Foundation of earth and establishment of Heavens

Foundation of the earth and establisment of the heavens

"The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.

By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew" (Pro.3:19-20).

The Lord by wisdom has founded the earth. Normally we are taught in the Scriptures that God created the earth by His power. How can we understand the term "wisdom" here? By wisdom of this world, the scientists make inventions. By wisdom, God creates something out of nothing. The wisdom of God is unsearchable (Rom.11:13). We can easily search out the wisdom of the wise or the wisdom of men because man creates something out of something. Then the Lord has established the heavens by understanding. Understanding comes out of wisdom. God understood the intricacies of the hosts of the heaven out of His great wisdom. Accordingly, He established the courses of sun, moon, stars and various planets. Job says that God spread out the heavens and treads upon the waves of the sea (Job 9:8) and that God commands the sun not to rise up and seals up the stars at night (Job 9:7).

Let us study from the astronomy how the universe is functioning so that we can know how God has established the heavens by understanding. Through the study of astronomy, we are simply discovering how God has established the whole universe by understanding. But still we through the study of astronomy are not able to understand the power by which the entire universe functions in a systematic manner and in a time frame. It is beyond the human understanding. Through our limited knowledge, we cannot comprehend the understanding of God by which He established the heavens or the whole universe. Since we are inhabiting the earth which is given to us for living, we understand the hidden things of the earth. But we cannot understand fully the hidden things of the planets which are not meant for our living. We send un-manned satellites to planets like Mars and discover something. We thus understand something about the planets out of something we discover.

Our earth is one of the nine planets of our solar system; our sun is a star like other thousand millions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The light of the stars comes to us from different directions and distances with varying intensity.

Innumerable stars are above us. Stars have a certain position, distance and brightness. All stars are born, live thousands of years and die. Inside them energy is set free by nuclear reactions. Stars with greater mass burn faster and end as neutron stars or black holes. Stars with less mass possess a longer life. They are ending as white dwarfs, which are cooling down very slowly and at least are getting invisible. It is only God who can number the stars and who can all them by their names. "Great is our Lord, and of great power: His understanding is infinite" (Ps.147:4-5). His understanding cannot be comprehended through our human mind as it is infinite.

Our solar system consists of the sun, nine planets (and their moons), an asteroid belt, and many comets and meteors. The sun is the center of our solar system; the planets, their moons, the asteroids, comets, and other rocks and gas all orbit the sun.

The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. A belt of asteroids (minor planets made of rock and metal) lies between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, the ecliptic.

By His knowledge, the depths of the water are broken up and the clouds drop down the dew. The solar rays penetrate the depths of the sea water and make them evaporate. All large scale sea ice melting is triggered by the solar radiation. Due to the solar radiation into the depths of the sea, the sea water gets evaporated and goes up. When the sun shines, the sea water is heated and it begins to rise, and as the air rises, it begins to cool. Clouds are formed when the humid air is cooled below a critical temperature : the water then condenses on tiny suspended particles and forms droplets in the atmosphere. Dew forms when a surface cools (through loss of infrared radiation) to a temperature which is colder than the dewpoint of the air next to the surface. Dew is made of liquid water that has condensed from some of the water vapor contained in the air. The Word of God sums up the whole process of formation of dew. His knowledge means "solar radiation".

Next.....Sound wisdom and discretion