III. Cosmology

     Before you can talk about where the life on earth and mankind came from, you need to have a stage upon which the drama is acted out – you need a universe and a planet earth.  How did the universe and its galaxies, suns, planets, meteors, comets, etc. come into existence, how is it laid out, and how does it function?  This is the concern of “cosmology” – trying to understand the “cosmos” or universe.  Because no human observed the origin of the universe or even our own planet (nor can the origin of a universe be reproduced in a laboratory setting), every story offered as an explanation of these things will have to be rooted in some kind of a blend of current observations and lots of imaginative philosophical assumptions/speculations.  Thus, philosophy and religion are major players in this area and the realistic options are pretty limited.  What we decide to believe about the origin and nature of the universe and planet earth will then influence what we believe about the history and development of both the earth’s surface (geology) and the lifeforms that existed in the past and left a record in the earth’s strata (paleontology). 

The Unavoidable Synergism

     A “synergism” is a “working together” of two separate elements to produce an effect, a relationship, or an explanation of something else.  As we approach the “ultimate” questions of origins, we must realize the necessity of both speculative, imagined conceptual “models” along with the observation of current “results” from unknown and/or unobserved processes.

     Traditional “science” can do a great job of investigating current reality – observable and testable events and processes that are going on in the present.  These can be examined and tested for variables so that something can truly be known about how current processes work and what results they will produce.  However, the less one is able to observe and test processes, the less can be known for certain and the more one must depend on imagination and speculation about what would produce the “results” that can be seen in the present.  Here it would be good to remember the “limits” of scientific investigation,

All science begins with observation, the first step of the scientific method.  At once this delimits the scientific domain; something that cannot be observed cannot be investigated by science. . . . it is necessary, furthermore, that an observation be repeatable, actually or potentially. . . One time events on earth are outside science. . . . That is also a major reason why one-time, unrepeatable events normally cannot be science.^[1]

     Thus, when considering one-time “origin” events in the distant past, religion and philosophy really are the major players in trying to understand what happened and several conceptual “models” are justified as you search for the most likely explanation.  The arrogant attempt by evolutionary materialists/naturalists to dominate the scene is balanced by how often their story has had to change as new evidence comes to light.  Especially in this area, you will find that “models” of cosmology are long on theory/belief and very short on hard evidence.

     It is here that we need to remember that both “Creation” and “Evolution” are philosophical conceptual models for trying to understand the unobserved past and its questions.  Both begin with unproven assumptions - “faith” - about the ultimate “cause” for the processes and effects that exist.  However, the plausible options for the ultimate reality/cause are really very limited and logic dictates that the ‘First Cause” in a cause-effect chain of events must be eternal and self-existing, be it eternal matter or an eternal powerful intelligence.

     The two plausible options for explaining all of physical reality are Theism (God/Intelligent Design) and Materialism.  There really are no other theoretically “workable” beginning points than intelligence/Being or impersonal matter.  Then, one must reason and speculate on how well those two “starting points” can account for what follows.  You can try and discern, from your observations of natural processes and speculations, what kind of results and effects each of those possible causes would produce.  Whereas some religions claim to be nothing more than human interpretation/experience-based explanations (like Buddhism), others claim to have been “revealed” by the Creator Himself (the Judeo-Christian/Biblical system).  If the Judeo-Christian/Biblical viewpoint is valid (and there are reasons to think it is), then we do have outside information – Divinely observed and communicated information – on ultimate issues that humans did not observe and can, otherwise, only speculate on. 

Cosmology

     After you have settled on a philosophical/religious foundation for your thinking (theistic or materialistic), you will begin the process of observing current realities and applying some imagination.

     “Cosmology,” literally, is the “study of the cosmos” (the universe).  How did it come into being, how old is it, how big is it, how is it laid out, how does it function?  Because of the vastness of the universe and the degree to which it could not be observed, this is an area in which metaphysics (theology) has been a frequent participant. 

cosmology has much in common with religion; both rely on a very small measure of information and a very large measure of belief.^[2]

Origin of the universe

     Down to around 600 B.C., virtually all major stories about the origin of the universe and the planet earth were “religious” stories.  The Sumerians (ca. 3,000 B.C.) claimed that supernatural divine power cause the universe/earth to exist, that humans had lived long lives and one shepherd had even gone directly to be with the gods prior to a great flood.  There was a good deal of careful observation going on in the ancient world concerning the heavens and this was often used for astrology and producing accurate calendars.  What was different and unique about Genesis was the conception of a single, great, moral, Creator and a clear portrayal of the heavenly bodies as simple elements of the creation and not deities to be worshipped (Gen. 1:14-18) – no polytheism or idolatry – just a universe spoken into existence by intelligent power.

     Around 600 B.C., the first known non-theistic stories begin to appear with the Ionian Greek philosophers Anaximander and Empedocles.  Their story was that eternal “living matter” took on an “animal” form in the sea and slowly developed over time.  Pythagoras (c. 500 B.C.) viewed the world as spherical and not the center of the universe, with the earth, planets, and sun revolve around the central fire or "hearth" of the universe.  Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.) believed that all things forever flow and change, thus cosmic history runs in repetitious cycles, each beginning and ending in fire.

     Aristotle began with a theistic origin for the universe and then developed his “geocentric” (earth-centered) orderly view of the universe.  The Egyptian, Ptolemy (127-145 AD), added to the earlier work of Hipparchus and held the same basic geo-centric view as Aristotle.  At this time, not only our moon, but the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were known and a good deal about their movements.  This view was commonly held until the 15th century.

     Aristotle conceived of the universe (illustration, right) as earth-centered (geo-centric), with planetary bodies arranged at fixed orbits outward from the earth.  Of course, all that Aristotle had to work with on this was his own perspective on it – the earth is the center of our existence and conceptual universe.  The visible perspective is powerful enough that even today we still talk as though the sun “rises/sets” in relation to our visual horizons. 

The “Helio-centric” View

     One of the major ideas that upset the Aristotelian worldview of Medieval Europe involved shifting the assumptions as to what was at the center of the universe/solar system.  Most of the work involved in this came through Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and he became convinced that the heliocentric (Sun-centered) system was a better view.  Although he kept his view fairly quiet during his lifetime, Galileo (1564-1642) added to the Copernican view his telescopic observations of an apparent “wobble” in the orbit of Mars, which was best explained by placing the sun rather than the earth at the center of our planetary system.  For several decades, Galileo struggled with the entrenched and dogmatic Aristotelian “University Elite” (some of whom would not even look through his telescope) until they portrayed the issue as a “theological heresy” and persuaded the Church to silence him. 

“Modern” Theories of the Origin of the Solar System^[3]

      The problems faced by any theory on the origin of the solar system have become increasingly complex as astronomers' knowledge about the planets, satellites, comets, and asteroids has expanded.

     The earliest of such theories were certainly much less constrained. A scientific approach to the origin of the solar system became possible only after the publication of Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravitation in 1687. Even after this breakthrough, many years elapsed while scientists struggled with applications of Newton's laws to explain the apparent motions of planets, satellites, comets, and asteroids. 

The Newton-Kant Model

     The first semblance of a modern theory for solar system origin was proposed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1755. Kant's central idea was that the system began as a cloud of dispersed particles. He assumed that the mutual gravitational attractions of the particles caused them to start moving and colliding, at which point chemical forces kept them bonded together. As some of these aggregates became larger than others, they grew still more rapidly, ultimately forming the planets. Because Kant was not highly versed in either physics or mathematics, he did not recognize the intrinsic limitations of his primitive approach. His model does not account for planets moving around the Sun in the same direction and in the same plane, as they are observed to do, nor does it explain the revolution of planetary satellites. 

“Nebular Hypothesis” of Simon LaPlace

      A significant step forward was made by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) of France some 40 years later. Laplace was a brilliant mathematician who was particularly successful in the field of celestial mechanics. After publishing a monumental treatise on this subject, Laplace wrote a popular book on astronomy, with an appendix in which he made some suggestions about the origin of the solar system. It is this relatively minor work for which he is best remembered. Laplace's model begins with the Sun already formed and its atmosphere extending beyond the distance at which the farthest planet would be created. Knowing nothing about the source of energy in stars, Laplace assumed that the rotating Sun would start to cool as it radiated away its heat. In response to this cooling, as the pressure exerted by its gases declined, the Sun contracted. Owing to the law of conservation of angular momentum, the decrease in size would have to be accompanied by an increase in the Sun's rotational velocity. Centrifugal acceleration pushed the material in the atmosphere outward, while the gravitational attraction pulled it toward the central mass; when these forces just balanced, a ring of material was left behind. This process would have continued through the formation of several concentric rings, each of which subsequently coalesced to form a planet. The satellites are thought to have originated from similar rings produced by the forming planets.

     Laplace's model led naturally to the observed result of planets revolving around the Sun in the same plane and in the same direction as the Sun rotates. Because the theory of Laplace incorporated Kant's idea of planets coalescing from dispersed material, these two approaches for planet formation are often combined in a single model called the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis. This model for solar system formation was widely accepted for about 100 years. During this period, the apparent regularity of motions in the solar system was contradicted by the discovery of asteroids with highly eccentric orbits and satellites with retrograde orbits. Another problem with the nebular hypothesis was the fact that, while the Sun contains 99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system, the planets (principally the outer planets) carry more than 99 percent of the system's angular momentum. To conform to this theory, either the Sun would have to be rotating more rapidly or the planets would have to be revolving around it more slowly.

     In the early decades of the 20th century, several scientists independently decided that these deficiencies of the nebular hypothesis were so great that it was no longer tenable. The Americans Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin and Forest Ray Moulton, along with Sir James Jeans and Sir Harold Jeffreys, both of Britain, independently developed variations on the idea that the planets were formed catastrophically--i.e., by the close encounter of the Sun with another star. The basis of this model was that, when the two bodies passed at close range, material would be drawn out from one or both stars, and this material would later coalesce to form planets. A somewhat discouraging aspect of this theory was the implication that the formation of solar systems must be extremely rare, because sufficiently close encounters between stars occur very seldom, and thus very few would have taken place during the lifetime of the galaxy.

     The next significant development occurred during the middle of the 20th century, as scientists became more aware of the processes by which stars themselves must form and acquired a more mature understanding of the behavior of gases under astrophysical conditions. This perspective led to the realization that hot gases stripped from a stellar atmosphere would simply dissipate in space; they would not condense to form planets. Hence the basic idea of solar system formation through stellar encounters was physically impossible. Furthermore, the growth in knowledge about the interstellar medium--the gas and dust distributed in the space separating the stars--indicated that large clouds of such matter exist and that stars form in these clouds. Planets must somehow be created in the process that forms the stars themselves. This awareness prompted scientists to reconsider certain basic processes that resembled some of the earlier notions of Kant and Laplace. 

The “Big Bang” theory

      Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953) saw things, especially the apparent movement of galactic systems away from a central point, which caused him to propose the “Big Bang” concept in the 1920’s.  Apparent difficulties with the “Big Bang” theory motivated Bondi, Hoyle, and Gold to offer the alternative “Steady-State” theory in 1948.  By that year, of course, the universe was increasingly believed to be expanding; therefore, the only way to explain a constant (steady state) matter density was to postulate the continuous creation of matter to offset the attenuation caused by the cosmic expansion (and this contradicted the first principle of thermodynamics). This aspect was physically very unappealing to many people, who consciously or unconsciously preferred to have all creation completed in virtually one instant in the big bang. In the steady state theory the average age of matter in the universe is one-third the Hubble time, but any given galaxy could be older or younger than this mean value. Thus, the steady state theory had the virtue of making very specific predictions, and for this reason it was vulnerable to observational disproof, which came in the 1950-60’s.

     After surviving the opposition of many scientists, because the “Big-Bang” sounded like there was a “beginning” event (which might support the Biblical view) and did not support the concept of eternally-operating material causes, this view did survive the “Steady-State” challenge and has been the dominant viewpoint since.  However, new questions and problems continue to surface and the “Big-Bang” model will eventually (probably) pass from the scene.  It is already being challenged by various questions and new explanations.  The “Big-Bang” view still includes elements of earlier views, especially the notion that swirling gas clouds became solar systems and this is foundational to general evolutionary beliefs, 

As the sun’s first rays of thermonuclear light blazed across the galaxy 4.5 billion years ago the primal earth emerged from a spinning turbulent cloud of gas dust and planetoids that surrounded the new star.  During the next 700 million years the cloud settled into a more tranquil solar system and the sun’s third planet began to solidify.  On these figures for the age of the earth rest all of geology and evolution.^[4]

Reasons for Caution

      The current popular belief is the “big Bang” scenario, but there are some whopping assumptions laid down as the foundations for this viewpoint.  The popular conception of this theory, even amongst many scientists, is that the “Big Bang” began with all of the matter in the universe once, by some unknown force, compressed into the space of a proton,

At the start . . . the universe was smaller than a proton.^[5]

That point alone is very difficult to believe.  But then, at some point (8-20 billion years ago?), this tremendously powerful unknown “compression” force ceased (for some unknown reason) and suddenly it exploded, hurling bits of matter outward from that center point.  They believe that these outwardly hurtling bits of matter congealed into stars and began emitting light, from which they can calculate (distance times the speed of light) an age for the universe and of those stars.  Because they think the observed “red-shift” is a visual Doppler-effect (as when a loud vehicle approaches/passes a stationary person and there is a drop in the sound), they conclude that these stars are still moving outward from an original center point and away from each other.  However, there are some more accurate explanations as to what this view really assumes and asserts for those who wish to dig deeper.^[6]

     Others claim some observational problems concerning the alleged “red-shift,” which might suggest that something other than movement from an original center-point is going on.^[7]  As for measuring distant stars (and the extreme distances are probably correct) and estimating an age based on the speed of light, that is coming under increased questioning as well.  Why?  Well, Einstein said some fascinating things about space and time.  He talked about “gravitational time dilation” and that time does not pass at the same speed everywhere in the universe from all perspectives.^[8]

     Thus, Einstein suggested that an astronaut traveling near the speed of light could return to earth and find that his friends had aged 50 years, while the astronaut had aged only a few years.  Add to this the research that has been done in recent years about the apparent slowing of the speed of light over time,^[9] reports in early 1999 that a Danish physicist and her staff succeeded in slowing the speed of light by a factor of 20 million,^[10] and 2001 experiments in which light was slowed to the point of stopping it,^[11] and new theories that light traveled much faster in the early universe^[12] and you begin to realize that evolutionary viewpoints will continue to undergo revision, while Genesis chapter one will continue to handle new findings just fine.

     Today, astrophysics is in turmoil with new data rolling in and various new theories being offered.  Many questions continue as to how the universe is laid out and what processes are going on within it.

"Cosmology is in a state of flux," said American University astronomer Richard Berendzen.  "The problem now is not only do we not have the right answer, we're not even sure we have the right question."^[13]

     If the planets arose from gaseous material spinning off from an original swirling cloud of homogenous materials, then several questions come to mind.  Why don’t the planets all orbit the sun in the same direction - Uranus and Venus have “retrograde” orbits (opposite the direction of the rest of the planets).  Why are the planets and their moons made of different materials?

To the surprise of scientists, the chemical makeup of the moon rocks is distinctly different from that of rocks on earth.  This difference implies that the moon formed under different conditions . . . . and means that any theory on the origin of the planets now will have to create the moon and earth in different ways.^[14]

     As one watches the newspapers and journals, you discover numerous glitches in the system as different researchers discover conflicting items of information.  In 1979, astrophysicist George Smoot announced that the movement of the Milky Way galaxy may not indicate a “Big Bang” origin for the universe at all, but rather attraction toward a newly discovered “super giant” cluster of galaxies which are 2 billion light years in diameter (1/5 of the entire universe).^[15]

     Then, in 1981, observers at the Kitts Peak and Mount Hopkins observatories in Arizona and Mount Palomar observatory in California found some very large amounts of space to be sparse on matter.  It has long been assumed that the “Big Bang” would have distributed matter in such a way that the “overall distribution of galaxies should be roughly homogenous” throughout the universe.  Why would some portions of space be so empty of matter?^[16]  At this point, no one can answer these questions.  Not only are some areas of space fairly empty, but now it has been discovered that there is an orderly structure to the cosmos.   The large-scale structure of the universe is an orderly rectangle, a three-dimensional latticework of clusters and voids.  Concentrated matter appears to be spaced at fairly regular 91 million-light-year intervals.^[17]  As more and more of deep space is probed by the Hubble Telescope and this non-uniform spacing of matter is recognized, the foundational assumptions for the Big-Bang theory, galaxy formation, and galaxy distribution come more and more into question.^[18]

     Another startling discovery suggests that the long spans of time suggested for "stellar evolution may also be unnecessary.  Direct observation in 1997 found that a star called Sakuri's Object in the Sagittarius constellation has changed from a white dwarf (about the size of earth) to a bright yellow super-giant (80 times bigger than the sun) in only a few years.^[19]

     Even the question of whether the universe is finite (limited) or infinite (goes forever) is a major issue and one that evolutionists have assumed to be settled (an "infinite" universe replaced the infinite God in their thinking).  However, an article in the April 1999 Scientific American suggested that this was another overconfident statement,

The question of a finite or infinite universe is one of the oldest in philosophy.  A common misconception is that it has already been settled in favor of the latter.  The reasoning, often repeated in textbooks, draws an unwarranted conclusion from Einstein's general theory of relativity.^[20]

Dark Matter & Energy

     The idea of “dark matter” has been around quite awhile.  What is it?  It is believed to be a form of matter that does not emit light, absorb light, or scatter light, but only interacts with gravity.  “Dark Matter” is thought to far outnumber ordinary matter in the universe, but it has never been detected in any laboratory.

     "I'm as big a fan of dark matter and dark energy as anybody else," says astronomer Richard Ellis of Caltech. But, he adds, "I find it very worrying that you have a universe where there are three constituents, of which only one [i.e., ordinary matter] is really physically understood."

     "When you teach undergraduates, and they say, 'Well, what is dark matter?' Well, nobody's really sure.

     'What is dark energy?' We're even less sure. So you have to explain to a student, that … 90 percent of the universe, 95 percent, is in two ingredients that nobody really understands," says Ellis. "This isn't really progress."^[21]

     Prior to 1998, astronomers tended to believe that cosmic expansion was gradually slowing down.  That began to change after two groups of astronomers surveyed exploding stars, or supernovas, in a number of distant galaxies.  They found that the supernovas were dimmer than expected and that meant they were farther away than they should have been.  To explain this, the astronomers concluded that the expansion of the universe must have sped up at some time in the past and this required some kind of “anti-gravity” or negative pressure effect to have been involved.  It was at this point, in 1998, that “dark energy” was theorized to account for the situation and many astronomers believe that it is real.  However, no one can really explain it.

"Frankly, we just don’t understand it," says Craig Hogan, an astronomer at the University of Washington at Seattle. "We know what its effects are," Hogan says, but as to the details of dark energy, "We’re completely clueless about that. And everybody’s clueless about it."^[22]

      I find it interesting that “God” is not allowed into the “scientific” discussion of what is going on in the universe because He cannot be directly seen or quantified, but seems to answer a number of problems in understanding our existence.  These same characteristics apply to “Dark Matter/Energy,” but it is “scientifically acceptable” to employ unseen and little understood hypothetical entities/forces to help explain nature as long as they are not portrayed as a personal Creator.

A final comment

     Because there seems to be a dominant idea about the origin and structure of the universe during one’s life, it seems that everything is worked out.  However, as viewed historically, we can see that this is more a matter of philosophical/observational scenarios that further time and observation tend to discredit.  The Bible is general enough, that it can accommodate whatever real evidence comes to be known.  However, don’t hook you theology to anything beyond what Scripture says, for every cosmological scenario assembled by men so far have not stood the test of time very well.  We fool ourselves if we think that we possess an accurate knowledge of all of the data in the universe and, thus, have finally arrived at the “complete theory of everything.”  I believe the Bible will continue to be in agreement with the real data of the universe – just don’t get too confident of the “inspired truth” of any human formulation or description.

     Candid comments should warn us that much of what is currently believed is, again, not exactly based on clear, direct scientific observation.  Rather, it turns out to be a little bit of data filtered through a set of assumptions and philosophical speculations,

There are no purely observational facts about the heavenly bodies.  Astronomical measurements are, without exception, measurements of phenomena occurring in a terrestrial observatory or station; it is only by theory that they are translated into knowledge of a universe outside.^[23]

 If you ask me how far away those objects are [and hence how old], then the answer is the extraordinary one that you cannot calculate the distance unless you know what cosmological model applies to the universe.  The distance is so much on the Big Bang model, so much on the Steady-State Theory, and it has another value if the constants in the cosmological equations are different and the universe is in a cyclical condition.^[24]

 In the light of all these problems, it is astounding that the Big Bang hypothesis is the only cosmological model that physicists have taken seriously.^[25]

 Big Bang cosmology has become a bandwagon of thought that reflects faith as much as objective truth . . . This situation is particularly worrisome because there are good reasons to think the Big Bang model is seriously flawed.^[26]

The Biblical View

     The Bible tells us very little about the “mechanics” issue that lies at the heart of the stream of theories that have been offered to explain the origin and mechanics of galaxies and everything else in space.  However, the Bible does say quite clearly that the basic “creation” process lasted a week (Genesis 1; Exodus 20:11).  From the spoken command of the Creator, our sun, moon, and the stars (Genesis 1:14-18) came into being, although there is no attempt to further explain any of the “mechanics” involved in their origin.  Thus, science has lots of room to operate with respect to observing current activity and processes.  There are only a couple of other Biblical comments that I know of that could be investigated concerning the earth, the heavens, and time – however, these are possibly very simple statements that have fascinating correspondence with physical reality as more knowledge is gained.  Long before Aristotle, Job understood that the earth was not sitting on the back of turtle or on the shoulders of Atlas, but suspended in space – hung on nothing (Job 26:7).  Perhaps Isaiah knew long before 20^th century “inflationary universe” theorists that God had “stretched out the heavens” at some point (Isaiah 40:22).  And Peter knew that “time” does not pass at the same rate everywhere and from all perspectives (2Peter 3:8). 

     One final thought.  If the Bible is correct about an external “Creator” (and that should be considered as a respectable possibility), then modern science’s attempts to explain the origin of the universe on the basis of current “operational” mechanics will always be an exercise in futility.  Why?  Futility is guaranteed if science seeks to explain initial “origin” questions by means of ongoing “operational” processes.  If the universe and its present “natural processes” are the result of a separate “creation” event and processes, then current “operational” processes will tell us very little about how it came into being.  Totally committed to materialism and naturalism, scientists are limited to current “operational” processes as the only means of explaining how it came into being.  Imagine the difficulty of trying to explain how an automobile engine came into existence if all you have to work with are the observed processes by which the thing operates.  Of course, we know that there are two very different types of processes involved – metal forging, milling, drilling, stamping, etc. and intelligent input goes into designing and manufacturing an automobile engine.  However, once it is manufactured, an automobile engine operates in response to intelligent input and then will run by itself via the ignition system, a timing system, fuel/lubrication/exhaust systems, processes are involved.  Of course, the processes used in making an engine are very different from those by which it operates.  However, “naturalists” have nothing more to go on than the current operational processes of nature, so they conclude that it must have something to do with explosions, chance, and lots of time – no wonder the explanations seem hard to believe and don’t hold up very well over time.  The Bible encourages us to think of two separate kinds of natural processes – supernatural creative processes the brought the universe into existence and then divinely-established “natural” operational processes.

     After all of the time that Western intellectuals and "wanna-be's" have spent thrashing the Bible over the last couple of centuries, if you wait long enough even some of the opposition comes around to recognizing that the Scriptures are not so "out-of-touch" with reality after all, 

Most cosmologists - scientists who study the structure and evolution of the universe - agree that the biblical account of creation, in imagining an initial void, may be uncannily close to the truth.^[27]

 . . . . at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation.  For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.^[28]

     When one examines pictures from the Hubble telescope of what exists out in space (pictures below from the Hubble site), it is possible to look at it in such a way as to only see physical and chemical processes going on.  However, it is also very easy to see the same thing one observes anew every day in the sun-rises and sun-sets – the hand of a cosmic artist and visions of beauty and wonder.  For now, more than ever before, our technology offers us new glimpses into the truth declared in Psalm 19:1 - “The heavens declare the glory of God”!

A Ministry of Severn Christian Church (Severn, Maryland)

Unless otherwise noted, all material produced by Charles E. McCoy

All Scripture citations/quotations from the New American Standard Bible

To send a question to Chuck: chuck@severnchristian.org