He said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land."
Now, if we would start compressing the earth so that it was only four thousand miles in diameter instead of the eight thousand miles in diameter, as you are now only two thousand miles away from the center of the mass, the earth would still weigh the same as it weighs now. But your weight would go up tremendously, because you are closer now to the center of the mass. And being closer to the center of the mass your weight would now increase to where you would weigh several tons.Now, if you continued to compress the earth until, say, it was the size of a baseball, then you would be so close to the center of the mass that you would weigh over one hundred million tons. Now, if you continue to compress the earth, you finally can press it so much that you create a black hole and the whole thing disappears, because now the center of gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape it. So all of the light now is going inward because it is being drawn by this powerful gravity and so now you have a black hole. And you pass this point in the compression to where the center of gravity becomes so great, or the power of gravity is so great that not even light can escape it. And that is the theory for the black holes that we have in the universe.Now, if you would step into this black hole, according to some of the astrophysicists, you would enter into a whole new universe within this small black hole. You come out into a vast new universe in which, if you would take the object in that universe and begin to compress them, you could make other black holes in that universe. And when you have created the black hole, step into it and you'd enter out into another vast universe. Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? But that is what the astrophysicists are telling us about these black holes.Now, you see, in order for us to see things we have to have light, and what we see is reflected light off of the object. We don't see the object, but the light that is reflected by that object is what we behold. But if the gravity is so powerful that light doesn't reflect but it is drawn inward, the light can't escape then this creates the black hole. And it is created by the compression of atoms to the point that the center of gravity is so powerful within them that even light can't escape.So Jonah is talking about escaping from the presence of God, but you can't. If you would enter into one of these black holes and enter into another whole new universe, you'd find God was there and He fills that whole universe.Jesus said, "In My Father's house there are many mansions," in My Father's house. How vast is the Father's house? Vast enough that there are many mansions in it. Those mansions could even be universes within the black holes of the black holes of the black holes. Paul the apostle, when talking with the Epicurean philosophers there in the Areopagus, said unto them, "I perceive that you are very religious, for as I have been walking through your streets I have observed all of the altars that you have made to the gods. And on one corner I saw an altar and the inscription was to the unknown god. This is the God that I'd like to talk to you about, because He is the one who has created the heaven and the earth and everything that is in them and in Him we live, we move, we have our being." I'm surrounded by God. I can't escape God. Wherever I am I'm surrounded by God.