The Sun and Moon

Which is bigger—the sun or the moon? I’m sure you know the answer: the sun is much larger than the moon. But let me ask you another question. How did you know that? You would not come to that conclusion with the naked eye because the moon often appears to be larger than the sun. This is a fact we have learned in school as a result of science. 

The moon is big. It has a diameter of more than 2,100 miles, making it about twenty-five percent of the Earth’s diameter. While the moon is big, it is dwarfed by the sun, which has a diameter of almost 865,000 miles. Our sun is so massive that if it were a cookie jar and the moon were cookies, it could hold 6 million moons! 

When Moses was writing down the history of how God created the world, he described the fourth day in this manner: “Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also (Genesis 1:16).” I cannot help but wonder how Moses knew the sun was larger than the moon. In the book Exploring Genesis, John Phillips wrote, “Ordinary observation would lead to the opposite conclusion. We have all seen the giant harvest moon, seemingly eight feet in diameter, hovering over the skyline, dominating the evening sky. We have never seen the sun look as large as that. Ancient peoples thought the moon was far greater than the sun, and accounted for its lack of light and heat, as compared with the sun, by assuming it was very much farther away from the earth than the sun.” 

In truth, the moon appears to be larger than the sun because it is much closer to Earth than the sun is. While the sun is 93 million miles away, the moon is fewer than 240,000 miles away. By the way, the precise location of the sun and moon in relation to the Earth is optimal for life, proving God’s intelligent design of the universe. 

The only way Moses could have known that the sun is larger than the moon is if God told him that was the case. The prevailing thought for thousands of years was the exact opposite, and when the Bible appeared to be incorrect, it was later justified by science. Not only can we trust God’s Word, we can be reminded that we never have to altar our interpretations of it just because the prevailing thoughts today say the Bible is wrong. When there is a contradiction between God’s Word and man’s, just hold on; soon we’ll find out that man was wrong once again, and God is always right.