Power*

March 31, 2023

When you read (or hear) the word 'omnipotent', do you know what it means?  The dictionary defines it thus: 

omnipotent [ˌämˈnipəd(ə)nt]

ADJECTIVE

1. (of a deity) having unlimited power; able to do anything.

    "God is described as omnipotent and benevolent"

Did you notice the word 'power' in the definition?  When you think of power, what comes to your mind?  Do you think of natural sources of power like solar, wind or water?  How about geothermal or even muscle power?  What about man-made sources such as radio, microwave, infrared, x-ray, or nuclear?  Nuclear power is certainly one of the most potent sources of energy here on Earth.  Science tells us that gamma radiation is the most powerful energy source in the universe.  But is it?

Most of these different types of energy exert incredible power but they pale in comparison to the power wielded by the omnipotent God who created it all!  Please take a moment to meditate on His power.  Think about it with reverence and awe.  Think about it slowly and in a positive frame of mind.  Then ask yourself this one question.  "What kind of power is this?"  The power to just 'will' something into existence.  And not just 'something' but an entire universe teeming with light, energy and countless other amazing possibilities.  The power to sustain everything that exists.  The power to read the human heart.  Now that's power!!  It boggles my mind when I think about it.  I'm convinced it'll make my mouth hang open in self-deprecating, reverent astonishment and I will fall to my knees and worship Him in obedient submission when I finally meet Him face-to-face.

I'm pretty sure it's beyond the capability of the human mind to even comprehend how truly powerful God is.  It's why we should fear Him, not in the sense of being afraid (He loves us profoundly after all!) but in the sense of sheer, unmitigated awe and respect!

We've all heard of the 'Big Bang' theory but here's my take.  God said, "Let there be light!" and KABOOM, although science tells us that the actual sound would have been inaudible to the human hear, something akin to robotic humming.

Thomas Kitching writes, "In the Big Bang, space was suffused with light.  A fraction of a second after the event, the universe was over a million trillion times smaller than an atom.  It was also hot: a septillion (one followed by 24 zeroes) times hotter than the center of the sun.

From this small and hot beginning, the expansion and cooling started.  In this early stage, the universe was extremely bright and at frequencies of light that humans cannot see.  There were no stars, only a uniform and formless soup of particles.  In opening your eyes to the night sky—if such a thing were possible in the moment before you burned up—you would have been instantly blinded by the intensity of the light (even light outside visible frequencies can harm our eyes).

This would have been the case until the universe became tolerable to human eyes after about 1.2 million years.  At this point, there were atoms around.  They began to form about 370,000 years after the Big Bang.  This may seem like a long time, but it isn't really when you consider that the universe is nearly 14 billion years old.  At this time, the sky would have glowed with the color and temperature of a candle (the hottest part of a candle is 1,400°C).  So, while we could have read by the light of the night sky, we would still have been burnt to a crisp while doing so.

The sky would have glowed, slowly becoming dimmer and redder for another 4.6 million years, before finally becoming black to human eyes.  There were still no stars, so the night sky would have been uniformly and totally dark.  However, it would have still been very hot and baked any human observer with heat like a very hot oven." —Thomas Kitching

My hope is that the people who read this will think about it, maybe mull it over a bit, and that some of them will want to respectfully discuss it in the 'Comments' section below.

I welcome any comments as long as they are respectful.  I can handle criticism and opposing viewpoints, in fact I encourage them.  Join the discussion on any of my web pages.  Polite, courteous, or neutral comments will be published for everyone else to see.  Comments that are deemed rude, inappropriate, vulgar, hurtful, racist, misogynistic, violent, or sexual (among others) will not be published.  Remember, we can all agree to disagree and still be respectful!