Among America’s early colonists were two types of people: the complacent and the visionary.

“One, the majority, was content to take the easy and safer way out, to cling to the coastal strip, exploiting it by planting, exporting the results, and importing all other products, including manufactured goods, from Europe, and by maintaining the closest possible maritime links with the mother country,” explained historian Paul Johnson in George Washington—The Founding Father. If you want to know what America would have become if this group had decided its future, just look at Central and South America. The Latin colonies in those lands tended to stick to the coastline and leave the interior alone. They were content to remain under the strict control of their distant home governments. As a result, they developed sluggishly. To this day, many of those countries have stronger economic links with—and remain more dependent upon—nations across the Atlantic than with each other, which cements their limitations.

Thankfully, in America the visionary minority won out. A pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit burned within them. They recognized the promise of a rich land stretching infinitely west. Their ambition, Johnson wrote, was “to move inland, take possession of the entire country, loosen, ignore or, if necessary, renounce the links with Europe, and create an entirely new society, self-reliant, independent and [unique].” Had it not been for the second group, the United States might not have been born, let alone become the single greatest nation in history.

When Tocqueville visited the young country in the 1830s, he witnessed and recorded for posterity just how this restless bunch of Americans had come to define the nation’s character. “Canadians and Mexicans are building a stable society,” Michael Ledeen wrote of Tocqueville’s observations, “but the Americans are forever pushing past existing frontiers, simultaneously destroying and advancing civilization ….” The two centuries since have been the unfolding story of this rugged ideal. “We are forever getting on with it. We are a revolutionary people, driving ourselves to new frontiers in every generation,” Ledeen wrote (Tocqueville on American Character).

It was this spirit that inspired and animated man’s first trip to the moon 40 years ago. It was a time when we looked up at the night sky with wonder—and ambition. President Kennedy rallied that ambition, harnessed that restlessness, and set our course for the heavens. “We choose to go to the moon,” he said. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” (emphasis mine). That challenge inflamed a rigorous effort, and within an astonishingly short time, the frontier of lunar travel had been breached.

It is difficult to remember this history without nostalgia. Clearly, America has since lost the vital measure of this pioneering spirit. The nation’s character is being overwhelmed with the other attitude—present among its people from the beginning—of complacency and contentment with the easier, safer way. We are indulging the urge to cling to the comfortable coast and slide into reliance on outside powers, trusting in their benevolence. Ours is a “Laodicean” age—lukewarm and self-satisfied (Revelation 3:14-18). Witness the slide into expanding welfare-statism. Witness the unfaltering, decades-long shift from production and manufacturing toward service industries. Witness the unprecedented addiction to debt and dependence.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, it took a mere eight years from President Kennedy’s challenge to place a man on the moon. By contrast, today, eight years from 9/11, we can’t even erect a building. Ground Zero remains a hole in the ground because construction plans, grand though they may be, are tied down with miles of Lilliputian red tape. As for America’s space program, it is withering into obsolescence. By next year it will be completely grounded, after which the U.S. hopes to pay Russia for seats aboard that nation’s trips to the International Space Station.

The shift of influence from our visionary minority to its complacent majority precisely parallels America’s loss of national power. This was prophesied to occur just before the end of this age. God warned He would remove the nation’s mighty, honorable, capable, wise, eloquent and grand-thinking leaders and allow selfish, small-minded children to take their places (Isaiah 3:1-4). This is fulfilled. The America Tocqueville saw exists today mostly in echoes.

But the heavens still beckon. We have left our footprints on the moon, but the rest of the cosmos remains an undiscovered frontier.

Will it ever be conquered? Consider an answer from an unlikely source. God’s Word shows that not only did God create the universe, He has mastery over it (read, for example, Job 38:31-33). He not only made all the stars, He has a name for each one (Psalm 147:4; read also Isaiah 40:26).

Yes, God is deeply excited about the universe, and intends to put it to use.

What use? Here is the answer: “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:18). God formed the universe to be inhabited! He doesn’t intend for it to sit empty forever. He wants to populate it with life.

How? With whom? These are valid, important questions—with solid answers. Those answers are not myth or religious speculation. In fact, they are directly related to the gospel message brought to this Earth by Jesus Christ two millennia ago.

If you want to see those answers plainly revealed within the pages of your own Bible—if you want to know the true purpose for and meaning of the impressive, infinite universe we inhabit—and to understand how human beings play a most critical role in that future—then order a copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The Incredible Human Potential. You can read it on this website right now, but it’s worth spending time with. We would be happy to send you a free copy to hold, to study, to mark up.

In Genesis 15 is recorded a remarkable exchange between God and the patriarch Abraham. God brought this man outside and directed his gaze upward. “Look now toward heaven,” He said, “and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them.” Then He said, “So shall thy seed be.” This promise stirred within Abraham an ambition, a vision. He kept his eyes toward heaven the rest of his life (Hebrews 11:8-10).

Man’s journey to the moon was only a taste of the miracles that lie ahead. God wants us yet to look up at the night sky with wonder—and ambition. Our destiny lies in the stars.