| Highlights of Dawn | July 1969 |
Man’s Place in the Universe
“When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou has ordained; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him? For Thou has made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the work of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet.” —Psalm 8:3-6
IN JULY the Space Agency of the United States Government will undertake to land two men on the moon and, after a period of exploration, return them to earth again. At Christmas time last year, and again in May, three men circled the moon in a space ship and returned safely to earth, but the July effort will go a step further and attempt a landing. The interest of the world will be centered on this undertaking, and millions will be hoping and praying that the mission will be accomplished successfully, and without harmful incidents to the astronauts.
The efforts of the United States and of Russia to land men on the moon raise a number of interesting questions, one of which is whether or not there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe other than on our planet Earth. It was not expected that life would be found on the moon, but what about Mars and Venus and millions of other places? It has already been discovered that there is some moisture on Mars. Does this mean that there is life there, and if so, what kind of life?
The Bible shows that there is intelligent life in the universe other than human. Our text declares that God created man “a little lower than the angels.” This means that there are angelic beings based somewhere in the universe, and that these are of a higher order than man. Logic alone would tell us that man could not be the most intelligent and powerful being in existence. Man can reach the moon by designing machines which will perform in keeping with certain laws of gravitation and electrical impulses. But who created those laws?
The laws which govern the universe are so perfect, and control the spinning earth and moon so accurately, that astronauts can be blasted off from the earth at a certain second and know within a few yards the spot on the moon on which they will land. These laws, and many others that are used by man, but not understood, indicate that somewhere there must be higher life that is responsible for those things which so amaze the human mind; and that life is the Creator’s.
The Moon So Near
According to human standards the moon is a very great distance from the earth—about eleven times the circumference of the earth. But this is a very short distance indeed among the heavenly bodies! A revealing quotation from the book, “Creation’s Amazing Architect,” will be appropriate here:
“Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. To reach the earth from the moon, which is our nearest heavenly neighbor, light takes 1¼ seconds; from the sun it takes 8 minutes. To go outside our planetary system it takes 4 hours. To come from the earth’s nearest star-neighbor it would need to travel nonstop for four years. To come from the nebulae of Andromeda it would take 800,000 years.
“At Palomar, California, the latest telescope, for instance, has been able to photograph some distant spheres, the light of which would not reach the earth for 2,000 million years. If one of these distant suns were to explode at the moment it was being photographed from the earth, the explosion could not be seen for another 2,000 million years.”
This means that some of the distant spheres are so far away that when traveling 186 thousand miles a second, it would require 2,000 million years to make the trip. When we think of it in this way we realize that man has not gone very far in his personal exploration of the universe, even if he is about to land on the moon. To contemplate the immensity of the universe should help us all to remain exceedingly humble before our Creator, realizing how puny and unaccomplished we really are.
Thinking along this line helps us to grasp more clearly what David had in mind when he wrote, “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” (Ps. 8:3,4) The Hebrew word here translated “ordained” means “to be erect, or stand.” Applied to the moon and stars the thought would seem to be to keep their places in the immense galaxies of heavenly bodies. They are held in their orbits by divine appointment and power, and this is equally marvelous with the fact of their creation.
How does the Creator hold the moon and the stars “erect”? The same way he keeps the earth in place. Job wrote concerning the Creator, “He … hangeth the earth upon nothing.” (Job 26:7) Actually, of course, the billions of heavenly bodies which comprise the universe are not hung “upon nothing.” It only appears this way to our human eyes because the mighty power which keeps them so accurately in orbit is invisible to us.
Last December when the three astronauts circled the moon they transmitted to the earth-people a reading of part of the first chapter of Genesis which tells of the original creation of the universe, and of the preparation of the earth for human habitation, although they did not read on to verses 16-18 which speak of the sun and moon, which, as the record states, God “made” to rule the day and the night. These verses are interesting. They read:
“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. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.”
While the Hebrew word here translated “made” is used in certain texts of the Bible to convey the idea of “create,” it has a much wider meaning and usage than this. Here the thought of making “two great lights” is that he appointed the sun and the moon to rule the day and the night. The quotation says that he “set” them in the firmament.
The same Hebrew word is rendered “appointed” in Psalm 104:19. Here the psalmist informs us that “God appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.” Thus we have the Bible’s own interpretation of God’s work on the fourth creative day; that it was not a matter of creating the sun and the moon at that time, but of appointing them to “rule over the day and over the night.” and also that they might be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”
The sun and the moon and the earth were created at the time described in Genesis 1:1, which reads, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This “beginning” predates the six epochs of time which the Bible refers to as “days,” during which the earth, as we have noted, was being prepared for human habitation. At the beginning of that first epoch “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” It was then that God’s voice of authority said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” This was evidently the light of the sun which dimly penetrated the “swaddling band” of darkness that surrounded the earth at that time. While the light of the sun came through to the earth sufficiently to make a difference between day and night, it did not “rule.” It is doubtful if the moon was then visible at all.
It was in the fourth creative epoch that the sun and the moon became the rulers, so to speak, of the earth so far as days and nights and seasons were concerned. Prior to this, although the veiled light of the sun was sufficiently powerful to make the growth of certain vegetable life possible, the huge trees that were then deposited to form our coal beds do not show any “rings” to denote the years of their growth, as growing trees afterward did, and still do.
Earth, Man’s Home
With man now beginning to journey to the moon, and considering similar voyages to Mars and Venus, many are wondering if humans are at long last to free themselves from their earthly surroundings, and inhabit other parts of the universe. The answer of reason to this question would be no. Man is not adapted to atmospheric and other conditions which exist elsewhere in the universe. He has to be dressed in a special space suit to live even an hour or so on the moon. Regardless of where man’s exploits may take him, he was created to live on the earth.
The crowning feature of God’s earthly creation was man. Creation’s Architect designed the earth and all its appointments for man. Genesis 1:26-28 reads, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish [fill] the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth [creepeth] upon the earth.”
Isaiah 45:18 confirms the fact that man was created to live on the earth, and that the earth was designed to be his eternal home. We quote: “Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.”
In view of the fact that all mankind is dying, the assurance that God created the earth “not in vain” might appear to be subject to question. God had made every provision in Eden for man to live forever. He was provided with every kind of food necessary to continue living, and he was told to multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it; that is, to make all the earth like that one garden spot which God provided for him. We can visualize that this arrangement would eventually result in the earth’s being filled with a perfect and happy human family, free from sickness, pain, and death.
But man was given a law, divine law, disobedience to which would lead to death. He disobeyed the law, and the death penalty fell upon him, with the result that until now man has been a dying creature. However, this does not mean that the creation of the earth to be man’s home was “in vain,” for God provided redemption from sin and death through his beloved Son, Christ. Jesus, who, as Paul wrote, gave himself “a ransom for all.”—I Tim. 2:3-5
What this means is that in God’s due time the condition of the human family on earth will be the same as though sin had not entered to mar the happiness of God’s earthly creatures whom he made in his own image—they are to be restored to life. Thus Paul wrote, “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Cor. 15:21,22) This work of restoring the human race to life on the earth will be accomplished during the thousand years of Christ’s kingdom. It will be then that Christ, as the “second” Adam, will regenerate the dead and dying race of the first Adam.—I Cor. 15:45,47; Matt. 19:28
In Hebrews 2:7-9 the Apostle Paul quotes David’s words in Psalm 8:3-6 concerning man’s being given dominion over the earth, and adds, “But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and. honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” Here is another assurance that God’s original purpose in the creation of man is yet to be accomplished; for Jesus (who, like Adam, was in the image of God, and crowned with earthly glory and honor) became a substitute in death for Adam and his race. He took the sinner’s place in. death, and thus provided for man’s release from death.
This release from death will be accomplished during that period described by the Apostle Peter as “times of restitution of all things,” and Peter added that this blessed future time of restoration to life and health was foretold by all God’s holy prophets since the world began. It is concerning this blessed time that the prophets spoke in their references to blind eyes being opened, and deaf ears being unstopped. It is then that “the lame man shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.”—Isa., ch. 35
And what a wonderful home the earth will be for man when all the problems stemming from disobedience to divine law will be solved—solved, that is, by divine wisdom, and through the agencies of Christ’s kingdom! One of the great lessons man will have learned from his horrendous experiences is that disobedience to divine law must inevitably lead to suffering and death. And throughout the kingdom age humans will learn that obedience leads to peace, joy, health, and life. Let the astronauts go to the moon now, if they wish, but eventually all mankind will learn that their true place of happiness is right here on the earth, where there will be pleasures forevermore.