Star Fields and Space Talk about atomic power and fantastic force, friends, nothing equals the blazing furnace of the sun which soars above us every day. It is impossible to comprehend the vastness of this power plant which constantly radiates heat, light and power. In one second that sun puts out more energy than the whole human race has consumed throughout its entire history—so says Fred Hoyle in his book on astronomy. Of course, our planet only gets the benefit of two-billionth part of the sun’s heat coming down through the atmosphere. For this we should be thankful—even while we shiver through the December snows. It is estimated that if the sun were covered with ice 50 feet thick, this frozen shell would be melted in just 60 seconds. Where such a terrific, sustained heat comes from is a mystery to even the scientific mind. To accumulate such a mass in the first place is colossal. To kindle a fire to heat such a mass is more so. And to conceive how such a heat is maintained throughout the centuries is completely beyond the range of human understanding. Those great flames leaping from the sun are mighty scarlet tongues of fire resulting from hydrogen explosions. They blaze and flare as far as 500,000 miles into space. Yes, what we see taking place on the sun is now known to be a mercifully distant counterpart of the man-made hydrogen bomb. Is it any wonder that Jeremiah breathes words of thanksgiving in Lamentations 3:22: “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed....They are new every morning: Great is thy faithfulness.” You see, if this earth came any nearer to the sun, we would all burn up. If we were any farther away, we would freeze to death. The Psalmist had something interesting to say about the sun in Psalms 19:1-3: “Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun.” In other words, there is a place in the heavens where God has put the sun. “Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” You know, scientists made fun of that statement for a long time. They said, “Look at the Bible. It is supposed to be true; it is supposed to be scientific and it says the sun travels.” They said that the earth traveled but the sun was stationary. But now scientists have found out that David was right and scientists were wrong. It has been only in the last 150 years that they have found that the sun is traveling at the rate of 33 1/2 million miles a year. Now don’t be excited about that for if the sun traveling at that terrific speed, headed right for the nearest star, it would take it 180,000 years to reach it. The sun is shining on this small world 93 million miles away, and giving it a steady flow of heat equal to two trillion horsepower in the form of sunlight. Yet for every single horsepower of energy that is striking our world, two billion such units are missing this planet as they go forth in all directions, to all quarters of the universe. So the total amount of energy given off is two billion times two trillion, or four sextillion, horsepower. It is now known that the amount of heat this world alone receives in the form of sunlight is as great as could be developed by burning 300,000 tons of coal every minute. And to develop the amount of heat the sun is giving off in all directions in that minute of time, two billion times 300,000, or six hundred trillion, tons of coal would have to be consumed. It is hard for us to realize the distance of the space in the heavens. It is 240,000 miles to the moon and 93 million miles to the sun. Let us imagine that the sun were hollowed out and place our earth inside the sun, and then the moon could revolve around the earth at a distance of 240,000 miles, without touching the rim of the sun. You could put two sets of earth and moon inside the sun and they would not interfere with each other. Such is the immense magnitude of our own sun. It has a diameter 100 times that of earth. There are many scientific statements found in the book of Job. Job was one of the earliest Bible writers, even though the book of Job is nearly in the center of our Bible, yet it was one of the first books. I think of this statement in Job 38: 31, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” Think of it! Pleiades is one of the remarkable things in the heavens. We just look up and say, “There are the seven sisters,” little realizing the magnitude of that constellation of the Pleiades. Way back there, God said, “Job, can you guide all those—that great mass of stars?” Yet God guides them, such a mass of them, and not one jams into the other. Job, in his faraway day, could not possibly have understood the significance of these questions. Photographs now reveal that there are 250 stars in the Pleiades, all drifting through space in a common direction, bound together and flying like a flock of birds toward a distant goal. And God asked Job if he could bind them together, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?” This earth and sun is bad enough, but look up there, could you operate it all without bumping them into each other? There is that mass of stars all moving together in the same direction in the heavens and at the same time all revolving around each other. In this same verse He says, “Or loose the bands of Orion?” Would it be possible for man to say, “Now, God, you let go of Orion and I’ll take care of it for the time being.” One of those stars in Orion, called Betelguese, is one of the largest stars in the heavens. Now remember, as far as our sun is concerned, you could put two of our earth and moon systems in the sun and they would move about and never touch each other, or the edges of the sun, but how large is Betelguese, just one star of Orion? It is 43 million times the size of our sun. No wonder God said, way back there when He was trying to question Job and show him the power of God, “Could you operate Orion one night and keep it traveling on in its course?” As if that were not bad enough, Betelguese is hurling itself through space at the rate of 376 miles a second. “Could you keep them going, Job?” By the way, in comparison to our earth and its 6 foot man, how tall do you think man would have to grow to become proportionate to the size of Betelguese? He would be 37 1/2 miles tall. He would stand higher than most planes have ever flown. His forefinger would be 11,000 feet long. The iris of his eyes would be 530 feet wide. And he could easily make himself heard, for in speaking he could open a mouth 8,250 feet wide! Now please don’t tell anyone that I said there are people living on Betelguese who are 37 1/2 miles tall. What I am attempting to do is merely illustrate what a giant world it is in comparison to the figures and the sizes which we understand. And remember, Betelguese is only one of the stars looking down at us through the constellation of Orion—just one of the billions of stars in the island universe of which we are a part. The vast majesty of it all staggers the human mind. Looking out into God’s limitless universe we are bewildered, we are dazed, we are overwhelmed with what we see. Even a glimpse into the shining, speeding distance spotlights the utter littleness of man. Job is queried again in Job 38:32, “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?” That great sun, shining in the heavens, and the suns around it—could you guide them? If you say there is no God in the heavens, then you take over just Arcturus and see if you could just guide that. Arcturus is traveling 25 times as fast as our sun. Suppose we’d say that we would like to trade off our sun and get Arcturus—you know that is the common thing to do today, when you get tired of one thing, trade it in and get a different one. Arcturus is so great that if God put it in the place of our sun, here in our solar system made up of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, etc., Mercury would be buried 2 1/2 million miles under Arcturus. The body of Arcturus is so great that it would take all the place of our sun and then would bury the nearest planet 2 1/2 million miles under its coat. Our system, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, etc., if you measure clear across there, it is over 7,000 million miles in diameter. That is the distance that the planets travel, 7,340 million miles. You say that is a terrible distance. I can’t imagine that far. All right—if you would go to the nearest star, how far do you think you would have to travel? 25 billion miles—that far to the nearest star! Our system is so great that it is 7,000 million miles across. But to the nearest star it is 25 billion miles! The stars are suns. We are on a planet, not a sun, not a star. Our planets make up our sun’s family and the distance across the family of our sun is 7,000 million miles, and the nearest star is 25 billion miles. It would take you 300,000 years to count that much, counting as fast as you could for that time. If you would take all the cotton that has ever been sewn in the world it would not reach to the nearest star. It takes light, going at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, 4 1/2 years to reach here. Let’s say that a man stands here with a flashlight and it will take that light from that flashlight 4 1/2 years to reach the nearest star, yet it could go around the earth 7 times in just one second. You go out and look at the Pole star, that beautiful North Star that has meant so much to mariners as they have guided their ships at sea by its light. How long do you think that it takes the light from that star to come here to our earth? 45 years! We look at it and say the North Star is quite bright tonight, but that light that we see tonight started from the North Star 45 years ago. The North Star could go out tonight and we would not know it for 45 years. But how far away is the farthest corner of the universe known to man? That has been measured by astronomical photographs and the farthest point man has been able to photograph is one billion light years away. Now I want to explain that to you just a moment. Here is light; it travels at 186,000 miles every second. When it has been traveling that fast for one year, that is a light-year. Then that farthest point known to man in God’s universe is one billion light years away. Oh, friends, when I see some of these things, I say, “How small is man. How insignificant is man in comparison to the other things God has made.” If you started out walking to that place, and we’ll say you could take one stride as far as from here to the sun—each step would be 93 million miles long—it would take 25,000 billion strides to reach the other side of God’s universe, as far as man is concerned. But after you had gone there and taken 25,000 billion strides, then God would say that you have just started, that is just the bare beginning. It is like when you are out on the seashore and you say, “I have seen the Pacific ocean.” You have just seen a tiny glimpse of it. Do you know that there is no end to God’s universe? I know that is incomprehensible and I don’t want to get you thinking about it, but when you have walked that far, it is just a start on a morningwalk—it is unfathomable. That is what David says, Psalms 147:4,5, “He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names, Great is our Lord, and of great power; His understanding is infinite.” I ask you, friends, can mortal man comprehend the magnitude of it all? No, we can’t begin to think of such space. The infinity of space is much like the infinite book of truth and wisdom that we have from God—the Bible. There are continual revelations and thrills brought to view when you start studying it. It talks about the things which are current and relevant, and it is inexhaustible, just like space.