Googolplex and Creation

Yesterday my children were asking me lots of questions about the very large number googolplex  as they tried to get a grasp on how big it is.  They sought to understand what thing could they relate to which would represent the size of this number.  For example, my daughter asked, “If someone was born at the time of Adam and counted all the way until the time that Jesus came again, would he get to a googolplex?”  Or my four-year-old son asked, "If you counted all the teeth in the world, would you get to a googolplex?"  The answer to both of course was “not even close!” for the number is so large that one scientist estimated that simply writing it out “in full decimal form (i.e., ‘10,000,000,000...’) would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than is available in the known universe.”  Having a name for this unthinkably large number of course is not of much value to us, but it does serve to illustrate our inability to even begin to comprehend very large numbers.  There is simply no way to visualize or estimate or really get any good understanding of what a quantity like this would look like—it is simply too large for us to fathom.  We are similarly incapable of understanding the magnitude of the creations of God, He who is called Endless.  The Lord declared as such to Moses: “Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?”  He then explained to Moses that as a mortal he could never comprehend in totality the works of God: “And, behold, thou art my son; wherefore look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease.  Wherefore, no man can behold all my works, except he behold all my glory; and no man can behold all my glory, and afterwards remain in the flesh on the earth” (Moses 1:4-5).

              Other scriptures affirm the magnitude of the creations of the Lord.  For example, Enoch declared, “And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations” (Moses 7:30).  I believe that what Enoch is saying is that if we could count all of the individual “particles” on the earth (I take that to mean things of the size of individual grains of sand) and millions of others like it, then that number we come up with would not even adequately describe the size of creation.  Scientists have given an estimate for the number of particles of sand on the earth at around 10¹⁸, a huge number, and so a million earths of that same size would give an estimated 10²⁴ as the number that is “not a beginning of the number of [God’s] creations.”  (It is interesting to note that the current guess for the number of stars in the universe, 10²², is in the ballpark of this estimate of Enoch’s number).  From Enoch’s statement we learn that the quantity of creations of God is simply staggering to comprehend.  In Doctrine and Covenants 76:112 it speaks of “where God and Christ dwell” and describes it as “worlds without end,” a reference I believe to the quantity of their creations (this earth, for example, is one place they will “dwell” in the Millennium).  Moses also was told by the Lord, “Worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten….  Only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man” (Moses 1:33-35).  Thus the scriptures testify that the Lord’s creations are innumerable, endless, more than all the particles of millions of earths, without end; simply put, they “never cease.”  We simply cannot comprehend it.  It just may be that the size of His creations is in fact the best representation of a googolplex that we have.