"2 And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it;
3 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest." (Abraham 3:2-3)
The Order
Four thousand years ago, through the Urim and Thummim, the Lord showed Abraham the stars. In this vision he saw that earth belonged to a system governed by a group of stars he described as ”the great ones” and the greatest of these, Kolob, ruled the entire structure. In 1835, when Joseph Smith published the Book of Abraham, nothing in astronomy fit this description. To the science of that day, there was simply our solar system, and the universe, with nothing in between.
One hundred years after the publication of the Book of Abraham we learned that Earth belonged to a system of planets and stars we now call the Milky Way galaxy. This system has four hundred billion stars, at least one hundred billion planets and enough dust and gas to make billions more. Commenting on the significance of galaxies President J. Reuben Clark said the following:
"Each galaxy in this vast universe is a "heaven" in its place to its starry inhabitants. Our galaxy—the Milky Way—is our heaven." J. Reuben Clark "Kolob the Governor"
If the Milky Way is our heaven and the “order” Abraham saw, then where are the “great ones” that govern it?
The Great Ones
Our galaxy has so many stars it would take about ten thousand years just to count them. The majority are distributed throughout the spiral arms and are red dwarfs. Red dwarf stars are just a tenth of the size of our sun and one ten thousandth as bright. But the stars at the center of the Milky Way are much different.
The center of our galaxy is cloaked in a veil of dust that makes it impossible to see using traditional methods. However, infrared and what is known as adaptive optics recently provided us a window to the galactic core and what we saw was nothing short of “great.”
The density of stars at the galactic core is a billion times greater, causing it to outshine the rest of the galaxy (see image above.) But these stars aren't the red dwarfs that we find in the spiral arms, they are red giants.
Red giants are one thousand times larger than our sun, three thousand times more luminous, and the ones at the center of the galaxy are very close together. Within a single light-year of the Milky Way's core, there are ten million of these titans. In contrast, the closest star to Earth is 4.2 light years away and that is just one. Ten million red giants, shoulder to shoulder, in contrast to the red dwarfs that fill the spiral arms, would be “great ones” indeed, and in such a place the word “night” would have no meaning. Discussing the day when the earth will return to the presence of God, passing the Great ones along the way, Orson Hyde said the following:
"when the earth is taken out of this orbit, it will come in contact with the rays of other suns that illuminate other spheres; their rays will dazzle our earth, and make the glory of God rest upon it, so that there will be no more night there." JOD 1:130
The Governor
But Abraham saw something even greater than the “great ones.” Kolob, the Lord said, “is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.” If the stars at the center of our galaxy are the “great ones” then where is Kolob?
Roughly fifty years ago Karl Jansky discovered a radio signal coming from the center of the galaxy. In 1992 astronomers began monitoring the stars orbiting this invisible object and after sixteen years of study their conclusion was published in the 2008 Astrophysical Journal:
“The stellar orbits in the Galactic Center show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt." Science Daily "Unprecedented 16-Year-Long Study Tracks Stars Orbiting Milky Way Black Hole
The red giants at the center of the galaxy are one hundred to one thousand times larger than our sun, but the black hole they orbit is four million times more massive than our star. Everything in the Milky Way orbits this massive object and clearly, it has been set to “govern all those which belong to the same order as that (earth) upon which (we) stand.”
The Pearl of Great Price also tells us that Kolob was “the first creation,” which is one of the reasons it is symbolic of Jesus Christ. Answering the question of which formed first, galaxies, or the black holes that are at the center of nearly each one, George Musser of Scientific American said:
“Because galaxies are the building blocks of the universe, this question lies at the heart of many of the puzzles of cosmic evolution. And the answer? The holes came first, Christopher Carilli of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and his colleagues announced today at the American Astronomical Society meeting.” George Musser Scientific American “Which Came First, Galaxies or Black Holes?”
We also know that time on Kolob is in concert with God's time and that “all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord.” Discussing how time works in a black hole, Sara Slater, a cosmologist and particle physicist at Harvard University, said the following:
“Also we see that everyone inside the event horizon is a psychic. This happens because light can travel to you from events in the future, so you can quite literally see them… If you look away from the center, though, you see two images of everything--one from T hours in the past and one from T hours in the future… For instance, if both you and Tolstoy were in a black hole and were separated by 3 light years, you could be watching him start and finish War and Peace at once.” Sara Slater “What Happens to Spacetime Inside a Black Hole?”
Lastly, we are told that the sun borrows its light from Kolob. We haven't discovered evidence that the sun receives light from the black hole at the center of the galaxy or any other source. However, one thing we can't explain about our star is why it's atmosphere is hotter than its surface. Logic tells us that an object that is warmer on the outside is being heated by an external source. Perhaps one-day science will find an explanation for this phenomenon but clearly, we still have a lot to learn about even our own star.
Conclusion
One hundred years before we knew that galaxies even existed, Joseph Smith translated and published the vision of Abraham which describes the Milky Way exactly. Abraham saw our galaxy is a system of stars that both our sun and the earth belong to. A system governed by “great ones,” and the “first of all creation” which is a place where the past, present, and future are “one eternal now,” lies at the very heart, governing the entire structure.
Does this suggest that God's kingdom is entirely within the Milky Way galaxy? No. Our Father went through the plan of salvation, as did His Father before Him, and “all that the Father has” is the promise to the faithful at the end of this journey. If we follow this logic then each Father has become one with His Father and received His kingdom which included His Father's kingdom and, consequently, the universe belongs to the Gods by divine inheritance.
However, there was space here, and this is where our father chose to place His children, so this is where He chooses to be. Yet, through divine inheritance, the universe is His and He has promised it to us if we take up our cross and follow His Son.
