Islam was founded by Muhammad (c. Islam in Ethiopia dates back to the founding of the religion; in 615, when a group of Muslims were counseled by Muhammad to escape persecution in Mecca and travel to Ethiopia via modern-day Eritrea, which was ruled by Ashama ibn Abjar, a pious Christian king. Henry of Anjou was crowned King Henry III of France in 1575, at Reims, but hostilities-the Fifth War-had already flared up again. All the means that there are of sinners going out of the world, are so in God’s hands, and so universally and absolutely subject to his power and determination, that it does not depend at all the less on the mere will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell, than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned in the case. What is money if not a “superhuman controlling power”? Why these thousands of years of human history with a glorious beginning, and a horrible fall into sin, and a history of Israel, and the coming of the Son of God into the world, a substitutionary death, a triumphant resurrection, the founding of the church and the history of global missions to where we are today?

It’s too general. It’s too disconnected from the specific persons of the Trinity and from the flow of history the way God is guiding it. It’s about God. And that’s an understatement. Resounding through the whole Bible – from eternity to eternity – like rolling thunder is: God created the world for his glory. The Bible is crystal clear about this: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). If someone asks, “If earth is the only inhabited planet and man the only rational inhabitant among the stars, why such a large and empty universe?” The answer is: It’s not about us. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. If this takes hold of you the way it should, it will affect the way you think and feel about everything. Think you can name it? Guess the name of the biblical figure who battled the Moabites and the people of Ammon: Hphheatjoas? For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned?

Sanctification is that renewal of our fallen nature by the Holy Ghost, received through faith in Jesus Christ, whose blood of atonement cleanseth from all sin; whereby we are not only delivered from the guilt of sin, but are washed from its pollution, saved from its power, and are enabled, through grace, to love God with all our hearts and to walk in his holy commandments blameless. Also nature! Why such a breathtaking world for us to live in? What I mean under the first heading is that religious appeal is directed partly to excite that instinctive fear of the wrath of a tyrant which was inbred in the unhappy populations of the arbitrary empires of the ancient world, and in particular to excite that fear of an all-powerful arbitrary tyrant behind the unknown forces of nature. The continuity of Chinese civilisation across thousands of years and thousands of square miles is made possible through China’s religious traditions understood as systems of knowledge transmission. Northern and southern folk religions also have a different pantheon, of which the northern one is composed of more ancient gods of Chinese mythology. Telescopes make unimaginably big things look more like what they really are.

According to Coe, farming became more effective during this period, likely because of the breeding of more productive forms of maize, and perhaps more importantly, the introduction of the “nixtamal” process. So they are without excuse. Our lives are to be telescopes for the glory of God. And so to know this one thing – that all things exist for the glory of God – is to know something supremely important about everything. There are billions of things you don’t know. And this is one of the most important things you can know about anything. You don’t know everything. This is why God created the world – “that he may be glorified.” This does not mean: “that he may be made glorious.” Don’t take the word “glorify” and treat it like the word “beautify.” To beautify means to take a plain room and make it beautiful. As Jonathan Edwards said, “Tis no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow.” So we don’t glorify God by improving his glory, but by seeing and savoring and showing his glory (which is the same as knowing, loving, showing).