"Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ"
(I Corinthians 11:1)

The ST. PAUL SCHOOL (With Frank Eiklor, Eileen Young and Walter and Cecilia Contreras)

THE UNIVERSE AND YOU

(WHAT'S OUT THERE?)

Most people believe there is a God. Then there are atheists who say there is no God. Both groups stop there - just arguing their points of view. They live and die with their opinions - with even the "believers" never experiencing more than their head belief.

Then God Himself goes to work on certain minds and hearts. I was one of them. Facts begin to bombard the head while the pulse quickens at truths that become real.

"Of course there is a God!", I told myself. "My conscience proves it. I can't get away from the law of right and wrong. There is a 'purpose' to life - if there wasn't, no one could say 'there is no purpose'."

So "conscience" convinced me from the inside. Then "creation" overwhelmed me from the outside. The Universe! What's out there? Before the Hubble telescope discoveries of other galaxies, the scientific world believed that our Milky Way was the only galaxy and that it was the whole universe. Moreover, scientists said there was no end or beginning to the universe - that's how they avoided any "In the beginning, God created..." discussion. No sir, they repeated with certainty, the universe was static. It had no beginning. It would have no end. There was no need for God. End of conversation.

Until "Hubble" spelled "trouble" and blew their "static universe" to infinity. Peering into the Mount Wilson Observatory's most powerful telescope, astronomer Edwin Hubble not only discovered galaxies beyond our own but also saw that space itself was expanding while distant galaxies were retreating from us at astonishing speed. There had to be a beginning. And the universe was expanding toward an end! Science was turned on its head.

But don't be too hard on the poor scientists for thinking that our galaxy was the only one - instead of one of perhaps billions or trillions of not just stars but other galaxies. Their great but limited minds could not - and can not - comprehend our own galaxy. Our Milky Way alone composed of over 200,000 million stars? The sun l,300,000 times bigger than earth! At 93 million miles away, a plane flying 1,000 miles an hour, taking more than ten years to reach the sun? And the sun's interior heat of 15 million degrees centigrade able to melt 240 million cubic miles of ice per second.

And Sirius, the closest star visible in the Northern Hemisphere is 40 times brighter and 7 times bigger than the sun. A space craft traveling at 17,000 miles an hour would take 318,000 years to reach Sirius. I'm serious! The Milky Way itself is 150,000 light years across. One light year equals six trillion miles (that's 6 million, million miles) because light at 186,000 miles a second (7 times around the earth in one second!). Whew! What a Creator!

Just one more "WOW" about our massive Creator God who is "from everlasting to everlasting". (Psalm 106:48)

The North Star is a million times the size of the sun and 400 light years away (remember, one light year equals 6 million, million miles). Man's best speed is 5 miles per second to escape the gravitational pull of earth. Not bad. But "God speed"? In just one second - 186,000 miles!

But God wants you and me to know He does more than hold the universe in His hand. He holds us in His heart and wants us to know Him - really know Him. That's why Jesus Christ, Creator of it all, walked on this earth. His purpose was to come perhaps to the darkest part of the universe - the human heart - and utter again those glorious words, "Let there be light!" More on that in our next study.