Genesis 1:14-16, “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”
I love astronomy. I have watched hundreds of astronomy videos on YouTube. My favorite YouTube channel is Calm Space (also, Calm Science). I absolutely love this man's calming voice, which I listen to every night while sleeping. Each video is two hours long, packed full of fascinating astronomical facts and terrifying realities. God is truly more than amazing!
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large infrared space observatory launched on December 25, 2021, designed to study the early universe, galaxy formation, star and planet birth, and exoplanet atmospheres from its orbit around the Sun–Earth L2 point one million away. It is an international partnership led by NASA with ESA and CSA, featuring a 21.4 foot segmented mirror and instruments like NIRCam, MIRI, NIRSpec, and FGS/NIRISS.
JWST does not orbit around the Earth like the Hubble Space Telescope (launched on April 24, 1990), it orbits the Sun one million miles away from the Earth at what is called the second Lagrange point or L2. Lord willing, I am excited when the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches in September of 2026, which will take wide images of the universe. So wide in fact that you would need 3,000 digital television screens just to view one image.
So far, the JWST has blown scientists away with new discoveries. Whereas the previous Hubble Space Telescope had discovered hundreds of billions of galaxies, the James Webb Space Telescope has discovered 2 TRILLION galaxies. I cannot wait to learn what the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope discovers! We are on the cutting edge of astronomical discoveries right now. Her are eight amazing new astronomy discoveries found in 2025. Psalms 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”
I was thinking today about the mind blowing number of stars in the universe. Scientists truly do not know, but NASA tells us that they estimate there are at least one septillion stars in the known galaxy. That is a 1 with 24 zeroes behind it! I have to type out the number dear reader, so you can see it and marvel in astonishment at God's greatness with me...
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Stars
Do you realize that God made them all by the mere Word of His mouth. 2nd Peter 3:5, “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.” And did you know that God calls each star by their name? Psalms 147:4, “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.” Man can only guess how many stars exist, but God knows the exact number; and He not only knows all of their names, He calls them by their names.
It would require 31,700 years just to count to one trillion. And that's if you could count one number per second for 24 hour a day, 365 days a year. Realistically, to say or think a random number like 445,568,463,373 would require several seconds. And you couldn't count for more than about 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, realistically, it would take someone about one million years to count to one trillion. And you'd have to multiple that times another trillion to count to one septillion. So, it would require about one quintillion years to count to one septillion. My head hurts!
As I mentioned earlier, I was thinking today about the mind blowing number of stars in the KNOWN universe. There could be MUCH more than one septillion stars. We simply don't know! And if that's not humbling enough dear frail human being, then consider that with all of man's amazing technological advancements and exponential increase in knowledge today, we still can only visit ONE OF THOSE STARS—our own Sun (which is located 93 million miles away from Earth).
The next nearest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri (discovered in 1915 by Scottish astronomer Robert Innes) located 4.24 lightyears away. That's a shocking 25 TRILLION miles away! Driving at highway speed at 62 mph (100 kph) would take 45,000,000,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri. Needless to say, mankind will NEVER be visiting Alpha Centauri except with our telescopes. To travel to the nearest star within our Milky Way Galaxy, after passing our own Sun, you would need to travel at the speed of light (671 million mph) for 4.24 years! The fastest vehicle man has ever made is the exploratory Parker Space Probe which traveled around the Sun at 430,000 mph.
Humanity with our intriguing space telescopes cannot peer any further than 13.8 billion years into space, simply because light hasn't had enough time to reach us yet. Astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding in 1929, when he published his findings on the relationship between the distance of galaxies and their recessional velocities, now known as Hubble's Law. By working backwards using Hubble's discovery, in 1927 astronomer Georges Lemaître calculated that the expansion rate began 13.8 billion years ago, in an theoretical event which he dubbed “The Big Bang.”
But please remember dear reader, The Big Bang is only a manmade theory, not factual science. It could be true that we simply do not know when the universe began. But we do know how it began. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Could The Big Bang refer to when God spoke the universe into existence from nothing? Sure it could. But we ought to be very careful not to assume what we don't know for certain, which is speculation, not concrete science. Granted, The Big Bang sounds reasonable, but to talk about it as if it were a scientific fact is very unethical and wrong.
Dark Energy, Dark Matter And Ordinary Matter
These are fascinating concepts of the workings of our universe. The more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know.
We will never be able to see beyond 46 billion light-years into the universe due to the finite speed of light (671 million mph) and the expansion of the universe (which expands at a rate faster than the speed of light). This limit defines the observable universe, which is the portion we can detect from Earth with telescopes. Interestingly, although no object can travel faster than the speed of light, space itself can.
To help understand this concept, picture a balloon. Let's draw a few dozen dots on the balloon to represent the galaxies of the universe. Then let's fill the balloon with air so that it expands. The dots (galaxies) themselves are not moving, but the space between them is expanding. This is what's happening to the universe, which is expanding at a rate of just under 43 miles (70 kilometers) per second per megaparsec (a unit of distance equal to approximately 3.26 million light-years), according to recent measurements.
In gravitationally bound galaxies, like our own Milky Way Galaxy (which includes Andromeda 2.48 million light-years away), there is no expansion. It is the empty space between the known two trillion galaxies that are ever expanding. The universe has a way of being stranger than man's theories can predict. Truly, this is proof of Psalms 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”
I had a difficult time trying to understand how the universe is expanding so fast that light hasn't had time to reach the Earth, so that we will never be able to see beyond 46 billion light-years (270 trillion miles) into the universe. But this brilliant man (whom I enjoy listening to while I sleep each night) explains the topic so well that I finally understand Cosmic Expansion. ...
Here is a helpful quote from the video (a little after 1:53 time)...
There is a repulsive force in the universe, but it's not balancing gravity to keep things static. It's overwhelming gravity and causing expansion to accelerate. We call this force dark energy. Dark energy is the most mysterious component of the universe. We know it exists because we see its effects, but we don't know what it is. Current observations suggest that dark energy makes up about 68% of the total energy content of the universe. Dark matter, the invisible stuff that holds galaxies together through its gravitational pull, makes up about 27%. Ordinary matter, the stuff that makes up stars, planets, and us, makes up only about 5%. We live in a universe where 95% of the content is stuff we don't understand. 68% is dark energy pushing space apart. 27% is dark matter pulling things together through gravity, but invisible to all electromagnetic radiation. Only 5% is the normal matter we can see and touch and study directly. This is humbling. We've learned an enormous amount about the universe in the past century. We've mapped the cosmic microwave background, detected gravitational waves, photographed black holes, discovered thousands of exoplanets. But the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know. The universe is dominated by two forms of stuff, dark matter and dark energy, that we can't directly detect, can't explain, and don't understand. So, what is dark energy? The simplest explanation is that it's the energy of empty space itself. SOURCE (after 1:53 in video)
The Fallacy Of A Young Earth Creation
I will say that I strongly reject the utter nonsense of a Young Earth Creation (YEC), which is so popular with fundamentalist Christians today. The theory of YEC contradicts legitimate science, common sense and even the Holy Bible: - Geologist, archaeologist and paleontologist scientists have verified that dinosaurs lived 65 to 220 million years ago, not 4,500 years ago as some religiousites absurdly claim.
- Common sense tells us that dinosaurs didn't live with humans 4,500 years ago. Do you really think literally thousands of species of life just went away, poof, gone?
- Psalms 102:25, “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.” The psalmist specifically mentions the earth's foundation as being “old.” I believe that the human race is approximately 6,000 years old, which the history of human development and civilizations easily confirms. But I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old, as scientists tell us. I reject all forms of evolution. Pastor Curtis Hutson (1934-1995) also taught an Old Earth in his intriguing series, 'DEMONOLOGY.
Final Thoughts
God is beyond human understanding. What saith the Scripture? Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Wow! Carefully notice that the inspired Holy Bible says “heavens” (plural). This refers to more than just the clouds and atmosphere, but also includes the stars and universe. Of an estimated one septillion stars in the known universe that we can see, we are only able to travel to explore one of them, our Sun.
God is truly more than amazing. Did you know that it was Jesus, our dear Savior, who created all things? (John 1:1-3) The Lord is worthy of our praise, love and adoration.
