Limitations on God's Promises

Each day, in my e-mail Inbox, I receive a message based on a verse of the Bible. This morning's message was under the same heading as this blog-post and read as follows:

«“Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.” (Jeremiah 31:37)

The people of Israel, in spite of all God had done for them, continually rebelled against Him, even turning to other gods. One might think God would have destroyed them and started again, but He had made a promise first to Abraham, then to Isaac, and then to Jacob, that this nation would be His special people, and He would not break that promise.

In our text God reveals the “conditions” under which He would cast off Israel, but they are such that there is no possibility of their being met.

If heaven above can be measured: Neither Abraham nor Jeremiah could have had any concept of the number of stars or the depth of space. Now, with modern telescopes, we see unthinkable distances and even farther and farther as our technology increases. Estimates of the radius of the universe now stand at around 46 billion light-years, and no end is in sight.

If the foundations of the earth [can be] searched out beneath: Sometimes scientists claim they know more about the sun than they do the earth. But in reality, only one percent of the earth’s radius has been explored. The pressures and temperatures that exist deep inside the earth are unthinkably great, and we don’t even know how matter acts under those conditions. The promise to Israel is secure.

Scripture is likewise full of “exceeding great and precious promises” (2 Peter 1:4) made to the believer. Our text indicates God’s attitudes toward His promises. We need not worry that He will keep His Word.» (Days of Praise - http://www.icr.org/homepage/)

That estimate of the radius of the universe really caught my attention! Up came the calculator, and I started to work. As many will know, a "light year" is the distance that light travels in one earth-year - at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles per second. This means that, in distance, a light year is 186,000x60x60x24x365.25! My calculator couldn't handle even that. However, I did manage to get to a "light-day" at more than 16 billion miles. Continuing from there, and now working only in billions (!), I arrived at the conclusion that the current estiimation of the radius of the known universe is 27²² miles (approx.)! That represents a figure of 27 followed by 22 zeroes:

220,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles (approx.) - and that is only the radius of what we know!

What an amazing universe! If we had reached the very edge, and it was a perfect circle, then the area covered would be (no pun intended!) astronomical! Of course that would also immediately raise the question as to what lay beyond the circumference of the circle!

Within the known universe, mankind (or 'peoplekind' if one is the rather silly and immature PM of Canada!) can predict the arrivals of comets; can plan journeys through space (at least through the Solar System - a mere speck in what we can see - although one tiny spacecraft has, if memory serves me well, gone beyond the Solar System but has lost contact with Earth); can plot weather systems. Yet, there are those who would continue to insist that all of this came from nothing (okay, you physicists, from a singularity: but from whence came the singularity?!) and, simply by a process of random chemical reactions, and random collisions, etc., became the amazing, ordered, predictable entity of which we still mknow only the tiniest part!

As I state in one of my own books: "It requires a great deal of faith to be an atheistic evolutionist"!