The moon provides benefits to mankind.  The Bible says, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth’; and it was so.  Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made stars also.  God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:14-18).  The moon and stars not only give us light at night, they also help us keep track of time.  It takes 29 1/2 days for the moon to complete a full lunar cycle.  The lunar phase helps us keep track of the passage of time; and by the stars, one can navigate a ship.

The moon also plays an important role in sustaining life in the oceans and seas upon earth.  Anyone who has maintained a pond or fish tank knows that keeping the water aerated is essential to the life of most aquatic plants and animals.  In comes the moon in God’s design.  The moon creates the tides.  On any given spot on the Earth’s beaches one can observe the ocean level rising for about six hours and then falls for about six hours. Then the cycle is repeated.  Tide and wind helps keep the ocean aerated.

The moon helps cleanse the oceans as well.  The area between the low and high tide line is called the intertidal zone.  Many of he organisms which live in this region feed off of things which would otherwise pollute the oceans  Thus the moon moves water around aiding in cleansing the oceans waters.

The moon also teaches us something about God’s wisdom in designing this Earth.  Water, particularly salt water, ocean currents, and convection help to prevent greater extremes of temperature on this planet.  John Hudson Tiner writes, “Vast oceans cover much of the earth’s surface. Ocean water absorbs heat in winter and releases it in summer, helping to moderate the earth’s temperature…An extreme example is the earth’s moon. The moon orbits the Earth, so it is, on average the same distance from the sun as the Earth.  The moon has no water.   For that reason, temperatures jump to more than 93 degrees C (200 degrees F) on the sunlit side.  After the sun sets, temperatures plunge to -73 degrees C (-100 degrees F)” (Tiner, The World of Chemistry,pp. 83-84).  Moreover, we all know that the moon is pockmarked by meteorites;  while, due to eath’s atmosphere most meteors (named meteoroids before entering the earth’s atmoshere, named meteors if entering earth’s atmosphere,  and named meteorites  if striking or impacting the earth or moon or some planet) burn up  in the mesosphere (a layer of the earth’s atmosphere) because of friction between the meteor and the earth’s atmosphere.  God made this Earth to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18).

Next, we perhaps can learn something of the age of the universe from the moon. When Neil Armstrong was planning to go to the moon Bob Hope asked him what his greatest fear was.  He responded without hesitation, “moon dust.”  NASA, assuming the Earth and moon was very old, thought accumulated cosmic space dust would be 50 to 80 feet deep!  They put huge pods on the Lunar landing Eagle to prevent the craft from sinking into this cosmic space dust.  The Earth with its wind, rivers, and oceans, they thought would erode such – there would be no signs of such accumulations here.  But, on the moon it should be thick.  There would be no erosion to wash or blow it away.  It would just build deeper and deeper.  What did they find?  Paul D. Ackerman writes”There was not a billion years worth of dust, nor was there a million years worth of dust.  There was, in fact, only a few thousand years worth of dust on the moon’s surface”(Ackerman, It’s a Young World After All, p.21).