Big Numbers!

Day 195:  "Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him."   Mark 16:5-6


Conservative estimates say that over 300 prophecies have been recorded in the Bible regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; he fulfilled all of them with complete accuracy.  This is staggering if you consider the odds of all them being fulfilled by one man--1 chance in 10 to the 157th power!  This is a HUGE number! How huge?  We cannot comprehend. Lets look at a more conservative example.  Winning the powerball lottery.  The odds are 1 in 175 million (or 1.75 x 10 to the 8th power).  Here is how one statistician,Ronald L Wasserstein describes this comparatively meager probability:

"Here is an example I have used in classrooms all over the country, and it is way more fun than thinking about being struck by lightning! Imagine 175 million freshly minted one-dollar bills are being delivered to my house near Washington, D.C. One of those dollar bills is specially marked as the "lucky dollar bill." You get to pick a dollar bill, and if you happen to pick the lucky dollar bill, you win all the dollar bills.

A straightforward mathematical calculation using the dimensions of a dollar bill reveals it will take two semi-trailers to deliver the 175,000,000 dollar bills to my house. Once these arrive, they will have to be unloaded, of course, so you will have a fair chance to pick the lucky dollar bill. So, we will lay them out end to end. How long will that line of dollar bills go?

If we start from my house, we'll have enough dollar bills to go all the way south to Disney World in Orlando. Then we'll still have enough to go clear across the country to Disneyland! But, even then, we are not out of dollar bills, so we can go north and make it all the way to Portland, Oregon. Still, we have dollar bills, enough to make it all the way east to Portland, Maine. And, fortunately, we'll have enough to make it back to my house near DC, completing the loop.

Do we have any dollars bills left? Yes! We would still have enough dollar bills to go all the way around the loop a second time!

Now imagine that you walk, bike or drive for as long as you want around the double loop, and when you decide to stop, you stoop over and pick up one dollar bill. Your chance of selecting the lucky dollar bill is one in 175 million, the same as your chance of winning the Powerball jackpot!"

So, how big is 10 to the 157th power?  Walid Shoebat describes it like this

Let us try to illustrate this number using electrons... Electrons are very small objects. They are smaller than atoms. It would take 2.5 times 10 to the 15th power of them, laid side by side, to make one inch. Even if we counted four electrons every second and counted day and night, it would still take us 19 million years just to count a line of electrons one-inch long.

How many electrons would there be if we were dealing with 10 to the 157th power of electrons?

Imagine building a solid ball of electrons that would extend in all directions from the earth of 6 billion light years. The distance in miles of just one light year is 6.4 trillion miles. That would be a big ball! But not big enough to measure 10 to the 157th power of electrons! In order to do that, you must take that big ball of electrons reaching the length of 6 billion light years long in all directions and multiply it by 6 x 10 to the 28th power! How big is that? It's the length of the space required to store trillions and trillions and trillions of the same gigantic balls and more. In fact the space required to store all of these balls combined together would just start to "scratch the surface" of the number of electrons we would need to really accurately speak about 10 to the 157th power!

Assuming you have some idea of the number of electrons we are talking about; imagine marking just one of those electrons in that huge number. Stirring them all up. Then appointing one person to travel in a rocket for as long as he wants, anywhere he wants to go. Now tell him to stop the rocket, segment a part of space, take a high-powered microscope, and find that one marked electron. What do you think his chances of being successful would be? It would be one in 10 to the 157th power. 

I believe my faith is reasonable.  I believe my Bible is True. I believe in the Risen Christ, who came, died, and rose again to save me!

Please, God, bless!

Inspired by "365: A Daily Creativity Journal: Make Something Every Day and Change Your Life!" I decided I should be more conscientious of my creative side. I chose to modify this one year challenge (9/23/14-9/24/15) to create something each day that would also force me to focus my perspective on a Godly world-view.