“To the influence of this Book we are indebted for
the progress made in civilization, and to this we must
look as our guide in the future”.
– Ulysses Grant (President, 1869-77, of the U.S)
THE Bible has been acknowledged over the years as covering every subject of human knowledge and need now and forever (Finis Dake, Bible scholar); as one incomparably so various and full of concentrated wisdom (Herbert Hoover, President, 1929-33, of the U.S); and as the first and almost the only book deserving of universal attention (John Quincy Adams, the second President, 1797-1801, of the U.S).
Science as the study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world and society agrees with scriptures at the end of the day if thorough observation and quality experiment is carried out. Until the findings of science confirm the truth of scriptures, science is only mid-stream, yet to find anchor. To understand nature the best recourse is the God of Nature who has spoken twice: through nature and through His Word (the Bible), and both align perfectly.
Galileo (1564 – 1642) and Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), two earliest scientists knew this. For Galileo, with his groundbreaking feats in astronomy and physics, the scriptures cannot lie, only the interpreter of it may. And for Francis Bacon, author of modern scientific reasoning: induction, and hence seen as father of modern science, there are two indispensable books – the book of nature and the Bible.
TRUE SCIENCE AFFIRMS BIBLE
Indeed, all the conclusions of science between 600 BC and 200 AD – regarded as the first age of science – that are still relevant today agree with scriptures. And between the early Egyptians and Babylonians the abiding feats reached in mathematics, metallurgy, anatomy and astronomy stay in tandem with the laws of creation as found in the Bible. The Babylonians may have given us the true measurements of the lunar and solar cycles, the exact tracing of the paths of the planets, the divisions of the circle into 360 degrees and the designation of constellations, e.g the Zodiac, but all confirm scriptures as given to Moses, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, John and others (except, of course, the perverted and satanic angle of astrology and horoscope). Sir John F. Herschel (1792 – 1871), the British astronomer who mapped over 525 new nebulae and star clusters told all ages: “all human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths that come on high and are contained in the sacred writings (the Bible)”.
It is worth recalling that John Herschel, who incidentally invented a method of photographing on sensitised paper, was the son of Sir William Herschel (1738 – 1822), who himself brought home the bacon when he developed a new kind of reflecting telescope, and struck a feat when he discovered the planet Uranus (1781) and mapped well over 2,500 nebulae and star clusters, aside producing a theory of binary star systems and determining the movement of the solar system through space. When men such as John Herschel with such intimidating family scientific record speak, who is one quack scientist in your clime, with their ill-equipped laboratories dotted with gimcrack instruments, to advance the contrary view, feign atheism, and question the veracity of the Bible? All human discoveries only confirm the truth of scriptures!
Science, from the Latin word scientia or its more basic root of scire, means to know. It connotes, understandably, the attempt to know or to explore the unknown; to make it known. In other words science invents nothing but tries to make known (systematic knowledge and organization of verifiable sense experience) what has been there. In this sense science cannot contradict what has been and until it confirms what is, it remains a sailing boat in deep waters.
William R. McGrath in A Bible Treasury (1981) said the obvious when he said, “there is hardly a physics textbook of 50 years ago which is not now hopelessly out of date because the former theories have been proven wrong and new theories are being invented all the time to try to explain the new observations about nature. Yet the marvellous thing about the Bible is that it is always up to date and practical and appropriate while yesterday’s science textbook ends up in the trash”. And until science “touches” what is, we would agree with Martin H. Fischer (1879 – 1962), the German-born US physician, that “all the world is a laboratory to the inquiry mind”. At any point science agrees with scriptures inquiry ends.
Recorded in the Bodelian Library, Oxford and signed by 800 scientists of Great Britain is this statement: “we, the undersigned … desire to express our sincere regret that researchers into scientific truth are perverted by some in our own times into occasion of casting doubt upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God written in the book of nature, and God’s Word written in Holy Scriptures, to contradict one another … physical science is not complete, but is only in a condition of progress”. This is the truth or fact that the mathematician David Hilbert was inadvertently alluding to when he said that the measure of success of a scientific paper is how many other papers it makes irrelevant. Lewis Wolpert, professor of biology, as Applied to medicine, University College, London, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, recipient of the Michael Faraday Award for the Public Understanding of Science and author of the very influential The Unnatural Nature of Science agrees, in this regard, with Hilbert, when he said: “we all ultimately disappear from the literature, because our work is incorporated and it is gone and forgotten, I’m afraid. It really is a very strange process”.
The German physicist, Max Planck (1858 – 1947) puts it this way: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”. At that point it has, no doubt, aligned with scriptures, for all scientific truth aligns with scriptures hence they endure. And so then, the inquiring goes ad infinitum until a proper chord is touched, and that chord is in scriptures: in “Thus saith the Lord”! Scientific exploration that takes the Bible as compass gets to safest of shores.
BIBLE AND FINDINGS OF SCIENCE
The Scripture (every jot and tittle of it) is incontrovertible just as it is infallible. Its account should be believed and taken hook, line and sinker. Just only some few years ago medical science was able to tell us life is in the blood. Moses told us that long, long ago: “… for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof …” – Leviticus 17: 14. It is only in this computer age we are being told that one day or so could not be accounted for in the life of our world, a fact (or secret) Joshua and Hezekiah were privy to many centuries ago as you can see in Joshua 10: 12 and Isaiah 38: 8.
It is now that science noticed that our earth rotates, a fact Job knew thousands of years ago (see Job 38: 12-14 where verse 13 refers to the axis and 14 says: ‘it is turned as clay to the seal’ which is the figure of the potter’s wheel). It is great finding today to discover that the earth is just rotating out there
in space. Job knew that long ago: “He stretched out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26: 7). Meteorologists may have discovered the water circle today but Solomon knew that long ago: “The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. 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” (Ecclesiastics 1: 6, 7).
What news it was to discover that the atmosphere ‘weighs about fourteen pounds per square inch at sea level’. In Job 28: 25 God showed long ago that the air could be measured: “To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure”. Who cannot see the hydrologic cycle in Job 36: 27-29 which literarily reads: “For he draweth up the drops of water, they distil as rain from the vapour (mist) thereof, which the clouds (skies) pour down and drop upon man abundantly. Yea, can any understand the spreadings of the clouds, the thunderings of His pavilion?”
Science has today agreed with Jeremiah 33: 22 that, “THE HOST OF HEAVEN CANNOT BE NUMBERED” when it told us that there are well over 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, and even just as there could probably be billions of galaxies out there in space. Today, science says that the material universe we can behold and all matter in it is made up of little, invisible things called atoms which in turn are made up of smaller particles and that these smaller particles are made up of yet smaller particles which cannot be seen even by electron microscopes but can only be guessed. Whatever difficulty they may have will disappear if they know as we know that: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear”. THINGS WHICH ARE SEEN WERE NOT MADE OF THINGS WHICH DO APPEAR!
Science has agreed with what the Bible said about man being “fearfully and wonderful made” (Psalm 139.4) when it revealed for instance that the body consists of various chemicals – iron, sugar, salt, carbon, iodine, phosphorus, lime, calcium, and others – about 98 ¢ worth. The body has 263 bones; 600 muscles, 970 miles of blood vessels; 400 caps on the tongue for taste; 20,000 hairs in the ears to tune in to all sounds; 40lb. jaw pressure; 10, 000, 000 nerves and branches; 3, 500 sweat tubes to each sq. inch of skin or 40 miles long; 20, 000, 000 mouths that suck food as it goes through the intestines; 600, 000, 000 air cells to the lungs that inhale 2, 400 gallons of air daily; and a telephone system that relates to the brain instantly any known sound, taste, sight, touch, or smell. The heart beats 4, 200 times an hour and pumps 12 tons of blood daily (Finis Dake). David knew more than that thousands of years ago, and he knew too that it is only God that could have done that and, so, did not only acknowledged Him as the Maker but gave all honour and worship to Him.
This writer joins McGrath and others to offer scientists another clue from God’s own Word: The great heaps and piles of fossil strata could only have been laid down by the violent combination of water and whirlwind of Noah’s flood; the sea-beds found twisted and turned into mountain tops could only have happened by some vast upheaval turning the sea-beds into mountains and the mountains into sea-floor; the many remains of quick frozen ancient animals in ALASKA and SIBERIA, some dashed into pieces and others piled helter-skelter on top of each other in layers with the very TROPICAL PLANTS still in their mouths that they were chewing when tidal waves and instant ice storms overwhelmed them “can only be explained by a vast flood combined with the tilting of the earth’s axis to alter the seasons”.
Today, many see the planets representing a jig-saw puzzle that could possibly be fitted together! Right as they may be they need know that everything began in the Scriptures. What many know is that God confused the tongues of men when He scattered them after their Babel affront, but most do not know that about the same time or a little after that God also divided the united (physical) earth into continents thereby separating men from men even further. This is what I mean: “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided…” (Genesis 10: 25). So that we don’t miss the point, many years after, 1Chronicles 1: 19 repeated that: “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg; because in his days the earth was divided…”
Time and space would fail us to represent the thousand and one ways science (true science) has echoed the truth and veracity of Bible; and that, of course, is the only purpose of science, true science.
Indeed, enduring findings of science can only exclaim with David: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; …” (Psalm 8:3). Yes, true science at the end of the day would readily concur, again, with David: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them has he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof” (Psalm 19: 1-6).
