He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17)
In part II we will look at our amazing solar system and how it relates to the Milky Way galaxy.
The moon is about seven thousand miles in circumference and it rotates once on its axis every twenty-seven days. That is why it always looks the same in the sky. It revolves around the earth once every twenty-seven days. It is approximately 240,000 miles from earth. The path of the moon’s orbit around the earth is 1,502,000 miles. It travels at 56,630 miles per day around the earth.
The earth is approximately 24,000 miles in circumference. It rotates on its axis at about one thousand miles per hour. It makes one complete rotation every twenty-four hours. The earth is approximately 93,000,000 miles from the sun. It revolves around the sun once every three-hundred and sixty-five days. The earth travels about 587,000,000 miles around the sun. The speed of the earth in its orbit around the sun is 1,610,000 miles per day or sixty seven thousand miles per hour.
The sun is approximately 865,000 miles in diameter. It is made mostly of helium and hydrogen. It burns at a temperature of 10,000 degrees fahrenheit. The sun burns through six hundred million tons of hydrogen per second. If the sun were to burn out, the earth would not have available energy to sustain it for more than a week. The sun and our solar system is approximately 1/2 way from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The solar system travels at approximately 514,000 miles per hour in its trajectory around the galaxy. At that speed it would take our solar system 1,400,000 years to make one revolution around the galaxy.
The Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years across. It contains between two and four billion stars. It rotates clockwise. The two tails of our galaxy do not follow the center of the galaxy like a pinwheel, but they lead the way. In the universe, the Milky Way galaxy is one of billions of galaxies. The universe contains trillions of stars.
The question is: If the earth is spinning at a thousand miles per hour while it revolves around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour and the solar system is hurtling through space at more than a half a million miles per hours, why aren’t we just sucked out into space? It is called gravity. The larger galaxy holds our solar system in place while the massive sun holds the planets of our solar system in place and the large earth holds the moon in its orbit and and everything on this earth in place. Gravity is also what keeps the stars and galaxies and planets from crashing into each other.
When you think of the orderliness of our solar system and the universe as a whole it shows intelligent design. The universe did not just happen as the evolutionist insist. It was planned and it runs like a well oiled machine.
The Bible tells us who that designer is. Colossians 1:16-17 tells us that; “For by Him (Jesus) all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” The Bible says Jesus, God the Son, created the universe and He is the one who holds everything together.