EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE (SPREADETH OUT THE HEAVENS)

Seven books of the Bible reference this event starting from about 1000 BC in the book of Psalms, to about 518 BC in the book of Zechariah (a span of almost 500 years). This "stretching" of the universe was done during the creation week described in Genesis. Dr. Russell Humphreys suggests in his book Starlight and Time that it may have given the universe an older look the farther you move away from Earth into the outermost reaches of the universe. From Earth's perspective, the universe would be about 6,000 - 10,000 years old. However, in the outermost reaches of the universe, this rapid expansion may have given those galaxies the appearance of being billions of years old, even though they aged that much in what is most likely less than 24 hours.

English Standard Version
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,(Genesis 1:17)

Current evolutionary thinking suggests that the universe is still expanding. This is based in large part of the belief that 'red shift' indicates that the stars and galaxies are moving away from each other. However, Isaiah 40:22 seems to suggest that this expanding of the galaxies was a one time event that occurred in a very short amount of time (probably in less than 24 hours), and that the expansion may no longer be occurring. Tents and curtains don't keep expanding once they're fully opened up. They are finite in size. 

[It is] he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
- Isaiah 40:22

Furthermore, none of these Bible verses appear to suggest that this expansion is still going on.

Do scientists really know what the impact would be of having the universe expanded at what was most likely millions or even billions of times faster than the speed of light? How would such a rapid expansion affect the visible red and blue shift we see today in space? How would that affect time, especially at the outer edges of the universe? Could the red shift that evolutionists believe indicates an expanding universe actually be the result of this rapid stretching of the universe that started and ended about 6,000 years ago?

Quotes below are from the King James Bible (KJV), and are listed in alphabetical order.


Ezekiel
Author(s): Ezekiel
Date: 592-570 B.C.


And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature [was] as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above.
Ezekiel 1:22



Isaiah
Author(s): Isaiah
Date: 746-680 B.C.

[It is] he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

- Isaiah 40:22

Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

Isaiah 42:5

Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I [am] the LORD that maketh all [things]; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
Isaiah 44:24

I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, [even] my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.
Isaiah 45:12

Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: [when] I call unto them, they stand up together.
Isaiah 48:13

And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where [is] the fury of the oppressor?

Isaiah 51:13

Jeremiah
Author(s): Jeremiah
Date: 627-585 B.C.


He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.
Jeremiah 10:12

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding.
Jeremiah 51:15

Job
Author(s): Possibly Job, Elihu,
Moses or Solomon; not sure
Date: 950 B.C. or earlier

Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea.
Job 9:8

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, [and] hangeth the earth upon nothing.
Job 26:7

Hast thou with him spread out the sky, [which is] strong, [and] as a molten looking glass?
Job 37:18


Psalms
Author(s): Several
Date: Varied, about 1000 B.C.


He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness [was] under his feet.
Psalms 18:9

Who coverest [thyself] with light as [with] a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:
Psalms 104:2

Bow thy heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
Psalms 144:5


2 Samuel
Author(s): Samuel, Nathan, Gad
Date: About 930 BC


He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness [was] under his feet.
2 Samuel 22:10


Zechariah
Author(s): Zechariah
Date: 520-518 B.C.


The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
Zechariah 12:1

Job 9:8

Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea.

Spacetime is highly curved at cosmological scales, and as a result the expansion of the universe is inherently general relativistic; it cannot be understood with special relativity alone. The images to the right show two views of the large-scale geometry of the universe according to the ΛCDM cosmological model. Two of the dimensions of space are omitted, leaving one dimension of space and one of time. The narrow circular end of the diagram corresponds to a cosmological time of 700 million years after the big bang; the wide end is a cosmological time of 18 billion years, where one can see the beginning of the accelerating expansion which eventually dominates in this model. The purple grid lines mark off cosmological time at intervals of one billion years from the big bang. The cyan grid lines mark off comoving distance at intervals of one billion light years. Note that the circular curling of the surface is an artifact of the embedding with no physical significance; space does not actually curl around on itself. (A similar effect can be seen in the tubular shape of the pseudosphere.)

"Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:(Psalms 104:2)

Holman Christian Standard Bible

God is enthroned above the circle of the earth; its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like thin cloth and spreads them out like a tent to live in.(Isaiah 40:22)

"Who Stretchest out the heavens or "who expant the heavens like a curtain

The brown line on the diagram is the worldline of the Earth (or, at earlier times, of the matter which condensed to form the Earth). The yellow line is the worldline of the most distant known quasar. The red line is the path of a light beam emitted by the quasar about 13 billion years ago and reaching the Earth in the present day. The orange line shows the present-day distance between the quasar and the Earth, about 28 billion light years.

According to the equivalence principle of general relativity, the rules of special relativity are locally valid in small regions of spacetime that are approximately flat. In particular, light always travels locally at the speed c; in our diagram, this means that light beams always makes an angle of 45° with the local grid lines. It does not follow, however, that light travels a distance ct in a time t, as the red worldline illustrates. While it always moves locally at c, its time in transit (about 13 billion years) is not related to the distance traveled in any simple way. In fact the distance traveled is inherently ambiguous because of the changing scale of the universe. Nevertheless, we can single out two distances which appear to be physically meaningful: the distance between the Earth and the quasar when the light was emitted, and the distance between them in the present era. The former distance is about 4 billion light years, much smaller than ct. The latter distance (shown by the orange line) is about 28 billion light years, much larger than ct. Note that the light took much longer than 4 billion years to reach us though it was emitted from only 4 billion light years away. In fact, we can see from the diagram that the light was moving away from the Earth when it was first emitted, in the sense that the metric distance to the Earth increased with cosmological time for the first few billion years of its travel time. None of this surprising behavior originates from a special property of metric expansion, but simply from local principles of special relativity integrated over a curved surface.

What space is the universe expanding into?

A graphical representation of the expansion of the universe with the inflationary epoch represented as the dramatic expansion of the metric seen on the left.

Over time, the space that makes up the universe is expanding. The words 'space' and 'universe', sometimes used interchangeably, have distinct meanings in this context. Here 'space' is a mathematical concept and 'universe' refers to all the matter and energy that exist. The expansion of space is in reference to internal dimensions only; that is, the description involves no structures such as extra dimensions or an exterior universe.

Finite space theory does not suppose space has an edge, but rather that space wraps around on itself. If it were possible to travel the entire length of space without going faster than light, one would simply end up back in the same place, like going all the way around the surface of a balloon (or a planet like the Earth)

The notion of more space is local, not global; we do not know how much space there is in total. The embedding diagram has been arbitrarily cut off a few billion years past the Earth and the quasar, but it could be extended indefinitely, even infinitely, provided we imagine it as curling into a spiral of constant radius rather than a circle. Even if the overall spatial extent is infinite we still say that space is expanding because, locally, the characteristic distance between objects is increasing.