powerful lenses.

But as we look on beyond, friends, there would be a beckoning glow of countless other island universes.

You see, the creation of God is limitless.

Man has not even begun to investigate it or understand it.

Those trillions of blazing stars are formed into solar systems.

Our 9 planets, of course, circling around the sun, forms our own solar system, and they all revolve in perfect order in their appointed paths.

Next we have what is known as group systems.

Here thousands of suns with their stars and planets are clustered together, and each cluster moves along in its own direction.

And yet within the cluster the different solar systems are circling in their own directions and their own paths, but the entire group is moving along also in a common direction.

The next part is the amazing island universe, which contains over a hundred billion suns.

At least the 1 in which the Earth is located contains that many.

Astronomers say that there are 200 million island universes out there in the immensity of space.

1 of them, by the way, is 50, 000 times larger than our own.

The Milky Way is our own island universe.

The nearest other Milky Way system to us is a million light years away.

Now let's pause for a moment, friends, and contemplate the power that is required to keep those systems in order.

Why is there not constant collision and chaos?

True, they are very far apart, there is plenty of space, and yet, friends, they are traveling at tremendous, unbelievable speeds.

I think of Arcturus, which is known as the runaway of the heavens.

The average speed of a star is 26 miles per second, but Arcturus is rushing madly along at 257 miles per second.

By the way, Arcturus is a million times larger than our sun, and we said that our sun was more than a million times larger than the earth, so this gives you an idea of the incredible mass of this star.

And as it goes dashing wildly through space it is drawing hundreds of other star travelers along with it, all at a speed of 900, 000 miles per hour.

Yet with this headlong rush through space, Arcturus has never yet crashed.

Now notice how the Bible speaks of this in Job 38.12.

Canst thou bring forth Masoreth in his season?

Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?

Of course, Job seemed to understand about that runaway of the heavens.

He spoke of it here in his inspired writing.

Even our own world, of course, is no slowpoke when it comes to travel.

The earth turns about a thousand miles per hour on its axis, Then it orbits the sun at a speed of 68, 000 miles per hour, and then of course our sun and the entire Milky Way system is moving along at 44, 000 miles per hour.

So even though we're not conscious of it at all, we're moving at headlong speeds right through space.

Now, the most important part of all of this is that these great systems seem to revolve around some common center.

Nobody seems to know just where that spot is located in the heavens, but, friends, I have no doubt that it is the very throne of God.

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