Christ's Busiest Week: Part 3

Allen Webster

Topic(s): Evidences, God, Jesus, Science

Links to this entire series:

• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 1
• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 2
• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 3
• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 4

God has two sorts of “books.” They are the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture—“The World Book and the Word Book.”

Moon

The Moon is mentioned 62 times in the Bible. This egg-shaped satellite constantly orbits the earth. The Moon is about 238,900 miles from Earth on average (at its closest, 221,460 miles; farthest approach, 252,700 miles). Traveling by car, it would take you 130 days to reach the Moon. Traveling by rocket, it would take 13 hours; traveling by light speed, it would take 1.52 seconds¹. Driving around the diameter of the Moon (2,140 miles) by car would take four days.

• The Moon revolves around Earth in about one month (27 days 8 hours). It rotates around its own axis in the same amount of time. Said another way, the Moon’s rotation period is synchronous with its revolution period around Earth. Thus the same side of the moon always faces Earth.
• The Moon has almost no atmosphere because of its weak gravity. Without an atmosphere, there is no wind or water erosion. Therefore, the Moon’s surface is always the same, unless a meteorite hits it. The astronauts’ footprints, for instance, have remained unchanged on the Moon’s surface since 1969.
• The Moon’s gravitational force is only 17 percent of the Earth’s gravity. Therefore, a 150-pound person on earth would weigh only 25 pounds on the Moon; a 250-pound person would weigh only 42 pounds.
• Since sound waves travel through air, the Moon is silent; there can be no sound transmission on the Moon.
• The surface of the Moon is scarred by millions of craters, caused by asteroids, comets, and meteorites. The Moon has no atmosphere to burn up these objects before they hit the surface. There is no erosion and little geologic activity to wear away these craters, so they remain unchanged until another new impact.
• From earth we view the Moon from different angles at different times, enabling us to see about 59 percent of the Moon’s surface, even though the same side always faces us.²

Stars

Stars are mentioned 66 times in Scripture. During the French revolution, Jean Bon St. Andre, the Vendean revolutionist, said to a peasant, “I will have all your steeples pulled down, that you may no longer have any object by which you may be reminded of your old superstitions.”

“But, you cannot help leaving us the stars,” replied the peasant.³

The galaxy to which the Sun belongs, the Milky Way, contains hundreds of billions of stars.

How many stars are there in the Milky Way? William Keel gives a standard answer in his introductory astronomy classes: “About as many as the number of hamburgers sold by McDonald’s.”⁴ Being more precise requires an extrapolation and ends up with an estimate of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. Scientists estimate the number of stars in the universe at roughly the number of all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches (1021: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).

And yet, God “telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names” (Psalm 147:4). Truly, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained . . . O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:3–9). “Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light” (Psalm 148:3).

“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:41). The Sun was more splendid than the Moon, and one star can be more beautiful than another. The heavenly bodies have long been thought to vary in color and beauty. The Orientals employed colors to denote the seven great heavenly bodies: Saturn, black; Jupiter, orange; Mars, scarlet; Sun, gold; Mercury, blue; Moon, green or silver; and Venus, white.⁵

Day 5: Jesus made the fish and fowls (Genesis 1:20–23)

There is unending variety started on Day 5: bass, catfish, crappie, salmon, piranha, bream, walleye, tuna, blue marlin, lungfish, spike fish, and shark. In fact, over 25,000 species of fish have been identified, and scientists estimate that there may still be 15,000 fish species not yet classified. There are more species of fish than all the species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals combined. Consider some other interesting facts about Christ’s Day 5 creations:

• Forty percent of all fish species inhabit fresh water, yet less than .01% of the earth’s water is fresh water.
• Some species of fish can fly (glide), others can skip along the surface, and others can even climb rock.
• Fish have a specialized sense organ called the lateral line which works much like radar and helps them navigate in dark or murky water.
• The largest fish is the great whale shark which can reach fifty feet in length.
• The smallest fish is the Philippine goby that is less than 1/3 of an inch when fully grown.
• The spotted climbing perch is able to absorb oxygen from the air and will crawl overland using its strong pectoral fins.⁶

Air animals also comprise some of Jesus’ greatest creations. How poor we would be without eagles, hawks, blackbirds, doves, owls, finches, sparrows, swallows, kingfishers, ducks, ravens, pigeons, and yellowhammers! “The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:8–9).

Endnotes:

¹http://www.moonphases.info/.
²Facts are adapted from http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/moon/.
³John Bate’s, Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious Truths, 1865.
⁴keel@bildad.astr.ua.edu.
⁵Vincent’s Word Studies
⁶http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1791&articleid=586.