And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.(Genesis 1:14-19)
God created light on the first day, but the Sun and moon and stars on the fourth day. The difference is that on the first day, God said , ‘Let there be light, lit. ‘Or’ . But on the fourth day, God said let there be ‘lights’, or ‘light giver’, ie Ma-Or.
The Creator, made two main lights, ‘the greater light’, (the sun) to rule the day and ‘the lesser light’, to rule the night. Of course this account of Creation is given from a geo-centric perspective. The Sun and moon are essential, the stars incidental. The Sun was created as a light generator, the moon as a light reflector.
In John’s account of the new Creation, in the gospel of John, this same distinction of lights is made, contrasting the ‘true Light’, ie Jesus the incarnated Word of God, with John the Baptist, or with any human witness to the Word of God,
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.(John 1:6-9)
The church is a light, but only a reflected light. We are true witnesses only to the extent that we reflect the light of God. We lose our capacity to reflect light, when we turn away or even drift away from God. Jesus the LORD is the only true self-generating light of the world, penetrating the darkness of sin and estrangement from God.
These Celestial lights were to be for “Signs and seasons” as well as to measure days and years. But what were they to be signs of? History has indeed been marked by celestial portents of great events.
There are those who speculate that the 12 constellations now known as the Zodiac was a teaching of some kind. However since the fall of man, we are no longer able to properly interpret the ‘signs in the stars’ because of the corruption of our reason and out tendency towards idolatry. Therefore God has forbidden any form of stargazing, or astrology,
Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee(Isaiah 47:12-15)
Yet all is perfectly in order; comets travel with regularity in orbits that can be anticipated in intervals of years. Laws govern the circuits of massive heavenly bodies,that allow them to be studied and predicted. Scientists have discovered that If the earth were not shielded by Jupiter and Saturn we would have long ago been pelted with meteors and comets and would not sustain life.
There are heavenly bodies that absolutely dwarf the earth. They could contain thousands of earths, and whose gravitational pull could suck the earth into themselves from millions of miles away! But the earth is perfectly situated to teem with life. Were it any closer to the sun and we would burn up, any further we would freeze over. THe position of the earth in the Milky Way galaxy is ideal.
The built in features to the earth such as the perfectly tilted axis, the rotational lift, our magnetic field which serves as a meteor and radiation shield, and our moon, all cry out as a witness to the Intelligent and Loving designer, who surely created this planet, among the trillions of other celestial objects, as a habitation for us.
O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)