Genesis chapter 1:1 says, “God created the heavens and the earth”. There is a vast difference between the things God ‘created’ and the things God ‘made’.
To ‘create’ is to bring into existence something out of nothing. To ‘make’ is to further form, fashion, build, shape, sculpt, or cultivate that which was created. Eve then was a work in progress. For example, God created Adam and from Adam’s rib, He made (shaped, fashioned) Eve.
A carpenter can ‘make’ a chair out of wood, but he cannot ‘create’ the wood itself. An illustration was given of a dialogue between God and Satan. Satan claimed he could do everything that God did. God told Satan to create man. So, Satan gathered some dust together, and before he went any further, God told him, “Stop, create your own dust”.
There is a general perception, and a false one at that, that the ‘dust’ spoken of is ‘dirt’. Man is not made of dirt but of the choicest of minerals and chemicals from the earth. The Psalmist says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
Man is a created being with all the faculties to know that you are God’s masterpiece, a direct product of God’s handiwork. However, man has dared to refute the existence of a Creator-God and defend the hideous theory of evolution.
Evolutionists such as William Paley, Michael Denton, Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin have by reason of their own admission, conceded that all living things are too improbable and too beautifully designed to have come into existence by chance. They will go as far as to aver that there must be an ‘Intelligent Designer’ but will not admit it is God. Others have labelled it as blind forces of physics.
The Heavens
We noted that Gen 1:1 says, “God created the heaven and the earth”. The word ‘created’ is given in the singular. The word ‘heaven’ or ‘heavens’ is dual in Hebrew, meaning that it can be singular, dual or plural. In essence, there are three heavens; namely, the first heaven is the Atmospheric heaven, also referred to as the ‘firmament’ or the ‘expanse’; the space in
which the birds of the air fly and clouds float. The second heaven is the Stellar heavens in which God had placed the celestial bodies such as the sun, the moon and the stars. The third heaven is God’s abode, a heaven NOT created. Again, we have that principle, two heavens visible and one invisible.
One of the things that has staggered the imagination of man and provoked the curiosity of mankind since time immemorial was the Stellar heavens. Man’s inquisitive mind and his insatiable quest to probe into the unknown have never ceased. Man was and still is determined to discover or unveil what lies beyond the unknown. It is the kind of fascination that has inspired intrigue and curiosity since the dawn of civilisation.
Attempts have been made for centuries to categorize and catalogue stars, galaxies, and planets.
The invention of Galileo’s celestial telescope in the 17th century. century discovered countless millions of stars, scattered throughout space. Since then, astronomers have made some incredible and illuminating discoveries that have silenced critics, cynics and sceptics who refused to acknowledge the Creator-God.
OBSERVING AND GLORIFYING
In the 1920’s the Hubble Space Telescope and in recent times the Spitzer Space Telescope were able to look into a distance of several billion light-years. These telescopes have provided some invaluable information regarding the universe.
Then we have the SALT (Southern African Large Telescope) in Sutherland, a small town in the Northern Cape Province, positioned at the South African Astronomical Observatory. It is the largest, single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. Astrophysicists, scientists and cosmologists have made some staggering calculations just by studying the galaxies.
Recently, (in a sneak peek), NASA was able to make available some images taken from the James Webb Space Telescope, showing the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. It is the largest infrared optical telescope in space and can look at a distance of 13,1 billion light years.
This is the largest telescope that has ever been placed in space, and it is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope. Its mission is to look back in time, and astronomers believe the results will ‘fundamentally alter our perception or understanding’ of God’s mighty universe. It is designed to answer outstanding questions and further deepen the world’s knowledge of our universe, and make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy.
There are billions of stars and constellations in each galaxy, and there are an estimated 200 billion galaxies. The prophet Jeremiah said, “The host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea be measured” (Jer. 33:22). It was this analogy that God used when describing to Abraham his posterity, that in blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is upon the seashore” (Gen. 22:17).
Hebrews 11:3 reads, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed (prepared) by the word of God”. In the gospel of John 1:3 we read, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made”. Then in Revelation 4:11, we read, “For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created”. By the word of His mouth, God spoke the universe into existence, and He upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3). G&P
(To be continued)
