Does God Care About You?
Reprinted by permission of The Navigators Log.
In the vastness of space, does God know and care about you as an individual?
Where is heaven?
Has man really begun “space travel?”
Are there angels?
What are those “noises” astronomers are hearing from outer space?
Is everyone really different from everyone else?
How many stars are there?
How many grains of sand are there?
How do men tell time?
This article answers these questions… and the answers are important to you as an individual.
Man hasn’t gone very far in space. He has just taken a flea’s hop to the moon.
Suppose you were going to take a round-the-world trip starting from your home. And suppose the service station attendant three miles, just 36 blocks, from your house knew of the proposed trip. And suppose you stop there to get gas as you begin your travel.
He asks, “Starting on your round-the-world trip?”
You say, “Starting? I’m already well on my way!”
He wouldn’t be in the least impressed.
Now suppose man plans to travel from earth to Pluto, the outermost planet in our solar system. When he reaches the moon, he would be the proportional distance to Pluto as you were on your proposed around- the-world trip when you arrived at the gas station three miles from your home.
Though man has achieved a phenomenal event by reaching the moon and the mass media has reported that “space travel” has begun, the short distance is almost laughable when viewed in the proper perspective of the vastness of the universe.
Until a few hundred years ago it was firmly believed that there were 1,014 stars. Now there are known to be more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and there are more than 100 thousand other galaxies similar to ours.
The closest star is our sun. If you were able to leave earth in a rocket ship that could travel at a million miles per hour, it would take 93 hours or roughly four days to reach the sun. If that same rocket ship traveling at a million miles per hour were going to our next closest star, Alpha Centauri, it would take 3,000 years.
So man hasn’t gone very far in space.
When we explore the greatness of God, we know that at best we can achieve only a partial result. Psalm 145:3 says, “…His greatness is unsearchable.”
Space distances and the number of space bodies are beyond our wildest imagining. Our minds can’t conceive of such figures.
Yet in Psalm 147:4 it says of God, “He telleth the number of the stars…” In Genesis 22, God was reaffirming to Abraham what He was going to do in and through him. He talked of the multiplication of Abraham’s generations. God said Abraham’s seed would multiply as many as there are stars, and “… like the sand upon the seashore.”
Several years ago an astronomer attempted to estimate the number of stars in the universe. He concluded with 10 to the 28th power.
A few years later Sir James Jeans, the British scientist, attempted to determine how many grains of sand there are on all the seashores of the world. Unstrangely enough, he resulted in the same figure— 10 to the 28th power.
Does God know any number greater than 10 to the 28th power? In Psalm 139:17-18, the writer says, “How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand …” If there are 10 to the 28th power grains of sand on all the beaches, God has passed through His mind more than that number of personal thoughts about you.
God not only knows the number of stars, but knows every intimate detail about you. And He values infinitely your individual worth. Christ talked about the worth of the individual in the Gospels.
Referring to the supermarkets of His day, Jesus spoke of a bargain sale on sparrows. He says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?” Then he says, in another portion, “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings?” The bargain is that the fifth one is thrown in free — of very little worth.
In Matthew 10:31, Christ says, “Fear ye not…you are of more value than many sparrows.” He says in Matthew 10:29, “…and not one of them (sparrows) shall fall to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.” Then to press the point of the value of the individual, He says, “…the very hairs of your head are all numbered:”
But God’s knowledge goes even deeper. Psalm 147:4 says, “He calls them (the stars) all by their names.” He not only knows, the number of the billions of stars, but He knows the name of each one.
And He knows your name also. It is interesting to note in Scriptures how aware God is of everyone’s name. God didn’t say, “Hey, you there.” He said, “Samuel, Samuel.”
On the day when Gideon was preparing to take an officer on reconnaissance, God helped him select the man. God didn’t say, “Take that tall, skinny one.” He said, “Take Phurah.” He knew everybody in the army.
In Revelation 2:17, it says, “To him that overcometh I will give a… new name…which no man knoweth saving him that receiveth it.” God not only knows the name you have now, but He has reserved a special name for each of us which He will reveal to us some day in the future.
When you are walking in heaven during eternity and hear that “special” name that only God and you know, you will be aware of two things. First, it will be the Lord Himself speaking to you. Second, no one else will be within hearing distance. It is a “special” name reserved for you.
God has also made every star different from each other star (1 Corinthians 15:41). What does this mean?
The first hint of this is in Job 38:7, where it says that in early creation the stars sang and made music together. There are many people today who can’t work without a background of stereo music. Adam and Eve had it too. Quite a stereo! And it’s still playing up there, but sin has dulled our human ears so we can’t hear it.
However, radio astronomers are discovering meticulously precise signals coming from the stars. They have a frequency which never varies. A special sound from each star. Perhaps the next discovery that is going to be made by radio astronomers will be how to computerize these signals, play them into a transmitter and compose music the like of which has never been heard since those days in the beginning of time.
1 Corinthians 15:41 illustrates that every person is different from every other person, just as every star is different from every other star.
This points out the Biblical importance of everyone doing his own thing. God knows the purpose for which He created you and me and there will never be harmony and effectiveness in the Body of Christ until every one of us is doing his own thing. I hope that you never dishonor God by thinking that if you were like someone else or were someone else, than you could serve Him better.
I was talking to a man in New Zealand recently who had been studying genetics. He said, “Genetically it is possible that God has made everybody different.” He said the number of genetic possibilities are three billion to the 30th power. When that number is reached, God will have to duplicate! God hasn’t used all those possibilities yet. Everyone is different.
Isaiah 45:12 says, “I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.” Not only did He say, “I made,” but “I command” them.
One day one of my sons asked me a question. He said, “If God is as real as you folks maintain, why doesn’t He just show Himself the way He did in the Old Testament and there would be no doubts?”
I said, “Son, what time is it?”
He looked at his watch and gave me the time.
“Is that the correct time?” I asked.
He said, “I dialed the telephone company’s number and listened to the recording.”
I asked, “How does the telephone company know the right time?”
I then told him how several years ago the Congress of the United States gave the Naval Observatory the responsibility for furnishing the correct time to the United States as well to all the ships at sea. This observatory has the finest telescopes and chronometers that men and money can put together.
Their procedure for determining the correct time is something like this. At regular periods they focus telescopes on certain stars. When this star reaches a certain position on their telescope, they say, “Mark,” and they check the chronometer for the time. If the time does not agree with their tables, they never say, “The stars are a microsecond ahead this morning.”
They say, “Correct the chronometer,” because man uses the movement of the stars as a reference point for time.
God said, “…all their host have I commanded.” And in measuring the stars man has seen that they have never varied a millionth of a second since the time the first records have been kept.
In any talk about the vastness of the universe, there comes the inevitable question, “Where is heaven?”
Dr. Irwin Moon, producer of the Moody Institute of Science films, had the following conversation about this very subject with a famous scientist.
Moon: “Do you believe God?”
Scientist: “Oh, yes. In fact all the scientists I know believe in God. The closer you get to the basic construction of matter, the more you know there has to be a god. But, don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe in God the way you do.”
Moon: “What is the difference?”
Scientist: “Let me ask you a question. Where is heaven located?”
Moon: “We used to say it was ‘up’ but now that we know the world is round, we say it is ‘out’ instead of ‘up’.
Scientist: “How far is ‘out’?”
Moon: “I don’t know.”
Scientist: “Is Abel in heaven?”
Moon: “Yes, Abel is in heaven.”
Scientist: “How did he get there?”
Moon: “I don’t know.”
Scientist: “If heaven is located just beyond the range of my telescope and Abel has been traveling at the speed of light for 6,000 years, he is only a tiny portion of the distance that I have seen with my telescope. So, assuming that heaven is just beyond the range of my telescope, he has literally thousands of years yet to go before he reaches heaven.”
Moon: “Doctor, you have received the Nobel prize for your work in physics. You have done more than any other person to popularize the idea of the porosity of matter. Now, if your research is true, is this wall mostly space?”
Scientist: “Yes, it’s about as porous as a breath of fresh air.”
Moon: “If this wall is porous and this chair is porous, why can’t I push the chair through the wall the same way I can push my fingers between one another?”
Scientist: “I don’t know why you can’t push the chair through the wall. I have tried it and it won’t go through. But this I know, it is not because there is a collision of the solid particles. We assume that between the solid particles there is an electrical flux operating on opposing frequencies.” (To illustrate this, take two horseshoe magnets and try pushing them together, like poles against like. You will discover that there is a strong electrical force that keeps you from doing it. This is what the scientist is saying about opposing frequencies.)
Moon: “If your theory is true, would it be possible then for two earths to occupy the same space at the same time and neither be conscious of the other’s existence if they were perfectly synchronized by frequency so that there are no collisions?”
Scientist (after thinking a moment): “Yes, not only two, but hundreds of thousands of earths could occupy the very same space.”
Moon: “I think I have learned something very valuable from this conversation. Just this morning I was reading Ephesians 2:6, which says, ‘we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.’ To get to heaven, I may not have to move an inch. All I have to do is change to a different frequency.”
Colossians 1:27 says, “Christ is in you.” This is literally true.
Matthew 18:20 is true also, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.”
Psalm 34:7 says, “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them.”
I have never seen an angel. And to the best of my knowledge I have never collided with one. But I believe that the world is full of them.
Where are the angels? 2 Kings gives the answer. Reading this book is like reading the morning newspaper. Israel and Syria were fighting. But the Syrians, though they had the larger army, were unsuccessful.
The Syrian king was told that the Israeli prophet, Elisha, somehow knew all their battle plans… in fact, even knew what the king said in his sleep. So they set out to capture Elisha.
The next morning Elisha and the young man he was teaching saw that they were surrounded with heavily armed Syrian soldiers. The young man was afraid and said, “Alas, my master! How shall we do?”
Elisha said, “Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” I believe the young man had a great deal of respect for Elisha’s spirituality, but not too much for his mathematical ability. Seeing the young man’s consternation, Elisha said, “Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.”
If we were to translate that into today’s language, in light of what we have just learned from the conversation between Dr. Moon and the scientist, we could say, “Change his video frequency so he can see what’s out there.”
“And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man (changed the frequency) and he saw; and beyond the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” There is a thin veil separating the seen from the unseen.
Where is heaven? Could it be it occupies the same geographic space as the earth? I think there is scriptural evidence that not only is man the focal point of God’s interest, but it may be that God’s headquarters is located in the same part of space that the earth is in… just on a different frequency.
The God of the unimaginable vastness and intricacies of space is intimately interested in you as a person. He is not just a God “out there somewhere,” but He is a God “right here.”
We simply cannot comprehend the things that are planned for those of us who are Christians. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”