When David looked up at the night sky, he knew that what he was seeing was the work of God’s hands, an incredible display of His glory. But, strangely enough, there are many well-intentioned Christians today whose understanding of creation actually contradicts this simple truth penned by David (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) in Psalm 19:1.
I am referring to the idea that the light we see from the distant stars was created “in place” or “in transit” rather than actually originating from the stars themselves. This is proposed by many who hold that the Biblical account of creation demands that God created these distant stars around 6000 years ago. Most of these stars are more than 6000 light-years away, meaning it takes more than 6000 years for light to travel from the stars to the earth. Therefore, they propose that the light we are seeing from these stars did not actually originate from the stars, but was rather created separately from those stars. Some even suggest that this is the explicit teaching of Genesis 1, since it speaks of the creation of light as occurring on Day 1, but the creation of stars not occurring until Day 4.
This view may sound plausible on the surface, but in fact there are many details that we now know about astronomy that argue quite convincingly against it. The fundamental issue is that the light we observe in the heavens does not simply reveal a fixed picture of the stars as static objects, but rather an ever-changing, dynamic picture of various events in time. Perhaps the most obvious is what happens at the end of the life of a star. The star quite literally ceases to exist as a star, disappearing in a spectacular explosion known as a supernova. One notable example of this was Supernova 1987A, which was the end of a certain star approximately 167,000 light-years away. As the name implies, this supernova suddenly appeared in 1987, meaning that is when the light from this explosion event reached the earth.
Now here is the fundamental question: Did Supernova 1987A actually ever happen? Those who hold to the idea that God created the light from the stars “in transit” are in a difficult position here. What did God actually create on Day 4 in the place where we currently observe nothing but the expanding remnants of this explosion? He apparently did not create a star here (if their understanding on the age of the universe is correct), for the light beams He created seem to indicate that the star disappeared in an explosion 167,000 years ago. So in this view He must have actually created nothing but the remnants of an explosion. Therefore the explosion that we “saw” in 1987 never really happened, and the star that was apparently present before the explosion never really existed!
When David uttered his inspired statement, “the firmament (i.e., the heavens) shows His handiwork,” surely he did not mean that what we see in the heavens is simply a light show of events that never actually happened. Rather, events like Supernova 1987A that we see in the heavens are really and truly the work of God’s hands. They actually happened, and they are telling the glory of the God who created them to anyone who cares to listen.
This page copyright © 2005 Edward A. Morris. Created March 13, 2005. Last updated March 13, 2005.