The Mind Blowing Universe!
It is mind blowing when in a nano second our minds catch a glimpse of and then try to hold onto how God's perfect plan is so beautifully weaved into His creation of man and the universe through time, space and within His Word, which He left us as a guide book for the secrets of it all.
It doesn't get much better. When we have surrendered it all in order to 'know that we know, The Great I AM that I AM'. There really is not just looking back anymore to see the wonders that 'have happened' but now in the surrendering there is experiencing and seeing in the present as we hold ourselves in the present as His beauty whirls faster than the speed of light. Which is according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity is c = 186,000 miles/sec = 300,000 km/s = 3 x 10 10 cm/s (= 1 light-year/year). (And on this one I need to go back to study since I am far from understanding the mind or the calculations of a mathematician!! And this alone is mind blowing to me!!)
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. Isaiah 4:22
Here's an interesting astronomy explanation for the speed of the expanding universe. It is long and if you want to read more here's the link:
http://www.geocities.com/worldview_3/science.htmlScience Facts Confirm the Bibleby R. Totten, M.Div - © 2000
Background IssuesDuring the 1700s, various "Enlightenment" philosophers of western culture wrote articles and books which attempted to portray the Bible's view of the world as being backward, and superstitious, and un-scientific.
For example, Voltaire (1694 -1778) maintained that the Middle Ages were a time of darkness and ignorance. Marquis de Condorcet (1743 -1794) emphasized how great a step in mankind's progress it was to get rid of the shackles of barbaric, "superstitious religion," and advance into enlightened human reason, especially through science. Similarly, others such as Hume and Gibbon philosophized in the same direction.
In their work on philosophy of science, called The Soul of Science, (Wheaton:Crossway, 1994), Pearcey and Thaxton explain how this same anti-Christian viewpoint of the enlightenment continued to spread through the "positivists" in the 1800s. The positivists "portrayed the development of science as the inevitable 'march of mind' from darkness and superstition into the light of reason ---with 'reason' defined by the modern secular mind" (p.47).
One of the boldest expositors of this positivist viewpoint, was A.D. White, who wrote History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896). Pearcey & Thaxton summarize his work : "White combs through Western history for examples of Christians who resist scientific concepts later accepted by mainstream science, chalking up their resistance to fear and dogmatism while lavishing praise on any historical figures lucky enough to have anticipated modern concepts" (Soul of Science, p.48).
What White and the anti-Christian writers of the "Enlightenment" disingenuously ignored, was that modern science and the scientific method was founded on and grew up out of the Christian biblical worldview, assumptions and culture of Europe, as a result of discussion between Christian researchers and thinkers --such as Isaac Newton and Gregor Mendel. (See: "
The Foundation of Science is The Biblical Worldview").
Disputes about new ideas in science should come as no surprise. --When there is discussion about new ideas there are often disagreements --and, naturally, the Christian founders of modern science also had disagreements then (including arguments with church officials and society at large) --just as there are disputes among scientists (both secular and Christian) today. No surprise there. --But positivism has left many people with a warped view of the history, and the proper functioning of scientific review --and religion's role in it.
Contrary to the positivist view of things, many of the principles of modern science were already spoken of in the Bible as facts of nature many years before scientific research finally made the empirical discoveries. We'll touch on a number of these areas here.
The "Big Bang" and Expanding Universe
It is now quite well established (as discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929) that the universe is expanding sort of like a lump of dough, whereby every galaxy (like raisins in the dough) is getting further apart from the center and from all the other galaxies ...except this is happening at a speed of many thousands of miles per hour (...in fact, the rate of expansion is increasing).
Now, if we "reverse the film" on the expanding universe, and go way back, we would end up with all the matter in the universe located in a small area, which would be the beginning point. Such a "beginning" which expands out to today's universe is compatible with what is presented in the Bible. The Bible starts out by saying, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). So, there we have a "beginning" to the universe.
It should be noted that in Genesis 1:1, the Hebrew word for "created" ("bara") means a "creation from nothing," as something is brought into existence. A start from nothing, is a very good description of what cosmologists (such as Stephen Hawking) call a "singularity," which is the starting-point of the Big Bang. ---A singularity is: all the potential mass (matter), energy, and dimensions (including time) of the cosmos, reduced down to an infinitely small point of ZERO volume. --This same concept is brought out again in Hebrews 11:3 which declares that "the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." The original starting-point for the universe was invisible, and had zero volume --just as the Bible teaches... as no other ancient writing does.
Furthermore: Cosmologists and physicists teach that matter, 3-dimensional space, and even time itself virtually did not exist before the Big Bang; (when God created them). Here it is fascinating to NOTE: 1Corinthians 2:7, 2Timothy 1:9, and Titus 1:2 indicate that time itself, with all its eons and ages, had a "beginning." ---NO other ancient literature (besides the Bible) states that time had a beginning!
Then, having started from this "beginning" point, the Bible even says about God: "He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea" (Job 9:8); and "He stretches out the heavens like a tent" (Psalm 104:2); and "He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in" (Isa. 40:22); and "the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens" (Isa. 51:13); ...there are about nine such biblical references. --Notice that God stretched the heavens out in the past, and some of those verses declare that He still "stretches" the universe out today!
This "beginning" from nothing, and the "spreading" or "stretching out" of the heavens (an excellent portrayal of the expanding universe due to the Big Bang since the instant God created the universe) are words of biblical prophets that were written from about 1500 BC. ---which is about 3000 years before Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding!
Pretty mind blowing isn't it?!!
