87+ quadrillion miles. Our nearest neighboring galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy, which is an estimated 2,000,000 light years away. That's so far that a radio wave which goes around the earth approximately 8.2 times in one second would require over 1 million years to get there, and a return message would take another 1+ million years. The observable universe has an estimated diameter of 20 billion light years. But it isn't simply the size of the universe that is so marvelous. The size is important, of course, but so is the `design'. The earth, for example, in orbiting the sun, departs from a straight line by only one-ninth of an inch every 18 miles--a very straight line in human terms. If the orbit changed by one-tenth of an inch every 18 miles, our orbit would be vastly larger and we would all freeze to death. If it changed by one-eighth of an inch, we would come so close to the sun w e would all be incinerated.. Are we to believe that such precision "just happened by accident"? The sun is burning at approximately 20 million degrees Celsius at its interior.. If we were to move the earth `away' 10%, we would soon freeze to death. If we were to move the earth `closer' by 10%, we would once again be incinerated. The sun is poised at 93 million miles from earth, which happens to be just right--by accident? The moon is poised some 240,000 miles from the earth. Move it in just onefifth, and twice every day there would be 35-50 feet high tidal waves over most of the earth's surface. The distance of 240,000 miles happens to he just right--by accident? And consider these facts: the earth is rotating at 1,000 miles per hour on its axis at the equator, and moving around the sun at 70,000 miles per hour (approximately 19 miles per second), while the sun with its solar system is moving through space at 600,000 miles per hour in an orbit so large it would take over 220 million years to complete just one orbit. [Remember the psalmist's statement (Psalm ...
