In the November issue of The Witness we came across an interesting article on Science and the Bible in which the author attempts to show that the Scriptures are not behind but ahead of the times. Here follows the article in full, and we pass it on to you without comment.

“The Bible was thousands of years ahead of the science of the times in which it was written. Look at this statement in Job 26:7—and remember, it was written nearly two thousand years before Christ was born: ‘He…hangeth the earth upon nothing.’ Think of the ridiculous myths and legends that have been current in many lands. Some believed that the earth was upheld by a huge tortoise, or a giant, or an elephant. There have been all sorts of ideas. But the Bible gives the only scientific reply to the question as to what upholds the earth. God hung it upon nothing.

We are told that according to one of the latest measurements by the U.S. Bureau of Standards, the earth weighs a little more than six sextillion tons—whatever that is! With the earth turning on its axis so fast that at the equator it attains a surface speed of more than a thousand miles an hour, no bearing conceivable to the human mind could uphold such a weight at such speed. The earth must be made to float upon nothing, as God indicated in His word thousands of years before science had proved it.

For thousands of years people believed that the world was flat and that the sun went around it. But all this time the Bible was speaking of ‘the circle of the earth.’ Isaiah 40:22

Notice also the scientific fact mentioned in Job 28:24, 25. Speaking of God Job says: ‘For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds; and He weigheth the waters by measure.’

Now the scientists have proved that it is the weight of the air or atmosphere, or changes in that weight, that causes all our weather. Air pressure at sea level is nearly fifteen pounds to every square inch of surface, an average of fourteen tons upon every person. About one ton of air rests upon every square foot of surface. Remember the fact that air has weight was recorded in the Holy Scriptures at least 2,500 years before Torricelli invented the barometer to measure that weight.

The wonders that science is bringing to our attention impress upon our minds the wonderful God of the universe. The more wonderful nature is the more wonderful the God who created everything in nature. We read in Job 12:7-10 ‘But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.’

Dr. Arthur Compton, of the University of Chicago, once said: ‘The world is beautiful to the scientist who is opening new vistas continually. The molecules made from atoms, the atoms made from electrons and protons, shows a universe within a universe. And a God who can control a universe like that is mighty beyond imagination.’

This is the God of the Bible, the creator, the God who balanced the atmosphere with approximately 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen, with a trace of carbon dioxide, argon, neon, helium, krypton, xenon, hydrogen and ozone. It is proportioned exactly to fit the needs of the human race and all living creatures upon the earth. A change in one direction or another would make life as we know it impossible.

The God of science is the God who created the honeybee with its 6,000 sense plates in its two antennae, its five eyes with their thousands of six-sided, fixed-focus lenses, color blind to red but able to see ultraviolet rays invisible to us; with wings that vibrate 11,140 times a minute, making bees complete masters of the air so they can fly forward, backward, up, down, from side to side, or poise motionless like a helicopter.

He is the God who created water which, like all other fluids, becomes heavier when it becomes colder. This, however, is true of water only until it reaches four degrees above freezing, when it becomes lighter and rises to the surface as ice. If it should sink to the bottom, rivers and lakes would become solid. Even the seas in many parts of the world would become frozen from the top to bottom, and all animal and vegetable life would cease.

He is the God of whom we read in Psalm 135:7: ‘He causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries.’

He causes the sun’s rays to vaporize water in which con­dition it occupies a space 1,600 times greater than it does in its liquid state and therefore is much lighter than air, floating readily and ascending into the higher regions, where it is carried all over the earth.

‘All the rivers run into the sea yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.’ Ecclesiastes 1:7.

God knew all this that the wise men did not know many centuries ago. Science has caught up with the Bible in explaining the circulation of water over the earth, into the sea, out of the sea by evaporation, onto the land in the form of snow and rain, back by way of rivers into the ocean again.

Has anyone ever seen a river running uphill? ‘Unto the place from where the rivers come, thither they shall return again,’ says the Bible. And it is true. The waters do go back to the hills and mountains. They go by way of the sky and the clouds.

The God who can carry this mighty earth on a trip of 525,000,000 miles in 365 days, 5 hours, 45 minutes, 46 seconds, on so exact a timing that it does not vary more than a thousandth of a second in a century—He is the God of the Bible.

In Job 38:4, 5 God asks this question: ‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest?’

God made the earth just right for the people living upon it. If the sun were 193,000,000 miles from the earth, the intense cold would kill everybody; if it were only 15,000,000 miles distant, the terrible heat would kill everybody. But, since it is approximately 93,000,000 miles away everything is just right. The range of temperature within which life, as we know it, is possible is very narrow, so God in his creative wisdom set the sun and the earth the right distance apart.

Think of the deadly actinic rays from the sun. Why do they not kill everyone on the earth? Because there is a protective blanket around the earth, a layer of ozone and other gases many thousands of feet thick. Tanning and sunburn are only mild forms of what would happen if this layer were not present. Professor Rudolph Loudenburg of Princeton University says that this layer is from fifteen to twenty miles above the earth and may be nearly 100,000 feet in thickness.

We have mentioned only few of the scientific sugges­tions in the Bible, but in all these things we see the wis­dom and protective power of God.

‘Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.’ Psalm 145:3, 4.

Only an all-wise creator could know all the require­ments of human life, and He made everything fit them. Since God’s book of nature and his book of divine revelation came from the same hand, they must agree. One helps to explain the other, and we should be interested in both. We should worship the all-wise heavenly Father who is the author of both. Let us study God’s two books. Let us accept the revelations of both where they go beyond human knowledge. They are the utterances of our creator, who, as we would expect, knows far more than we know. So let us read the holy Scriptures as the word of God.” So far the article.

As we said at the beginning of this article, we did not plan to make any comment; but we have space left to say this, that we are not particularly a student of science. Yet there is something fascinating, astounding, in scientific data, even that described in this article, that makes one stand in awe before the great universe God has made and declare: Yea, what hath God wrought! Some of our readers, who have no learning to speak of will no doubt smile at the stupendous figures mentioned in the article, and conclude that they are figments of a deluded mind. We would not join with them in their folly, but rather humble ourselves before the God of creation, and looking in His book of revelation declare with the Psalmist: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.”

M. Schipper