Dr. Jason Lisle conducts a number of lectures on the theme of origins at Indian Hills Community Church, Lincoln, NE (2019):
Understanding Genesis
Secrets of the Cosmos that Confirm the Bible
The Solar System Declares the Glory of God
The Ultimate Proof of Creation
Science Confirms Biblical Creation
The Secret Code of Creation
Questions and Answers
Article: 10 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT GOD’S CREATIVE POWER by Dr. Sam Storms (original source here)
A week or so ago I was alerted to a video…
How Many Stars from The John 10:10 Project on Vimeo.
…that focused on the amazing creative power of God, both in terms of the massive size of the universe as well as the incredibly small world of molecules and atoms. It may be helpful here at the start to remember that we count from million to billion to trillion to quadrillion to quintillion to sextillion.
So, here are ten things that should leave you in awe of your God.
(1) On a clear night, perhaps best in the desert, the human eye can see upwards of 5,000 stars. That may seem like a lot until you realize that the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy is approximately 400,000,000,000 (400 billion). Some would place the number a bit lower, but certainly not less than 100,000,000,000 (100 billion).
(2) Although that many stars may in itself be overwhelming, we must remember that our galaxy is only one of approximately 2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion galaxies). Of course, this estimate is based on what is in the observable universe. What we can currently discern, largely through the Hubble Telescope, should not be taken as the limit of what is actually present.
(3) Now, for the sake of our analysis, let’s dial it down to the a much more conservative estimate and draw our conclusion based on only 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies. That’s a whole lot less than 2 trillion! OK, if we multiply only 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies times 10,000,000,000 (10 billion stars in each one), and 10 billion stars is an extremely low, conservative estimate, we come to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1 sextillion stars in the universe!
(4) Now consider all the grains of sand on the earth. There are approximately 135,000 grains in one cubic inch of sand and 235,000,000 in one cubic foot. That’s a lot of sand!
(5) There are approximately 220,000 miles of coast line on earth and 6,000,000 square miles of desert.
(6) There are, therefore, approximately 7 billion billion (that’s not a typographical error; the repetition is intentional) individual grains of sand on the earth, or 7.5 x 10 to the 18th power! Much too big to fit on a single page!
(7) In spite of this staggering number of grains of sand on the earth, there are approximately 10 times as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on the earth.
(8) A single grain of sand is approximately 0.04 of an inch. Yet, in one grain of sand there are 500 billion billion atoms (again, that’s an intentional repetition). That means there are more atoms in one grain of sand than the total number of grains of sand on the earth!
(9) There are in one drop of water 1,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 1.7 quintillion) individual H2O molecules.
(10) Just a few drops of water contain more molecules than the total number of stars in the entire universe.
Where did it all come from? What could possibly account for the unfathomably massive size of the universe as well as the incredibly tiny world of sub-atomic particle physics? The answer is given by Paul in Colossians 1:16 – “for by him [that is, by or through the Son of God, Jesus Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him.”
I know this is about ten things that reflect on the creative power and majesty of Jesus Christ, but let’s look at one more. Most of us wake up and go through our day without ever taking note of the sun, except perhaps to complain about it either being obscured by clouds or too hot to stay outside very long. What we rarely if ever consider is the fact that hundreds of billion billion billion billion (that’s 10 with 38 zeros) fusion reactions take place every second in our sun. On top of that, more than 400,000,000 tons of hydrogen are being converted into helium every second in the heart of the sun. And our sun is only one, quite small, star among the billions and billions and trillions and trillions of others throughout the universe, all of which undergo a seemingly endless inferno of chemical and nuclear reactions.
And Jesus does it all! How true are the words of the psalmist: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).
Article by Tim Challies (original source here)
When it comes to the age of the universe, Christians find themselves in a bit of a conundrum. At least, those Christians do who hold to a traditional interpretation of the first two chapters of Genesis—an interpretation that leads them to believe the universe is something less than the billions of years indicated by contemporary understandings of the scientific data. Those, like me, who hold to a six-day understanding of creation have to face this question: Why does the universe look so old? Why does it look older than it actually is? This is a question Dr. Albert Mohler took on at a Ligonier Ministries conference several years ago and his response was (and remains) helpful to me.
Before I comment on his answer, I want to point out that all Christians, no matter their interpretation of the opening chapters of Scripture, have difficult questions to face as they attempt to strike harmony between Scripture and science or, better, between God’s book of special revelation and God’s book of natural revelation. Those who believe the universe is ancient have to grapple with the existence of death before the fall, for example, or why the creation account is so clearly laid out as if it all takes place in six literal days. It is not only young earth creationists who have to admit the existence of difficult questions.
As Dr. Mohler considers the age of the universe he tells why he is drawn to the six-day view: “In our effort to be most faithful to the scriptures and most accountable to the grand narrative of the gospel, an understanding of creation in terms of 24-hour calendar days and a young earth entails far fewer complications, far fewer theological problems, and actually is the most straightforward and uncomplicated reading of the text as we come to understand God telling us how the universe came to be and what it means and why it matters.”
But why, then, if the universe is so young, does it look so old? His first answer is this:
The universe looks old because the Creator made it whole.
Accordingly to a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2, God did not create a universe that began in an infant or primordial state before maturing over billions of years, but a universe that actually began in a state of maturity. When it was still young it already looked mature because this was God’s design. Indeed, this was the case with the first human being. “When he made Adam, Adam was not a fetus; Adam was a man; he had the appearance of a man. By our understanding that would’ve required time for Adam to get old but not by the sovereign creative power of God.” Adam and Eve were created whole, mature, grown up, and were placed in a garden that was also whole, mature, and grown up. “The garden was not merely seeds; it was a fertile, fecund, mature garden. The Genesis account clearly claims that God creates and makes things whole.” There is our first answer, that the universe looks old because God created it to look old. This was design, not deception, just as was the case for Adam, the human being who had no history, no parents, no infancy, no childhood.
The second answer is this: The universe looks old because it bears the effects of sin. Sin is an evil intruder into the world and one that brought about God’s judgment. This judgment was expressed in the catastrophe of the great worldwide flood and in a million lesser catastrophes since. These catastrophes have marked, stained, and scarred all that God created. We bear the effects of sin in our tired eyes, wrinkled skin, and aching bones, and in equivalent ways the earth is marked and marred by sin. Paul says in Romans 8 that the world is groaning, “And in its groaning it does look old. It gives us empirical evidence of the reality of sin.” The universe looks old rather than young to display the evidence and consequences of sin, for once we see this we are but a short distance from considering the joy, necessity, and beauty of redemption. A suffering world is crying out for the deliverance that will come.
To my mind these are compelling answers, though they are admittedly somewhat speculative in that neither one can appeal directly to chapter or verse. I will give the final word to Dr. Mohler: “At the end of the day, if I’m asked the question ‘why does the universe look so old?’ I’m simply left with the reality that the universe is telling the story of the glory of God. Why does it look so old? Well that, in terms of any more elaborate answer, is known only to the Ancient of Days. And that is where we are left.”