Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | A man by the name of Hipparchas [high-PARK-us], who lived in the year 125, decided to count the number of stars in the heavens. He concluded that there were 1022. Seventy-five years later, however, Ptolemy found four more and declared that there were 1026.

Interestingly enough, the Bible, written 2700 years before Ptolemy, said that the stars were innumerable. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17). Skeptics made fun of such a comparison. To compare the number of the stars to that of the grains of sand on the seashore was to them laughable. After all, there are more grains in a handful of sand than the 1026 stars Ptolemy claimed existed.

But only a few years ago on a “Nova” television program the noted evolutionary scientist Carl Sagan said there are probably about as many stars in the sky as there are grains of sand on the seashores of the world. The Bible, written centuries ago, has been correct all along.

Just in case you’re interested, using computer math software, the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth has been estimated to be 7.5x 10 to the 18th power, and the number of stars in the universe has been estimated to be 3 thousand million billion. But NASA says there are zillions of uncountable stars.

Psalm 147 tells us, “He [God] determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name” (Psalm 147:4). We humans haven’t yet named them all. In fact, for a few dollars, you can have one named after you. But God has already counted and named them.

It’s no wonder the Psalmist wrote, “When I consider…the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3, 4). It makes you stop and think, doesn’t it!