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.