Lift up your eyes on high, And see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of His might And the strength of His power; Not one is missing (Isa. 40:26).1
Indeed, lift up your eyes with Isaiah, and see the great wonders on high. Look at the moon. It is about 240,000 miles away. If you take a passenger jet that travels at the speed of 600 miles per hour, it will take some 17 days to get to the moon. Forty years ago, Apollo pioneers made it to the moon in less than four days. That’s still a long way, and yet light takes only a little more than a second to cover that distance at 186,000 miles per second. Who placed the moon just right in space that it may be a light in the night for simple humans such as we are?
And where is the sun? Light from the sun takes only eight minutes to reach the earth. That means the sun is roughly 93 million miles away from the earth; a little nearer and we would scorch; a little farther and we would freeze. Just the right distance away, and who was responsible for this ruler of the day?
Think of the solar system. The farthest any man-made satellite has traveled is out to the edge of the system, several billion miles away. In 1977, scientists launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft to explore outer space. Traveling at a speed of some 42,000 miles per hour, 12 years later Voyager 2 took a peek at Neptune. The spacecraft was so far away from earth that it took four hours for a radio signal (traveling at the speed of light) to reach the earth. And Neptune and planet Earth are neighbors within the same solar system.
Why stop at the solar system? Look at a clear, velvety night sky, and you see millions of stars, twinkling like little lanterns. Our nearest star (Alpha Centauri) is 10,000 times farther away than Neptune, or about 25 trillion miles. For these kinds of distances, it is easier to just say how long it would take for light to travel that far, which, in this case, totals about four years. For any of the stars we can see with the unaided eye, light has been traveling for up to several hundred years.
But these stars are only part of the Milky Way Galaxy that extends out far enough that it takes light 100,000 years to reach us from stars on its edge.
Beyond our own Milky Way Galaxy are myriads of other galaxies. The most distant object visible to the unaided eye is one of these galaxies, called Andromeda, which is more than two million light-years away. However, the Hubble Space Telescope currently looks at objects that are more than 1,000 times farther away than even the Andromeda Galaxy. That is a septillion miles away, and this is a baffling figure: 1 with 24 zeros after it.
No wonder Isaiah was lost for words, and cried out in awe and wonder: “See who has created these things.” And the psalmist was driven more to penitence and praise: “The heavens declare the glory of God; / And the firmament shows His handiwork. / Day unto day utters speech, / And night unto night reveals knowledge” (Ps. 19:1, 2).
From the grandest to the minutest
If the grandest in the universe leaves us speechless, what about the minutest of which God made? He is not only the Lord who created the glorious galaxies, infi nite stars, distant planets, towering mountains, and vast oceans that continue to baffl e us, He is also the Lord who controls, reigns, and rules over the minutest details of our universe. “ ‘The very hairs of your head are all numbered,’ ” said Jesus (Matt. 10:30). Now, the human hair is not very thick, but even so, across its thickness 100 human cells can be lined up side by side. Each cell can easily accommodate hundreds of viruses, and each virus can stack up thousands of atoms. Even the atom is much larger than the protons inside it. If the protons inside an atom were scaled to the size of a basketball, the size of the atom would be about the size of Delhi, home of 12 million people.
What is God’s power?
We have seen a few simple examples of God’s greatness in nature. These will catch our attention, but interestingly enough, the essence of God’s power and greatness lies elsewhere.
Remember Elijah when he fl ed from Jezebel? He spent 40 days at Mount Horeb. He must have remembered the stories about God’s great power manifested on that mountain when God gave the children of Israel the Ten Commandments. God came and talked to Elijah there, and pretty awesome natural events occurred again: wind, an earthquake, and fire. But God was not in any of these. Finally, in a still, small Voice, Elijah sensed the presence of God (1 Kings 19:11, 12).
Elijah felt the power of God and a sense of His assurance. Paul defines that power as “the power of God to salvation,” the power of the gospel (Rom. 1:16). This power changes lives; it gives us assurance that we belong to God. People are looking for this power.
Science cannot understand or account for the reality of this power. Steven Weinberg, in his book Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature,2 describes what a final theory in physics would be like, and what form it might take. His concluding essay argues that “the only way that any sort of science can proceed is to assume that there is no divine intervention.”3 And since science has been so successful when using this assumption, the assumption is presumed to be correct. As such, “there is an incompatibility between the naturalistic theory of evolution and religion as generally understood.”4 Religion arose “in the hearts of those who longed for the continual intervention of an interested God.”5
Weinberg would like to believe in a Designer, but that Designer would also have to be responsible for suffering and evil. He would like to find evidence in nature of a concerned Creator, but finds “sadness in doubting that we will.”6 He does not think “that science will ever provide the consolations that have been offered by religion in facing death.”7 Religion provides meaning and hope, but for those very reasons, it seems “indelibly marked with the stamp of wishful thinking.”8
The truth is that science has done well at mechanistically explaining the natural world with a steadily diminishing need to invoke a God-of-the- gaps until its use has fallen into disrepute. But it has left humanity with a clockwork universe that provides nothing for the human spirit and too rarely leads to belief in a personal God. Woe is the church if it provides no more than science for the basic needs of the human soul, if it, too, provides only rules, creeds, doctrines, and rites, and if it doesn’t provide the concern of a friend or of a personal God who cares.
The evil in the world can be explained philosophically by a God who made creatures with free will so they could love, but when evil directly affects a person’s life, the only answer comes from a friend who can empathize or a personal God who understands. A purpose in life requires the personal touch, making a difference in someone else’s life.
Weinberg feels that personal need but unfortunately does not see the solution in religion. Perhaps, he has seen only the form of godliness but not the power. The wonders of nature inspire awe, and that is good and important, but more is needed to give the power of the gospel of Christ—of a Person.
A visit to Russia
I visited Moscow several years ago to work on a nuclear physics experiment. In the process, I made friends with a scientist who, for many years, has worked as a theoretical nuclear physicist at Moscow State University. She has shown an interest in my faith on several occasions, has asked about the vegetable gardens that a professor at the Zaoksky Seminary was famous for, has attended the Adventist church in Moscow, and knows a little about our beliefs.
I happened to visit her again recently. This time she asked me about the problem of suffering. I was ready to tell her about the great controversy between good and evil, God wanting free will creatures to love Him, Lucifer choosing not to love, and the results. Before I could start, however, she said, “I already know about the fallen angel.” Obviously, that answer wouldn’t satisfy her.
Thinking about it since then, I have realized, Why not? Philosophy is fine for answering philosophical questions. That answer worked fine for me. What pain have I experienced? But for my scientist friend, who was struggling with taking care of her husband who had just had a heart attack, philosophy wasn’t good enough. A loving God would not allow her husband to have a heart attack, to have this senseless suffering.
What my host needed was not a recitation of doctrines; rather, she needed to know of a loving, personal God, of a Christ who suffered along with us here on the earth, who knows our sorrows as well as our joys. She needed the personal touch of another who was hurting as she was. Could I give her that? Have I experienced it myself?
That’s our challenge. God’s power in nature is there for us to see. But more importantly, we need to experience God’s power in the gospel, the power that changes our own lives and makes us His children. That we have the power to argue for a particular viewpoint, whether in science or theology, is not so crucial, but we must recognize the importance of experiencing the power of changed lives so we can reach out and touch others. Not a form of godliness, but the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
1. All scripture passages in this article are from the New King
James Version (NKJV).
2. Steven Weinberg, Dream of a Final Theory: The Scientist’s
Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1992).
3. Ibid., 247.
4. Ibid., 248.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 256.
7. Ibid., 260.
8. Ibid., 255.
