Psalm XIIII. 1
I’m not much of an astronomer, but I do thoroughly enjoy an occasional chance to view the heavens with a telescope. It’s similar to but different than looking through a microscope at algae or amoeba or paramecium or copepods right out of the local pond. Both allow you to see things you can’t see with the eyes God gave you. It’s like being in Dr. Seuss’s “Horton hears a Who,” somewhat like visiting another little world that you cannot normally see.
Where I once lived there was a local astronomers’ club that, on a Saturday evening once a month during cooler weather when the skies were clear, members would set up their telescopes on the pad in front of a local college’s science building and invite the public in to their “star party.”
Each member would have his or her telescope set up and eagerly awaited the public to share with them a little knowledge about the heavenly bodies we were viewing. I saw Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s three visible moons, Mars just barely one evening as it was going down, the Andromeda Galaxy, but I suppose my favorite was the moon. With the naked eye it looks so brilliantly, radiantly, smooth. Through a telescope, or even a good pair of binoculars, it looks scarred, scraped, pounded and dented like an ancient Roman battle shield. In any phase, through the telescopes, it just seems so remarkably close, to see the rips, impact areas, and craters that you could just reach out and touch it. I never tire of moon gazing. And I learn
ed that the moon (at 275,000 miles relatively close) and the sun (at 93,000,000 miles relatively distant) appear the same size in the sky. I should have realized that having seen an eclipse but the strangeness of that little fact never occurred to me. It just so happens that the moon is 400 times smaller in diameter than the sun and the sun is 400 times farther away from us.
ed that the moon (at 275,000 miles relatively close) and the sun (at 93,000,000 miles relatively distant) appear the same size in the sky. I should have realized that having seen an eclipse but the strangeness of that little fact never occurred to me. It just so happens that the moon is 400 times smaller in diameter than the sun and the sun is 400 times farther away from us. In a recent interview, Christopher Knight, co-author of “Who Built the Moon,” said, “The Moon sits very close to the Earth yet it is widely regarded as the strangest object in the known universe.” He refers to the moon as an “impossible object.”
“Furthermore, the Moon mirrors the movement of the Sun in the sky by rising and setting at the same point on the horizon as the Sun does at opposite solstices. For example, this means the Moon rises at midwinter at the same place the Sun does at midsummer. There is no logical reason why the Moon mimics the Sun in this way and it is only meaningful to a human standing on earth.” Knight has his followers.
Of course, the underlying reason that these pseudo-scientists are amazed and flabbergasted is their belief that the entire solar system, indeed the entire universe was created through the randomness of a “big bang.” The possibility of this occurring randomly is just, well, miraculous!
The moon takes 27.3 earth days to revolve one time on its axis. “Coincidentally,” it takes 27.3 earth days to complete one orbit. What that means is that every where on earth when people look at the moon they see the same side of it as they saw the night before and the night before, etc. We call that the light side of the moon. The other side of the moon that we never get to see is called the “dark side.”
You see, it would be mathematically impossible for all of these remarkable features to have happened as a result of an explosion millions of years ago. The odds are just “astronomical.”
An old book revered by the three major religions of the world gives us a very clear picture of what happened to give us such an awesome little mind-boggling neighbor.
“And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the starres also.
“And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light vpon the earth;
“And to rule ouer the day and over the night, and to diuide the light from the darknesse: and God saw that it was good.
“And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.”
I’m quite sure that “good” to God means “perfect.,”; absolutely perfect. And did you notice that “God set them in the firmament of the heaven.” This tells me that the Almighty Creator God placed the moon and the sun in their orbits with his Unchanging Hand. What a God!
The Psalmist put it this way; “When I consider thy heavens, the worke of thy fingers, the moone, and the starres which thou hast ordained;
“What is man that thou art mindeful of him? And the sonne of man, that thou visitest him?”
Psalm VIII. 3,4
I’ve known a few perfectionists in my life. They’re interesting characters. These are the folk who in a spare minute will line their pencils and pens up side by side on their desks, pencils in one group and pens in the other. You’ve seen them. It would be cheap humor to relate other examples. The world needs perfectionists. We’ve got more than enough slobs.
God in his quest for a perfect world created with His Hand and placed in perfect order the sun and moon along with the aforementioned “oddities,” “miracles,” “impossibilities,” and “coincidences,” just for us to study, gaze upon, wonder about, and say to ourselves, “What a God!” I mean, that’s the obvious conclusion, isn’t it?
Well, no not quite. During the interview, when asked pointedly, “Who built the moon?,” Knight replies that there are three possibilities, God, aliens, or humans. He concludes that the only scientifically reasonable choice is the last one, humans.
Earlier this year, David Icke, former British sportscaster who stated in a television interview that he was Jesus Christ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke suggested that due to the aforementioned anomalies, the moon is some sort of construct, a hollowed out planetoid. Why would he suggest such a thing. He just can not align himself with the first possibility, that of Divine Design. Knight agrees, “Another factor was the obvious message that has been built into the Moon to tell us it’s artificial…As to who did it, well, that’s a lot tougher.” Why is that tougher? God was quite clear as to Who did it and how it was done.
Icke picks it up here with his idea of a solution. “I’ve found the Zulu legends to be the profoundly accurate in the way that they use symbolism to describe very profound scientific truths.” So, in this he rejects the account of creation as put forth in Genesis and believed by 2.1 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, and 13.5 million Jews, to base his belief on a Zulu folk legend.
Icke continues, “Credo Mutwa [a Zulu shaman] tells me that the Zulus believe that the moon comes from far, far away and it was hollowed out like the yolk taken out of an egg and it was rolled across the heavens by two reptilian entities, which he gives Zulu names for.” And he states this as evidence for his case. Icke connects this belief with his Anunnaki, a race of two-legged reptilians from the Draco constellation, in his book “The Biggest Secret,” who have supposedly intervened in earth’s business for millions of years. By this argument, Icke has just gone over the edge.
Stephen Hawking in his latest book states, "Because there are laws such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself out of nothing. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going." You read right: the universe will just “create itself out of nothing.” This of course began at the big bang when “nothing” exploded.
The Apostle Peter wrote that in the last days, there will be “false teachers among you…denying the Lord that bought them…And many shall follow their pernicious wayes, by reason of whom the way of trueth shall be euill spoken of.” (II Peter II. 1,2) He also tells us that “…there shall come in the last days scoffers…” (II Peter III. 3)
The Apostle Paul tells us that “in the last dayes perillous times shall come. For men will be louers ot their owne selues, couetous, boasters, proude, blasphemers…Having a forme of godlinesse, but denying the power thereof; from such turne away.” (II Timothie III. 1,2,5)
Praise the Lord that these prophecies are being fulfilled in our lifetime. It’s easy to ignore the false prophets if we stick close to the true. The prophet David tells us that “The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handy worke. Day vnto day vttereth speech, and night vnto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voyce is not heard.” (Psalm XIX. 1-3).
The next time you gaze up into the sky at our nearest amazing, miraculous, impossible neighbor, feel free to say “What a God!”
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