Some Miracles Are Easy to Believe
Many discoveries about the universe have only been made the last century that boggle the mind. The speed of light (186,000 mph) is only one. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, receives light from our sun in 4.22 years. If each star in our galaxy, The Milky Way Galaxy, is represented as a grain of sand, all the stars would fill a large dump truck.
But today, thanks in part to the Hubble Space Telescope and from Radical Amazement (Judy Cannato), we know there are billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars. If each star was represented by a grain of sand, if one imagined filled railroad hopper cars, passing by at the rate of one per second for twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, it would take three years for all the sand-filled hopper cars to pass by.
If your mind is not boggled enough, scientists such as Edwin Hubble, Albert Einstein, Georges Lemaitre, George Gamow, and Wendy Freedman were a few that concluded the universe was actually expanding at an increasing rate, which started off with the Big Bang Theory approximately 13.7 billion years ago. This theory is corroborated by cosmic radiation throughout the universe. With God in charge of that kind of synthesis, why would anyone doubt His ability for miracles on this puny earth?
Some physicists have concluded that God had ‘life’ in mind all along. In Radical Amazement it was shown in the beginning if the start of the Big Bang had expanded a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent slower, the gravitational force would have imploded the universe. If it had expanded a trillionth of a trillionth faster, matter would have escaped all gravitational pull, and would have expanded at a rate fast enough not allowing any life to form.
Realizing all this was likely for a purpose, one (and all Christians do) could understand how such a God could easily produce miracles such as healing lepers, giving sight to the blind, providing food for thousands, walking on water, and controlling the weather. It should be no stretch whatsoever to believe He could actually rise from the dead.
After all the making and production in the cosmos, what could He NOT do? Transubstantiation, the complete changing of ordinary bread and wine into His actual body and blood, should be comparatively utter simplicity to God. But even some Christians have doubts.
In John [Bible] alone, Jesus says numerous times “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” Most bolted upon hearing this, because they thought He was talking about cannibalism. Jesus did not stop those from leaving, because He knew some humans may not grasp this miracle. Transubstantiation means a total physical change with the same appearance, no mere co-representation, and no grape juice.
It’s interesting that the only ones who would not leave, and remained with Jesus were his apostles. Jesus asked if they would leave too. They would not. Even more interesting was most of those twelve (ex. Judas) became the cornerstone of the Catholic Faith.
It turns out Christians believed in the Eucharist until around 1517 when some Christian sects decided Jesus’ statement was just too unbelievable, and determined on a different ‘interpretation’. Maybe in 1517, many Christians had no idea what information was waiting for them with the determination of the making of the cosmos.
Amazingly in 2003, scientists using the LAMBDA – Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observed that about 25% of the existing universe is “dark matter”. This matter cannot be seen, but it can be detected by its gravitational pull.
And about 70% of the universe is “dark energy”. It has been determined this is the force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. That means almost 70% of the universe cannot be seen, but most now agree it is causing the universe to expand, with mass velocities faster at the outer reaches of the universe.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Death by Black Hole“ puts it (p. 47), there is an education we weaned from this journey of the mind: “…humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, [and] hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos.”
It is possible God’s question could be put to many in this day and age: “Do you also want to leave?”[John 6:67]
Kevin Roeten can be reached at [email protected]