SCIENTIFIC TRUTH IN THE BIBLE

The Bible is not primarily a book of science; but we can rest assured that any reference to scientific facts in the Bible is accurate because scientific fact and Bible truths always agree. This must be so, if it were not, God would be contradicting Himself.

As an example of scientific truth in the Bible we cite Isaiah 40:21-, where is said of God that, 'it is He that sitteth above the circle of the earth. " Here by inspiration Isaiah states that the earth is a globe, a fact universally accepted by science today. Since God "sits above the circle of the earth' And God is omnipresent, the earth must present a circle from whatever position it may be viewed. This could not be true if the earth were not round like a ball.

Another example is found in Job 26:7, where, Job says that God "hangeth the earth Upon nothing. ' The earth is floating in space just as the sun, moon, and various planets are. ' is another fact universally accepted by science.

Some have scoffed at the idea of 'the morning stars singing together., " as stated in Job 38:7, but present day inventions force us to admit that this statement is true. As far as we can tell, the stars emit light only, but todav we know there is some connection between light and sound. Light travels in various wave lengths, while sound waves travel through solids, liquids, or gases. Light waves of different lengths produce different colors; and different colors may be used to suggest different musical tones. Also, by using the photo-electric cell and a beam of light passing through a sound track, as on motion picture film, all kinds of sound effects can be produced, including talking, singing, and music from mechanical instruments. So light can be used in producing audible sounds.

In Job 22:12 we read that Eliphaz, the Temanite, exclaims: "Behold, the height of the stars, how high they are!" Today in considering the stars and scientific facts concerning them, we can exclaim, "How high they are,!" The human mind is unable to grasp all of the difficulty of the vastness of such colossal distances.

Our nearest neighbor in the sky is the moon, and it is 240,000 miles from the earth. If there was a good highway between the earth and moon, it would take a car traveling twelve hundred miles per day, 700 days to reach the moon. This give us some idea about "how high the moon is." Man could not reach the sun in his life-time traveling at this slow speed. It would take 35 years to reach the sun traveling at three hundred miles per hour.

But the distance to the moon and sun are insignificant compared to the distance of the stars. The mile is too short a unit of measurement to describe the distance to the stars, therefore men describe them as "light years." Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, and a "light year" is the distance light will travel in one year. Light from the nearest star takes about four and one third years to reach the earth. Some of the brighter stars are more than 100 light years from the earth. Our galaxy of stars, known as the Milky Way, are tens of thousands of light years away. The diameter of the Milky Way is thought to be about 100,000 light years.

All of this is beyond our comprehension. Such figures may mean little to us; and perhaps we should be content to express as Eliphaz did some three thousand years ago, 'Behold, the height of the stars, how high are the,.,. ' These, and many other scientific truths found in the Bible should cause us to accept the truthfulness of the Scriptures as well as its inspiration.

How were Job, Isaiah, and others able to speak and write about these things? How could they make any accurate reference to the shape and support of the earth, the producing of sound wave of light, the height of the stars, etc.? The only explanation is God!

Up to 400-600 years ago, people believed the earth was flat. When Columbus was planning his voyage in which he discovered America , people tried to dissuade him because they thought the earth was flat and that he would come to the edge and fall off. Even if it should be round as he claimed, he would have to sail uphill coming back; and that might be impossible. Some people today still find it hard to believe that the earth is round; but Isaiah twenty-five hundred years ago pictured it as a globe. This fact science has been able to prove only in comparatively recent years. How could Isaiah have stated as clearly and definitely that this was true, without divine guidance.?

People, hundreds of years after Isaiah and Job, have imagined different means of support of the earth. Some have thought it was resting on the back of a giant. Others have thought an enormous turtle swimming in a great ocean bearing the earth on its back. However, they had no explanation of the support of the giant or the ocean! Some just find it hard to accept the, truth that God "hangeth the earth Upon nothing;' but Job declared that fact more then three thousand years ago.

Who in the time of Job, could have imagined that some day sound could be visually on a strip of film and that the sound could be reproduced from this by means of light, thereby demonstrating the physical possibility of the morning stars singing together?

As to the height of the stars we find that primitive peoples, unaided by science, did not consider that the heavenly bodies are very far away. In the minds of primitive people, even today, the heavenly bodies are fairly local in their nature. They are surprised when they are told people in America and on the other side of the earth, can see the same sun and moon that they see. When young children are asked, "how far away the stars are?" they usually say, "Just there." They do not understand just how far they really are.

Again we ask, how could these writers write, as they did? If they had been depending on their own knowledge, they could not have written the things they wrote. They could only have written it, if they were guided by God's revelation. Indeed the Bible is the only accurate revelation of God's will to man.