Man’s Place in the Vastness of Creation

SPEAKER 03 : 0:01

The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:17

So it is possible for a man to know God. In fact, it’s even possible for a man to understand God. We have God’s own word for that. And when you think about it, we really know quite a lot about God. The problem is that when you have a limited amount of time to tell someone about God, what are the important things you would want to tell him? For a person who knows nothing about God or the Bible, I would be hard-pressed to start anywhere except with the simple concept of God as Creator. What’s interesting is that this is precisely the place where the founding fathers of our country started when they laid out the case for our independence. They said, “…we do hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” So in their eyes, the very guarantor of our most fundamental rights is, according to the founding fathers, the creator. All men were created. All men were created equal. And our creator said, by the nature of man, he has certain rights. Among them, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now the reason why I think this is important was also outlined by the Apostle Paul in the introduction to his epistle to the people in Rome. In chapter 1, verse 16 of Romans, he said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It’s the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first, yes, and also to the Greek. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. And he goes on to say, having made this point about the just living by faith, he says, the wrath of God Now let me pause just a moment to make this clear. Paul is talking about those people, Gentile philosophers, who deny God. And he is saying that in the process of denying God, in the process of standing up and saying, oh, no, there is no God, or God is this or God is that, he says they are suppressing the truth. Because that which may be known about God is plain. God has shown it to him. Well, now, the natural question is, well, how do you do that? What do you mean? Paul answers, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. being understood by the things that are made. Paul says clearly, it is from the creation of the world that the invisible things about God are made visible. They are understood by all the things that are made, His eternal power and Godhead, so they are without excuse. They are without excuse because out of the simple awareness that there is a creator of all things, many conclusions become inescapable. The founding fathers concluded some very important things from the concept of God as creator. They saw logically the same thing Paul did, that the creation is a self-evident fact. They said, we consider these truths to be self-evident facts. That basically means that what is self-evident needs no proof. It is there, and it is in itself evidence. I don’t have to prove that God exists. I simply am. As Rene Descartes famously said, I think, therefore I am. Someone came by one day and said, Renee, would you like a cup of tea? And Renee said, oh, I think not, and promptly disappeared. The simple fact of God as creator has far-reaching implications. Creation, on the face of it, requires a purpose. I mean, why would God make all this that we see around us if he had no purpose, if he wasn’t going somewhere with it? It didn’t mean something. Well, someone writing in the Psalms so many years ago, no one knows exactly when, addressed this very problem in the eighth Psalm. It’s found in the Bible. He said, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings you have ordained strength because of your enemies, that you might still the enemy and the avenger. It’s just even in the mouth of children. Hold a baby in your arms, the psalmist said, and look at this child. It stills the mouths of those who would deny the excellence of God. Then he goes on to say, When I consider the heavens… the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars which you have ordained. What is man that you are mindful of him? Who cares about man? What’s the son of man that you visit him? And I could say, oh, amen to that. For when you go out on a dark night and look up into the starlit sky, and you sit and think very long about what it is you’re seeing up there, man does seem to become insignificant. But the psalmist said, no, I can look at the stars. Man can become insignificant, but I still have to hold in my arms this little baby, and I have to consider what I’m holding. He said, You have made man a little lower than the angels. You have crowned man with glory and with honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands. You have put everything under the feet of man, all sheep, all oxen, all the beasts of the field, all the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the same. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth! And of all the things I know about God… The one thing that captures my imagination more than any other is the relationship between God, man, and the universe. What indeed is man? And what does the universe have to do with man? There was a time when I could go out on a dark night and see a sky full of stars and marvel at the beauty. I was brought up on a farm in the hills of northwest Arkansas, and there wasn’t much light pollution up there, and on a clear night, the sky was a thing to behold. Now, there’s so much light around, you can’t get a good look at the night sky. But now, there’s something else as well. We know things about the universe that we didn’t know before. From where we sit, on our beautiful blue marble circling our yellow sun, we seem to be at the very center of the universe, because as we look out into the universe, there is a horizon in every direction, and that horizon is at the same distance. We can see so far out, and beyond that is nothing, and it is the same no matter which way you look. and spread evenly and randomly on a grand scale, we see stars and galaxy most of the way to that horizon. But as we see closer and closer to the horizon, we see only quasars, and then we see nothing. Why is it that we don’t see anything beyond a certain point in the universe? Is there an edge out there? Is there an end to it all? And what does it all have to do with man anyway? We’ll talk about that when I come back in half a minute.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:44

Just how great is God? Really? How much power is controlled by the creator of the universe? And what does he plan to do with it? To find out, request your free CD titled, How Great Thou Art. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:17

So here we are lying on our back in the grass staring up at the night sky. Stars everywhere. Millions, no, billions of stars everywhere. The furthest things out there we can’t see with the naked eye. We have to have a telescope, maybe the Hubble telescope or even a radio telescope to tell us what they are. And we know that way out there somewhere is the furthest known object in the universe. How far is it out there? Well, it’s a long way. They tell us that the light from one object to another travels at 186,000 miles per per second. The distance, then, that light would travel in a year is 186,000 miles times 60, times 60 again, times 24 to get it up to a day, times 365 for a year. That works out to be nearly six trillion miles that light travels in a year. That’s a six with 12 zeros after it. So you can figure that an object one light year away from us is a long way off. Light at 186,000 miles per second takes a full year to get here from something that was one light year away. And after our sun, the nearest star is a cluster of three stars called Alpha Centauri, and it’s four light years away. If it blew up today, if it just went out today, we wouldn’t know it for four years. The next closest object is Barnard’s Star. It’s six light years away. Everything in space is a long way from everything else. Barnard’s Star, the second closest one to us, is two light years away from the closest one to it. You know, you can walk out at night at certain times of the year and see the Milky Way. That’s our galaxy. That’s a collection of hundreds of billions of stars. Our galaxy. is 100,000 light years across. You know, numbers like that sort of go right over our heads, in one ear and out the other. We really can’t cope with them. They’re just too big. Those quasars, though, that we see out on the horizon of the universe, remember, our galaxy, 100,000 years for light to cross our galaxy at the speed of light. Those quasars that they see out on the horizon of the universe, they tell us these may be 15,000 million light years away. That’s 15 billion light years. Now here’s the tricky element in all of this. They tell us the universe is 15 billion years or so old. So we are looking out there and seeing what the universe looked like shortly after 15 billion years ago. It’s very young what we are seeing. But here’s the problem. The universe, they tell us, looks exactly the same no matter where you are. So that means that out there on the edge of the universe where those quasars are, things are not now as they appear to be. They are actually out there now just like they are right here. And someone out there, if there is someone out there, could not see what our part of the universe is like today. They would be seeing it as it was 15 billion years ago. And in looking at us, they would think they see the edge of the universe, the horizon, the quasar, the furthest thing in the universe from them and to them. There is nothing beyond us, just like as we look at those quasars, there is nothing beyond them. And someone looking back at us from out there, they too would think that they are at the center of the universe. Now, this sounds confusing. It’s because we are literally looking back in time. We can only see objects out there as the light comes here. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and the light that is coming to us from the outer edges of the universe is coming here at the end of a 15 billion mile journey. Therefore, what we see is very, very old. Now, why is it that we only see objects in the universe out there some 15 billion light years? Why don’t we see a little further? The answer is because 16 billion years ago, there was nothing out there. There was nothing here. There was nothing anywhere. One moment there was nothing. The next moment there was a rapidly expanding universe growing out of what they call the Big Bang. And those objects out there on the edge of the universe are traveling away from us at something like 90% of the speed of light. Of course, the truth is we really don’t know how big the universe is, and we really don’t know how old it is. Science, estimates of science vary from, I don’t know, somewhere like 10 or 11 billion years up to 15 billion years. And maybe there’s someone who thinks it’s older than that, give or take a billion years. But, you know, what we do know is it had a beginning. And we can look out into space and see the evidence of that beginning. In fact, they tell us the radio telescopes can see actually the background glow of the Big Bang itself. Now, why am I telling you all this? Well, I’m telling you all this so that we can come to understand that the universe is incomprehensibly huge. And even though it’s populated with heavenly bodies and there are millions of billions, space is so great, so huge, that astral bodies are separated by distances that boggle our minds, even the closest of them, distances that effectively quarantine them from one another. After all, we can’t travel at the speed of light. Even at half the speed of light, it would take eight years to reach to the nearest star, and 12 years to reach the nearest one that might have a planet at half the speed of light. And this is why those UFOs people talk about are not spacecraft from another galaxy, or even from elsewhere on our own, because nothing physical, nothing with mass, can even begin to approach the speed of light. You know, Star Trek is a lot of fun, and all the science fiction movies are bags of fun. But you have to consider reality. The fuel to accelerate a spaceship to one-half the speed of light would amount to 80 times the weight of the ship itself. And it would take the same amount of fuel to slow it down once it got wherever it was going. And to accelerate to half the speed of light would take a lot of time. It would take two and a half months to accelerate from standing start to half the speed of light, carrying three Gs, as they say, all the way. Now, can you imagine your body weighing three times what it does right now for two and a half to three months? You couldn’t manage it. You couldn’t survive that kind of a journey, which means that the acceleration and deceleration time would be quite long for getting up toward half of light speed. And if we could travel close to the speed of light, even if we could get on up close to the speed of light, we might be able to travel halfway across our galaxy in, say, oh, 10 years. But 25 years would have passed at home on Earth. The truth is, we are quarantined by space and by time from any other worlds or civilizations or peoples that even might be out there. And, oh, they might be out there in their millions, perhaps billions, because the size of the universe has plenty of room for them all, with no one even knowing the others existed. Some 15 billion or so years ago, there was nothing here of this universe, nothing at all. It takes a poet sometimes to describe things so we can really grasp them. And James Weldon Johnson many years ago wrote The Creation. And he started by saying, and God stepped out on space and he looked around and said, I’m lonely. I’ll make me a world. And as far as the eye of God could see, darkness covered everything, blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp. Then God smiled, and the light broke. And you know, the truth is, it may have been just that simple. And that brings me back to the question, given the universe, given its scope, given everything we see out there and the things that we know about it, what is man after all? We’ll talk about that when I come back.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:59

For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, Knowing God, Number 5. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.

SPEAKER 02 : 19:27

We don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews for sure. Traditionally, people thought it was the Apostle Paul. Scholars have questioned that. Nobody questions that it’s a first century document written by a man who certainly is the foremost theologian, really, of the New Testament church in that era. He starts out the book of Hebrews by saying this, “…God, at various times and in various manners, spoke in time past to our fathers by the prophets.” But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. Plural. By the Son of God he made all. The world’s. And so consequently, when you lie on your back in the grass outside at night and look up at all those stars that are up there, you realize that he says, God made all that by his Son. That this Son, being the brightness of his glory, the expressed image of God’s person, upholding everything by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. This one, the writer of Hebrews tells us, was far greater than any angel. The angels are not even in the ballpark with this individual. And he says later, You, Lord, in the beginning have laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. Now, that’s a hard thing to get your mind around when you understand that these things have been going on for 15 billion years and are going to keep right on going for some time yet. But you’ve got to realize, if we can put a series of numbers in front of the age of the universe, we have declared it to be finite. And in fact, when you consider eternity, 15 billion years is just a hiccup in time. And they tell us it’s just a question of whether or not the universe will collapse back in upon itself or whether it will continue to expand and just burn out. But it will not continue. It will perish. And God, it says, God remains. They will all wax old like a garment. And like a vesture, you will fold them up. And they’ll all be changed, but you are the same, and your years shall not fail. And you can’t help but wonder if maybe the writer of Hebrews has given us the answer to the way the universe will end. Not that it just expands and expands and finally burns out, but that it is folded up and it changed into something totally different, which the Bible seems to tell us it will be. To which of the angels did he say at any time, Sit on my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool? Obviously none of them. They are all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who will be the heirs, plural, of salvation. Who’s that? He then says, Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest at any time we let them get away from us. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and has since been confirmed to us by them that heard him? God also bore them witness with signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will. Now, here comes the kicker. Here comes the clue. To the angels, he has not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak. He is basically saying there is another world out there that we don’t see yet, and the angels are not going to be the ones that that world is put in subjection to. Well, who then? But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him? Now we’re back to the psalm again. What is man? When you stand out there at night, when you look up into the heavens, you ask the question, What is man? You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor, and you set man over the work of your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet. Everything. For in it we say he put all in subjection under man. He left nothing that is not yet put under him. Now hold it. We’re sitting out here in the backyard at night looking up at the stars in the sky, remember? And it says, there is nothing that God does not intend to put under man. Now, we see not yet all things put under him. And that’s the truth. We look up at that night sky. We consider the distances that are involved in that. And we say, no, there’s no way that we can go out there and dominate or have dominion over that universe. But we do see this. We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. We see him crowned with glory and honor that by the grace of God he should taste death for every man. For it became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. I don’t know if you’d realize what we just read. But what he is saying is that the entirety of the universe is ultimately to be in subjection to man and and that man is being brought into glory as a son of God with all that that entails. Both he that sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. So if I only had a limited amount of time to tell someone about God, these are some of the things that I would want to tell him. That God created all this universe. He is the creator. He is the creator of man. And he created man for a purpose. And that purpose transcends even the greatest and highest imagination of man. These things reveal the greatness of God. They reveal his power, his character, his purpose. One of the greatest of the Psalms says it all. It’s the 148th. Praise you, the Lord. Praise you, the Lord, from the heavens. Praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels. Praise him, all his hosts. Praise him, sun and moon. Praise him, all you stars of light. Praise him, you heaven of the heavens. You waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded… and they came into being. He has established them forever and ever. He has made a decree which shall not pass. Praise you, the Lord, from the earth, you dragons in all deeps, fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and hills, fruitful trees and cedars, beasts, all cattle and creeping things and flying fowl, kings of the earth, all people, princes and judges, young men and maidens, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is excellent, and his glory… is above the earth and the heaven. It sort of gives new meaning, doesn’t it, to what I always say. You were born to win.

SPEAKER 03 : 27:28

The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:57

Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.