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The “Cosmic Distance Ladder” Reminds Me of “Jacob’s Ladder”

The “Cosmic Distance Ladder” Reminds Me of “Jacob’s Ladder”

Last updated on: January 17, 2025 at 9:34 pm by Kermit Zarley

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The “Cosmic Distance Ladder” Reminds Me of “Jacob’s Ladder” 2025-01-17T21:34:40-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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Several hundred never-before-seen galaxies are visible in this deepest-ever view of the universe, called the Hubble Deep Field, made with NASA Hubble Space Telescope. | Image Credit: NASA

This weekend in Washington, D.C., NASA and Carnegie Science are celebrating a centennial discovery at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It is Edwin Hubble’s discovery with his telescope in 1923 of a star outside of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is home to our Earth. Previously, most astronomers had thought our galaxy was the only one in our universe so the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy was the edge of the universe. Instead, Hubble’s discovery of this single, pulsating star, later named V1, opened up a whole new vista to astronomers. They came to realize that our universe consists of hundreds of billions of galaxies, thus making our universe way, way larger than previously thought.

Redshift Proves Other Galaxies

Hubble made this discovery by seeing stars such as V1 shifting to a brighter and brighter red color, which came to be called “redshift.” Hubble had suspected that the universe had

other galaxies besides ours, and his discovery of redshift proved it.

But Hubble made another discovery from redshift that he never accepted. He found that the redshift of some stars outside our galaxy was becoming more red than that of other stars. Astronomers came to realize that this indicated what was later named the Hubble Constant. It means that stars with faster redshift indicate they are moving at faster speeds away from Earth. The Belgian Jesuit priest Georges Lemaitre, who was also a physicist, was the first to realize this meant space was expanding or stretching so that our universe has been expanding in size ever since it came into existence.

Cosmic Expansion

And that’s another issue astronomers became surprised about. They used to think the universe was static in that it remained the same size and thus may not have had a beginning. But Hubble’s telescope showed him that this cosmic expansion proved that the universe has always been expanding. Lematire further realized that the universe came into existence all at once, as if in an explosion. By 1949, astronomers were calling this explosive beginning of the universe “the Big Bang.”

I tell all about this in the chapter “Cosmology” in my book about the second coming of Christ entitled Warrior from Heaven (2009). I first state that when Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity, he believed in the clockwork universe as most astronomers and physicists did, that the universe is static, always remaining the same size.

God Stretches Out the Heaven Like a Tent

Then I state in my book, “In the 1920s, American Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) was the first to develop an astronomical telescope (placed inside a building on top of Mount Wilson, in California.) It rotated one complete revolution every twenty-four hours but in the opposite direction of the earth’s rotation. This ingenious idea effectively negated the earth’s rotation. Outer space could now be viewed more accurately from a seemingly fixed position. Hubble also added photographic plates to his telescope, enabling prolonged photographic exposures. All of this provided more clarity for viewing the heavens so that the photographs had amazing detail. The result was that other galaxies in space could be observed for the first time.

“Then Hubble made a most surprising discovery: all of these galaxies are moving away from the earth. This led to the revolutionary scientific conclusion that the universe is not static but dynamic, undergoing what is called cosmic expansion. This means that galaxies do not mechanically move away from each other; the space in between them expands. In effect, the universe is continually being stretched. That is exactly what the Bible says, that God ‘stretches out the heavens (like a tent).'”

The Big Bang Proves God’s Creation

Then I show in the book that Hubble’s law of cosmic expansion led to the Big Bang theory about the beginning of our universe. And I quote biblical texts affirming this beginning and the stretching of the universe, which is done by God. These discoveries by Edwin Hubble with his telescope led to the astronomical conclusion that our universe is about 13.7 billion years old. So, rather than science disproving the Bible, science proves that the Bible is right when it begins by saying, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1.1). According to the Big Bang, it happened as an explosion in a moment of time.

Scientists still haven’t figured out how that happened, since they reason that there must have been some dense particle, however small, from which the explosion occurred, called a “singularity.” Yet many Christian theologians have always claimed that God created the universe “out of nothing.”

The Cosmic Distance Ladder

Astronomers are now referring to this cosmic expansion as the “cosmic distance ladder.” They think of it as a yardstick of measurement to galaxies outside our own Milky Way Galaxy. The first rung of this ladder is that star Hubble first discovered outside our galaxy—V1. Scientists can now see through telescopes over 100 times farther into space than Hubble could with his first telescope. So, they are imagining this cosmic distance ladder extending to far-distant galaxies that they are viewing.

The Dream About Jacob’s Ladder

This cosmic distance ladder that scientists imagine in their measuring of the universe reminds me of Jacob’s ladder in the Bible. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham. Their lineage went Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We read in the Bible that Isaac told his son Jacob that he must not marry a Canaanite woman where they lived. So, Isaac told Jacob to leave Beersheba and travel north to Haran to get a wife from his kinsfolk there. So we read, “Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, ‘I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; … Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land'” (Genesis 28.10-15 NRSV).

Jesus Is Jacob’s Ladder

We then read, “Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in his place—and I did not know it!’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven'” (Genesis 28.16-17). Guess what! Jesus of Nazareth is that ladder, and the rungs of that ladder will reach heaven.

At the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, he was making disciples and choosing his twelve apostles who would later carry on his ministry by evangelizing and teaching the world. Jesus had been baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin John the Baptist. John was baptizing many people, many of them who came from Jerusalem twenty miles away. This caused religious authorities to come to John to inquire who he was. We read in the Gospel of John in the New Testament that they asked him, “‘Who are you?’He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ … He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1.19-20, 23).

Then we read of John the Baptist, “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I saide, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of the me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel'” (John 1.29-31).

We then read about Jesus’ first disciples, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew. Andrew found Philip and “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael asked him, ‘Where di you get to know me?’ Jesus answered , ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man'” (John 1.45-51).

“One Like a Son of Man” Receives a Kingdom

During Jesus’ public and private ministry which lasted about two to three years, he did not go around claiming to be God or even admitting that he was the Messiah except on a few occasions privately, as here. Rather, Jesus constantly referred to himself both privately and publicly as “the Son of Man.” It was an allusion to the only occurrence in the Tanakh (Old Testament) of a special person receiving that title, though a little enlarged. We read of a vision that the prophet Daniel had, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power, all peoples, nations, and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Daniel 7.13-14 NIV).

This vision is of a future event that will happen in the future in heaven. “The Ancient of Days” is God the Father. “One like a son of man” (Aramaic kebar enash) is Jesus of Nazareth. I believe that the ke in this Aramaic expression, which is translated “like,” refers to Jesus’ virgin birth. That is why Jesus taught the parable, which was about himself, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return” (Luke 19.12 NRSV). He taught this on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified. But his disciples did not suspect this and “supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately” (v. 11). So, Jesus called himself a “nobleman” in this parable because of his virgin birth and being a righteous man. When Jesus used the expression “son of man,” he was simply accepted this shortened form of it which was in current use during his time and is found so often in the inter-testamental book of 1 Enoch.

Jesus Joins Heaven and Earth Together as Jacob’s Ladder

In conclusion, Jesus will be Jacob’s ladder when he joins heaven and earth together at his second coming. We read from John the Revelator, “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21.2). This is the city of God in heaven, and at Jesus’ second coming it will come down from heaven toward earth. Jesus will then join the two together as Jacob’s ladder, and the angels of God will be descending and ascending upon this Son of Man.

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