Been awhile......

I know it's been awhile since I have posted...I have excuses....really!.....at least ten or twenty!

Mostly it's because i have been working non-stop 12 hour shifts every day and by the time I get home I am just wasted and my brain is fried.

On the other hand....I have been wanting to share a couple of things with you...the first is something that if you actually get ahold of it....it will help you to understand scripture...I don't know how else to say it other than you need to understand God's view on objectification...It's going to be really complicated and I will choose another time to write about it.

The second thing is what I want to write about first......also pretty complicated.

This may take you a little time to read....it is very "heady" in places. I would probably print it out if I were you. I have added internet links to certain terms should you choose to look them up.



To sum it all up: The article I am going to post here proves a direct and scientific correaltion between The Big Bang Theory and the Six Days of Creation. I have highlighted in green some of the most interesting parts and statements.

Don't skip forward and try to understand the end of the article without reading the beginning...it won't make any sense. You need the first parts of the article to understand the second parts.


The writer of the article is Dr. Gerald Schroeder . I saw an interview with him on a tv show called The Naked Archeologist .


The Age of the Universe

One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5758 years. Whereas, data from the Hubbell telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the number at 15 billion years. In trying to resolve this apparent conflict, it's interesting to look historically at trends in knowledge, because absolute proofs are not forthcoming. But what is available is to look at how science has changed its picture of the world, relative to the unchanging picture of the Torah. Because the Torah doesn't have the option of changing. (I refuse to use modern Biblical commentary, because modern commentary already knows modern science, and so it is influenced by that always.)

So the only data I use as far as Biblical commentary goes is ancient commentary. That means the text of the Bible itself (3300 years ago), the translation of the Torah into Aramaic by Onkelos (100 CE), the Talmud (redacted about the year 500 CE), and the three major Torah commentators. There are many, many commentators, but at the top of the mountain there are three, accepted by all: Rashi (11th century France), who brings the straight understanding of the text, Maimonides (12th century Egypt), who handles the philosophical concepts, and then Nachmanides (13th century Spain), the earliest of the Kabbalists.

This ancient commentary was finalized hundreds or thousands of years ago, long before Hubbell was a gleam in his great-grandparent's eye. So there's no possibility of Hubbell or any other scientific data influencing these concepts. That's a key component in my attempt to keep the following discussion objective.

A universe with a beginning.

In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, "What is your concept of the age of the universe?" Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology - the deep physics of understanding the universe - was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American - the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer. The answer that two-thirds - an overwhelming majority - of the scientists gave was, "Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says 'In the beginning.' That's a nice story, it helps kids go to bed at night. But we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning."

That was 1959. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the echo of the Big Bang in the black of the sky at night, and the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a beginning. Science had made an enormous paradigm change in its understanding of the world. Understand the impact. Science said that our universe had a beginning, that the first word of the Bible is correct. I can't overestimate the import of that scientific "discovery." Evolution, cave men, these are all trivial problems compared to the fact that we now understand that we had a beginning.


Of course, the fact that there was a beginning does not prove that there was a beginner. Whether the second half of Genesis 1:1 is correct, we don't know from a secular point of view. The first half is "In the beginning;" the second half is "G-d created the Heavens and the Earth." Physics allows for a beginning without a beginner. I'm not going to get into that today, but my new book, "The Science of G-d," examines this in great detail.

It all starts from Rosh Hashana.

The question we're left with is, how long ago did the "beginning" occur? Was it, as the Bible might imply, 5758 years, or was it the 15 billions of years that's accepted by the scientific community? The first thing we have to understand is the origin of the Biblical calendar. The Jewish year, 5758 years, is figured by adding up the generations since Adam. Additionally, there are six days leading up to the creation to Adam. These six days are significant as well.


Of course, what the question would be is where we make the zero point. On Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, we blow the Shofar three times during the Musaf service. Immediately upon blowing of the Shofar, the following sentence is said: "Hayom Harat Olam - today is the birthday of the world."

This verse might imply that Rosh Hashana commemorates the creation of the universe. But it doesn't. Rosh Hashana does commemorate a creation, but not the creation of the universe. We blow the Shofar three times to commemorate the last of the three creations that occurs in the Six Days of Genesis. First, there's a creation of the entire universe and the laws of nature. Then on Day Five, there's a creation that brings us the Nefesh, the soul of animal life. Finally, at the end of Day Six, there's a further creation that brings us the Neshama, the soul of human life. Rosh Hashana commemorates not the first or second of the creations, but the creation of the Neshama, the soul of human life. Rosh Hashana falls right here. Which means that we start counting our 5758 years from the creation of the soul of Adam.

We have a clock that begins with Adam, and the six days are separate from this clock. The Bible has two clocks. That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the fact that Talmudic commentaries 1500 years ago, bring this information down. In the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 29:1), an expansion of the Talmud, all the Sages agree that Rosh Hashana commemorates the soul of Adam, and that the Six Days of Genesis are separate. Now 1500 years ago, when this information was first recorded, it wasn't because one of the Sages like Hillel was talking to his 10-year-old son who said, "Daddy, you can't believe it. We went to a museum today, and learned all about a billions-of-years-old universe," and Hillel says, "Oh, I better change the Bible, let's keep the six days separate." That wasn't what was happening.


You have to put yourself in the mind frame of 1500 years ago, when people traveled by donkeys and we didn't have electricity or even zippers. Why were the Six Days taken out of the calendar? At the time, there was no need to make them separate. The reason they were taken out is because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. "There was evening and morning" is an exotic, bizarre, unusual way of describing time.

Once you come from Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having children! Seth lives 105 years before having children, etc. From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human in concept. But prior to that time, it's an abstract concept: "Evening and morning." It's as if you're looking down on events from a viewpoint that is not intimately related to them.

Looking deeper into the text.

In trying to understand the flow of time here, you have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-?-vis the Bible are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. Up the river at Harvard, at the Weiger library, they probably have 200,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don't expect that by a simple reading of those sentence, you'll know every detail that is held within the text. It's obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out.

The idea of having to dig deeper is not a rationalization. The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2) tells us that from the opening sentence of the Bible, through the beginning of Chapter Two, the entire text is given in parable form, a poem with a text and a subtext. Now, again, put yourself into the mindset of 1500 years ago, the time of the Talmud. Why would the Talmud think it was parable? You think that 1500 years ago they thought that G-d couldn't make it all in 6 days? It was a problem for them? We have a problem today with cosmology and scientific data. But 1500 years ago, what's the problem with 6 days? No problem.

So when the Sages excluded these six days from the calendar, and said that the entire text is parable, it wasn't because they were trying to apologize away what they'd seen in the local museum. There was no local museum. No one was out there digging up ancient fossils. The fact is that a close reading of the text makes it clear that there's information hidden and folded into layers below the surface.

The idea of looking for a deeper meaning in Torah is no different than looking for deeper meaning in science. If you get up early in the morning, look over and there comes the Sun, rising in the east. Wait a few hours and the Sun sets in the west. The simple "reading" is "there's the Sun again going around the Earth." But there's much more to it. How about the Earth rotating on its axis. And if you neglect the rest of the universe and just take the Sun-Earth system, it's not the Sun that's moving, although that's every perception of human perception.

In the Sun-Earth system it's the Sun that is standing still, and the Earth that is moving, rotating on its axis which means that this moment, as we are sitting here, we are moving about 800 miles an hour. There go the clouds. Look at them zooming by. No, that's not what's happening, because we're all moving together. We don't feel it because it's inertial motion, there's no acceleration. So it feels like we're standing still. But in fact we are moving at 800 miles an hour as we rotate around to get a day and a night out of that one 24-hour day. Our Earth is moving around the sun at about 20 miles a second. And the entire Solar System is moving around the center of our galaxy at about 250 miles a second. That's per second. Do we feel any of it? No. So when Galileo argued and claimed that Earth is not standing still, he got put under house arrest. Just as we look for the deeper readings in science, we need to look for the deeper readings in text. Thousands of years ago we learned that there are subtleties in the text that expand the meaning way beyond. It's those subtleties I want to see.

Natural history and human history.

There are early Jewish sources that tell us that the calendar is in two-parts (even predating Leviticus Rabba which goes back almost 1500 years and says it explicitly). In the closing speech that Moses makes to the people, he says if you want to see the fingerprint of G-d in the universe, "consider the days of old, the years of the many generations" (Deut. 32:7) Nachmanides, in the name of Kabbalah, says, "Why does Moses break the calendar into two parts - 'The days of old, and the years of the many generations?' Because, 'Consider the days of old' is the Six Days of Genesis. 'The years of the many generations' is all the time from Adam forward."

Moses says you can see G-d's fingerprint on the universe in one of two ways. Look at the phenomenon of the Six Days, and the development of a universe which is mind-boggling. Or if that doesn't impress you, then just consider society from Adam forward - the phenomenon of human history. Either way, you will find the imprint of G-d.

I recently met in Jerusalem with Professor Leon Lederman, Nobel Prize winning physicist. We were talking science, obviously. And as the conversation went on, I said, "What about spirituality, Leon?" And he said to me, "Schroeder, I'll talk science with you, but as far as spirituality, speak to the people across the street, the theologians." But then he continued, and he said, "But I do find something spooky about the people of Israel coming back to the Land of Israel."


Interesting. The first part of Moses' statement, "Consider the days of old" - about the Six Days of Genesis - that didn't impress Prof. Lederman. But the "Years of the many generations" - human history - that impressed him. Prof. Lederman found nothing spooky about the Eskimos eating fish at the Arctic circle. And he found nothing spooky about Greeks eating Musika in Athens. But he finds something real spooky about Jews eating falafel on Jaffa Street. Because it shouldn't have happened. It doesn't make sense historically that the Jews would come back to the Land of Israel. Yet that's what happened.


And that's one of the functions of the Jewish People in the world. To act as a demonstration. We don't want everyone to be Jewish in the world, just to understand that there is some monkey business going on with history that makes it not all just random. That there's some direction to the flow of history. And the world has seen it through us. It's not by chance that Israel is on the front page of the New York Times more than anyone else.

What is a "day?"

Let's jump back to the Six Days of Genesis. First of all, we now know that when the Biblical calendar says 5758 years, we must add to that "plus six days." A few years ago, I acquired a dinosaur fossil that was dated (by two radioactive decay chains) as 150 million years old. (If you visit me in Jerusalem, I'll be happy to show you the dinosaur fossil - the vertebra of a plesiosaurus.) So my 7-year-old daughter says, "Abba! Dinosaurs? How can there be dinosaurs 150 million years ago, when my Bible teacher says the world isn't even 6000 years old?" So I told her to look in Psalms 90:4. There, you'll find something quite amazing. King David says, "1000 years in Your (G-d's) sight are like a day that passes, a watch in the night." Perhaps time is different from the perspective of King David, than it is from the perspective of the Creator. Perhaps time is different.

The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2), in trying to understand the subtleties of Torah, analyzes the word "choshech." When the word "choshech" appears in Genesis 1:2, the Talmud explains that it means black fire, black energy, a kind of energy that is so powerful you can't even see it. Two verses later, in Genesis 1:4, the Talmud explains that the same word - "choshech" - means darkness, i.e. the absence of light.

Other words as well are not to be understood by their common definitions. For example, "mayim" typically means water. But Maimonides says that in the original statements of creation, the word "mayim" may also mean the building blocks of the universe. Another example is Genesis 1:5, which says, "There is evening and morning, Day One." That is the first time that a day is quantified: evening and morning. Nachmanides discusses the meaning of evening and morning. Does it mean sunset and sunrise? It would certainly seem to.

But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The text says "there was evening and morning Day One... evening and morning a second day... evening and morning a third day." Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned. Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is only mentioned on Day Four? We know that the author of the Bible - even if you think it was a bunch of Bedouins sitting around a campfire at night - one thing we know is that the author was smart. He or she or it produced a best-seller. For thousands of years! So you can't attribute the sun appearing only on Day Four to foolishness. There's a purpose for it on Day Four. And the purpose is that as time goes by and people understand more about the universe, you can dig deeper into the text.

Nachmanides says the text uses the words "Vayehi Erev" - but it doesn't mean "there was evening." He explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet - the root of "erev" - is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is "there was disorder." The Torah's word for "morning" - "boker" - is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.


Order can not arise from disorder by random reactions. (In pure probability it can, but the numbers are so infinitesimally small that physics regards the probability as zero.) So you go to the Dead Sea and say, "I see these orderly salt crystals. You're telling me that G-d's there making each crystal?" No. That's not what I'm saying. But the salt crystals do not arise randomly. They arise because laws of nature that are part of the creation package force salt crystals to form. The laws of nature guide the development of the world. And there is a phenomenal amount of development that's encoded in the Six Days. But it's not included directly in the text. Otherwise you'd have creation every other sentence!

The Torah wants you to be amazed by this flow of order, starting from a chaotic plasma and ending up with a symphony of life. Day-by-day the world progresses to higher and higher levels. Order out of disorder. It's pure thermodynamics. And it's stated in terminology of 3000 years ago.

The creation of time.

Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: "There is evening and morning, Day One." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says "evening and morning, a second day." And the Torah continues with this pattern: "Evening and morning, a third day... a fourth day... a fifth day... the sixth day." Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One" ("Yom Echad"). Many English translations that make the mistake of writing "a first day." That's because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between "one" and "first." One is absolute; first is comparative.

Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That's a phenomenal insight. Time was created. I can understand creating matter, even space. But time? How do you create time? You can't grab time. You don't even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah's use of the phrase, "Day One." And that's exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: hat there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself.

Einstein's Law of Relativity.

We look at the universe, and say, "How old is the universe? Looking back in time, the universe is about 15 billion years old." That's our view of time. But what is the Bible's view of time? How does it see time? Maybe it sees time differently. And that makes a big difference. Albert Einstein taught us that Big Bang cosmology brings not just space and matter into existence, but that time is part of the nitty gritty. Time is a dimension. Time is affected by your view of time. How you see time depends on where you're viewing it. A minute on the moon goes faster than a minute on the Earth. A minute on the sun goes slower. Time on the sun is actually stretched out so that if you could put a clock on the sun, it would tick more slowly. It's a small difference, but it's measurable and measured. If you could ripen oranges on the Sun, they would take longer to ripen. Why? Because time goes more slowly. Would you feel it going more slowly? No, because your biology would be part of the system. If you were living on the Sun, your heart would beat more slowly. Wherever you are, your biology is in synch with the local time.

If you could look from one system to another, you would see time very differently. Because depending on factors like gravity and velocity, you will perceive time in a way that is very different. Here's an example: One evening we were sitting around the dinner table, and my 11-year-old daughter asked, "How you could have dinosaurs? How you could have billions of years scientifically - and thousands of years Biblically at the same time? So I told her to imagine a planet where time is so stretched out that while we live out two years on Earth, only three minutes will go by on that planet. Now, those places actually exist, they are observed. It would be hard to live there with their conditions, and you couldn't get to them either, but in mental experiments you can do it. Two years are going to go by on Earth, three minutes are going to go by on the planet. So my daughter says, "Great! Send me to the planet. I'll spend three minutes there. I'll do two years worth of homework. I'll come back home, no homework for two years." Nice try. Assuming she was age 11 when she left, and her friends were 11. She spends three minutes on the planet and then comes home. (The travel time takes no time.) How old is she when she gets back? Eleven years and 3 minutes. And her friends are 13. Because she lived out 3 minutes while we lived out 2 years. Her friends aged from 11 years to 13 years, while she's 11 years and 3 minutes.

Had she looked down on Earth from that planet, her perception of Earth time would be that everybody was moving very quickly. Whereas if we looked up, she'd be moving very slowly. Which is correct? Is it three years? Or three minutes? The answer is both. They're both happening at the same time. That's the legacy of Albert Einstein. It so happens there literally billions of locations in the universe, where if you could put a clock at that location, it would tick so slowly, that from our perspective (if we could last that long) 15 billion years would go by... but the clock at that remote location would tick out six days. Nobody disputes this data.

Time travel and the Big Bang.

But how does this help to explain the Bible? Because anyway the Talmud and commentators seem to say that Six Days of Genesis were regular 24-hour periods! Let's look a bit deeper. The classical Jewish sources say that before the beginning, we don't really know what there is. We can't tell what predates the universe. The Midrash asks the question: Why does the Bible begin with the letter Bet? Because Bet (which is written like a backwards C) is closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction. Hence we can't know what comes before - only after. The first letter is a Bet - closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction.

Nachmanides the Kabbalist expands the statement. He says that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain "kol yemot ha-olam" - all the ages and all the secrets of the world. Nachmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing... but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a dimension for the speck: something very tiny like the size of a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life) and the Neshama (the soul of human life) are spiritual creations. There's only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. The speck is all there was. Anything else was G-d. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nachmanides describes the substance as "dak me'od, ein bo mamash" - very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance - so thin that it has no essence - turned into matter as we know it.

Nachmanides further writes: "Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman" - from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Not "begins." Time is created at the beginning. But time "grabs hold." When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no essence - that's when the Biblical clock starts.

Science has shown that there's only one "substanceless substance" that can change into matter. And that's energy. Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change into matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold. Nachmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don't know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy - light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays - all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock begins for the Bible, lasted about 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and time flows forward. The clock begins here.

Now the fact that the Bible tells us there is "evening and morning Day One", comes to teach us time from a Biblical perspective. Einstein proved that time varies from place to place in the universe, and that time varies from perspective to perspective in the universe. The Bible says there is "evening and morning Day One".

Now if the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses and Mount Sinai - long after Adam - the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, millions of days already passed. And since there was a lot of time with which to compare Day One, it would have said "A First Day." By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says "a second day," because there was already the First Day with which to compare it. You could say on the second day, "what happened on the first day." But you could not say on the first day, "what happened on the first day" because "first" implies comparison - an existing series. And there was no existing series. Day One was all there was.

Even if the Torah was seeing time from Adam, the text would have said "a first day", because by its own statement there are six days. The Torah says "Day One" because the Torah is looking forward from the beginning. And it says, how old is the universe? Six Days. We'll just take time up until Adam. Six Days. We look back in time, and say the universe is 15 billion years old. But every scientist knows, that when we say the universe is 15 billion years old, there's another half of the sentence that we never say. The other half of the sentence is: The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates that we exist in. That's Einstein's view of relativity.

The key is that the Torah looks forward in time, from very different time-space coordinates, when the universe was small. But since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time. Imagine in your mind going back billions of years ago to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there's an intelligent community. (It's totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it's going to shoot out a blast of light, and every second it's going to pulse. Every second -- pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It shoots the light out, and then billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish, and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light is imprinted (printing information on light is called fiber optics - sending information by light), "I'm sending you a pulse every second." And then a second goes by and the next pulse is sent.

Now light travels 300 million meters per second. So the two light pulses are separated by 300 million meters at the beginning. Now they travel through space for billions of years, and they're going to reach the Earth billions of years later. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. That's the cosmology of the universe. And that means it's expanding into an empty space outside the universe. There's only the universe. There is no space outside the universe. The universe expands by space stretching. So as these pulses go through billions of years of travelling, and the universe is stretching, and space is stretching, what's happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses really get further and further apart. Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we say, "Wow - a pulse!" And written on it is "I'm sending you a pulse every second." You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive another second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because depending on how much time this pulse of light has traveled through space, will determine the amount of stretching that has occurred. That's standard cosmology.

15 billion or six days?

Today, we look at time going backward. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning, relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million million. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see it every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.

The Torah doesn't say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we're sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah's perspective is from the beginning looking forward. Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3000 years ago.

The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I'm not speaking as a theologian; I'm making a scientific claim. I didn't pull these numbers out of hat. That's why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step. Now we can go one step further. Let's look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in "The Principles of Physical Cosmology," a textbook that is used literally around the world.

(In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That's the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.)

The calculations come out to be as follows:

• The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.

• The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.

• The third day also lasted half of the previous day, 2 billion years.

• The fourth day - one billion years.

• The fifth day - one-half billion years.

• The sixth day - one-quarter billion years.

When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?

But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.


Gerald Schroeder

Concerning Quarterbacks and Monks

I’ve been meditating on your first question to me; “.........but what do you think are the most important tools a believer needs when living a successful life for the Lord???”  I began focusing on the term “successful life for the Lord” and what exactly does that mean?

The definition of success comes in many forms.  Athletes may have one definition of success, and a stay at home mom may have another.  A musician may see success as a number one hit, and a doctor may see success as a surgery that went well.  It really depends upon your perspective.  Perspectives on success are as numerous as the stars.

Let’s take a moment and narrow the spectrum.  There is a difference between accomplishment and success.  Accomplishment means that you have engaged in a task or action with a goal in mind and have subsequently obtained the desired results. People all over the world have goals and they accomplish things everyday, but can it be said that they are all successful?

It could be said that success is when you have a pattern of accomplishments over time that when put together, add up to a major obtainment in life known as Success.  For instance, the quarterback on a pro football team began winning games in middle school, high school and college.  This pattern continues after he is recruited to a pro team and he is able to demand a very high price in his contract.

So then, “a successful life for the Lord”….. based on what I just described would indicate the need for a pattern of accomplishments….this is interesting territory!  I will explain from two different angles:

First: To accomplish something for the Lord presupposes a goal in mind and success would indicate multiple goals.  This is what James said about accomplishing things for the Lord:

James 2:14-18 (NIV)

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? ¹⁵Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

¹⁸But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds."
      Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

Some people (Catholics…etc) have taken scriptures like this and decided that “doing” things like feeding people and clothing people showed their faith…they accomplished things for the Lord over their whole lives….is this a successful life for the Lord?  The same people, while doing much good forgot about other scriptures like:

Philippians 4:8 (NIV)

 ⁸Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

About nine miles off the coast of Ireland is an island called Skellig Michael.  On this island is a very, very old Christian monastery that was only able to hold about 10 to 12 monks at a time.  So, what do monks do all day on a very remote island?  They pray, read and recite scripture and think…that’s about it!  Is this a successful life for the Lord?

The Apostle Paul said:

Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)

 ¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

He describes our Christian life as a race….one foot in front of the other….one step at a time….He says that the path is marked out…in other words as you put one foot in front of the other your goal is to stay on the path.  The “path” for everyone can be found in the scriptures…the path for you …personally can be found in your heart.

If the Lord speaks to your heart and tells you to go to a remote island and pray for the rest of your life…follow that path…be successful in what He has called you to do.  If He speaks to your heart and tells you to be a banker or a concrete worker….then follow that path….If He tells you to go to the grocery store and witness to the person decorating cakes….then do that!

Now here is the second part:  People all over the world have experienced the Lord speaking to their heart, telling them to do this or that…follow this path or that path….and they didn’t and now they live a life full of guilt because they know they missed it.  Or maybe they didn’t follow the path laid out in the scriptures and got caught up in a sinful life even though they were Christians…and now they feel like there is no hope…they know for sure that they have not lived a successful life for the Lord.

The problem is…they really don’t understand what a successful life in the Lord is all about.  A successful life in the Lord is knowing God’s love is no different from one moment to the next…no matter what you did in the last moment.  It is knowing God’s forgiveness for every single second of your life…from the time of your first breath…to your last.  It is knowing that Jesus is the one with a pattern of accomplishments in His life..He met every goal that God laid out….He had success……and His success is yours.  It is our heritage to live in the benefits of His success.  In other words…..you may have been in a wheel chair for your whole life but you get to have the pro football quarterbacks paycheck!

God..............Is.

I am sorry it keeps taking me so long to respond.  I have been working long shifts leaving me only enough time to sleep and give a kiss to mom.  As I understood it these were your questions:

 .........but what do you think are the most important tools a believer needs when living a successful life for the Lord???

What do you think are the most vital things for the believer to do?
What are the most necessary things for a believer to know?

You know, there are some preachers that can take these three questions and preach all year on them…including Wednesday night services!  But I have never been one of those guys…I think after awhile folks just get bored.  Soooo, I will give you the super condensed, extra light, sugar free, only 2 carbs version without any caffeine!....and it should only take about 600 pages or so…..LOL

Actually, I will just take one question at a time and deal with it and then deal with another and probably go back and forth a little.

But before I begin….. I want to quote from an article that Grandma Hartman sent me a link to:

George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!” Solomon, the wisest man in the world, once said:

 ⁹ What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

Sadly, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat the failures of the past.

Church history is one of those topics that the “hyper-spiritual” deem to have little value. Putting down the study of church history ranks right up there in the “ignorant Christian” poll with those who boldly declare, “I don’t want to study theology or doctrine; I just want to read the Bible!” … This lack of knowledge is the doorway for error to cycle through the Church repeatedly and be welcomed by unsuspecting generations as “new revelation.”

…Error, like all trends, tends to circulate every few years. When error emerges those who don’t know history, specifically church history, think they have a revelation. They see it as a “scrumptious morsel,” unaware of the damage it has wreaked in the past. In the race to have the next new revelation some preachers rush to their pulpits, or in the case of traveling preachers, they rush to your pulpit and create havoc in the hearts of believers.  Pastor Jim Richards (link to article)

This is the reason that in my responses to you I often tend to refer to church history and theology.

The most important tools….Hmmm

To begin with…two words….”God is”.  Many people have faith issues throughout their life.  They wonder all kinds of things.  Did I really know enough to make a decision to be a Christian when I was a kid?  Is God really real?  Is the stuff I have learned about God the right stuff?...Should I really believe like this?

When I was in 4^th grade ( I think it was 4^th…real close to there) I had a faith crisis.  My class in school had gone through a unit on Greek Mythology…only I didn’t stop when the unit was over.  I began checking out books from the library and reading them instead of watching TV or doing homework.  To me, the whole Greek mythology just made more sense.  They had an answer for everything.  I really was in actual real faith trouble…I remember how I felt and my faith in God was beginning to disappear.

Grandpa Hartman rescued me.  I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation or how it came about…there is a faint recollection of me sitting in the living room reading a mythology book and Grandpa Hartman began asking me questions.  I remember that he was very gentle with the whole conversation and didn’t try to “blow me out of the water”.  I remember suddenly “coming around” and realizing that all this mythology stuff was really stupid.

A “faith crisis” means you are human.  It is the way that you emerge from it that may determine your ultimate destination…we can talk about salvation theology another time.

Very early church history records that on the Day of Pentecost while the 12 apostles were still under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit they created a statement that concisely explained what they believed in.  Each apostle was responsible for one of the twelve points.  They called it the “symbol” and it was to be memorized and never written down.  Over time it was eventually written down and called the Apostles Creed.

The Catholic Church at various times decided that they wanted a “statement of belief” that was more specific about certain areas of doctrine.  This was necessary because even in those early times there was always a guy preaching some new revelation he had.  So, over time, different statements of belief were issued also called “creeds”.  Each creed stated some of the same things and focused on slightly different very important areas of the faith.

When I was in third grade and Grandpa Hartman was still attending bible school…He had a class that had asked him to write down his own personal statement of belief.  I remember this paper in particular because I remembered some of the statements in it when in 1980 I was trying to write my own personal statement of belief.  While it may seem weird that a third grader actually read college level papers..it’s the truth.  It is also true that I understood very little of what I read because Grandpa used words like “plenary” which you won’t find on a third grade spelling test.  As an adult doing my own study I found what Grandpa Hartman used as a root for his statement of belief.  It is the Athanasian Creed…[pronounced  ath-uh-ney-zhuhn]  I am including it in this part of my response because it states who and what God is….but even with this…only you…yourself…can believe that God…..is:

…We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal and yet they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One Uncreated, and One Uncomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not Three Almighties but One Almighty.

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not Three Lords but One Lord. For, like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, there be Three Gods or Three Lords. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father, and of the Son neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

So there is One Father, not Three Fathers; one Son, not Three Sons; One Holy Ghost, not Three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore or after Other, None is greater or less than Another, but the whole Three Persons are Co-eternal together, and Co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting Salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.

God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His mother, born into the world. Perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable Soul and human Flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood. Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but One Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by Unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Man, so God and Man is one Christ. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into Hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works…

Veritas

I decided to write about something that has been on my heart lately…no idea why…but here it is:

What would it be like to know…everything…that was knowable.  One scholar suggests that Aristotle was the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.  Aristotle was a teacher and a thinker.  He taught all the subjects that existed three to four hundred years before Christ was born and wrote about them too.  I like to think of him as a mix between the stodgy old college professor and the monk who sits under a tree and contemplates the deeper meanings of the bird songs he hears.  Many consider that the writings we have left from Aristotle were what he used for lecture notes.  In his fourth book of fourteen on the subject of metaphysics he makes this statement:

“…to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true; so that he who says of anything thatit is, or that it is not, will say either what is true or what is false; but neither what is nor what is not is said to be or not to be.”

This is the statement that is considered by most scholars to be the absolute root of any definition on what truth is.  As an aside:  You might recognize the last few words as those spoken by Shakespeare’s character Hamlet.  Hamlet was speaking of existence.  In other words, to exist or not to exist.  I believe there is a correlation between Hamlets statement and a contemporary of Shakespeares named René Descartes who is considered to be the father of modern philosophy.  It is Mr. Descartes who said; “I think, therefore, I am.”  The opposite of which is if you aren’t thinking then you don’t exist.  So, here is my own personal formula of the three:  To be or not to be = To exist or not to exist = To think or not to think.  ( You won’t find this correlation anywhere in the entire world except right here in this blog! )

…..and then, just for fun…I can prove that the answer to the question is actually…Not to be!  Here is the mathematical proof:

To be = 2b

2b + 2b = 4b

2b – 2b = 0

2b * 2b = 4b²

2b / 2b = 1

At no time is the answer 2b.  So then, we must say the correct answer to the question is not 2b!

Ok, back to Aristotle.  The statement he made seems really, really simple.  But no one had ever put into words exactly what truth was.  The wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, also wrote really, really simple things like this:

Ecclesiastes 11:3 (NIV)

 ³ If clouds are full of water,
       they pour rain upon the earth.
       Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north,
       in the place where it falls, there will it lie.

Can anyone say Duh?  So, anyway, once Aristotle had set his thoughts to paper, then others were free to paraphrase, add to, subtract from…etc.  One of those people who used Aristotle’s work as a starting point and went much farther was Thomas Aquinas.   He was a priest in the Catholic church about three hundred years before Shakespeare came on the scene.  He wrote many things but arguably his greatest accomplishment was the Summa Theoligica.  It is a book that is Christian doctrine in scientific form.  The “Summa” contains 38 Treatises, 612 Questions, subdivided into 3120 articles, in which about 10,000 objections are proposed and answered.  I haven’t read it all…but he is quoted as saying that “he had learned more in prayer and contemplation than he had acquired from men or books”…and I believe him.  Question #16 in the “Summa” contains eight articles on Truth.  Some of what he said will turn your brain inside out…but there is a very good point that I would simply like to quote here:

From the response in Article 1…”Now we do not judge of a thing by what is in it accidentally, but by what is in it essentially. Hence, everything is said to be true absolutely, in so far as it is related to the intellect from which it depends…”

I want you to think of this statement in terms of the scriptures as the “thing” being judged and I will restate the quote in that light:

Now we do not judge the scriptures by what is in them accidentally, but by what is in them essentially.  Hence, the scriptures are said to be true absolutely, in so far as they relate to the intellect (God) from which they depend.

From this statement you might infer that I am proposing that some of the scriptures are in the bible by accident….I am not.  I believe that the scriptures as we have them, are exactly as God intended for us to have them.  To understand what Thomas means by the word “accident” you would need to read Article One fully but basically what he means is that there is other information attached to truth….for our purposes here, it would mean that there is other information “attached” to or “in” the scriptures…that are not the “thoughts of God”.  I will show you what I mean:

Genesis 4:4-5 (NIV)

⁴ But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, ⁵ but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Is the anger that was in Cain the truth that God wants you to learn about in this passage?...or do we go a little farther…

Genesis 4:4-7 (NIV)

⁴ But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, ⁵ but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

 ⁶ Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

I believe that what God wants you to learn in this passage is in verse 7.  This is a prime example of what I want to show you.  There was true information (Cain was angry) attached to the truth (Do what is right…)

So, here is my whole point….and it is something that you should give serious consideration to when evaluating what someone is teaching from the scriptures:

Everything in the scriptures is stated truly…But not everything in the scriptures is Truth!

All of the stories, the events, the words that people said, what they thought….everything that is written about in the scriptures actually happened and God put all of that information in there for a purpose…..but….God is Truth and if someone uses a particular scripture to try and teach a principle that doesn’t line up with who God is….then it isn’t truth….no matter how much scripture they quote.

It is learning lessons like this that will help you to discern when a person has wrong doctrine or is even trying to teach something from a cult.  Always listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to your spirit.

btw…the word in the subject line, Veritas is the Latin word for truth.  The hyperlink itself has a sound bite that will show you how it is pronounced in Latin but it doesn’t easily show you how to pronounce  it in plain ol’ English ….Ver - a - toss

Association and Thought Process

I'm not sure if I had the opportunity to tell you this, but this past
weekend Laura and I had th chance to attend one of our business
conferences put on by LTD. The conference was called twenty ten vision/
20X Vision. The premise was to provide people the opportunity to see
some of the things the leaders went through, and some of the things
they had achieved, to give the organization vision for the future......

Saturday, the leader that provides mentorship for most of the business
owners in KC hit the stage. His name is Paul. you might have heard
Laura or myself bring him up at some point. He's 27 and has been
retired since he graduated college. Anyways, he had brought up some
things about living, pursuing God's calling on your life, but broke it
down into a real simple acronym that made a ton of sense. He said when
you are doing what God had planned for you, you will have true JOY and
happiness in your life. And that JOY is broken down....
Jesus....he needs to be first and foremost
Others.....
Yourself....JOY
Some hits were mentioned after that but that was really what I took
out of that talk.
Focus on Jesus first, others, then yourself......
To me this means growing spirtualy and being focused on him.
So... What does it mean to be focused on him?? I ask myself....... To
me i think focusing on him means to

1. Be consumed in communication w/ him
2. And to actually put into action what he reveals to you....be it
problem areas, or someone he wants you to befriend...just listen and
act.

So I that talk had me deciding to kick up the notch on communication
with him, and putting into action what he shoots my way....

Next thought was when one of the diamonds hit the stage. His name is
Alan Leineinger. Sunday morning I can't say that I remember any
specific part of his talk, like I did when Paul spoke, but what i
received from his talk was important also. He had mentioned some of
the things he did when he retired 20 some odd years ago, and one of
the first things he did was DIVE head first into the word and even
bible college.

All the talks summed up to one serious question in my mind. Obviously
being able to discern when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us is really
important. And being able to speak in tongues when your spirit needs
has things to pray about can be a big deal.........but what do you
think are the most important tools a believer needs when living a
successfull life for the Lord???

What do you think are the most vital things for the believer to do?
What are the most necessary things for a believer to know?

I was thinking, it has been our knowledge from the beginning that I
was meant to be " a wise and mighty warrior of God, weilding the sword
of truth in love"

But how do I become the most wise and most mighty warrior he has in
mind for me???

At this point all I can say is
Give myself a big thumbs and say "stay in the word everday and keep in
good communication with your savior, YEAH!!!!!"
But that answer leaves me feeling like a hiker with backpack, geared
up for a long journey, but no compass and no map.......no direction.

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We Three Kings...

Your phone call yesterday got me to thinking…so I started writing.

Lets begin with an acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton.  His name was Edmund Halley.  Edmund was doing his best to mathematically prove some of the work done by Johannes Kepler who had published his thoughts on how planets move within a solar system.  Upon a visit, Mr. Halley discovered that Sir Newton had already solved all the math problems but had yet to let anyone know about it.  So, Mr. Halley convinced Sir Newton to write it all down and then Mr. Halley published the whole thing at his own expense.  The book was called Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and is regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science.

In 1682 Mr. Halley saw a comet which prompted him to begin some research and to collect data about appearances of other comets in the past.  With the data that he collected and the mathematical proofs that Sir Newton had developed…Mr. Halley was the first person to predict that a specific comet would reappear and even when…it would reappear!  Years later his calculations proved accurate when Halley’s comet appeared in the night sky.  Other astronomers wanted to know when in history this comet had appeared and if anyone had noticed..so they worked the math backward.  They discovered that Halley’s comet had appeared in the night sky in the year 11 B.C. which prompted some to wonder if it was the star that the three wise men followed to find the Christ child.

This leads to a question:  How does an event seen in the sky convey knowledge of earthly events?  The answer begins in Genesis when we see that a mans life is calculated in years.  And then on through Genesis 8 where Noah is mentioned as observing months and a specific number of days in a given month.  This knowledge of times and seasons was obviously transferred to Noah’s sons and his grandsons.  It is one of Noah’s grandsons…Nimrod…who established Babylon somewhere around 2300 B.C. and it is to Babylon where the roots of Astrology lead.

It is the Babylonians that seem to have had some of the first understandings of the movements within the solar system.  And it is the Babylonians that seem to have been the first to assign meanings to those movements.   Approximately 1700 years later…Babylon still exists and is very powerful in the world.  Its King is Nebuchadnezzar and in 605 B.C. he invades Israel and among the captives is a kid named Daniel.  The child is raised in the kings household and taught Babylonian culture which among other things would have been 1700 years of mysticism surrounding the movements in the solar system.

Because of Scriptural and historical accounts we know what happened to Daniel in his life.  We know that God used him mightily by revealing hidden things to him.  We also know that the Magi existed at that time and that Daniel was placed in charge of them.  The magi were ethnically oriented and were related to the people that today we call the “Kurds” in Iraq.  The Magi didn’t appreciate that a Hebrew had been placed in charge over them and this led to the whole “Lions Den” ordeal.

So then, the Magi who followed the star to the Christ child belonged to this sect.  They were not kings…that idea came later in medieval times.  There may have been more than 3…the scripture doesn’t specify…..And they arrived when Jesus was two years old….not at the scene of His birth in a manger.  We don’t know their names…different cultures have given different names to them.

I think its important to note a couple of things:

1.    The Magi travelled to Jerusalem and their appearance caused a stir…so much so, that even the king was informed of their arrival and their quest.  Think about it…if it was just a few guys that arrived in town..would it be noteworthy to the King?  Why would the Kings advisors waste his time?  I think it is much more likely that the Magi arrived accompanied by a whole caravan of different types of people…servants?...wives?..concubines?  cooks? And enough camels for their journey.  I think that the king made it his business to know who exactly these people were.

2.   Their journey was between 1000 and 1200 miles and could have taken a year or more.  Additionally, the time between when they saw the star and the time that they actually left…required enough time to prepare for an odyssey of unknowns.  They didn’t know how far or where or how long it was going to take….but they knew one thing for sure…they were seeing what is described as a star and they were sure they needed to follow it.  I personally believe that the star appeared at the moment of Jesus’ birth.  Remember, Jesus was two years old when the Magi visited him and King Herod had inquired of the Magi when the star had appeared…He then proceeded to kill all male children two years old and younger.

3.    The Magi observed and followed a star for more than a year and probably two years.  The star eventually led them to the exact house where Jesus was.  How did a star do this?  Stars in the sky do not represent a fixed address on earth.  Which is why some have said that the star must have been a comet because it moved…but the same argument applies….a comet cannot pinpoint an exact house in a specific city.  I believe that the “star” that the Magi followed was much like the sign that Moses and the Israelites followed…a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night .  I don’t believe that the Magi followed pillars of cloud and fire…I believe they followed what they could only describe as a star…they wouldn’t have had any other words to describe a moving light in the sky.  But I think that the light was close enough that it could guide to a specific house in a specific city.  Think about where you live….and imagine that you had never been there.  If you were only one half mile away from your home….how close would a light have to be to your home for you to be able to know for certain that you had arrived?

Anyway…where should we go from here…I brought up some stuff about astrology…but you let me know.