Most would agree that our view of the vast universe and how it came into existence is greatly influenced by whether we believe in God and are willing to recognize the evidence of God’s involvement in everything we see.

In Psalm 19:1 we are told: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands…. The Apostle Paul further explains in Romans 1:20 that “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” ( New International Version).

The astronomer Hugh Ross in his book Why the Universe Is the Way It Is gives us some idea of how vast the universe is: “These 200 billion galaxies contain, on average, about 200 billion stars each. So the total number of stars in these galaxies adds up to about 40 billion trillion—and that’s without the estimated 10 billion trillion stars contained in the unobserved dwarf galaxies. Somewhere around 50 billion trillion stars make their home in the observable universe” (2008, p. 31).

With the powerful telescopes available today and information collected as a result of satellites launched into space many scientists are also acknowledging that our world is stamped with signs of intelligence behind its formation. Dr. Stephen Meyer, a multi-credentialed academic and one of the leading voices in the intelligent design movement stated that “across a wide range of sciences, evidence has come to light in the last fifty years which, taken together, provides a robust case for theism [belief in an intervening God]. Only theism can provide an intellectually satisfying causal explanation for all of this evidence” (quoted byLee Strobel, The Case for a Creator , 2004, p. 89).

Many ancient peoples made the mistake of worshipping the sun, moon and stars (Deuteronomy 17:3; 2 Kings 17:16) and living by astrology (Jeremiah 8:2; 10:2), resulting in the fact that by rejecting God as the Creator, they lost the ability to properly understand what they were seeing.

A similar inability to understand what we witness in our vast universe exists today with Darwinism and the theory of evolution offering no explanation for how matter came into existence or the purpose for human life and hope for the future. For the followers of Darwin this life is all there is. In contrast the Bible reveals we have the opportunity to live forever (1 John 2:17), and that God has plans for “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), where those who become part of His family will reside with Him after planet earth undergoes a fiery transformation (2 Peter 3:7).

The biblical story of the stars and the purpose for man makes far more sense than mindless evolution and offers the opportunity to be part of a future world serving our Creator.