Doesn’t “The Heavens and the Earth”, imply with ‘Heavens’ that it is the entire Universe?
I’m of the mindset that “heaven” has many meanings in the bible and often just means “the sky”, that is, what we would call the atmosphere of the earth. I see us as living on a big “space ship” with the atmosphere on the outside, rather than the inside, allowing us to see the universe in the immediate vicinity of our planet. And it is amazingly designed.
And whenever the bible discusses Jesus and his sacrifice, it is always about mankind on earth, just as much of the old Testament is Israel specific, even though there were people on the opposite side of the globe living out their lives, never mentioned in the bible, other than our great commission to preach His message to the ends of the earth - not the universe.
This was a huge revelation for me. Just as early bible writers thought the earth was flat and the sky was solid, held up by the pillars of the mountains, and was the dwelling place of God (and the rest of the elohim), and the early church believed the Earth was the center of the universe, we have simply accepted that the only men that could possibly exist are the ones on earth.
But it never actually says that.
I think the book, A wrinkle in time, as well as C. S. Lewis’ science fiction books about Venus and Mars touch on this as well.
The bible is only written for the inhabitants of earth, based on their past, present and future place in his kingdom. If there are sentient beings made “in his image” on other worlds, they have a different story. And I believe there is no reason to believe there are none.
I’m not sure if C.S. Lewis thought if we were alone or if there were other beings in the Universe (perhaps the later). I know that he did posit the idea that if there were other beings he wondered if they had fallen into sin or if they were still in their Garden of Eden.
And then he wrote something that I find amazing. Something along the lines of how we were the fortunate ones to have fallen into sin so that we could experience the wonderful grace of God.
Interesting and profound way of looking at it. Although it might just be him making lemonaide out of lemons. I’d prefer to be in the Garden of Eden with God. (Well - until I screwed up and got cast out.)