On the Way to Glory
Our earth is on the way to glory!
Sound impossible? It is the promise of our Creator: “As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Num. 14:21).
God has a plan, a that plan is linked with His whole creation. We are not here by chance. And we are not alone. Consider the vast creation…
Look Up!
Go outside on a starry night and look up. What human mind designed and displayed all this magnificence, all this vast and visible creation? What human hand executed the design? Where did all this come from?
Every human voice must be silent. Here is firsthand evidence of the work of our Creator. These are His worlds, millions and billions and quadrillions of them.
Since the dawn of civilization, the stars have been objects of wonder and mystery. Only within the past fifty years have we begun to comprehend even vaguely the vastness of space.
Galaxies and Galaxies and Galaxies
Galaxies are giant star-cities separated by millions of light years (a light year is the distance light travels in one year—186,000 miles every second, or 11,000,000 miles every minute.)
Our earth is one of nine planets in our solar system, which is located in a vast star city we call the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Milky Way is only averaged sized among the galaxies, yet its diameter is so great that if you had started across it 6000 years ago traveling at the speed of light, you would today be less than one-thirteenth of the way across it!
And so many galaxies have been detected in space that estimates of the total number in the universe range from 400 billion (400,000,000,000) to a literally infinite number. And each galaxy is made up of billions of stars. (A Mount Palomar study of the Big Dipper constellation estimates that there are a million galaxies in the bowl of the Big Dipper alone! )
All from a “Big Bang”?
Did it all just “happen”? Is blind chance responsible for this magnitude of creation? Can we think there is no plan or purpose behind it all? Where does it all end, when more and more powerful telescopes only reveal broader expanses filled with more myriads of stars?
Ages ago God’s prophet Jeremiah declared that “the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured” (Jer. 33:22).
The stars are silent for any information about their purpose. For the plan behind their creation, we must turn to the information manual our Creator has provided about Himself and His work, the Bible.
And the Bible tells us that there is a plan, there is a design, there is a purpose. Speaking of the creation of the earth, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “He created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. 45:18).
Our Place In it All
Can the God who orders this vast creation even take notice of our little planet, to say nothing of the human creatures that live and die upon it?
The answer is yes! God is mindful of all who are mindful of Him. They are His “special treasure,” His own “prized possession.” Can we even fathom such a Being!
There Is A Plan
God has a plan, His plan is to one day include the earth among His heavenly creation. This is the plan He has repeated countless times through the ages past, as we are told in the Bible, “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,…and to those who remember his commandments to do them” (Ps. 103:17-18). If God’s mercy extends from everlasting past to everlasting future, He must have had intelligent living beings somewhere to whom He could show mercy.
Why not real people? Why not us? Why can’t we be part of the action? What is there to hinder our having a part in His vast, eternal plan?
Nothing at all, if we cooperate with His rules.
God’s far-reaching plan is the heart of the Lord’s prayer: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Our earth is destined become a part of heaven. Heaven will open its doors and take in the earth. And God’s will shall be done here as it is now done in His finished creation.