Let There Be Light

In the late sixties, The Washington Post featured a cartoon entitled “The Big Bang Theory.” It portrayed two scientists reaching the pinnacle of a mountain where a monk was perched with the scriptures open on his lap. He asked them, “What took you so long?”

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is roughly 100,000 light-years across, and our solar system sits about 26,000 light-years from its center. To put this into perspective—if the star closest to our solar system vanished today, its light would continue to stream toward us for the next four years; we would not realize it was gone until then. If the star farthest from us within our galaxy vanished today, its light would continue streaming toward us for approximately 75,000 years. Much of what we see in the night sky, though only just reaching our eyes, is a profoundly ancient "ghost" image of what was then rather than what is now.

The farthest galaxy observable from Earth is roughly 13.5 to 13.9 billion light-years away. NASA currently estimates there are billions of stars in our galaxy and billions of galaxies in the universe, all of which is expanding outward from a single point. The expanse between stars and galaxies is so vast that galaxies have been observed passing through each other without catastrophic physical collisions.

Our understanding of the cosmos has developed exponentially, especially over the past two hundred years. Yet, there remains a God-designed barrier—a "veil" over physical reality—that scientists and astronomers rarely emphasize: Space, in the truest sense of the word, prevents us from knowing how much of what we observe still exists. We study a profoundly ancient image of what was, not what is. Our comprehension of existence itself is further distorted by perspective; time, as we know it, is an Earth-bound phenomenon. Outside the gravitational and rotational context of our solar system, our standard measurements of seconds, minutes, and years lose their terrestrial relevance.

One can argue, then, that as children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, we enjoy a more complete understanding of the "Kingdom of God" (spiritual reality) than we do of physical reality. As Jesus explained to the woman at the well, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). To Nicodemus, He further clarified, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. It is like this with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Jesus came to restore our oneness—our atonement—with God. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, the veil in the Temple that symbolically separated us from a Holy God was torn open, giving us direct access. Life for the believer is thereby a dual existence; we operate in God’s Kingdom while still inhabiting His physical creation. This is why Jesus prayed for His followers just before His crucifixion: “I am not praying that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them... by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:1517). Through faith, we have “crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24) and now live on the other side of a great unseen divide.

The Big Bang theory is consistent with the account offered by Moses in the Tanakh. God describes Himself as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14)—the Alpha and the Omega. Science estimates the "beginning" happened roughly 13.8 billion years ago. And what preceded that moment? As Moses declared: "Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God" (Psalm 90:2). As Peter shared, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8).

Astronomy reinforces the existence of God because the cosmos appears to be infinite. To the believer, this vastness makes the existence of a Creator not just possible, but certain. While some regard faith as an emotional crutch, the sheer scale of creation points toward a Designer whose ways are beyond our own. As Isaiah spoke for God: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8–9). Everything in existence is still expanding outward from the moment God willed everything into existence with a single, spoken command:

“Let there be light.”