Pastor’s Note: Due to the size of T. De Witt Talmage’s message, I am going to break it down into two series of 4 posts each. I will continue the second series in approximately two to three weeks where his message will conclude with the last 4 posts. T. De Witt Talmage has a series of these messages that he called “The God Everywhere” series. I will most likely post more in the future, the Lord permitting. – God Bless as you study these.
The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars -4
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).
What pleases and astounds me is that each one of the millions of worlds has a God-given name. Only a comparatively small number of them have names given them by scientists. If astronomers can give a name to a whole constellation or galaxy, they think they do we’ll, but God has a name for each star in all immensity. Inspired David declares of God: “He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name” (Psalm 147:4). They are not orphans that have never been christened. They are not waifs of the night. They are not unknown ships on the high seas of immensity. They belong to a family of which God is the Father, and as you call your child Benjamin or Mary or Bertha or Addison or Josephine, so He calls all the infant worlds and all the adult worlds by their first name, and they know it as well as though there were only one child of light in all the divine family. “He calls them all by name,” and when he calls, I warrant they come.
Oh, the stars! Those vestal fires kept burning on infinite altars. Those lighthouses on the coast of eternity. The hands and weights and pendulum of the great clock of the universe. According to Herschel, the so-called fixed stars are not fixed at all, but each one a sun with a mighty system of worlds rolling round it, and this whole system with all the other systems rolling on around some other great center. Millions and millions, billions and billions, trillions and trillions, quadrillions and quadrillions!
But what gladdens me, and at the same time overwhelms me, is that those worlds are inhabited. The Bible implies it, and what a small idea you must have of God and His dominion if you think it only extends across this chip of a world which you and I now inhabit. Have you taken this idea of all the other worlds being inhabited as human guesswork?
“For thus says the LORD, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited . . .” (Isaiah 45:18). Now, if He inhabited the earth so that it would not be created in vain, would He make worlds hundreds and thousands of times larger and not have them inhabited?
To Be Continued
To be continued in two or three weeks.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 