Sunday, December 7, 2008

God Knows First

GOD was the FIRST to know!

That numerous truths about our world were written in the Bible hundreds or even thousands of years before science “discovered” them.

Scientists “Discover” Truths That Were in the Bible All along!

Few people might be aware of this:
There are passages in the Bible that coincide with scientific principles that weren't "discovered" by scientists until thousands of years after the Bible had been written.

Here are a few examples:

It wasn’t until around the time of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) that science established that the earth was spherical and hung in space.

The prophet Isaiah wrote in about 700 BC that:

“GOD “SITS ABOVE THE CIRCLE OF THE EARTH”

Isaiah 40:22

About 3,000 years before Columbus, it was written in the book of Job that:

God “stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.”

Job 26:7

Also, when Jesus spoke of His Second Coming, He referred to a night scene (men sleeping), a morning scene (women grinding), and a midday scene (workers in the field) happening simultaneously (Luke 17:34-36). This, of course, is an indirect reference to a spherical earth.

The Bible described the hydrologic cycle:

In various passages, the Bible describes a hydrologic cycle, the process by which clouds are formed, rain is produced, and ground water is replenished. Science made the same discovery in the 1600s, long after the Bible passages were written.

Here are the related Bible verses:

Job 26:8—He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it.

Job 36:27-28—For He draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man.

Ecclesiastes 1:7— All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.

Galileo (1564-1642) was the first to “discover” that the number of stars is uncountable – a fact that has been clearly established by modern scientists, who now estimate the number of stars in the “billions and billions”

Johannes Kepler counted 1005.

The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe counted 777.

The Greek astronomer Ptolemy had said there were 1056.

Twenty two centuries before Galileo, the prophet Jeremiah said:

“The host of heaven cannot be numbered”

Jeremiah 33:22

The Bible stated the existence of valleys and springs in the seas:

Not until the past few hundred years did man have the technology to discover that there are deep valleys and fresh water springs in the oceans.

But the Bible always knew:

2 Samuel 22:16a - Then the channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were uncovered. …

Genesis 7:11 - In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

In 1643, with the invention of the barometer, Evangelista Torricelli discovered a way to measure the atmospheric air pressure and thereby proved that air has weight.

In what is believed to be the oldest book in the Bible, Job is quoted as saying that:

God “establishes weight for the wind”

Job 28:25

Jet streams – the strong permanent high-altitude wind currents that have a major bearing on weather systems – were discovered by science in the 19th century.

Nearly 3,000 years earlier, King Solomon wrote:

“The wind goes toward the south, and turns to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit.”

Ecclesiastes 1:6

Words of the wise…

Daniel 12:4 - But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.

Sir Isaac Newton, writing in the 16th century on the prophecy of Daniel 12:4 (written about 2500 years ago), said that if true, it would be necessary that a new mode of traveling should be invented, for knowledge would be so increased that man would be able to travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour.

Voltaire, the French philosopher of the same century, true to the spirit of skepticism, rejoined:

"Now look at the mighty mind of Newton, who discovered gravitation; when he began to study the book called the Bible, it seems in order to credit its fabulous nonsense, he believed that the knowledge of mankind will be so increased that we shall be able to travel fifty miles an hour! The poor dotard!" ("Dotard" in this sense indicated a fool.)

Today even a skeptic would have to say, "Newton was a wise philosopher; Voltaire a poor old dotard."

The true relationship between science and the Bible is perhaps best summed up in the words of British astronomer John Herschel (1792-1871):

“All human discovery seems to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truth contained in the Sacred Scriptures.”

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