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Transcript 584A
The Place of the Earth in the Universe
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. I have a question. Nowadays the trend scientifically is toward Einstein's Theory of Relativity. He was, as I guess everyone knows, a scientist born in Germany who fled Germany in, I guess, the 30's. He borrowed a lot from a man named Albert Michelson, who was born in Germany or Prussia, and was involved in the Michelson-Marley experiment, and he had written publications on the velocity of light and lightwaves and their uses. And there were other people. A man by the name of Hans Warbigger, who didn't have much publicity in the United States, but did in Germany, due to a particular philosophy also had an interpretation of the universe based upon what he called eternal ice.
All these people have their own points of view as to what is the universe, what governs the universe. By the way, the Michelson-Marley experiment wanted to prove the relative motion of the earth to the universe – or in those days I guess they called it the ether, or whatever it was. But I was just wondering. Your specialty is the Bible, specifically. How would you define, insofar as your understanding of the Bible is concerned, God's plan as revealed in the scriptures of the earth and its relationship to the universe? And I'll take your answer over the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you very much. A very interesting question. Actually, mankind is fascinated by this grand universe in which he finds himself. He takes his mightiest telescopes, even radio telescopes, and points them out into deep space and finds that there are galaxies of stars extending out billions of light years into space. With light traveling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, they figure out how far that would travel in a year, and then measure that by several billions years, and you get an idea how far distant some of the stars are.
And wherever he looks, he finds billions upon billions of stars, far beyond his ability to count them. And he looks at this and he wonders, what is this universe? How did it come into being? What's going to happen in the future? He asks all kinds of questions.
Well now, it's very interesting that the Bible puts all of this into its proper perspective. We of course, being just a very tiny little individual on a very great earth, and the earth being only a very tiny little speck in our solar system, or at least within the galaxy in which our solar system is located, we look with awe and wonder at this universe.
But when we get the proper perspective and we realize that there is a God who created all of this, then we can bring the whole thing down to size. Now the Bible teaches, in Genesis 1, and throughout the Bible, that God's first concern was the earth, the earth, not the universe, not the stars, not the sun, not the moon, not anything out there, but the earth itself. And as a matter of fact, it's very significant that when they send these exploring missions out to some of the other planets – Mars and Jupiter, and Venus, and so on – we find there, as we look at those other planets, that they are altogether different from the earth. They have great ranges of temperature, they have huge storms going on, huge volcanoes, or whatever. Some are dry and barren. In no way do they give the slightest appearance of earth, with its trees and its beautiful flowers and its benign temperatures, its temperate climates, and all the things that we find on this earth. When we want to look at the jewel of the creation, we look at the earth, insofar as the material universe is concerned.
It's true that as we look at the universe we see other astounding things, like the brilliant light that comes from the stars, and so on. But insofar as the part of the universe that shines with the greatest brilliance, it is the earth itself, because of the all the beauty and the marvelous interrelationships that exist here on this earth, and the fact that there is life on this earth. It's very significant that they have never found the slightest vestige of life on the moon or on Mars or on any of the other planets anywhere out there. And of course it's when you get to the question of life that you're really beginning to look at that which is exquisite beyond our imaginations. We can't have the slightest idea - we haven't the slightest idea, really, of what life is.
Now the Bible says that when God created the earth, and that was the center of His attention, He formed first of all the vegetation on this earth, after He had formed it out of the water, on the third day of creation. Then on the fourth day, almost in an offhand manner, God says, "He made the stars also," as if to say, what else is new?
Let's look at a molecule, or at an atom, of which molecules are made. And we see that they are very precise, with their protons and electrons. Mathematically they figure all the way through. They are like miniature universes. No matter how you divide the atom into smaller and smaller particles, you never come to the end of it. There's still some further division that can go on, if you have the equipment that enables you to do this. And of course it is God who created this. When He spoke and the earth came into existence, all of these fascinating forms of material existence came into being.
But the very same God who created the atom, which is so tiny that we cannot see it, and it takes thousands of them so that we actually see something with our naked eye, and we can't even see the electrons and neutrons that make up the atom. This is the very same God who spoke, and the stars came into existence, the billions of stars out in deep space. And why did God create the universe? Psalm 19:1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament (that is, the expanse of the heavens) showeth His handiwork."
You see, God is indicating His power, His creative ability. And He doesn't require billions of years, as the scientists would suggest, to do all this. He simply did this on the fourth day of creation, taking six days of twenty-four hours to create the earth and the whole universe, because God is God.
Now that's what happened 13,000 years ago, according to Biblical reckoning (I believe that can be shown.) And the Bible teaches that this universe, as mighty as it appears to us, is going to come to an end. We read in II Peter 3, and the end of the universe will be simultaneous with the end of this present earth, II Peter 3:10, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise. And the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
It goes on in verse 12, "Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved. And the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for New Heavens and a New Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."
And so this grand universe, that has existed now for the same period of time, namely, 13,000 years, is going to be destroyed on the last day. And we're coming to that very rapidly. We're approaching that last day very, very rapidly. All the signs in the Bible that relate to the return of Christ and the end of the universe are beginning to develop before our eyes.
And so the duration of the universe is going to be approximately 13,000 years. Now one of the interesting facts that keeps the scientists going in their attempt to understand the universe and understand matter, understand this creation, is that they find that everything obeys very precise rules. Have you ever thought about this? The reason that scientists were able to put a man on the moon (that's a long way out there in space) or that they could send a space mission out to one of the other planets that are hundreds of thousands of miles away from here and even millions of miles away from here, the reason that they're able to do that is that everything within the universe interrelates with each other in accordance with very precise mathematical relationships, because God has created it. He has designed it. The same as if you were going to build an automobile; everything has to interrelate within that automobile. Otherwise it will not function. You just can't throw a lot of materials together and then expect to have an automobile. Or if you're going to bake a cake, you just can't go into your shelf and get a little of this and a little of that, and throw it all in a pot and then expect that a cake is going to come forth. It has to be designed. There's just a certain amount of salt, a certain amount of baking soda, or flour, or whatever else you're going to put into that which you are going to bake. And only then are you going to have a beautiful cake.
And so it is in the universe. Everything is very precisely designed by God so that there is precise interrelationships with everything else. And of course, because man's mind is patterned after the mind of God, therefore he sets out to discover this. He first of all discovers that two plus two makes four, and then he discovers that two times three makes six. And then he can go on from there and get more and more involved in his mathematical equations. And he'll find that these things begin to relate with the universe. Everything is very precise.
And so as he uncovers this rule or that law, whether it's the law of gravity or the law of something else, he is simply uncovering one of the perfectly designed laws that God has laid down in establishing, in building, in designing the universe. And of course man is very grateful. He really thinks he's done something. And that of course keeps him excited and interested to keep going even further. And so he can do more and more with the elements of this universe, as he designs computers, and so on. And with computers he can go through his equations much more quickly, so that he can cover even more and do even more with the universe.
And all of this is possible because in the first instance everything in the universe, going all the way from the smallest elements of matter to protons and electrons, going all the way through the universe to the stars themselves, they all interrelate in this very precise fashion. And the only time that they don't is when the anomalies occur because of the curse that is upon this universe, upon this earth. It is under the curse of sin. It has been cursed of God, because of man's sin. And therefore there will be the viruses and the weeds and the thorns and the anomalies that develop, that don't follow a normal pattern. Otherwise everything will, the basic rules can be uncovered.
But when man comes along with his theories that the earth is four and a half billion years old, or the universe is thirteen billion years old, or whatever it may be, if it is contrary to the Bible (and of course those theories are), then you know that man has gone down a blind path. His assumptions are so erroneous that his conclusions are also so erroneous, and he should start all over again.
Actually, if scientists would start with the Bible, and I'm firmly convinced of this, if scientists would start with the Bible and try to uncover all the information they possibly could from the Bible, recognizing it is the Word of God, and use that as their foundation, and then in the light of that begin to examine the evidence they're finding, their production of new information would go far more rapidly than it has.
For example, they wouldn't be fussing around with this idea of four and a half billion years. They would realize they have to fit everything within a 13,000 year period, and then lots and lots of enigmas and problems that they can't solve would begin to fit. For example, they wonder why the floor of the ocean is so bare of sediment. If the earth has been around for millions and even billions of years and if the continents erode because of the action of ice and weather, and so on, and the erosion materials go down through the streams into the ocean, and finally when the ocean water is saturated they precipitate out as sediments on the bottom of the ocean, you would think that there would be vast quantities of sediment on the ocean floor.
But the fact is that, except along the shorelines, most of the ocean floor is relatively bare of sediments. And so scientists speculate and cogitate and meditate, and come up with schemes and theories, like platetonics, namely, that the ocean floor is divided into huge plates that gradually slip under the continental masses,. and thus they clean themselves of sediments, and that's why we have the bare ocean floor. Well, they wouldn't have to come up with these speculative ideas at all if they would recognize that the earth is only 13,000 years old. How much sediment would they expect to find on the ocean floor, with continental weathering going along like this?
And then when they examine the amount of elements in the ocean water, they would find that they began to approximate exactly what they would expect with a world that is only about 13,000 years of age.
Well, so much for that little bit of an essay.