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Wednesday, 27 October 2021
Collaborating with Jerry Miller 11

The last sentence yesterday was a question. "How great is our God?" That's a question that deserves an answer. Our God is so great that He alone could create (and did create) the universe and everything in it. Think about what we know today as scientific specifics. The moon is exactly 400 times closer to the earth than the sun and exactly 400 times smaller than the sun, making a total lunar eclipse possible. That is specific.

Rabbi Trail: I used to have a 55 gallon salt water aquarium. It took a lot of maintenance. God's aquarium (called the rivers, lakes and oceans) is both salt and fresh water and He has never had to maintain it. It just works.

For that matter, the whole earth is God's terrarium. Man has tried to duplicate God's creation on a smaller scale. In Arizona 20 years ago there was the biosphere experiment. The problem was the people in it were sneaking out and loading up on beer at the corner pub. So much for a closed system. My point is that God's terrarium works. The balance of oxygen and nitrogen is just right to sustain both animal and plant life.

My other point is that man is always trying to duplicate God's work, but can't. Medical science is always trying to duplicate - God created - bodily functions such as kidney function. Maybe with some success for a season, but in time, man's replacements break down. As Joyce Kilmer (who would name their son Joyce?) said, "Only God can make a tree." End RT.

The Bible itself (God's written word) makes some incredible statements that should lead even the most devout agnostic to scratch his/her head in wonder over God's greatness. Here are a few examples.

Isaiah 40:22a He sits above the circle of the earth ... Here the Hebrew word translated circle is "Kadur" meaning "ball." The Bible refers to the earth as a sphere. Do you think Columbus knew that? The Bible also describes the earth in space Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over the void; He suspends the earth over nothing. That was written at a time when other (less inspired) men thought the earth was flat and attached to the back of a turtle.

One more and then we'll move on. Job 3-28:26 Behold, God is exalted - beyond our knowledge! The number of His years is unsearchable. For He draws up the drops of water; they distill rain into its mist, which the clouds pour down and shower mankind abundantly. This is an amazing description of evaporation. Only evaporation would not be discovered by Nils Wallerius (physicist and theologian) until the 1700's, some 2,500 years after this was written by the author of Job.

Okay, I saved the best for last. This great God gave instructions to Moses on how to worship Him. These instructions turned out to be about 40 chapters of the Torah. The result was the Tabernacle in the wilderness (Called the Mishkan - a form of the word "Shekinah" meaning God's presence. The word actually takes on many forms in modern Hebrew and can mean neighborhood, deposit, or even one who lives in a housing project.)

But that's not the end of the story. Galatians 4:4-7 But when the fullness of time came, God sent out His Son, born of a woman and born under law - to free those under law, so we might receive adoption as sons. Now because you are sons, God sent the Ruach of His Son into our hearts, who cries out, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a son - and if a son, also an heir through God.

God sent His Son to grant each of us access to His neighborhood. The veil was torn in two and the middle wall (separating both Jews and non-Jews) was torn down. The gift of eternal life in God's presence is now available to us all. Be inspired. Shalom.

Posted By Rabbi Michael Weiner, 10:18am Comment Comments: 0