Job 38:32 “Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?”

The fact that God especially mentions guiding Arcturus indicates that it must be more difficult to guide than the average star. This is an interesting star which is easy to locate in the sky. The handle of the Big Dipper points directly at the star Arcturus. Is this star a hard star to guide?

“This high velocity places Arcturus in that very small class of stars that are apparently a law unto themselves. He is an outsider, a visitor, a stranger within the gates; to speak plainly, Arcturus is a runaway. Newton gives the velocity of a star under control as not more than 25 miles a second, and Arcturus is going 257 miles a second. Therefore, the combined attraction of all the stars we know cannot stop him or even turn him in his path.” Charles Burckhalter of Chabot Observatory

Long ago God solemnly stated through the statements He made to Job that Arcturus was a star which especially needed His guidance. Arcturus is a great star which is forty light-years away. The light which we see from this star actually starts toward this earth forty years away and has been traveling 186,320 miles per second night and day for forty years to get here. In 1933 the light from this star was used to react on a photoelectric cell and turn the switch that lit up the Chicago World’s Fair. Forty years before, the World’s Fair had been held in Chicago in 1893. For sentimental reasons it was announced that the light which would pull the switch for the World’s Fair of 1933 was the same light which had left Arcturus on its hurtling ride through space at the time of the 1893 fair.

This is the yard stick of travel in space. It is the distance that we will be able to travel in a year going at the amazing speed of 186,000 miles per second. So we start out from the sun to make this imaginary journey. Actually, there is no star within one light year of our sun. In fact, the nearest star to the earth is four and one-third light years away. That means it will take us four and one-third years to get there, even though we travel on a beam of light. It takes nine years for us to reach Sirius which is one of the brightest stars in our sky; 47 years to travel to the North star; 160 years to reach Arcturus; and 750,000 years to reach the nebula of Andromeda. So leaving the sun at the speed of light, we pass that nearest star in four and one-third years. But now, this is much too slow. Suppose we open up the throttle and actually travel one million times faster than light. Can you imagine, friends, what we are speaking about now. We will actually be going a million times faster than 186,000 miles per second.

Job is queried again in Job 38:32, “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?” That great sun, shining in the heavens, and the suns around it—could you guide them? If you say there is no God in the heavens, then you take over just Arcturus and see if you could just guide that. Arcturus is traveling 25 times as fast as our sun. Suppose we’d say that we would like to trade off our sun and get Arcturus—you know that is the common thing to do today, when you get tired of one thing, trade it in and get a different one. Arcturus is so great that if God put it in the place of our sun, here in our solar system made up of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, etc., Mercury would be buried 2 1/2 million miles under Arcturus. The body of Arcturus is so great that it would take all the place of our sun and then would bury the nearest planet 2 1/2 million miles under its coat.

Actually, there is no star within one light year of our sun. In fact, the nearest star to the earth is four and one-third light years away. That means it will take us four and one-third years to get there, even though we travel on a beam of light. It takes nine years for us to reach Sirius which is one of the brightest stars in our sky; 47 years to travel to the North star; 160 years to reach Arcturus; and 750,000 years to reach the nebula of Andromeda. So leaving the sun at the speed of light, we pass that nearest star in four and one-third years. But now, this is much too slow. Suppose we open up the throttle and actually travel one million times faster than light. Can you imagine, friends, what we are speaking about now. We will actually be going a million times faster than 186,000 miles per second.

Contemplate the power that is required to keep those systems in order. Why is there not constant collision and chaos? True, they are very far apart—there is plenty of space and yet, friends, they are traveling at tremendous, unbelievable speeds. Arcturus is the runaway of the heavens. The average speed of a star is 26 miles per second. But Arcturus is rushing madly along at 257 miles per second. By the way, Arcturus is a million times larger than our sun, and we said that our sun was more than a million times larger than the earth. So this gives you an idea of the incredible mass of this star. And as it goes dashing wildly through space, it is drawing hundreds of other star travelers along with it. All at a speed of 900,000 miles per hour. Yet with this headlong rush through space, Arcturus has never yet crashed.

Job understood the runaway of the heavens. He spoke of it in his inspired writing.

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