A Prepositional Comparison of the Old and New Testaments

Prepositions, though short, are some of the most important words in the English language. Modifying a single preposition can drastically change a sentence. Just imagine telling your friend to meet on your house instead of in your house.

Recently, I watched a video from a Christian conference held in Anaheim, California. One of the points from the message utilized the modification of a single preposition to cleanly compare the Old and New Testaments. Understanding the difference between the two testaments is crucial for any young, Bible-believing Christian.

Here it is:

The history of God with man is found in the Old Testament. The history of God in man is found in the New Testament.

This guy is thinking about what I just said. You should think about it some more, too.

In the Old Testament, God was there with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even appearing to wrestle with Jacob. As the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, He was with Moses and the children of Israel fleeing from Egypt. He was also there in the tabernacle and eventually the temple, dwelling with the children of Israel. Through the many failures of their kings and the period of captivity in Babylon, God remained with His people, faithful to restore them.

Yet all this time, with was the best God could do. It wasn't until the New Testament that with could become in.

The age of the New Testament was the result of a fundamental shift in the way God interacted with man. No longer was He limited to helping man outwardly, but he could actually enter into man as the Spirit.

The history of God in man started with Jesus Christ, who said that the Father was in Him (John 10:38) and that the Father dwelt in Him (John 14:10).

Through Jesus' death and resurrection, the way was paved for God to enter into more people. The history of God in man has continued through the apostles and countless other Christians. In 2 Corinthians 13:5, the apostle Paul asked the Corinthian believers, "Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?"

Thank God that now He can be not only with us, but also in us!

From Nanometers to Gigaparsecs

Nanotechnology is hot these days. This summer, I've been immersed in this fascinating area of science doing a research internship in Minneapolis. In nanotechnology, smaller is (almost) always better. My project is to fabricate a device containing nanochannels for DNA experiments. By definition, a nanochannel has two dimensions that are on the order of 100 nanometers.

How small is that?

Well, you could fit about a million nanochannels inside a single human hair!

This is a close-up of a strand of human hair. It doesn't really look like hair, but it is.

Nanotechnology is the science of small. Cosmology, on the other hand, is the science of big. Cosmologists investigate solar systems, galaxies, and even the entire universe and its origins. The observable diameter of the universe is about 28 gigaparsecs.

 Each gigaparsec contains a billion parsecs. I always thought a parsec was something George Lucas made up for Star Wars, but it's actually a real distance. Each parsec contains 31 trillion kilometers. Each kilometer contains a million millimeters. And each millimeter contains a million nanometers.

An artist's rendition of the universe. Because, of course, nobody can actually photograph the entire universe.

If you told me that you could fathom the difference in size between a nanochannel and the universe, I would call you a liar! Yet science spans this vast difference, crossing many orders of magnitude from the miniscule to the mammoth.

Can anything else span this difference? Or...anyone else? How about Christ?

Ephesians 3:18 tells us what the dimensions of Christ are. But Paul couldn't quite come up with the right numbers. All he came up with was "width, length, depth, and height." That's because Christ is literally immeasurable. Even the seemingly infinite universe can be made finite with units like gigaparsecs. You can't do that with Christ!

But what about Christ being small?

Fewer people consider this side of Christ. I had a tough time finding a verse reference saying that Christ could fit inside a nanochannel, but the thought of Christ being small still pervades the Bible.

In Matthew 15:25-28, a Gentile woman refers to the Lord as bread crumbs. He doesn't respond negatively, but instead commends her, saying, "Great is your faith." Bread crumbs are not measured in nanometers, but among foods, they are about as small and lowly as you can get.

In First Kings 19:11-12, a strong wind, an earthquake, and a fire pass by Elijah, but God didn't exist in any of those things. Instead, he existed in a still small voice.

Finally, in Philippians 2:5-8, we see that Jesus Christ, the infinite God, chose to humble Himself to the lowest of humanity by taking the form of a servant and dying the death of a cross.

Praise our Lord who is so big and yet so small!

Puerto Rico or Yosemite?

It's almost been a week since I returned from a trip to Puerto Rico. Some of my friends on the trip have already posted about Puerto Rico and the beautiful places in Puerto Rico. The beauty of the island was absolutely stunning, especially the beaches. I love natural beauty. But is Puerto Rico the most beautiful place I have ever visited? After going through a mental checklist, I narrowed the choices down to Puerto Rico and Yosemite National Park in California. I couldn't make a decision between those two, so I'm going to leave it up to you all. Check out the pictures below and leave a comment answering the question:

Which is more beautiful?

Puerto Rico

Yosemite

The picture credits go to Joseph Hernandez, Chris Chan, Garrett Ghent, and myself.