Our Awesome Universe - Church of God - NEO

26"In the Beginning • . . "Harlow Shapley, brilliant astronomer, takinga scientific poke at the Bible once wrote:"In the beginning was the Word, it has beenpiously recorded, and I might venture that modernastrophysics suggests that the WORD WAS HY­DROGEN GAS."In the very beginning, we say, were hydrogenatoms; of course there must have been somethingantecedent, but we are not wise enough to knowthat."Whence came these atoms of hydrogen ...what preceded their appearance, if anything?"That is perhaps a question for metaphysics.The origin of origins is BEYOND astronomy. It isperhaps beyond philosophy, in the realm of theto us Unknowable." (View From A Distant Star,Harlow Shapley, page 47.)Hmmmm?Hydrogen gas already WAS in the "very beginning?"Well, if hydrogen gas already was, then itwasn't the "very" beginning - was it?WHERE DID HYDROGEN come from?Harlow Shapley says we are not wise enoughto know; that it's beyond astronomy! Exactly!What God RevealsThat's why GOD reveals very plainly andquickly in Genesis 1: 1, "In the BEGINNING, Godcreated the heavens and the earth." We humans,no matter how brilliant, cannot know. We weren'tthere. The beginning occurred BEFORE the knownlaws of physics that govern the entire universewere in existence; before matter and energy werehere; before time and space had been created!The knowledge of beginnings depends onREVELATION. And God gives us as much knowledgeas we can understand. Being human, we are limitedto thinking in terms of the PHYSICAL universe. "Beforethe universe existed" is BEYOND the point ofour understanding. That's why God merely tells usHe created it at some distant time.But scientists REFUSE to acknowledge, as awhole, that there was a Greator God. They remainintent on trying to explain EVERYTHING on existingphysical laws.But how do you use something which was notin existence to explain something else coming intoexistence?What Hydrogen ProvesAnd of course, the existence of hydrogen in theuniverse, proves it had a starting time - otherwisethere would be NO hydrogen left in the universe.Yet, of all elements it is most abundant.One scientist asks:"How did hydrogen itself come into being?We cannot BEG THE QUESTION by supposing that ithas always existed."Hydrogen is steadily being converted intoother elements by processes that seem irreversible.In spite of this, hydrogen is still the MOSTABUNDANT element in the universe."We must, therefore, suppose that it has aFINITE age, for if it had existed for an infinite time,it should all have been used up by now." (The NewAstronomy, pages 148-149, a Scientific Americanbook.)Astronomers admit that we CANNOT reachback and explain beginnings - even on the basisof man-made theories.Another astronomer makes this scientificconfession:"What happened before the expansion started?Our model does not tell us ... Einstein's equationsbreak down altogether ..."It is for this reason that some people refer tothe start of the expansion as the creation of theuniverse. In some UNKNOWN WAY, it is argued, thematter of the universe was created at this moment... we need. not try to trace history back beforethis event, because the universe, and indeed, timeitself, did not then exist." (The Mystery of theExpanding Universe, William Bonner, pages 111,112.)Yes, indeed!How can you trace something to its "beginnings"when those beginnings occurred BEFORE orat the time when matter and laws you are dealingwith were in existence.There is a way, of course, that we can knowwhere matter came from and why it is here. Butthe answer depends on you accepting a source ofauthority that most scientists have decidedwithoutinvestigation - has no authority.The Oscillating TheoryAstronomers have tried to avoid the obviousproblem of the "Big Bang" theory. That is, WHEREdid the matter originally come from?Proponents of the "oscillating theory" - whichis merely a sophisticated "Big Bang" theoryclaimthat the universe has existed for an INFINITElength of time. The idea is that the present universalexpansion is merely ONE PHASE of theuniverse's motion.