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The ultimate destiny of the universe.
Posted By: koalamom, on host 4.33.111.177
Date: Sunday, May 13, 2001, at 16:13:02
In Reply To: Corrections Welcome posted by Oeras on Sunday, May 13, 2001, at 13:17:21:

> Space is vast. Picture a marble. Now picture the planet Earth. Earth is obviously millions of times bigger, but this does not compare to how vast space is, compared to us. Now picture the sun. 1.3 million Earths would fit into the Sun. The Sun is a star. The nearest star to Earth besides the Sun (Proxima CentauriAlpha Cen C) is 4.3 light-years away. So, traveling at the speed of light, it would take about 4 years and 2 months to get there. This distance is beyond conception of the human mind. Yet, space is far larger. I could continue in saying that there are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy alone.
>
> In fact, if the Andromeda galaxy were to collide with the Milky Way (a slight chance, in some millions of years), it is nearly guaranteed no stars would collide. Despite so many stars. This is not including all of the dark matter that is possibly something other than stars.
>
> Besides all this, eventually everyone is going to die out. The solar system is going to die out after that, and the galaxy, and the universe eventually. So, one marble is nothing. One person is nothing. Six billion people are nothing. One planet, with all its animal and plant life, amounts to nothing in the universe. Hundreds of billions of stars amount to nothing.
>
> And besides all this (or should I say, none of this), a universe means nothing.
>
> Oeras, May 13, 2001 A.D. (Gregorian calendar)

The theme of the book of Ecclesiastes immediately sprang to mind:

"'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (Ecclesiastes 1:2) He goes on to say that wisdom is meaningless, pleasures are meaningless, toil is meaningless, advancement is meaningless, riches are meaningless...although I don't see anything specific about the meaningless heat death of the universe, I think we can catch his drift..

but consider who's in charge of it all:

"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you lose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?" asks God of Job (Job 38:31).

God started it, He will finish it. The universe if pretty big, as you pointed out, but God is bigger. What's meaningless is life without the connection of a sovereign God and his eternal perspective.

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes 12:13 concludes: "Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

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