“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1).
In 1861, the French Academy of Science printed a brochure listing 51 scientific facts that, they said, contradicted the Bible. Slightly more than a century and a third later, there is not a reputable scientist anywhere in the world who would hold to a single “fact” as the French Academy of Science postulated. Strange, isn’t it, how rapidly science and technology have challenged the very foundations which were once held in such high esteem?
One of the interesting facts about the statements of a scientific nature which the writers of Scripture made about our world, is that what the authors wrote was usually in sharp contrast to the philosophic or scientific ideas of their day. Now, nowhere is this more apparent than when Jeremiah made the statement found in the thirty‑third chapter of the book that bears his name. He said, “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant … ” (Jeremiah 33:22, KJV).
That statement—that the stars cannot be numbered was contrary to the wisdom of the ancient astronomers, but ultimately, science demonstrated how right Jeremiah really was. As late as 150 B.C. (even several hundred years after Jeremiah) the Greek astronomer Hipparchus said there were 1026 stars in the universe. A hundred‑fifty years later, Ptolemy, a Roman scientist who was alive at the time of Christ, said, “No! Hold it. There are not 1026 … but 1056.”
That wisdom held sway until the year 1610, when Galileo pointed his first, primitive telescope at the starry host of heaven and said, “Wait! There are more stars up there than we have any idea!” Using the 200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope, the largest in the world at the time, astronomers have come to the conclusion that nobody really knows how many stars there are, but they estimate there are more than 200 billion billion stars out there.
Got any idea how many 200 billion billion are? To help you grasp that, try this picture. There are about 8 billion people in the world. If every person in the world started counting stars and counted 50 billion stars, no two stars would have been counted twice. Wow!
Who told Jeremiah that the stars were without number? Obviously, he didn’t learn that from the scientific thought of his day. Nor did he learn it from the ancient astrologers. Jeremiah’s insights could have only come from God. The Spirit of God gave witness to Jeremiah, who wrote truths and facts far beyond his times.
The Bible, surprisingly enough to some, mentions stars more than thirty times. It refers to some stars by precisely the same names that they are known today. Psalm 147:4 says that God counts the stars and calls them all by name.
One of the earliest dramas chronicled in Scripture is recorded in the Old Testament book of Job. This ancient drama says God made the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, and the constellations of the southern Zodiac, using exactly the same names as astrologers use today (see Job 38:31). Long ago, David wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). Psalm 33:6 says candidly, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.”
The next time you look upward on a dark night and marvel at the starry hosts of heaven, start counting and remember what Jeremiah said.
Resource reading: Psalm 147.
