13.7 billion years ago, the Big Bang blasted the universe into existence.  Ever since then, the universe has been flying away from itself.   For a long time, scientists wondered whether the universe will expand forever, or whether gravity will cause it to fall back into itself.  No more do they wonder.  Science has decisively answered the question. 

     The question has religious implications.  An eternally expanding universe accords with Christianity, as the Prophet Isaiah said, "Of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end,"[1] meaning that the Kingdom of Heaven will continually increase because the universe will literally expand forever.  Jesus added, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds, yet it grows to be the largest of trees, and the birds of the air nest in it."[2]  Likewise, the Big Bang started as the smallest of seeds, a singularity, infinitely small and infinitely dense, and it has grown to be quite large, such that the UFO's of the air nest in it.

     In tension with the Prophets, many human philosophers hypothesized that time exists as cycles of ages, which periodically collapse back into the Primordial Oneness of the cosmos, only to be reincarnated in another age.  This view accords with the presumption that gravity will overtake the Big Bang, and that the universe will collapse back into itself, only to be reincarnated in another Big Bang, which will again collapse back into itself, and so on, through the never-ending circle of time.

     Science has resolved the dispute in favor of the Prophets, over and against the philosophers.  It has become generally accepted sound science that the universe will expand forever.  The universe has achieved escape velocity.  It will never collapse back into itself.  Dark matter and dark energy, once poorly understood, have now been studied to the extent that we can scientifically confirm this conclusion.  According to the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration,

The most surprising discovery in the recent years has been the accelerated expansion of the universe.  New high quality data and other measurements have confirmed the fact beyond any doubt.[3] 

This fact, that the Prophets had it right and that the philosophers of humanity had it wrong, is evidence that the Prophets are truly inspired by an intelligence greater than our own.

The Never-Ending Expansion of the Universe

     There are three cosmic players influencing the ultimate destiny of the universe – luminous matter, dark matter, and dark energy. 

     Luminous matter is the stuff you can see.  It is comprised of atoms and molecules.  It accounts for only 4% of the total gravity it would take to force the universe to collapse.  According to Nicolson,

If the universe contained nothing else but luminous matter, gravity would be far too feeble ever to halt its headlong expansion.  The universe would be open, and destined to expand forever.[4] 

     Besides luminous matter, there is dark matter.  Dark matter is the stuff you cannot see.  It is matter, but not in the form of atomic particles.  During the explosion of the Big Bang, most matter was unable to form into atomic particles, and thus it exists at the subatomic level.  Dark matter provides less than a quarter of the mass required to exert the gravitational force needed to make the universe collapse on itself.  One estimate puts the figure at 22%,[5] and another at 20%.[6]   Thus, when the gravitational force of luminous matter and dark matter are combined, they account for only 26% or 28% of the gravity needed to overtake the velocity of the Big Bang.  In other words, there is far too little gravity in the universe to offset the speed at which the universe is expanding.  The universe will expand forever.

     But dark energy is the most mysterious of the three.

Dark Energy and Outer Darkness

     Astrophysicists believe that dark energy is an unseen force that is literally casting us into outer darkness.  They believe that this force is going to cause a very rapid acceleration in the speed at which the universe is flying away from itself, pushing us farther and farther away from the center of the universe at an increasing speed.  This theory is called "The Big Rip," because it proposes that the universe will be ripped apart and cast into the oblivion of eternal outer darkness.  The Big Rip has apparently already begun.  For the first 9 billion years in the history of the universe, gravity was slowing our velocity.  But about 5 billion years ago, the situation reversed.  The speed at which the universe is flying away from itself started to increase.  This is known from a spectrographic study confirming the increasing red shift of a sample of 230 type 1A supernovae in distant galaxies, whose light is just now arriving from 6 billion light years away.[7]  From supernovae like these, it can be determined that the universe is expanding so fast that it will never contract.[8]  Current theory sees dark energy as a type of cosmic fluid or negative pressure, wherein its pressure equals its density times the negative of the cosmological constant.[9]  Because of it, and because the gravity of matter is insufficient, the universe is flying apart, and it will never come back together again.[10]

     Dark energy echoes the words of Jesus Christ,

They will be cast into outer darkness.[11]

Outer Darkness and the Big Rip

     It is a proven scientific fact that hell fire and eternal damnation literally do exist.  Unfortunately, we cannot say the same about heaven yet.  Our telescopes are still not powerful enough to see heaven.  This is not a joke.  This is quite serious. 

     The Big Bang occurred at the center of the universe.  As the universe expands, its stars will burn all of the fuel in the universe until all the stars die.  All light energy will eventually be converted into heat energy – making the dark starless sky hellishly hot.  In the end, there will be nothing but burning coals of dead stars and eternal darkness.  The universe will never rebound.  It will never collapse on itself to repeat its life.  It will simply expand forever and ever into smoldering darkness.  This sounds like hell.  As Nicolson concluded,

We live in a universe that is dominated by its dark side.[12]

     Moreover, our ability to escape is now limited.  The best time to get out of the Milky Way Galaxy was before 5 billion years ago, that is, before the Big Rip started accelerating the speed at which the galaxies are moving away from each other.  Now might be too late.  The speed at which galaxies are moving away from each other may prohibit us from ever traveling to other galaxies.  The die has been cast.  We have already been cast into outer darkness.  As the Prophet tells us, "The axe is already laid against the root of the tree."[13]

     The fuel of the universe is low-mass elements, most notably hydrogen and helium.  These elements undergo nuclear fusion inside of stars, producing heat and light.  However, a point is reached where the gravity afforded by the mass of a star is no longer strong enough to compress the heavier elements into increasingly heavier elements.  When this happens, the star collapses within itself.  The larger supernovae form black holes.  The smaller supernovae form neutron stars.  The regular stars generally form white dwarfs.  Eventually, all the available low-mass elements will be consumed in this way.  In the end, the universe will be filled with black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, together with a lot of heavy metal in the depths of outer darkness.   

     Black holes are like Satan the Devil.  Black holes were once the largest of stars.  Shimmering like Lucifer, every black hole was once the light giving Eye of Horus – the divine sun-god.  But when they burned all their fuel, they collapsed into darkness.  Their gravity is so strong that they suck everything into their darkness.  They utterly destroy everything that nears them.  Even the light that illumines the universe is sucked into their eternal darkness.  As Jesus said, "If the light of your eye is darkness, how great is that darkness!"[14]   

     Two thousand years before the discovery of dark energy and dark matter, Jude the brother of Jesus wrote a chillingly accurate description of hell, defining its inhabitants as "Wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."[15]  From a scientific understanding, this is quite literally a factual description of eternal damnation.  For in the end, when dark energy triumphs over gravity in the Big Rip, there will be nothing but the hot ash of dead stars floating throw darkness.  Hence, science has proven that these wandering stars are damned to outer darkness forever, just as Jude prophesied. 

     Thus, when the universe has run its course, the words of Jesus Christ will literally be fulfilled, "He will cast them into outer darkness."[16]  If we stay in this Galaxy, the Big Rip will send us careening toward the outer darkness of hell.   

Hell's Prophecy

          When Jesus Christ called hell "outer darkness," he was cutting against the grain of the cultural beliefs of his time.  If he were a mere mortal, who was shaped by his culture, Jesus would have called hell "inner darkness," not "outer darkness," because the cultural assumption in his day, both in the Greek culture and in the Hebrew culture, was that hell existed below the earth, in the ground.  The Greeks called hell Hades.  The Hebrews called it Sheol.  Both names referred to the underworld – that is, a region under the earth.  But Jesus called hell "outer darkness," implying that hell existed outside the earth, not underneath it – as if hell were on the outer rim of creation.  Jesus Christ's choice of words is a chilling testimony to his secret knowledge of how the cosmos works!  Jesus Christ was no mortal.  He knew the dark mysteries of the cosmos as no human possibly could have.

Heaven

     If the Big Rip is hell, then is it possible that the Big Bang is heaven?  The Big Bang came from the center of the universe.  Perhaps somewhere a trillion zillion light years behind us, outside the range of our telescopes, at the center of the universe, there exists the Primordial Goddess, holding protons in her womb, and the Primordial God, impregnating her with excited electrons.  Together, they conjugate to make hydrogen – the simplest element, consisting of a single proton and a single electron.  Then the Goddess farts out little baby hydrogen atoms.  Clouds of hydrogen gas condense around her, compacting into massive supernovae.  Finally the God passes gas clouds of hydrogen into the broader universe with his massive exploding supernovae.  These supernovae stars illuminate the heavenly cloud, blasting all around them in a never ending array of fireworks.  From this splendid heavenly throne room, they re-fuel the eternal universe from the center outward with fresh hydrogen – the primary element of nuclear fusion.  If this is the case, then the words of the Prophet Isaiah are fulfilled – "Of the increase of his kingdom there shall be no end,"[17] because the universe will grow larger forever.

     The massive supernovae resulting from such dense concentrations of hydrogen must be a sight to see.  Large enough to fuse heavy metals in their thermonuclear cauldrons, these exploding super-giants must be much like what John and Ezekiel described concerning the heavenly throne room, filled with its colorful metals,[18] which in liquid and gaseous form would be dazzling indeed.  Such grandiose astrochemical fireworks must be a testimony to the true "chemistry" between Goddess and God, between Sophia-Ruach and Elyon.

     We must try to find some way to fly back toward the center of the universe, where this new hydrogen is being created.  Otherwise, we will cross the edge of the Big Rip into outer darkness and eternal damnation.  By flying to the center of the universe, we can "draw near to God," as the scripture says, in a very real and most literal sense.  Heaven is not a spiritual realm, but rather it is a physical location subject to the constraints of time, space, and the laws of physics.  Heaven is the center of the universe.  We must journey toward this central heaven, for it is the only way to find new worlds rich enough in hydrogen to perpetuate eternal life. 

To read more on the esoteric prophecies of Jesus Christ, click seven words behind this period.