Chag sameach Rosh Chodesh kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah.

"B'resheeth bara Elohim Alef-Taw ha-shammayim v-et ha-aretz" - "In the beginning (b'resheeth) created (bara) Elohim (God) Alef-Taw (Yah'shua the Messiah) the Heavens (ha-shammayim) and (v-et) the Earth (ha-aretz)" (Genesis 1:1).

In one verse - the first verse of the Torah and of the whole Bible - the whole of the act of creation of the Universe is contained. In Colossians 1:15-16 we are told - both the First Cause and the Instrument - that Yah'shua (Jesus) the Son "is the image of the invisible Elohim (God), the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him" (Col.1:15-16, NIV).

And in Proverbs 30:4 we are asked this question in typical Hebraic poetic form:

"Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of His hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in His cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is His Name, and the Name of his Son?
Tell me if you know!" (Prov.30:4, NIV).

Well, the Name of His Son - the Instrument of Creation - is Yah'shua (Jesus), and "His Name" - the Designer of the Cosmos - is Yahweh. Thus we know that the Son, Yah'shua (Jesus) is the true Creator of everything we see and can't see - physical and spiritual - and Yahweh the Father is the Designer - the Master Intelligence. And now we're going to prove it in a short sermon in order to honour Yahweh-Elohim this Rosh Chodesh.

Back in 1978 when I was a young man in my early 20's, an agnostic professor of astronomer and popular science writer, called Robert Jastrow wrote a book called, God and the Atronomers which I am holding in my hand. And, by the way, he was the founder of NASA's Goddart Institute for Space Studies, so he was a regular guest on TV in those days. Anyway, he wrote this (ignore the figures he quotes for the moment):

"Strange developments are going on in astronomy. They are fascinating partly because of their theological implications, and partly because of the peculiar reactions of scientists."

The essence of the strange developments was that those astronomers claimed to have proven that the Universe was created in a fiery explosion twenty billion years ago. In the searing heat of the first moment, they said, all the evidence was melted down and destroyed that science might have used to determine the cause of the great explosion. This is the crux of the new story of Genesis. And this is what today we know as the 'Big Bang' about which lots of books have been written like this one by David M.Harland in 2003, 13 years after the Space Shuttle Discovery placed the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit which for the last enarly 30 years has been sending us some of the most fantastic photographs ever seen and so much information about the Universe that we are hard pressed to process it all.

As you all know, I have been an amateur astronomer since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Since Hubble - and that's not the only telescope up in space, in fact, a German x-ray telescope, eROSITA, was launched on 13 October 2019 a few days ago - went online yesterday, Cosmologists have been having a field day. This book here by Jeremiah Ostriker and Simon Mitton (2013) called Heart of Darkness: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe speculates about so-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. I underline the word 'speculate' because this is Cosmogeny (as opposed to Cosmology) - theories about the Origin (geny is derived from genesis) of the Cosmos (which is more philosophy than it is science) and Cosmology which is what can be observed in the Cosmos.

According to Jastrow, scientists did not expect to find evidence for an abrupt beginning. In those days everyone believed in the Steady State Theory which basically said the Universe was stationary and had always been there and didn't have a beginning. Einstein clung onto this belief longer than most. So when the evidence began to accumulate for a 'Big Bang', they were repelled by their own findings! Einstein wrote, "Such possibilities seem senseless," and the great English astronomer Eddington declared, "The notion of a beginning is repugnant!" You can guess why. Why? Because as agnostic or atheistic evolutionists the notion that there was a 'beginning' meant there had to be a First Cause and they didn't want to admit that there might be a God - a Creator.

Speaking about these astronomers' reactions, Dr.Jastrow comments:

"There is a strong ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions. They come from the heart, whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why?"

Well, basically this book provides the answer and ends with Jastrow saying these words which have since become famous:

"The scientist has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Unfortunately, when atheists are presented with clear evidence there is a Creator they either repent and become believers, as many have and continue to, or - the majority, sadly - simply go into denial and dig their heels in. What are they saying today, in 2019, to explain the origin of the 'Big Bang'? Basically, 'Nothing created everything out of nothing.' Is it based on science? No, it is based on secular religion. You see, scientists don't, as they claim, base their beliefs on reason and logic alone, and as Jastrow proves in this book (and, remember, he was an agnostic), they all had visceral, negative emotional reactions to the incontestible evidence that the Cosmos had a beginning point. Albert Einstein resisted the truth a long time!

Now we could spend hours going through the evidence but we only have a very short time this morning. We're going to do a little experiment which will actually prove there has to be a Creator. To begin with, we will assume there was only one creation event and not many. The Book of Genesis tells us that the creation (or recreation) of this earth took place in six stages which are called "days" (we aren't going to worry about how long each day was as we want to focus on the big picture). And to begin with, we're not even going to worry whether Elohim (God) created everything instantly or whether, as theistic evolutionists (Christians who believe in evolution) believe, He directed a long evolutionary process over millions of years. Let's just establish that there had to have been a Creator - a Supreme Intelligence - so that we can all prove the mathematical and scientific basis of Theism - the belief there is a God, whoever 'He', 'She', or 'It' may be..

All we need is one dice, and here is one - six-sided one numbered 1 to 6. If we roll this dice, what are our chances of our getting a 6? What is the chance statistically? 1-in-6. Right. What are the chances of getting a 6 twice in a row? 1-in-6 x 1-in-6 = 1-in-36 rolls of the dice. You can do this for fun sometime if you like but you will need a big sample to get a consistent result, that is, you'll ened to roll the dice a few hundred times. OK. Let's continue. Each time you add another 6 - if you want to get three 6's in a row, then four 6's in a row, then five 6's, the odds go up exponentially. To get one 6, the odds are 1:6. To get two 6's, the odds are 1:36. To get three 6's the odds are 1:216. You get the idea. OK, that's all the brain-crunching you're going to have to do!

What would the odds be of getting a '6' 70 times in a row? So you roll the dice, and each time, without fail, you get a 6? It's pretty unlikely, but there's a very remote possibility you could. Anyone like to guess the odds? The chances are are 1 in 10^55, that's a 1 with 55 zero's after it:

That's just for 70 6's in a row. Next question: How long do you think you would you have to roll the dice, if you rolled it once every 5 seconds, before hitting 70 6's in a row? You would have to roll that dice for the following num,ber of years:

Ask yourself the question: What, then, are the odds of us being here by a random process of evolution? Remember, there are 10^80 atoms in the entire Universe bull of billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each galaxy!

You're probably wondering why I picked 10^55 as an example. Well, it's to do with the Big Bang Theory. You see, 10^55, or a 1 followed by 55 zeros, is the probability of the expansion rate of the universe being just right for the existence for us here today. From the moment of the 'Big Bang', our universe began to rapidly expand, the rate of that expansion was exquisitely finely balanced - any faster, and the universe would have expanded too rapidly to allow the formation of elements, molecules, stars and galaxies. Any slower, and the universe would have collapsed back in on itself. If we are to believe the Big Bang theory, then the universe expanded at just the right rate to allow life to develop in the future for us to be here. Remember, we're assuming that evolution is true. Our expanding universe hit 70 rolls of the number 6 in a row the first time. And consider that the expansion rate of the universe is just one of 30 or so incredibly sensitively finely tuned constants and fundamental forces in the universe that must be just the way they are for the universe to be able to produce us...and, I repeat, that's making the assumption, the HUGE assumption, that evolution could even take place naturally without further intervention by an Intelligent power in the development of even a single cell like a bacterium or an amoeba.

So what if you went and rolled this dice 70 times and every time it came up '6' - no waiting for trillions of years - what if they all came up the first time, which is what would have had to happen, unless, of course there had been trillions of failed 'big bangs' before. Beginner's luck? Hardly. You would assume that I must have rigged it. Maybe the dice are loaded, maybe there are 6's on every side. In other words, it can't be chance. Why, then, would we assume that this universe, with us in it, which is zillions of times more improbable than me being able to roll 70 6's in succession the first time round, is just a result of chance? The fact that we're here, even assuming something like 'evolution' is true, demonstrates that someone has loaded the dice. But maybe there's no dice at all. What if the evidence points to this life-permitting universe actually being the product of an Intelligent Mind which intended for us to be here, even if it took an incredibly long period of time?

Now you could come up with some other speculatative theories, like, maybe there's an infinite number of universes giving you an infinite number of chances to roll the dice. Well, maybe, but where's the scientific evidence for other universes? There's none whatsoever. But if you're hanging your hat on that possibility then you're every bit as committed to a faith position as the person who said Elohim (God) was behind it. In other words, you are following a religion of sorts. Believing in Elohim (God) isn't a delusion. It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion when we look at the finger-prints on our universe. And if it's true that we aren't the result of a fluke of the cosmic roll of the dice, and we're actually here because a Grand Designer intended us from the very beginning, that's worth staking something on.

You can't rationally argue against that. Now, to keep this simple, we have assumed that the Creator just started everything off with a controlled, designed explosion so that the Universe that formed had to eventually bring forth life. In other words, if the explosion was carefully programmed or 'fine tuned', a bit like the explosions in the Twin Towers on 9/11 (which were clearly intelligently prepared demolitions by experts) only in reverse and on a massive scale.

Now the secular scientists don't believe in creation, even carefully designed explosions, and what you aren't going to read in your school textbooks or hear in the media is that their belief in naturalism is full of scientific problems and inconsistencies. Like I said, we don't have time to examine this huge subject in depth so let's just look at one problem, and that's the problem of the missing antimatter. For those of you who don't know what antimatter is, it's a substance like ordinary matter but with the charges of the particles reversed - so plus is minus, and minus is plus - i.e. the protons are negatively charged and the electrons are positively charged, which is the opposite of what we have in our physical chemistry down here. The problem is this for the naturalist: there should be as much antimatter in the universe as ordinary matter and yet there is virtually none. That's a fatal problem for the Big Bang Theory. Indeed, the almost complete absence of antimatter in the universe testifies to its supernatural origin.

So we'll finish by looking at this one problem which is known as the 'baryon number problem'. In the Big Bang scenario, the universe starts out infinitely small, and infinitely hot, in a point called a 'singularity'. All the energy in the universe, and even 'space itself', is contained in this point. The point rapidly expands like a balloon and the energy cools as it is dispersed. The energy forms matter - hydrogen and helium gas. It is this gas which allegedly condenses to form stars and galaxies. Virtually every step in this conjectured process is riddled with problem that show how inadequate the 'Big Bang' model is. Let's take a peek at one of these problems involving the conversion of energy to matter.

Energy can indeed be transformed into matter. You can do this in a laboratory. However, such reactions always produce an equal amount of a substance called 'anti-matter'. Each class of particle of matter has, like I said, a corresponding anti-particle. Antimatter is identical to ordinary matter in virtually all respects except one: the charge of the particle is reversed. So, whereas a proton has a positive electrical charge, its antimatter counterpart, the 'anti-proton', has a negative charge. Likewise, electrons are negatively charged, but an anti-electron (also called a 'positron') has a positive charge. As far as we know, it is impossible to create matter from energy without creating an exactly equal amount of anti-matter. Those of you who like the Star Trek SciFi movies will know that the imaginary technology there consists of 'anti-matter' drives, with the anti-matter being isolated in a strong magnetic field from matter (otherwise it would blow everything up) and is then released in controlled, tiny amounts to generate fantastic amounts of energy. Fascinating stuff but whether we could actually do this is another matter.

So, if the 'Big Bang' had actually happened, it too would have produced an equal amount of antimatter. Therefore the universe today should have an equal amount of matter and antimatter. But it doesn't. The universe is made almost entirely of matter. This is no slight imbalance; it is a huge problem. It is estimated that the universe contains 10^80 atoms (that's 1 followed by 80 zeros). Each of these has a nucleus made of protons (and sometimes neutrons). Protons and neutrons are 'baryons'. There are baryons everywhere in the universe, and yet there are virtually no anti-baryons to be found.

So the 'Big Bang' supporters have come up with an idea to try and save the 'Big Bang from this baryon number problem. They have proposed that on extremely rare occasions energy can produce matter only - with no antimatter produced as a byproduct. In fact, there are a number of variant speculations in physics that rely on this notion to solve the problem of the missing antimatter, but, of course, none of these ideas rely on the results of observational science. Observations have shown that matter and antimatter are always produced in pairs; we have simply never seen one produced without the other. As usual, the naturalist must rely on conjectures that are inconsistent with observations. The baryon number problem remains a serious defect in the 'Big Bang' model.

This problem for the 'Big Bang' is actually a design feature for biblcial creation. When particles and anti-particles touch, they destroy each other and release enormous amounts of radiation. When Gene Roddenberry wrote the Star Trek stories he knew this and imagined this radiation could be used to power his fantasy Starship Enterprise. Scotty, you will remember, was the one responsible for the engines. If Yahweh had made the universe with equal amounts of matter and antimatter (as physics requires for a natural origin), then the matter in the universe would have been destroyed by any contact with antimatter, releasing devastating amounts of dangerous radiation. The universe contains virtually matter only because it was supernaturally designed and created by Elohim (God).

We don't have time to go into star-formation and how life could not possibly have evolved even by a single explosion. Like I said, it required a 6-stage creative operation with lots of sub-stages. If you think rolling one dice and getting 70 6's in a row is a problem, when it comes to the complexity of life, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dice getting exact sequences of DNA base-pairs, exact sequences of protein amino-acids, exact sequences of sugar saccharides, exact sequences of fatty acids, all arranged dynamically in multi-levels of organisation, millions of times over. Could Yahweh have directed some sort of evolutionary process to assure all of this happened? Theoretically, yes, but He doesn't say He did it this way in His revelation to us. Man did not appear by a long process of evolution through the ages. He was made de novo, brand new, straight out of matter, and had supernaturally programmed energy described poetically as "breath" that was "blown" into him. Was this instant, or did it take time? We're not told. Indeed, we're not told how the Universe was created either.

But we will keep hunting for answers, because man was created to be curious, but we won't arrive at the right answers if we deny the Creator or the Davar (Word) that He has given us, however difficult at times it may be to decipher it in a scientific age. I have no idea how the Infinite Elohim (God) made this incredible Universe. I just know, with the little scientific knowledge that I have, that the suggestion made by 21st century naturalists and atheists that 'nothing made everything out of nothing' is as insane, logically, as it is to claim that there are over 100 genders or that facts don't matter as post-modernists now claim. Facts do matter. Yahweh is an Elohim (God) of order, and science, and beauty, and morality, and everything else that we ascribe to Him. For me it requires far more faith to believe that 'nothing made everything out of nothing' than the Creator, Yahweh-Elohim, made everything through His Son Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). And the fact that He resurrected His Son from the dead, which to mind is beyond historical dispute, convinces me even more that Yahweh is the Lord of Matter and Spirit and every force in this wondrous Creation. This is my testimony as a Biochemist, Systems Analyst and Theologian. I hope you will be persuaded to investigate it further and find out the emet (truth) for yourself if you, the reader, do not know Elohim (God).

This has been a 'different' Rosh Chodesh talk and was prepared in answer to questions my youngest son has been asking me about the 'Big Bang' as he is himself quite a keen amateur astronomer! I hope it has been a blessing to you!

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