Welcome to Authorized Sword Ministries. This is Lesson Two of our course In the Beginning: The Truth About Creation. Today's lesson is called The Heavens Declare: Answering the Big Bang.

We're glad you're back.

In Lesson One we saw that God made the world by His Word in six real days. Today we look up at the night sky. The world says the stars came from a "Big Bang" billions of years ago. The Bible says something very different. Let's see what each one actually claims, and why we can trust God's account.

Our Key Verse

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." — Psalm 19:1 (KJV)

Every star you see on a clear night is preaching a sermon. It says, "Somebody made me."

Part One: What the Big Bang Claims

Let's be fair and say it the way its own believers say it. According to NASA, the story goes like this. About 13.8 billion years ago, the universe went through a split second of super-fast stretching called "inflation." Then came a very hot, thick "soup" of light and tiny particles. About 380,000 years later, things cooled enough for the first atoms to form, and that left behind a faint glow we can still detect today, called the cosmic microwave background. After about 200 million more years of darkness, the first stars formed. And our own sun and planets, they say, formed about 4.6 billion years ago out of a spinning cloud of gas and dust, with the sun forming first in the middle and the earth forming later out of the leftovers.

NASA itself admits, "Scientists aren't sure what came before inflation or what powered it."

Here's the key thing to notice. Nobody was there to watch any of this. It's a story about the past that no one saw, built on today's measurements plus a lot of assumptions. God asked Job a question that still stands:

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding." — Job 38:4 (KJV)

There was one Witness who was there at the beginning, and He wrote it down for us.

Part Two: Genesis Order Versus Big Bang Order

When you put the two stories side by side, they don't just disagree on time. They disagree on order.

The Earth Came Before the Sun and Stars

Genesis starts with the earth on the very first day:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." — Genesis 1:1 (KJV)

But the sun, moon, and stars don't show up until the fourth day:

"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." — Genesis 1:14-16 (KJV)

"And the evening and the morning were the fourth day." — Genesis 1:19 (KJV)

Notice how simply God says it: "he made the stars also." Billions of stars, and the Bible mentions them in four words. That's how easy it was for Him.

The Big Bang story has it the other way around: stars first, then the sun, then the earth. You can't fit those two together. One of them is wrong.

Light Before the Sun

On day one, before there was any sun, God said:

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." — Genesis 1:3 (KJV)

God doesn't need the sun to make light. He is the source of it. The sun was made to serve the earth, not the other way around.

Plants Before the Sun

On day three, God made the grass, herbs, and fruit trees:

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so." — Genesis 1:11 (KJV)

That's one day before the sun. In the long-ages story, plants come billions of years after the sun. Again, the order doesn't match.

Part Three: A Problem Inside the Big Bang

Now let's look at one problem that creation scientists at Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research point out. It's called the "horizon problem."

That faint glow we talked about, the cosmic microwave background, was discovered in 1964 and 1965 by two scientists named Penzias and Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for it. This glow comes from every direction in space, and its temperature is almost exactly the same everywhere, to about one part in 100,000.

Here's why that's a problem for the Big Bang. Think of a cold room with a space heater in one corner. Over time the heat spreads until the room is even. But that takes time, and the heat has to travel. In the Big Bang story, opposite sides of the visible universe are so far apart that, even with all their billions of years, there hasn't been enough time for heat or light to travel between them. So how did they end up the same temperature?

To fix this, a scientist named Alan Guth proposed an idea in 1981 called "inflation," that early on the universe stretched faster than the speed of light for a split second. But as Answers in Genesis notes, there are many different inflation models, there's no agreement on which one, if any, is right, and no one knows what would have caused it. Even NASA, as we read, says scientists "aren't sure what came before inflation or what powered it." In other words, a patch was added to the story to keep it working.

Part Four: What About Distant Starlight?

Now, you may hear someone say, "If the universe is only thousands of years old, how could light from stars billions of light-years away get here?" That's a fair question, and we want to give an honest answer.

First, as the Institute for Creation Research points out, the Big Bang has its own light-travel problem, the horizon problem we just talked about. So this question can't be used to knock down Genesis while letting the Big Bang off the hook.

Second, Bible-believing physicists have offered possible answers. Some have to do with how time and space behave. Einstein showed that time can run at different rates in different places, for example near strong gravity. Creation researchers are still studying these ideas, and we won't pretend every question is settled. But we don't need every answer to trust the One who was there.

And just so you know, there are some old explanations, like the idea that God created light already on its way, or that the speed of light used to be much faster, that creation ministries themselves no longer recommend. We won't use them here. We want to stick to what is solid.

What we do know is what God said He did with the stars, and how well He knows them:

"Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth." — Isaiah 40:26 (KJV)

"He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names." — Psalm 147:4 (KJV)

Scientists can't even count the stars. God has named every one.

Part Five: A Beginning Needs a Beginner

Here's something worth noticing. Even mainstream science, like NASA's own account we read earlier, says the universe had a beginning. The Bible said that from its very first verse. And anything that begins needs a cause. The universe didn't make itself out of nothing. God made it by His Word:

"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." — Hebrews 11:3 (KJV)

"He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion." — Jeremiah 10:12 (KJV)

And the Bible says that what God made is clear enough that no one has an excuse:

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" — Romans 1:20 (KJV)

The Creator Is Our Saviour

So who is this Creator? The Bible tells us plainly:

"All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." — John 1:3 (KJV)

"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." — Colossians 1:16-17 (KJV)

The Lord Jesus Christ made every star in the sky. And that same Jesus came down to this little planet He made, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again the third day. The One who holds the stars in place can hold your life together too.

If you've never trusted Him, you can today:

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." — Romans 10:9 (KJV)

Wrapping Up

Let's review:

• The Big Bang is a story about a past no one saw, and even its supporters can't say what started it.
• Genesis puts the earth first, light before the sun, and plants before the sun. The Big Bang order is the opposite.
• The Big Bang has its own light-travel problem, the horizon problem, and "inflation" was added to patch it.
• Distant starlight is a fair question, and creation scientists are working on honest answers.
• The universe had a beginning because it had a Beginner, and His name is Jesus.

Next time, in Lesson Three, we'll look at how God made living things, and the amazing design written into every cell.

Until then, go outside on a clear night and look up. The heavens are declaring the glory of God. God bless you.

Lesson 3 coming soon.