stars

48:7.1513. Stars are best dis­cerned from the lonely iso­la­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial depths, not from the il­lu­mi­nated and ec­static moun­tain tops.

3:3.1“God knows all things.” The di­vine mind is con­scious of, and con­ver­sant with, the thought of all cre­ation. His knowl­edge of events is uni­ver­sal and per­fect. The di­vine en­ti­ties go­ing out from him are a part of him; he who “bal­ances the clouds” is also “per­fect in knowl­edge.” “The eyes of the Lord are in ev­ery place.” Said your great teacher of the in­signif­i­cant spar­row, “One of them shall not fall to the ground with­out my Fa­ther’s knowl­edge,” and also, “The very hairs of your head are num­bered.” “He tells the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.”

3:3.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the only per­son­al­ity in all the uni­verse who does ac­tu­ally know the num­ber of the stars and plan­ets of space. All the worlds of ev­ery uni­verse are con­stantly within the con­scious­ness of God. He also says: “I have surely seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, I have heard their cry, and I know their sor­rows.” For “the Lord looks from heaven; he be­holds all the sons of men; from the place of his habi­ta­tion he looks upon all the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” Ev­ery crea­ture child may truly say: “He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “God knows our down­sit­tings and our up­ris­ings; he un­der­stands our thoughts afar off and is ac­quainted with all our ways.” “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” And it should be a real com­fort to ev­ery hu­man be­ing to un­der­stand that “he knows your frame; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.” Je­sus, speak­ing of the liv­ing God, said, “Your Fa­ther knows what you have need of even be­fore you ask him.”

15:2.1Only the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther knows the lo­ca­tion and ac­tual num­ber of in­hab­ited worlds in space; he calls them all by name and num­ber. I can give only the ap­prox­i­mate num­ber of in­hab­ited or in­hab­it­able plan­ets, for some lo­cal uni­verses have more worlds suit­able for in­tel­li­gent life than oth­ers. Nor have all pro­jected lo­cal uni­verses been or­ga­nized. There­fore the es­ti­mates which I of­fer are solely for the pur­pose of af­ford­ing some idea of the im­men­sity of the ma­te­rial cre­ation.

131:2.2“In the be­gin­ning God cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth and all things therein. And, be­hold, all he cre­ated was very good. The Lord, he is God; there is none be­side him in heaven above or upon the earth be­neath. There­fore shall you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. The earth shall be full of the knowl­edge of the Lord as the wa­ters cover the sea. The heav­ens de­clare the glory of God, and the fir­ma­ment shows his hand­i­work. Day af­ter day ut­ters speech; night af­ter night shows knowl­edge. There is no speech or lan­guage where their voice is not heard. The Lord’s work is great, and in wis­dom has he made all things; the great­ness of the Lord is un­search­able. He knows the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.

101:10.9Now, rather, are the sons of God en­listed to­gether in fight­ing the bat­tle of re­al­ity’s tri­umph over the par­tial shad­ows of ex­is­tence. At last all crea­tures be­come con­scious of the fact that God and all the di­vine hosts of a well-nigh lim­it­less uni­verse are on their side in the su­per­nal strug­gle to at­tain eter­nity of life and di­vin­ity of sta­tus. Such faith-lib­er­ated sons have cer­tainly en­listed in the strug­gles of time on the side of the su­preme forces and di­vine per­son­al­i­ties of eter­nity; even the stars in their courses are now do­ing bat­tle for them; at last they gaze upon the uni­verse from within, from God’s view­point, and all is trans­formed from the un­cer­tain­ties of ma­te­rial iso­la­tion to the sureties of eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. Even time it­self be­comes but the shadow of eter­nity cast by Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties upon the mov­ing panoply of space.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

150:3.31. The courses of the stars in the heav­ens have noth­ing what­ever to do with the events of hu­man life on earth. As­tron­omy is a proper pur­suit of sci­ence, but as­trol­ogy is a mass of su­per­sti­tious er­ror which has no place in the gospel of the king­dom.

85:5.1The wor­ship of rocks, hills, trees, and an­i­mals nat­u­rally de­vel­oped up through fear­ful ven­er­a­tion of the el­e­ments to the de­ifi­ca­tion of the sun, moon, and stars. In In­dia and else­where the stars were re­garded as the glo­ri­fied souls of great men who had de­parted from the life in the flesh. The Chaldean star cultists con­sid­ered them­selves to be the chil­dren of the sky fa­ther and the earth mother.

95:2.7The Egyp­tians long be­lieved that the stars twin­kling in the night sky rep­re­sented the sur­vival of the souls of the wor­thy dead; other sur­vivors they thought were ab­sorbed into the sun. Dur­ing a cer­tain pe­riod, so­lar ven­er­a­tion be­came a species of an­ces­tor wor­ship. The slop­ing en­trance pas­sage of the great pyra­mid pointed di­rectly to­ward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerg­ing from the tomb, could go straight to the sta­tion­ary and es­tab­lished con­stel­la­tions of the fixed stars, the sup­posed abode of the kings.