Just Thoughts:
Great Balls Of Fire!
Looking (not literally) at the sun and “seeing” God.
Christ taught spiritual truth and understanding through
parables (Mk. 13:34).
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they [we] are without excuse:” (Rom. 1:20).
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Great
Balls of Fire!
NASA Photo http://solarsystem.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/gallery/Sun_Earth.jpg
A
photo of our sun with a coronal flare, showing the earth’s size by comparison.
“The lights are on but no
one’s home.” – A wisecrack, indicating a person who is conscious but
lacking comprehension.
“Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do
you not hear? And do you not remember?
-- Christ (Mk. 8:18,21, NKJV).
All life on earth is
dependent upon the Sun’s light and heat.
Without it we would all quickly freeze to death in the dark.
Even if we could survive the cold, there would be no food.
The Sun is a thermonuclear
heater and light bulb for the earth. The outermost layer or zone is the corona,
which scientists believe to have a temperature of 3.5 million degrees F.
If the Earth were 10%
closer to the Sun we would all burn to death.
Only two planets are closer to the Sun than the Earth. Temperatures on
those planets, Venus and Mercury, are 800 to 880 degrees F.
If the Earth were 50%
farther away from the Sun we would all freeze to death.
After Earth, Mars is the
next planet away from the Sun and its temperature ranges from a subfreezing 23
degrees, down to 125 degrees below zero.
How far away is God?
Far enough away to resist destroying the earth because of the evil in it?
Still close enough to sustain it and all life in it?
Some wonder why God seems
to be hiding from mankind. Just as a closer visit from the sun would kill us
all, so would a face to face meeting with God. “. . . You can not see my face:
for there shall no man see me, and live.” – God, (Ex. 33:20).
God is keeping his distance
from us for the present time because he will not live in an “evil”
neighborhood (Psa.
5:4, Rev. 21:3).
If he were to go completely
away and abandon us, we would all die (through worldwide
self-destruction, “no flesh saved [alive]” Mk. 13:20).
If he comes too close to
what is called “this present evil world” (Gal. 1:4)
many would also die. Consider for instance, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,
where God took time to personally evaluate their individual and collective
degree of evil, (evacuated the one righteous man and his two daughters) and
promptly burned both cities and all the remaining people into ashes before
anyone could escape (Gen. 18:16-19:25).
God used “fire and
brimstone”. Fire coming out of the sky is considered lightening. Brimstone is
molten rock or Sulphur, in other words, “great balls of fire”.
To those who died, the last
thing they saw resembled the face of God.
“. . . his face as the
appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his
feet like in color to polished brass, . . .” (Dan. 10:6).
"And the Lord shall
cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show the lighting down of his
arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire,
with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones." (Isa.
30:30).
“. . . and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; . . .”. (Rev. 1:14-15).
The example of Sodom and
Gomorrah was a preview of the end of the world as we know it (Rev.
8:5-13, 9:15-21) and of the final
judgment of the unrepentant, who will not inherit eternal life (Rev.
20:15, 21:8).
Just as Noah and his family
were spared when the world was destroyed by a flood, and just as Lot, a
righteous man, was spared from incineration, so shall a few (Mat.
24:22) be spared from the death and
destruction that the world brings upon itself when Christ returns as King over
the Earth (Rev. 6:8, 8:9-11, 9:15, 18).
Superstitious men once
believed that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun came and
went. Today, when tragedies and
disasters happen, people ask, “Where was God?”, as if bad things happening
are his fault for wandering off or not paying attention and not caring.
The Earth continually turns
on its axis. (If it didn’t, really bad things would happen.) As it rotates, we
find ourselves “turning toward” the Sun every morning and “turning away”
from the Sun every evening. (In the
Garden of Eden, it was not God who hid from Adam and Eve but Adam and Eve that
hid from God (Gen. 3:8).)
If we “turn toward”
God, as in “seeking” him (Deu. 4:29, Mal. 3:10),
he promises good things. If we
“turn away” from him, bad things will happen, not because God is
intemperate, but because wrong choices produce undesirable results (Pro.
26:2), just as surely as the law of
gravity guarantees that everything that goes up, eventually comes down.
God created the Sun to give
us physical light, heat and (indirectly) food. He inspired Moses to write that
the Sun and the moon were also for “signs” to help us understand spiritual
truths. Light is associated in
scriptures with truth, knowledge, understanding, righteousness, salvation,
eternal life, God’s laws, God’s appearance, good works, Christ’s gospel,
and more. Light and darkness are
compared to good and evil. Darkness
is associated with evil, and the resulting punishment and death.
As the Sun illuminates our physical world and the things we can
physically see, so God offers us spiritual illumination regarding the things we
cannot physically see, such as the purpose of life and the future he offers us.
God created two “great
lights” as signs, one “greater” and one “lessor”. The “lessor” rules the night (Gen. 1:16).
In the absence of sunlight, we can
see by moonlight (reflected sunlight). While
God is keeping his distance because the world is in spiritual “darkness”, we
are to look to God and to access him through Christ’s name until Christ
appears (at his second coming) with the brightness of our Father (Rev.
19:11-16, 21:23).
For a more complete
discussion of how the Sun and Moon illustrate many truths about God and Christ,
see:
“Blinded By The Light:
Understanding The Things Which Are Not Seen” at
http://geocities.datacellar.net/changes1611/calblinded18.html
Photo courtesy of PD Photo.org: http://www.pdphoto.org/PictureHome.php
From bud stage through early bloom, the Sunflower will rotate 120 degrees to follow the Sun. At night it rotates back toward the East to await the Sun’s next appearing. When the plant “follows” the Sun, it experiences its greatest rate of growth. When the stem neck becomes “woody” or “stiffnecked”, it remains facing East and continues to mature and to become ready for harvest, but it stops growing.
Christ said that those in his future Kingdom would be
teachable, like a “little child” or they would not be allowed entrance (Mk.
10:15, Lk. 18:17). There is a difference between being “child-like” and
being “child-ish”. The former
refers to teachability. The latter
refers to immaturity.
Peter encouraged us to desire spiritual knowledge, like a
newborn desires milk, in order for us to grow spiritually (1Pet.
2:2).
Paul told the Corinthians that they had stopped growing, were
spiritual infants living on the simplest spiritual truths and unable to utilize
the more complex spiritual truths (1Cor. 3:2).
The author of the book of Hebrews (probably Luke) wrote the
same thing (Heb. 5:12-13).
All these are referring to God’s message through Isaiah
regarding the difficulty in understanding the knowledge and truth of God.
“[To] Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make
to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn [removed]
from the breasts.” (Isa. 28:9).
God gives knowledge and understanding to those who are
teachable. If we become
“stiffnecked” or unteachable, whether it is the childishness of spiritual
immaturity, the childishness (vanity) of adult physical age, or the childishness
(vanity) of education or pride, we can stop learning and we can stop growing.
If we think we know it all, then we can learn nothing more.
If we take a picture of the
Sun at the same time each day, it will not be in the same position in the sky.
Over the course of a year, the Sun will trace out a pattern similar to the
figure 8. This path is due to a
combination of the Earth’s motion around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth’s
rotation axis. This figure, called
an analemma, is often shown on Earth globes.
It takes a year to record
this on a single piece of film. Examples
are available at:
http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Solar-Analemma.htm
and at:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap020709.html
The figure 8 (when shown on
its side) is also the symbol of infinity (In space there is no up or down).
The analemma of the sun is the only one that is observable without a
telescope.
God is infinite in his
eternity. God shows us infinity. He
has given us a look at our future.
Worshipping the sun, moon
or stars as if they were gods would be idolatry and a misuse of the creation (Rom.
1:25).
But we can look at them to help us understand God, Christ and our future.
God said they are for “signs” and not just for
timekeeping (Gen. 1:14).
The word translated here as “signs” (Heb.“owth”) is also translated as
token (or proof), and is also used to indicate a memorial, an omen or a warning.
“And the disciples came,
and said unto him, Why speak you unto them in parables?
He answered and said unto
them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, but to them it is not given.”
“For this people's heart
is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have
closed;”
“Therefore speak I to
them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not,
neither do they understand.”
“But blessed are your
eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.” (Mat. 13:10, 15, 13, 16).
Some are blind because of
the darkness. Do you see the light?
Copyright 2007. M.H. and G.H. All rights reserved.
All scriptures are KJV unless noted otherwise.