ASTEROIDS

Millions of them silently fly around above you, and you’d better hope that one doesn’t fall on your head.  Asteroids may be the stuff of science fiction, but they’re terribly real – as a visit to Canyon Diablo west of Winslow, Arizona, will attest. 

Meteor Crater measures about 4,000 feet in diameter, with an interior depth of 600 feet and a rim rising 200 feet above the surrounding plain.  A fallen asteroid created the crate at least 5000 years ago.  The resulting explosion scattered fragments of nickel-iron (ranging in size from pebbles to 1,400 pounds) over 100 square miles. 

The largest known asteroid in the Solar System, Ceres, measures 584 miles across.  Astronomers have identified more than 250 asteroids with diameters of at least 62 miles, and believe more than a million rocks with diameters, greater than half a mile orbit between Jupiter and Mars.  Photographic evidence suggests our Moon is pockmarked with some 3 trillion asteroid-caused crates greater than three feet in diameter.

So is earth in danger from these space visitors?  Judge for yourself.  In 1992, a three-mile-long asteroid named Toutatis passed less than nine lunar distances from earth – and astronomers believe that in 2004 it will whiz by within 930,000 miles (less than four lunar distances).  And that’s just one asteroid we know about.  Many such flying rocks don’t reflect much light, so we can’t see them until they’re almost on top of us. 

Scientists believe that asteroids with diameters of at least .6 miles periodically collide with earth, each with an explosive yield greater than several hydrogen bombs.  Each collision would leave a crate 8 miles across and would cause short-term climatic changes worldwide.  That’s a lot of power just from a falling rock!

AND YET…

God knows the exact number of asteroids in the universe (Psalm 147:4).  IN fact, He personally set them in their proper places (Psalm 8:3).  It is He who seals off their light (Job 9:7) and calls them “wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 1:13).  God says that in the day of His wrath “men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken” (Luke 21:26), and He paints a starling picture of a future celestial judgment:

“THE STARS IN THE SKY FELL TO EARTH, AS LATE FIGS DROP FROM A FIG TREE WHEN SHAKEN BY A STRONG WIND.  THE SKY RECEDED LIKE A SCROLL, ROLLING UP, AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND ISLAND WAS REMOVED FROM ITS PLACE… SOMETHING LIKE A HUGE MOUNTAIN, ALL ABLAZE, WAS THROWN INTO THE SEA… AND A GREAT STAR, BLAZING LIKE A TORCH, FELL FROM THE SKY ON A THIRD OF THE RIVERS AND ON THE SPRINGS OF WATER.”

(Revelation 6:13, 14; 8:8, 10)

“How Majestic is Thy Name”, 2001.  www.newleafpress.net