Biblical Truth, the planet Earth

Science tells us a lot of things about the planet we live on, much of it common knowledge to any elementary school student but that hasn’t always been the case.  There have been many errors noted in previous generations beliefs about the world we live in world that have been disputed or flat out proven wrong with the information we have today.  We haven’t always had science as we understand it today but we do have many places through-out history where religion attempts to explain the scientific questions of the day…

Thousands of years ago, Hindu scriptures explained that the world as we know it was resting on the back of a huge elephant and that the elephant was in turn sitting on the back of a giant turtle that swam around in the sea of some other world.  The weather, earthquakes, floods and other phenomenon were to be attributed to the movements of either a colossal elephant or turtle?  Greek mythology claimed our planet was held on the god Atlas’ shoulders.  But the Bible tells a different story altogether about what supports the world:

He (God) stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing.

Job 26:7

You and I know today that the earth is suspended in space and nothing or no one holds it up.  And what does Job indicate is holding the world up?  The earth according to Job, “… hangs on nothing”.  The book of Job is one of the oldest written books in the Bible, many date it to 1500 B.C. about the same time the Hindu scripture about the elephant was written.  The Bible tells us that God gave a direct revelation to Job about the suffering he endured and during that revelation Job saw the world as God saw it, suspended in place by nothing without the help of a man or animal.

And for thousands of years man believed the earth to be flat and if you went too far you would drop off into, “nothing”.  Both Hindu and Buddhist scripture hold to the “flat earth” theory.  In 1522 the Portuguese ship Victoria became the first sip to successfully sail around the world.  Leaving Spain in 1519 and headed west, Victoria returned three years later from the east putting to end the myth of a flat world.  But long before the Victoria came to rest in the early 1500’s, the Bible was noted the earth as being round:

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

Isaiah 40:22

When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

Proverbs 8:27

As we all know today the earth appears as a circle, suspended in space with no one holding it up.  Job, Solomon and Isaiah all received the inspired Word of God about the earth as we all see it today.  Once again scripture is shown to be accurate and truthful while many other means are without a doubt, wrong.

Peace,

Jeff