The Heavens Proclaim His Glory

The Heavens Proclaim His Glory: A Spectacular View of Creation Through the Lens of the NASA Hubble Telescope Hardback: 176 pages Publisher: Thomas Nelson Released: Sept. 2010

Source: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program.

Book Description from Publisher Website:
Our world displays the handiwork of God all around us—in the land and sea, the animals and the plants. But in respect to the sky, the heavens, the universe…there’s a realm of beauty and creation man has not been able to witness, until now. The Heavens Proclaim His Glory is a compilation of stunning photography taken by NASA’s Hubble® Telescope capturing striking images of stars, galaxies, cosmic events, planets, and more. Vivid up-close photographs are paired with a romantic Psalm or quote, as well as a short description of the image. The Heavens will open up a whole new world of worship and praise for our God.

Contributors include: Francis Chan, Mike Huckabee, John MacArthur, Stephen Mansfield, Sarah Young, Max Lucado, Jenna Lucado, Henry & Richard Blackaby, Robert Morgan, Kirk Cameron, Homer Hickam, and more.


Review:
The Heavens Proclaim His Glory is a coffee-table type book full of full-color photos taken in space accompanied by poems, Psalms, and quotes from Christian authors. Each picture was labeled as to what it was and often had a short explanatory paragraph about what it showed.

The photographs were of galaxies, nebula, stars, planets in our solar system, regions of space, the Hubble telescope, and a few other space objects. The pictures were lovely, especially the full-page ones. There were also a fair number of photographs that were smaller--only about one-fifth of a page in size. Sometimes the smaller size was used to allow room for multiple pictures of different views of the same object.

There was a poem, Psalm, or quote on the page opposite of the photograph with a space and "God created the universe" theme. The text didn't take long to read. The photo information was usually on the same page as the photo. This meant text sometimes obscured part of the picture in the full-page photographs.

Several times, the labels referred to "galaxy evolution" and "star evolution." A few of the author quotes also touched on the origins debate. All of the quotes gave God the credit for creating the universe, but there was one quote explaining why the Big Bang fit with the Bible and proved God exists (which, according to Danny Faulkner in Universe by Design, is a flawed argument if you fully understand the Big Bang model and when you compare the order to the Genesis 1 creation account). There was also a quote explaining how there could be literal 24-hour days of creation before God created the sun, moon, and stars.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, though I did wish that all of the photos had been full-page since that's what I was mainly interested in. I'd recommend this book to Christians who'd like easy access to printed photos of the beauty found in space.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.