This transcript is taken from a program originally airing on Oct. 27, 2022. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition already of Stand in the Gap Today and our monthly focus on apologetics and biblical worldview, which almost always do with some guest from Answers in Genesis. Now, on this program focus we consider oftentimes key scientific or archeological or moral events of the day and how and when, properly reviewed, will always bring us right back exactly where we need to be, and that’s focused on God as creator, as outlined in Genesis Chapter 1. That’s really where a biblical worldview begins, in the beginning.
Now, as I sat down this morning to put this program into final preparation, I was moved at how this world, as you all are seeing, is cascading it seems into perplexity and confusion and lawlessness, with the tempo and the crescendo of events increasing by the day, and from imminent full-blown war, which we see out there, it’s what some are trying to make happen, to looming food shortages or skyrocketing inflation and high prices. And then this morning, confirmed now publicly, only a couple of weeks left of diesel fuel to run our trucks and trains. And I was going to say an intentionally depleted national emergency oil reserve, to now down only 17 days’ worth of supply.
Even Saudi Arabia chastising Joe Biden for this dangerous manipulation of prices and intentional strategy to reduce energy reserves, according to Saudi bin Salman, designed to maintain some stability in times of instability. That’s why the reserve were put aside. But he’s saying, “All right, Biden is destroying this.” I find it all remarkable. Yet, in these times I’m reminded, in scripture in various places like Luke 21, Jesus warned there of “a time when men’s hearts would fail for fear for the things coming on the Earth and would be perplexed,” are the words that Jesus said. “But in such times,” He said, “we need to respond very specifically.”
As He said in Luke 21:28, “And when these things begin to come to pass,” include some of the things I just mentioned, “then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” Now, while this verse speaks directly to the believers alive during the tribulation period, it can apply to us today in our lives, which is likely right prior to the days of tribulation, because we can see things that Jesus spoke about, as He said, “beginning to come to pass.” And they’re directed by God. They look more like the indicators of the times of prophecy Jesus spoke about than perhaps any other time in the history of mankind.
So that’s a big picture perspective. I was trying to deal with all of that in putting together the program. But in the context of looking up, that’s what caught my attention, look up. Look up to heaven, I felt would be appropriate to do on the program today, not just because of our times, but since Genesis 1:14-19, at that point, when God created the sun, the moon, and the stars, and then later talked about the heavens declaring the glory of God and shouting forth His praise for us to look up to, I thought today’s emphasis will be on certain current events in light of God’s creation and the incredible witness given to mankind by the sun, the moon, the stars, and the heavens above. My title for today’s program is this: The Heavens Declare the Glory of God, Not the Glory of Man. And you’ll see how that fits as we get into it.
Now I’m glad to invite to the program today for the first time Rob Webb from Answers in Genesis. Rob holds an MS, Masters in Science, in aerospace engineering with a concentration in astrodynamics and satellite navigation from the University of Colorado. He’s worked for over 10 years for NASA, focusing much of the time on the guidance, navigation, and control department for several different interplanetary programs. And he’s now a writer, speaker, and co-host of Answers News, which is a function of Answers in Genesis. And with that, Rob, thank you for being a part of the program here.
Rob Webb:
Yes, thank you for having me.
Sam Rohrer:
Rob, there’s a lot of things we want to cover, and this’ll be different. It’s not the kind of headline news we see about, but it is really heavenly news as we talk about things we’re going to share about what we see up in the sky. But I’d like for just a minute for our audience just to get to know a little bit about you, why you, as a former NSA rocket scientist, as an example, would leave NASA and go to work for Answers in Genesis. Put this together if you would. Why did you decide to pursue an aerospace engineering degree and went to NASA? And then identify something that you learned that was most significant.
Rob Webb:
Yes, I’ve always been interested in rockets my whole life. I’ve always been interested in the engineering science side of things. And I actually didn’t come to the faith in Christ until about 2012, which is about a year after I joined the industry. So I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, Bachelor in Science of aerospace engineering from Embry-Riddle in 2011. Immediately started working after that. My first job was with the NASA Glenn Research Center, and then I ended up getting saved a year later in 2012, which also was a year after I got married. 2011 was a pretty wild year for me, because I had just got my bachelor’s degree, just got my first job and then also just got married to my wife. And right around that same time in 2012 I got saved.
And then actually I have three little ones right now. I have a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old, so that takes up most of my time nowadays, trying to train them in the admonition in the ways of the Lord. But yeah, I’ve always just been interested in physics and science and that sort of thing. And when I became a Christian in 2012, I remember that was one of the things I always wrestled with, was how do I jive together what I read in Genesis with some of the science, some of the cosmology I’ve learned about in my college classes and everything like that? I ended up getting my master’s degree in 2014, and right around that same time I ended up becoming more of a young Earth creationist. I actually started off in more of the older kind of camp there, the theistic evolution kind of camp there.
Then I slowly started coming around, just started researching different questions from Answers in Genesis, ICR, the Institute of Creation Research, and then that sort of led me down the path of really answering my questions, how to defend my faith and how to make sense of the observable acts we see in the universe with scripture. That gives you a high level, ballpark overview of my story, my experience over the last decade or so.
In terms of that prompting to go from NASA to Answers in Genesis as well, I would say it just came down to Matthew 9:37, that Bible verse that I think most people are familiar with, when Jesus is talking to his disciples and says, “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.” So it really just came down to the fact of our time here on Earth is short. I need to be, make sure that I’m spending the most best time, the most efficient way to actually spend my life. It just came down to, do I want to continue doing this or do I want to instead go towards this ministry route? I’ve always wanted to be involved with ministry, and around that same time last year. I’ve been with Answers in Genesis since last November, so coming up on a year now.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, and let’s hold it right there. We got you over to Answers in Genesis, Rob. Thanks for that input, great insight. And ladies and gentlemen, a lot of things probably you can identify with that. When we come back.
I’m going to continue with Rob and we’re going to go to a headline news, something that’s out there. You may see there’s a big telescope, James Webb Telescope. We’re going to talk about what prompted that and what they’re finding out. It’s pretty amazing.
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Sam Rohrer:
Well, my guest today is Rob Webb. He holds a masters in science and aerospace engineering, and he was with NASA and he’s now with Answers in Genesis. The theme we’ve chosen for today is The Heavens Declare the Glory of God, Not the Glory of Man. Since the earliest days of human civilization, mankind has always been intrigued by looking to the stars. Due to the amazing arrangement of the sun and the moon and the stars and the galaxies above and the absolute precision of their movements, time can be tracked.
Mariners from all times throughout history were able and are able to accurately plot their courses across the oceans. Calendars can be established, eclipses predicted or determined with full accuracy. And for instance, on today’s date, 6,000 years ago, can tell because of the precision of what God has placed up there, actually what phase the moon was in this day 6,000 years ago. And because of the remarkable precision of the celestial orbits, we can know the alignment of the stars above Bethlehem when Jesus was born and the phase of the moon and the sun on the crucifixion day when Christ was in Jerusalem. It’s remarkable.
Okay, Rob. In our days there seems to be an increasing interest in some respects to explore the heavens. Massive telescopes like the James Webb Telescope is discovering facts never known before. Observatories we know have sat on top of mountains for a long time, intercepting, looking for signals and sounds from all over the universe. Our skies are now filled with satellites seeking to collect and to disseminate, to further information. And I’d like for you to share just a bit, since your whole training is to look up to the stars, tell us a little bit about this James Webb Telescope that some of our listeners may have heard about. Many may not. But there’s information being found as a result, but there’s also some controversy. So what is this telescope? What is its purpose?
Rob Webb:
Yeah, for those that don’t know, this is called the James Webb Space Telescope. It was named after a NASA administrator during the golden age of NASA is what they call it, back during the Apollo program days. Essentially this is a huge, I think it’s like a tennis court size telescope. It was like $10 billion in the making. It was just launched last December or last Christmas on an Ariane 5 rocket. Right now it’s orbiting the sun. I think it’s like 940,000 miles away at what’s called one of the Lagrange points out there, so it’s a very stable orbit for it to be able to look out at the expanse.
Some consider it basically the replacement for the Hubble Telescope. Probably most people are probably familiar with that telescope. But it’s probably not the most accurate to say, because there are fundamental differences between the Hubble and the James Webb. Essentially what makes it different is that James Webb will detect lights in what’s called the visible spectrum of the infrared. If you think about the spectrum of light, got your radio waves, your microwaves, your infrared, visible, ultraviolet, and so on, essentially it’s that red part of the spectrum that they’re trying to look at.
The reason for that is because the light from these very super distant galaxies are what’s called redshifted. That’s basically just another fancy term talking about the expansion of the universe. The universe is expanding around us, and because of that, there’s a red shift on the light from these galaxies. In order to be able to see these galaxies far away, they have to look in that infrared spectrum. They started taking observations, measurements over the summer, right around that July timeframe, and some of the results they’ve been seeing are just absolutely fascinating and really just give glory to God in all of it.
Sam Rohrer:
Before you get into that, because I want to know, I think our listeners are saying, “Wow, what have they found?” and I think that’s the key point, but can you just share briefly, was there a primary purpose that they launched this telescope? Were they looking for something specific, or was it just a general observation platform that happened to be way up?
Rob Webb:
Yeah. Yeah. The main driving force with a lot of the different NASA programs, it’s what’s called the naturalistic evolutionary worldview. They start with an origin story that doesn’t start with God. So they reject God in their knowledge and they try to come up with an origin for us in a universe without God. They typically come up with things like the Big Bang. I think most people have heard of the Big Bang idea out there. I don’t call it a theory, I call it basically an idea, a story, because there’s no evidence for it. Essentially what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to look at these stars and galaxies super far away, and they believe that they’re taking baby pictures of the universe essentially when they’re looking 13 billion light years away. And by the way, a light year is a unit of distance, not time. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion comes with a lot of people as well.
They’re looking at these galaxies far away, and they’re assuming that they’re seeing the universe as it was shortly after the Big Bang and try to confirm a lot of their theories on the formation of stars and how the Big Bang came about. Different things called the cosmic microwave background is another big one, big term that they throw out there. Another thing called inflation. Essentially, after the moment of the Big Bang, when you have that singularity where all time, space, matter exploded into existence, they had this time called inflation, where everything was moving faster than the speed of light and rapidly expanded around us. Basically, they’re trying to find evidence of that to back up their story here. And that’s why they’re so adamant.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, see and that’s interesting, because you didn’t quite say it, but you did say it. In essence, much of the exploration of space and all goes to the heart of what you’re saying, proving the naturalistic version of how we got here. I’m going to put it in my perspective. It’s actually an attempt to disprove that God was creator, to prove that somehow this whole thing came about without God, which obviously it goes right to the heart of part of your move from NASA to Answers in Genesis that I find interesting.
But let’s go back into that. What are they finding now as they’re out there on this platform, you say circling the sun and looking in the red spectrum throughout the universe? What are they finding that is either confirming what they were hoping to find or perhaps disproving what they were hoping not to find?
Rob Webb:
Yeah, that’s basically the surprising thing for a lot of these astronomers. It’s actually something here in the creation research community here, this is something we’ve been expecting. From the biblical worldview, everything that the James Webb is seeing is expected with our model. Essentially what they’re finding is they’re finding galaxies that are fully formed. These galaxies that are really highly redshifted, typically they use the letter Z to show how highly redshifted something is. Whenever you see z13, z14, that means it’s a really, really far away galaxy that’s away from us. And based on the Big Bang model, the secularists, basically past the z13, z14 mark, they shouldn’t expect to find any galaxies at all.
But what we’re seeing is past that mark, we’re actually seeing not only galaxies but fully formed galaxies that are spiral type galaxies that are in the shape of a disc, not in the process of assembly like they were expecting to find. So that’s a big one. And the other one that they’re finding is they’re finding a lot of these heavy elements in these galaxies. When I say heavy elements, think like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, those kind of elements, whereas they would expect to find maybe traces of hydrogen, helium, maybe a little bit of lithium, and that’s about it. So basically everything that they’re seeing, they’re puzzled over it. The evidence is completely just screaming that there was a creator, that these galaxies, like it says in Genesis 1, God spoke these galaxies into existence on day four. And everything we’re seeing with the James Webb is essentially confirming what we’re seeing in scripture.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. And let me follow up on that. We have two minutes left or so in this segment. At this point in time, you’re saying the information being found is not supporting of the naturalistic evolutionary Big Bang type of a concept, but just the opposite. So it’s giving some angst at least within that community. But how are they responding to it? I’m sure you’re in that community. Are these people just temporarily at this moment just wagging their heads and saying, “Oh no,” or do you see a movement perhaps as a result of this towards a serious consideration that there is a God who created all that we have and see?
Rob Webb:
Yeah, and of course it’s basically the same response to anything that we find in the world, in the universe. Essentially they come up with what’s called a rescuing device. They come up with an excuse. They try to explain away the evidence, because it’s something we say at AIG all the time, it comes down to your worldview. How are you interpreting the evidence? They interpret the evidence through their naturalistic worldview, so anything that doesn’t line up with their worldview, they’re going to try to reinterpret. It just confirms what scripture says, that these people, they know everything around them gives them evidence of the creator, but they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. So no matter what the evidence is, it’s not going to change their mind or change their outlook on the universe, because they’ve already decided in their heart of hearts to reject God. That’s what we see a lot of times over and over again with these kind of discoveries.
Sam Rohrer:
And I find that interesting. Don’t have time to go into, but you and I were talking yesterday before the program, Rob, that years ago, I can recall when the Challenger went up and I saw an article in the paper just a few days before where the statement was, the purpose for the Challenger mission was to go up and they were going to prove how the world came into being. They were going to find out who God was. That was the mission. And I read that in the paper and I thought, oh man, there’s no way God sits idly by. And of course, the Challenger did not come back to the Earth. And I thought, wow. And I hear the same kind of mentality, what you’re saying there, lots of time and effort, lots of money, lots of intellect, but it’s in the direction of trying to prove in essence that there was no God.
Wow. It’s an amazing thing. But ladies and gentlemen, bear in mind the more you find out, the more it proves the existence of God, not the fact that God does not exist. And that’s what we’re going to continue to talk about. When we come back, we’re going to talk about a thing called distant starlight. It ties into the Webb.
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Sam Rohrer:
Well, we’re at our midpoint now in the program and special guest Rob Webb from Answers in Genesis. We’re looking at the sky, actually, talking about the creation of God of all that we see above us. And like you just heard, the information that’s being found now by high-powered telescopes that are out in space looking around, what they’re finding is that lo and behold, it’s not what they expected. It really supports exactly what the word of God says. No surprise to us. It’s a surprise to them. Now, the study of the stars that we’ve talked about already has been augmented by the development of, as we were just talking about a little bit ago, the James Webb Telescope, telescopes, and placing orbiting probes out on distant missions to various planets across our solar system. It’s been going on now for some time.
And in every case it seems, just like we’re talking about, that the more people look, the more stars they find, the more galaxies they discover, just like Rob just shared. And it leads them all to ask the same old question: how did all these get here? Now, a supernatural creation of God or a haphazard explosion born of chaos into an impossible and awesome demonstration of order and beauty are what they have to consider. There’s only two choices. It either happened by chance or it happened by a supernatural creation. Now obviously, as people who hold to a biblical worldview, we say absolutely there’s only one way. It’s because God made it. He said.
Now Rob, there’s technically some things that are coming up on that. I’d like for you to share just a bit about how the scientific and NASA type people you’ve just explained, how more and more when they’re out there, particularly with this particular telescope and others, are finding more and more distant stars, they seem to keep showing up and being discovered. Okay, what is being discovered and how is it being explained? You’ve already talked about that a little bit, but quantify some of that. When they find a few stars, is it three or four or five or is it millions? You already mentioned some types being many light years away. How big is this universe that they’re finding? And bring that back to how they’re finding some of these distant starlight.
Rob Webb:
Yeah, our universe, I think every year, every decade we’re discovering more and more stars and we’re realizing just how big the universe is. I think the latest model I saw, they estimated up to two trillion galaxies exist in our universe. And just to give you an idea of how big galaxies are, for example, our own Milky Way galaxy has up to, they say, 100 to 200 billion stars in our galaxy. So if you assume each galaxy has 100 billion stars and there’s two trillion galaxies that we know of so far in the universe, and it’s counting too, that’s increasing. If you think about, just try to do the math there, that’s a countless number of stars that exist in our universe. And then just like you were mentioning before, that just shows really the awesome glory and just the mind and wisdom of God. Like it says in Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” So when we look out at this massive universe, it just shows the all-powerful God that we worship.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. Well, let me ask you a question, because people are probably thinking, because it produces a natural question, and that is this. Is the fact that they are finding so many new stars and so many new galaxies, it would bring one to the conclusion that new stars and galaxies are being formed as we speak, happening? Or perhaps is the universe so big and expansive when God created it, that some of the light from those distance stars are just now beginning to reach the Earth? How is that explained from a naturalistic perspective, and how does a Bible-believing creationist explain the fact that light from distant stars are just now coming into view?
Rob Webb:
So from the secular and naturalistic point of view, the evolutionary world view, they start off with the Big Bang. So again, they try to come up with an origin story that has already rejected God. They already reject scripture and what God says in Genesis 1, so they’re trying to come up with a naturalistic kind of frame. And that word “naturalistic,” all it means is basically everything we see around us is only guided by natural law. There’s no other force that’s in there. There’s no such thing as a supernatural. That’s why it’s called naturalistic.
And essentially what they believe is from the Big Bang, then over millions of years formed the stars, over more millions of years it started forming the galaxies. And essentially how it works is because the speed of the light is constant moving across the universe, it’s going to take time for that light to go from the star to reach us on Earth. And so they say when we’re looking at a star, say a billion light years away, they think it took that star a billion light years to come to us on Earth. That’s basically why you always see that 13.8 billion years old for the universe and all these different numbers that they throw out there.
Whereas on the flip side, from the biblical worldview from Genesis 1, that we see God spoke everything to existence and everything around us in six literal days, and we count up the genealogies, we know that the Earth and the universe itself has been around for only 6,000 years. A lot of people wonder, well how can we see light that’s billions of light years away if the universe is only thousands of years old? And there’s a lot of different models that are out there. Jason Lisle, for example, has a great one called the anisotropic model, if you guys want to look that up. He’s part of the Biblical Science Institute, BSI, so if you guys want to learn more about how that model works.
Danny Faulkner as well, our resident astronomer here, he also has a model to explain how we can see the distant starlight. If you guys want to learn more about that, jump onto answersingenesis.org. You can learn more about that. You can literally spend billions of years on our website researching all this stuff. But what it comes down to is, I think what the confusion is for most people is, the units of a light year is distance, it’s not time. And a light year, essentially all it means is how far light can travel over a year. And then because the universe is so huge, we can’t put miles onto it or kilometers, we have to use things called light years. So that’s really what it comes down to.
A lot of the different creationists, they propose relativistic type of effects. They’ve suggested different speeds of the speed of light and all these different models. And we do have answers for those, but really what it comes down to is where are we going to put our authority in? Are we going to be trusting man’s shifting opinions, which is like sand, it’s shifting every year, every decade, or are we going to be basing our authority on God’s word, which never changes from generation to generation, when He said that he spoke the universe into existence? It comes down to a worldview issue, is really what it comes down to.
Sam Rohrer:
It always does, doesn’t it, Rob? All right, let’s just take a look at this. In the next segment we’re going to be talking about when scripture says that what He created above us shouts His praise. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go into that in the next segment. I’m going to ask Rob to share. What we’re seeing in scriptures say that what we look above actually shouts the praise of God. We’ll talk a bit more about how that actually happens.
But let’s go here just for a little bit, Rob. You were into satellites also and satellite navigation. Almost like every week we hear about some new satellite’s been put up in space. How many satellites are up there right now floating around the Earth? What are they for, and is there any problem with the way that we’re putting them up there, almost to the point of are things getting so cluttered there’s a danger zone up there above us because there’s so many? Just a little bit about satellites, that might be an interesting thing for our listeners.
Rob Webb:
Yeah, it depends on what level of the orbit. There’s different altitudes above the Earth. We have what’s called low Earth orbit. That’s typically where you’re going to find the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope. At the low Earth orbit, we’re talking 300, 400 kilometers in altitude, you’re going to find thousands of satellites. There’s a ton of them out there that range in all different sizes. A lot of those will be a lot of your communications, a lot of your weather satellites, remote sensing satellites, that kind of stuff.
Then you have the medium Earth orbit. That’s where you’re going to find a lot of the GPS, the navigation systems. There’s not as many of those. There’s probably, I don’t know, maybe a couple hundred of those up there. And then you have the high elliptical orbits. Those ones are even less. Those ones are going to be for different special applications and programs as well. A lot of the satellite radio satellites will be up there.
And then more than that, you also have what’s called the geosynchronous orbit or the geostationary orbit. What’s unique about that orbit, it’s up about 35,000 kilometers, and that orbit matches the rotation of the Earth. What’s special about it is the satellites in those orbits, they’re able to locate the same spot on the Earth all the time. You’re going to see a lot of the Direct TV, the TV telecommunication, those kind of satellites are going to be at that orbit. I don’t remember the exact number for that, but it’s probably in the hundreds as well. So I would say all together there’s thousands of these satellites in Earth up to, I think the last number I saw was almost 5,000 satellites in total that are orbiting the Earth to today right now, that are at least operational.
Sam Rohrer:
And ladies and gentlemen, I would dare say, Rob, you would probably agree as well, is there’s probably very few people on this Earth whose lives are not affected by the presence of some satellite. We use a GPS when we travel in the car, right? And communication, even this radio program, ladies and gentlemen, has a connection to a satellite. The signal goes from where I am, and Tim’s sitting here right now in Elverson, Pennsylvania. It goes up and comes down in a satellite, and stations pick it up all across the country. So really truly, we live almost and die by satellites. It’s up there in that space. But that’s not what God was talking about, when He talked about sun and the moon and the stars. Satellites are man’s creation. They help but they don’t hold a candle to the moon and the stars and the sun. When we come back, we’re going to talk about the glory of God.
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Sam Rohrer:
Rob, just before we get into the final focus here of the program, you’re doing some things coming up that some of our listeners can participate in. Share that just briefly before we get into the final close of the program.
Rob Webb:
Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, I just wanted to just throw a quick advertisement out there. Starting next Tuesday, November 1st, me and our resident astronomer, Danny Faulkner, every Tuesday evening at 6:00 PM Eastern time, we’re going to be talking about the flat Earth movement that’s out there. And really, that’s [inaudible 00:30:10] a lot of our Christian churches and families today. It’s going to be an interactive program. So if you guys are interested in that, jump onto our social media, YouTube, Facebook, and you can interact with me and Danny Faulkner, ask your questions.
If you know anyone that’s involved with the flat Earth movement or you yourself are maybe debating whether or not the flat Earth is actually a true thing, I really encourage you guys to jump on there, because it’s really becoming a huge issue, especially in our Christian churches today. There’s so many Christians that are falling for this trap of believing that the Earth is flat, and it’s literally destroying families. We’re getting letters almost on a monthly basis, me and Danny are, from different families that are just looking for these answers. That’s why we’re doing this.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, I’m glad you are. As I told you, I have been approached by two different people who I know, they’re believers, who’ve given me books on the flat Earth. Ladies and gentlemen, you may not have heard about it, but it is there, and so it’s being dealt with, and so that’s why I wanted Rob to be able to share that.
All right. Now as we try to wrap up the program, Psalm 19:1-2, the Bible records this, and let me just read this section and then we’ll go into it and ask Rob to take and expand upon it. But it says there, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork, day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out throughout all the Earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them, God hath set a tabernacle for the sun who is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and a strong man runs his race with joy. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it. And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.”
And then in Psalm 147:45, scripture says this: “He,” God, “determines the number of the stars.” We just talked about that. Nobody can count them, but God does. He knows them all, “and He gives to all of them their names.” God’s actually named them all. And it says in that verse, verse 5, “Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure.” And to that I say amen. All these things we’ve talked about, well I can’t count what’s up there. Rob, you can’t count. It’s amazing.
Now, you’ve moved from NASA to Answers in Genesis and from collecting information to communicating truthful information, that’s what we’re doing on this program, to all who fear God. But at the end of the day, all of us who fear God, we know should give glory to God. So what can we learn from the sun, the moon, and the stars that give glory, God says, to Him, and for which man can take no credit? What do you say? Go anywhere you want on this.
Rob Webb:
Yeah, again, just like you said, Psalm 147, that God named all of the stars that are out there. And we just talked about it. There’s up to two trillion galaxies that we know of, and each one of those galaxies has billions of stars. So it’s a countless number of stars, and He gives each one of those names. And the great thing is, He literally just spoke it into existence. And the other cool thing is, when you actually read the Genesis 1 account there, when He is talking about the greater lights and the lesser lights, He essentially just says He made the stars also, kind of like in an afterthought, kind of like just yeah, and He also did this, which is just amazing to think about. When we look at this universe and just think that He just immediately by His power spoke it into existence.
And the Bible also says that He holds everything in the universe by the word of His power, like it says in Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1 as well. And what just amazes me is, this same God who created the countless stars by His awesome power, it’s the same God that also provides us salvation for us guilty sinners. He created us in His image. In the image of this powerful God we were created. No other creature was made that way. It’s only mankind that was made in His image. And He provided salvation for us that we could be reconciled to Him for all eternity, because of the finished work of Jesus on the cross.
And we know from the Bible that Jesus, our redeemer, is also the creator of this universe, like it says in John 1:1. And He’s the sustainer of this universe as well. So when we look at the heavens, when we look at the glory of God in this universe, let’s remember just to continue to worship our awesome God. And I think that should drive all of us to continue to explore God’s creation as well, not just on Earth, but explore God’s creation here in this solar system, in the universe, so we can just be more in awe of His glory and understand His ways. And just to understand the mind of God, I think, is just an amazing thing to think about.
Sam Rohrer:
It absolutely is. And I hadn’t thought of this question before then, but I’m curious in your thoughts. One of the things that science tries to do in sending out satellites and telescopes and that kind of thing is to prove the natural creation of the world, rather than God. So effectively, they’re trying to disprove God. Well, one of the things they’re also trying to do, Rob, clearly for a long time is to find life on other planets or other stars. It’s almost as if they can find it, then they can prove. What’s Answers in Genesis and the Bible-believing creationist think about life on other planets? Is there a reason to think that that is there, or is it here on Earth as God has told us in His word?
Rob Webb:
Yeah. The reason why they’re so interested in trying to find life in the universe is based on that evolutionary worldview. They believe that if life evolves here on Earth, and if there’s billions upon billions of stars with planets around each one of those stars, then they believe chances are there has to be life somewhere, because of that evolutionary worldview. And they’re constantly searching for ET, because they’re trying to essentially prove their story.
But really, what I’ve always thought of is, I think it ultimately comes down to this. They’re trying to look for alien life, because they believe these alien civilizations have better access to maybe better health. They have more wisdom, because they’ve been around for longer, and maybe they have the secret to immortality. Maybe they have the secrets that they can share with us to essentially help us to live longer. Which of course, all of those things are found in the Bible, found in scripture, where we actually go to find that eternal life. It’s only found through scripture and in God’s word.
And also, I think there’s just this sense of cosmic loneliness in the universe, where they basically think that someone just has to be out there. Normally what I tell people that are more interested in aliens and alien life, I let people know, yeah, there is someone out there. There’s someone out there that’s outside of space and time, and that’s our awesome infinite creator, the one that creates spacetime around us. And essentially here at the ministry, we would say that either way, if there is life or if there isn’t life in the universe, it really doesn’t affect us from the biblical worldview, because even if there is life out there, we know that God created that life and that God made it for a purpose.
But more chances than not, there is not going to be any life out there. And it also just presents a lot of theological problems too, because if you think about it, we were made in the image of God. Jesus became the God-man to save us from our sins. He didn’t become the God-Klingon on or the God-Wookiee or all these other alien races that are out there. So it really presents a lot of theological problems if there are aliens out there. You have to think, well, are these aliens, do they have salvation through Jesus? And how does that work? [inaudible 00:38:07].
Sam Rohrer:
Rob, it sure does. It sure does. We’re out of time. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being with us today. This was Rob Webb. Answersingenesis.org is where he is there. You can go and get information. Of course, our site here, standinthegapradio.com. And remember this, ladies and gentlemen. God so loved the world that Jesus Christ came to die for you and me, human beings created in the image of God. Boy, if that hasn’t changed your life, may it change it today.
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