OOK AROUND. Even though some of us may live in ugly parts of cities, most of us live in areas where there is beauty or we can travel to beautiful places in a fairly short amount of time.
God designed the earth to be the perfect habitat for man.
If you look carefully at our environment, you will marvel at the wonderful world God has provided for us. There is no place too harsh for people to live except for Antarctica. If the earth was only one percent closer to the sun, most of the earth would be too hot for man and most other life. If we were only one percent further from the sun, most of the earth would be to cold for man and most life. This is just one way in which God cares for us.
Just think about how cold it would be in the rest of the world if Cairo Egypt were like Nome, Alaska, or how hot the rest of the world would be if Nome had the weather of Cairo.
Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere. If it was only five percent less people couldn't live at higher altitudes and those with respiratory illnesses would die much more quickly. If we had five percent more oxygen, fires would burn much faster and hotter. House fires and forest fires would be almost impossible to put out.
You can look at almost any feature of our environment and see that small variations would make our planet uninhabitable or nearly so.
Sometime in the near future, a mere instant in all eternity, man's physical existence will be done and we will be free to roam the universe, unimpeded by the speed of light or the need for oxygen, food, water, heat or shelter
God designed the earth to be the perfect habitat for man. God cares for His creation. Sure, in some places it's terribly hot in the summer, in some places it's terribly cold in the winter, and some places both, but people live there and thrive. A wonderful elderly lady I knew from Duluth, Minnesota told me that they had only two seasons: winter and August.
But part of the wonder and perfection of our habitat is its variety; wouldn't it be sad if the earth was so uniform that anywhere you went was just like home?
What about the other planets? The moon has no air, water, life; we couldn't live there. Mars is cold and has little atmosphere. Venus is so hot lead is molten on its surface. No one could live there. The other planets are even worse. The stars are too far away to get to.
But even so, God made the universe for man.
Not in our present form, of course. Sometime in the near future, a mere instant in all eternity, man's physical existence will be done and we will be free to roam the universe, unimpeded by the speed of light or the need for oxygen, food, water, heat or shelter.
When God told Abraham his descendents would be as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea, there is no comparison between those two numbers; we can see only about 6000 stars, there are far more grains of sand in just a handful. But God knew how many stars there are, their numbers do compare to the grains of sand.
In fact, astronomers estimate that there are more than a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. This illustration shows the Andromeda galaxy; the closest to our Milky Way galaxy. If you go out in the country away from lights you can actually see it with the naked eye. Our own Milky Way galaxy looks much like Andromeda.
Astronomers estimate that there are over one hundred billion galaxies in our universe. The nearest, Andromeda, is about 200,000 light years away, the furthest known are tens of billions of light years away. Yet as Spirit beings we will be able to visit the furthest galaxy in an instant; distance and time will no longer limit us.
Isn't Andromeda beautiful? The Hubbell Space Telescope (since it was repaired) has given us beautiful new highly detailed pictures of space. Whenever astronomers get a new tool like the Hubbell Telescope, they find new and beautiful things in space that they never dreamed existed.
They also find new mysteries to try to explain. This illustration is a Hubbell view of an area in space called the Eagle nebula. It's a place where new stars are being born. Pictures of the Eagle nebula before Hubbell were beautiful, but it was like looking through nearsighted eyes without glasses. None of this beautiful detail was seen or imagined.
A hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars. Perhaps half of those stars have planets. God created all this. What a great God!
From the quarks, the tiniest sub-atomic particles to the whole universe, and who knows, maybe hundreds of billions of universes, God designed and made it all!
And what for? God didn't make it all for nothing; He didn't make it just so we'd have pretty things to look at through telescopes or have pretty pictures. He made it to share with us, with mankind.
There are enough galaxies out there so that every person who has ever lived and who ever will live can have one of his own. Perhaps there are enough universes so we can all have one of our own. Perhaps someday each of us will be able to make a universe of our own. Is this imagination running amuck?
God's purpose is to maximize the number who will be in His family.
How much time would it take you to design and create the topography and the life on one planet like earth? How 'bout a galaxy full of planets. Were you worried how you would spend eternity? How 'bout building universes.
In 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 we read "But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."
Unless God revealed it to them, Adam, Abraham, Moses, David knew nothing about the wonders of the universe that we know. Perhaps God did show some of these men, for David says in Psalms 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork."
God didn't make it to share with a privileged few either. God has shown us through His word that all those who have lived and died without knowing the truth will be resurrected and given their FIRST chance at salvation. How many have lived? Thirty billion, fifty, eighty, a hundred?
When God sets His hand to save those billions, He won't lose many. God says He will save all of Israel.
Ro 11:25-27 "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this [is] my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins."
Do you believe Him? Can't He do nearly as well with all the other nations and peoples? Yes! There may indeed be a hundred billion in God's family. God's purpose is to maximize the number who will be in His family.
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