FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars -3

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832 – 1902)

He who builds His layers in the sky, And has founded His strata in the earth; Who calls for the waters of the sea, And pours them out on the face of the earth— The LORD is His name (Amos 9:6).

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, And hath founded his troop in the earth; He that calleth for the waters of the sea, And poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name (Amos 9:6 KJV, emphasis added).

Read on in your Bible, and after a while the Bible flashes with the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, that strange illumination, as mysterious and undefined now as when, in the book of Job, it was written: “Even now men cannot look at the light when it is bright in the skies, When the wind has passed and cleared them. He comes from the north as golden splendor; With God is awesome majesty” (Job 37:21-22). While all the nations supposed that the earth was built on a foundation of some sort, and many supposed that it stood on a huge turtle, or some great marine creature, Job knew enough of astronomy to say it had no foundation, but was suspended on the invisible arm of the Almighty, declaring that “He hangs the earth on nothing” (Job 26:7). While all nations thought the earth was level, the sky spread over it like a tent over a flat surface, Isaiah declared the world to be globular—circular—saying of God: “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). See them glitter in this scriptural sky—Arcturus, Orion, the Pleiades, and the “Bear with her young.”

While running your fingers among the leaves of your Bible with the astronomical thought in your mind, you see two worlds stop—the sun and the moon. But what does that Christian know about that miracle who does not understand something of those two luminaries? Unless you watch modern astronomy put those two worlds in its steelyards and weigh them, you are as ignorant as a Hottentot about the stupendousness of that scene in the life of Joshua. The sun over three hundred thousand times as heavy as our earth and going thousands of miles the hour. Think of stopping that and starting it again without the shipwreck of the universe!

But I can easily believe it. What confounds me is not that He could stop and start again those two worlds in Joshua’s time, but that He could have made the wheel of worlds of which the sun and moon are only cogs, and kept that wheel rolling for thousands of years—the flywheel of all eternity. If an engineer can start a long train, it is not surprising that he can stop it. If God could make and move the universe, which is an express train drawn by an omnipotent engine, I am not surprised that for a part of a day He could put down the brakes on two pieces of the rotating machinery. Infidelity is hard up for ground of complaint against the Scriptures when it finds fault with that cessation of solar and lunar travel.

To Be Continued

T. De Witt Talmage, 500 Selected Sermons vol. 1. Public Domain.
Adapted and modified in some places to modern English usage.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture updated with the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Where the author quoted the main text, it is listed as KJV. Public Domain. All others changed to NKJV.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars -2

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832 – 1902)

He who builds His layers in the sky, And has founded His strata in the earth; Who calls for the waters of the sea, And pours them out on the face of the earth— The LORD is His name (Amos 9:6).

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, And hath founded his troop in the earth; He that calleth for the waters of the sea, And poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name (Amos 9:6 KJV, emphasis added).

On the first page of the Bible the sun and moon and stars roll in—the sun, a body nearly three million miles in circumference and more than twelve thousand times as large as our earth; the moon, more than two thousand miles in diameter. But God is so used to doing things on such an omnipotent scale that He takes only one verse to tell of this stellar and lunar manufacture. Yea, in three words all the other worlds are thrown in. The record says, “He made the stars also!” It takes whole pages for a man to extol the making of a telescope or microscope or a magnetic telegraph or a threshing machine, or to describe a fine painting or statue, but it was so easy for God to hang the celestial upholstery that the story is compassed in one verse: “Then 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” (Genesis 1:16).

Astronomers have been trying to call the roll of the stars ever since, and they have counted multitudes of them passing in review before the observatories built at vast expense, and the size and number of those heavenly bodies have taxed to the utmost the scientists of all ages. But God finishes all He has to say about them in these few words, “He made the stars also!” That is, Mars with its more than fifty-five million square miles, and Venus, with its more than one hundred and ninety-one million square miles, and Saturn with its more than nineteen billion square miles, and Jupiter with its more than twenty-four billion square miles, and all the planets of our system of more than seventy-eight billion square miles; and these stars of our system, when compared with the stars of other systems, as a handful of sand compared with all the Rocky Mountains and all the Alps. “He made the stars also!” For brevity, for ponderosity, for splendor, for suggestiveness, for sublimity piled on sublimity, these words excel all that human speech ever uttered or human imagination ever soared after: “He made the stars also!” It is put in as you write a postscript—something you thought of afterwards, as hardly worth putting into the body of a letter. “He made the stars also!”

To Be Continued

T. De Witt Talmage, 500 Selected Sermons vol. 1. Public Domain.
Adapted and modified in some places to modern English usage.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture updated with the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Where the author quoted the main text, it is listed as KJV. Public Domain. All others changed to NKJV.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars -1

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832 – 1902)

He who builds His layers in the sky, And has founded His strata in the earth; Who calls for the waters of the sea, And pours them out on the face of the earth— The LORD is His name (Amos 9:6).

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, And hath founded his troop in the earth; He that calleth for the waters of the sea, And poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name (Amos 9:6 KJV, emphasis added).

That is radiant poetry from Amos, the herdsman. He thrummed a lyre that has sounded through twenty-six centuries. While guarding his flocks at night, he watched the heavens. He saw stars above stars, and the universe seemed to him like a great mansion many stories high, silver room above silver room, silver pillars beside silver pillars, and windows of silver and doors of silver, and turrets and domes of silver rising into the immensities; and the prophet’s sanctified imagination walks through the great silver palace of the universe, through the first story, up through the second story, up through the third story, up through the twentieth story, up through the hundredth story, up through the thousandth story, and realizing that God is the architect and carpenter and mason of all that upheaved splendor, he cries out in the words of the text: “It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven” (KJV).

It is time that we widened out and heightened our religious thoughts. In our pulpits and Sabbath classes and Christian work of all sorts we ring the changes on a few verses of Scripture until they excite no interest. Many of the best parts of the Bible have never yet been preached from or indeed even noticed. Hence, I now begin a sermon on God Everywhere, beginning with the Astronomy of the Bible, or God among the Stars, as I think it edifying and useful.

The fact is that we have all spent too much time on one story of the great mansion of God’s universe. We need occasionally to go upstairs or downstairs in this mansion; downstairs and in the cellar study the rocks, or upstairs and see God in some of the higher stories, and learn the meaning of the text when it says: “It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven” (KJV).

Astronomy was born in Chaldea. Its mother was Astrology, or the science of foretelling events by juxtaposition of stars. The Orientals, living much out of doors and in a very clear atmosphere, through which the stars shone especially lustrously, acquired the habit of studying the night heavens. In the hot seasons, caravans journeyed chiefly at night, and that gave travelers much opportunity of stellar information.

To Be Continued

T. De Witt Talmage, 500 Selected Sermons vol. 1. Public Domain.
Adapted and modified in some places to modern English usage.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture updated with the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Where the author quoted the main text, it is listed as KJV. Public Domain. All others changed to NKJV.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.