Some of the worst slums are owned by absentee landlords who live far away and have no direct supervision or real interest in the condition of their properties and occupants except for the income they generate. Deists imagine God is something like this, claiming he created everything and then left it to us to manage things the best we can, having no direct or personal interest in the daily workings of things. Albert Einstein said he thought God was like this, taking his cue from the philosopher Spinoza. If we accept the universe as presented by astrophysicists from Copernicus until the present, it is not difficult to arrive at this conclusion. In fact, it might be even more reasonable to conclude that there is no God at all! Perhaps this is why so many famous astrophysicists are self-proclaimed atheists.
The Bible, however, paints a much different picture of a Creator who is quite near to us and continues to directly oversee his creation, taking an intense interest in the people who occupy it.
God’s Word also tells us that the heavens, rightly understood, declare God’s glory and character.
The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Psalm 19:1 (NKJV)
The heavens and earth should tell us about his power, of course, because we understand to some degree how much power it took to create all this. But Paul said that we also should arrive at some sense of his divine nature by observing his creation.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. Romans 1:20 (NASB95)
We know that the Bible describes God as love. His love is perhaps the most amazing aspect of his being. For us who believe the New Testament, his love is so great that he sent his only Son to die a horrible death to make it possible for us to be reconciled to him! But does the universe of Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and other modern proponents of anti-biblical astrophysics communicate anything at all about God’s love? I think not. Instead we are presented with an fathomless void, a cold uninhabitable supposed vacuum in which stars and planets and immense whirling galaxies are separated by incomprehensible distances, where God’s abode is nowhere to be found. We are told that other life forms surely exist, perhaps far advanced compared to ours, who might be hostile and a looming threat to our existence! We are told that asteroids and comets may someday, soon perhaps, impact the earth, causing overwhelming destruction. We are also informed that our “planet” (The word in Greek means wanderer.) has a thin, fragile atmosphere that is no protection at all and may fail us in the end. We are told that we revolve around an immense and far away sun whose nuclear explosions could create huge solar flares that could threaten our very existence. This does not paint a picture of a loving God.
I still remember looking up at a cold full moon as a high school student who was searching for God. I felt very much alone in the universe. Where was God? Does he inhabit some mysterious spiritual realm unknown to us that we will only discover after death? Is he even “out there” at all? Thankfully, if you know my story, the Holy Spirit drew me to Christ in my first year of college. I came to know the love of God personally, but his creation played no part in the matter. In fact, we might say the Holy Spirit overcame Satan’s false narrative regarding the heavens and earth in order to draw me to Christ.
Now that, decades later, I have come to believe the biblical account of the heavens and earth, it is easy for me to see God’s loving hand in his creation.
If we take the Genesis account of creation as a literal description of how God created the heavens and earth, which is how Jesus intended us to understand it, we will realize that God’s throne is situated right above us, as the Bible says over and over, in a very real physical location from which he looks down upon us with intense and loving interest.
If you have not yet accepted what the Bible teaches about creation and the heavens and earth, what comes next in this article will challenge your understanding of things. In fact, it may seem preposterous, but that is only because the devil has succeeded in making God’s truth seem like a fairy tale.
Please keep an open mind and ask yourself, “Am I willing to stake everything on what God says in the Bible, or do I think that the proclamations of so called science is a higher and more certain form of truth?”
The Bible tells us that God’s throne is right above us, atop a structure he made on the second day of creation called the firmament (Hebrew: raqia), which is a solid, immensely strong crystalline-like dome that separates the waters above from those below. I have written three articles on this structure, which I encourage you to read: Introduction to the Firmament, The Amazing Firmament, and The Firmament, the Throne, and the Apocalypse. The prophet Ezekiel saw this structure, as did John the Revelator. Moses and the elders of Israel actually visited it! It is a real place.
The existence of this dome precludes the earth’s being a sphere, which is an anti-biblical lie thrust upon us by sun worshipers going back to ancient Egypt, who regarded spheres as the perfect shape. I have written about the occult origins of heliocentrism in another article; so, I will not go into detail now about Copernicus’ and Newton’s ties to the legendary Egyptian hermetic author Tresmegistus.
Please do not abandon me now. I am not crazy: I am biblical. If you cannot believe what I am writing, at least humor me by continuing to the end of the article.
Without realizing it, we have been duped into worshiping a kind of idol called the globe for centuries.
Satan has managed to draw humanity into a love affair with a lie, even tempting us to try to pierce the firmament in pursuit of a fantasy called outer space.
The desire to do this goes all the way back to Babel. They built a tower. We have rockets. Satan has deceived us into trying to be lords of the universe rather than govern our assigned realm, the earth.
So, if we accept what the Bible says, the earth we live on must necessarily be a circular plane above which rests a dome of incredible size, which took God an entire day to create, in which God placed all that we see in the heavens. (See the illustration below which is found in Logos Bible software and is understood by Bible scholars to be the view held by the Hebrews and most of humanity prior to the dawn of what is called the Scientific Revolution, when we traded God’s truth for man’s speculations.)
This dome protects us. According to the Bible, the dangers supposedly lurking in the “outer space” of atheistic astrophysics is a satanic lie. Perhaps we should consider that the Bible does not mention such a place as outer space, only “outer darkness,” a realm of judgment and separation from God. It seems that Satan is luring us to try to journey to this place of judgment!
God’s loving hand created a perfect and protected environment for his people. His throne is directly above.
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. Isaiah 40:22 (NKJV)
The word that is translated “circle” is the Hebrew chug, which means a circle drawn with a compass, not a ball or sphere, which is an entirely different word. 
Believing God’s Word pits us against the declarations of mainstream “science” and the opinions of most people. It will subject us to ridicule and worse. Standing for God and his Word has always carried a stigma as far as the world is concerned. God asks us to willingly endure the reproach of those who do not believe that the Bible is true.
We who adhere to a biblical cosmology cannot explain everything, but neither can those who believe in a globe earth careening through space. We are not required to explain everything, though, are we?
Does God not expect us to believe his Word without our having complete understanding? Was not the quest for illicit knowledge the downfall of Eve and Adam? Did God not rebuke Job for demanding to know things beyond what God chose to reveal?
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors, When it burst forth and issued from the womb; 9 When I made the clouds its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band; 10 When I fixed My limit for it, And set bars and doors; 11 When I said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther, And here your proud waves must stop!’ Job 38:4–11 (NKJV)
One thing is sure. Only God knows how he created this world and the heavens, and we can only know for certain what he tells us in his Word. When we try to go beyond that revelation, if we end up contradicting his Word, we have departed from the truth.
Look to God’s instructions and teachings! People who contradict his word are completely in the dark. Isaiah 8:20 (NLT)
God wants us to trust him even when we do not fully understand. Satan mocks our childlike faith in God and his Word and promises to give us greater knowledge beyond what God reveals.
Please don’t go down that road again! If you have been traveling on it, now is the time to make a u-turn.
The presence of the firmament with God enthroned above it teaches us that God is very near and watches over us continually. This is one major reason Satan works so hard to hide the true nature of our world. A turtle on a fence post did not get there by himself. A solid dome over the earth did not somehow randomly evolve out of the chaos of an explosion.
A biblical understanding of the realm in which we live reveals the reality, nearness, character, and glory of God.
People who discover that the Bible’s version of cosmology is the truth often find God, too. Or, should we say, he finds us? Below I have a short video containing some testimonies of people who came to have faith in God and Christ in this way. I have collected even more on my Biblical Cosmology Resource Page.
God is not the absentee landlord of the Deists. He is the very near God of the Bible.
