|
|
|
The Bible is the most remarkable book ever written. It is remarkable in one aspect in
that it anticipated much of what modern science has discovered. The Bible is not a book
on science, but every scientific statement in it is absolutely correct.
And, although the Bible was written centuries ago, it's the most modern of all books, and the perfect spiritual guide for man. Paul wrote that "all scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (Second Timothy 3:16). That God inspired the Bible writers is obvious from the fact that whatever scientific statements they made were made long before those facts were discovered by man. Many people suppose there's a conflict between true science and the Bible. After all, they say, "the Bible is an 'old' book," and they presume that as science advances it disproves the Bible. To say that is to say truth conflicts with truth, but scientific truth never contradicts spiritual truth. Science is classified knowledge. It is systematized knowledge based on fact, and while theories of science change, true science never changes because all truth is absolute. Much of what science has discovered through the centuries was already written in the Bible long before modern science was developed. For instance, Herbert Spencer, who was a brilliant 19th century agnostic philosopher and scientist, concluded that power manifests itself in five distinct forms. In his treatise on Manifestations of The Unknowable, Spencer said power manifests itself in the following order: "Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and Force". Those very things which he discovered through scientific inquiry had already been listed in the first verse of the Bible for about thirty-five hundred years. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning (there's Spencer's "time") God (there's his "force") created (there's "motion") the heavens (there's Spencer's "space") and the earth" (there's his "matter"). Moses wrote those words by the inspiration of God about fifteen hundred years before Christ. Moses was not a scientist and had no knowledge of Spencer's findings, yet what he wrote was scientifically accurate. That kind of knowledge could only come from God. For centuries men believed the earth was a flat disc of land surrounded by a great world river. Ancient Greeks even believed the earth was borne on the shoulders of Atlas. Many of these ideas persisted until the 16th century when Magellan sailed around the earth and confirmed that it was a sphere poised in space. But the Bible stated that truth more than three thousand years earlier. In one of the most ancient books of the Bible, it is stated that "He hangeth the earth upon nothing" (Job 26:7). Christopher Columbus was warned of a "falling off place," but the Bible had clearly revealed the shape of the earth centuries before when Solomon wrote, "He set a compass (or "circle") upon the face of the deep" (Proverbs 8:27), and when Isaiah spoke of Him "who sitteth upon the circle of the earth" (Isaiah 40:22). God's scientific truth predated and anticipated modern science. Yes, the Bible is always up-to-date because it is God's absolute Truth and the only means we have of knowing the will of God for us. |