The Hubble universe can be visualized by a slightly inflated balloon covered with dots, where each dot represents a galaxy. As you further inflate the balloon every dot appears to be moving away from your dot and from all other dots. The balloon model helps us to understand this universe has no centre or edge. Every point is at the same vantage point relative to the overall surface of the balloon.

The farther we look into space, the more abundant quasars become, and the more densely the galaxies are distributed. We can no longer argue for a static or steady state for a creation event. The universe changes with time. This expansion of the universe, implies that it had a beginning in time. This observation that the Universe had a beginning in time is of course something the Bible has always insisted on. Robert Jastrow, an agnostic and founder of NASA's Goddard Institute, and head of the Mount Wilson observatory wrote that " the Hubble law is one of the great discoveries in science, and one of the main supports of the account in Genesis."

If there was once a single unit containing all the matter of the universe, and if that unit began expanding, we imagine some kind of explosion taking place. So in Big Bang Theory it is conjectured that an original unit, sometimes called "the primeval fireball" contained all matter and energy, even space and time - the entire universe. For reasons not understood the primeval fireball underwent 'the big bang' and scattered its material in all directions. The massive temperature drop resulting from the expansion, permitted the freezing of quarks into protons and neutrons.

This expansion has some unique and mind boggling characteristics. It is not occurring in space but an explosion of space, which itself was created in the 'big bang' together with time.

To decide whether the 'big bang' theory is valid we have to make predictions based on the theory and test them to see if they are true. One prediction was that the overall composition of the expanding fireball (the universe) was determined in the first few minutes. Calculations based on the fusion reactions of protons and neutrons indicated that the universe should be about 24% or 25% helium if the model is true. This predication has been born out by experiment. Most large astronomical objects whose chemical composition is known are between 23% and 27% helium.

A second prediction was that the 'big bang' should have flooded the entire universe with very intense radiation energy. With the expansion of the universe this radiation must have decreased, but traces of such background radiation, or "the echo of the big bang' as it is called, should be detectable and should come from all directions in the sky.

In 1965, Penzias and Wilson (two physicists at AT & T labs in New Jersey) stumbled across what is called the "microwave background radiation." They were trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio receiving device. However, they couldn't eliminate an unknown source of noise that corresponded to a temperature of about 3 degrees Kelvin. No matter where they pointed the receiver in the sky the level of radiation remained constant.

What they found fulfilled an earlier prediction of the 'big bang' theorists, that such low level radiation should exist as a remnant of the 'big bang' creation event. That the energy distribution in the universe indicates a mean temperature of about three degrees above absolute zero is the best supporting evidence for the theory.Subsequently the spectrum of this cosmic radiation was measured and the results confirmed another prediction, when it was found to perfectly match a theoretical curve called a 'black body curve'.

In April 1992 the cosmic background explorer satellite (COBE) brought back what scientists hailed as stunning confirmation of the hot 'big bang' creation event. Stephen Hawking called it "the discovery of the century, if not all time." What was particularly exciting about the new measurements taken above the blocking of the earth's atmosphere, is that they discovered some predicted ripples in the background cosmic radiation. These predicted irregularities, about one part in a hundred thousand were again just what astro physicists had predicted. George Smoot, leader of the COBE satellite team called these fluctuations "finger prints from the Maker."

The expansion of the fabric of space is not the only evidence that the universe had a beginning. The second law of thermodynamics, that disorder is always increasing, tells us that the universe is becoming less ordered (so that less energy is available for work). Nothing in science tells us how the Universe got into its highly ordered, low entropy state to begin with. One of Stephen Hawkins colleagues, Roger Penrose, has shown that this could not have arisen by chance.

It is now the orthodox view, based on a lot of circumstantial and significant experimental evidence, that the universe had a definite beginning. Some scientists give a blow by blow account of what happened in the first ten seconds of the universe, in some cases breaking it down to a millionth of a second, especially at the beginning of this singular event! These descriptions come from using mathematical procedures. The initial event is not described as a "creation" but as a "singularity," because it happened once, under very special conditions.

Many of the details in this time table will probably prove to be somewhat preposterous, but the main story - that for some unknown reason, and by some uncaused cause, a point (which contained all the matter now in the universe) started to expand, by a process not explained, The hatching of this primeval egg, caused a massive explosion, accompanied by incalculable temperatures, in the billions of degrees celsius. Thus into a void, which was at absolute zero (-2730C) and infinite in extent, the new universe expanded, quickly cooling sufficiently for the simplest forms of matter to emerge and become established. In the initial stages of this process the so called 'laws of nature' did not yet exist, and only one of the four basic forces of the universe existed. In the ongoing temperature drop, elements, stars, the galaxies, the solar system, and earth, eventually appeared.

There has never been a time in human history when there has been such an unmistakable message from space to tell us that there must be a super intelligent, transcendent Creator. If the creation story in the book of Genesis requires a leap of faith, some of the details of this story require several leaps of faith. There can be no direct specific,unequivocal evidence for this event. It depends on the credibility of an account, which does not contradict established facts, but which has elements of presupposition built into it. Faced with these observations, we go back to the Bible to find the only sufficient cause is found in the God described by Isaiah as eternally pre-existent and who remains transcendent above his creation, utterly incomparable in His greatness and wisdom.

Christians shouldn't feel threatened by modern cosmology because it describes an event that defies atheism and pantheism and harmonises wonderfully with the biblical statement in Hebrews 11:3 "By faith we understand that the worlds were created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."

The 'big bang' theory explains nothing about ultimate origins, it only forces us in the direction of being creationists, as it raises questions that science can't answer.

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