‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.’
- 2 Timothy 3:16 -
Have you heard of The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth? Maybe you know it as the Thomas Jefferson Bible. Having rejected the supernatural, America’s third president harmonized the four Gospels and removed almost all their miraculous events. While some mentions of angels and an afterlife remained, Jefferson erased Jesus’ miracles, His claims to deity, and even the resurrection! When asked why, Jefferson said the miraculous distracted from the “more true” story of Jesus, namely, the philosophical and moral instructions of a Galilean carpenter.
Jefferson claimed the virgin birth and the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were irrational and implausible. He longed for a day “when we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three.” Unlike most critics of Christianity today, Jefferson knew the Bible but denied its authority. He literally cut out the chunks that he found ‘hard to believe,’ and many follow in his steps by denying what they doubt or disapprove of. They overlook that, while the Bible never claims to be a scientific textbook, it does call itself ‘true from the beginning’ (Ps. 119:160) and everywhere that it intersects with science is 100% accurate.
The Bible unveils the eternal Creator who possesses all knowledge, was present when He created the universe, and holds all things together to this day. Extraordinary claims, right? Well, as skeptics say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And rightly so. Skepticism is healthy. Our world is full of people who’ll preserve burned toast that (they claim) resembles a dead saint. So we are wise to consider the evidence before judging if something is likely true or false. To quote a wise source outside the Bible, it was Socrates who said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So let’s get to it. We’ll start big and then drill down into detail.
The Bible makes many true claims that scientists have only lately begun to realize are accurate. Genesis says the universe had a beginning. Sounds obvious, right? Except philosophers and scientists rejected that claim for thousands of years. Only recently have astronomers agreed in a beginning of time, space, and matter. The Bible says all humans are of ‘one blood,’ descended from one man and one woman. Yet biologists in the 1800s insisted darker races evolved from lower animals, leading to devastating justifications for slavery and deprivation based on skin color. Today, geneticists verify that there is indeed only one human race (regardless of melanin) and that we all share an original pair of ancestors.
Claiming that the universe is not eternal and that darker people did not descend from lower beasts seems obvious now, but scientific history says otherwise. The big question is this: if the Bible is totally accurate about these weighty matters, what else does it get right despite being written thousands of years before the scientific age? Well get ready. This may feel like drinking from a firehose, but if you’re anything like me, the Bible’s claims to full truth and authority demand supernatural evidence of its trustworthiness.
EARTH’S FREE FLOAT IN SPACE
Job 26:7 (written 3,500 years ago): ‘He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.’ The Bible proclaims without any fanfare that Earth freely floats in space. The Hindu holy writings say the earth is a flat triangle made of honey, sugar, butter, and wine, and it sits on the heads of countless elephants that cause earthquakes when they shake. But we now know that Earth (a sphere) floats free in space.
THE EARTH IS ROUND
Isaiah 40:22 (written 2,800 years ago): ‘It is God who sits above the sphere of the earth.’ The Bible tells us that Earth is spherical. Though it was once commonly believed to be flat, it was the Bible that inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world without fear of falling off. He even recorded in his diary: ‘It was the Lord who put it into my mind. There is no question the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures.’
FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
Genesis 2:1 (written after creation): ‘Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.’ The Hebrew word here for ‘finished’ is in the past definite tense, indicating a completed action never again to occur. Creation was finished once and for all, known to modern science as the First Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. There is no ongoing creation. It is ‘finished,’ just as the Bible states.
SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
Psalm 102:25-26 (written over 2,500 years ago): ‘Of old You founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. Even they will perish, but You endure; and all of them will wear out like a garment.’ The Bible teaches that Earth is ‘wearing out’ like a garment, also known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics (or the Law of Increasing Entropy). Scientists now explain that in all physical processes, ordered systems become disordered over time. Everything runs down and wears out as energy becomes less and less available. That means the universe will eventually ‘wear out’ – something science only realized two hundred years ago.
THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE
Amos 9:6 (written 2,800 years ago): ‘God calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the face of the earth.’ The Mississippi River dumps over six million gallons of water each second into the Gulf of Mexico. That’s just one of thousands of rivers, but where does all that water go? The answer lies in the hydrologic cycle – a mystery to science until the 1600s, but one plainly described in the Bible. King Solomon wrote 3,000 years ago: ‘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’ (Ecclesiastes 1:7). How could he know this humanly? Written around the same time, Psalm 135:7 says: ‘God causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain.’
THE SCIENCE OF OCEANOGRAPHY
Psalm 8:8 (written 3,000 years ago): ‘…and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.’ The sea is just a huge mass of water, so how could it have so-called paths in it? Sailors discovered and mapped ocean currents in the 1850s, yet the Bible declared the science of oceanography thousands of years before. Matthew Maury (1806–1873), the father of oceanography who was nicknamed ‘Pathfinder of the Seas,’ noticed these ‘paths of the seas’ in Psalm 8. Maury took God at His word and went looking for these paths as a naval officer, and his vital book on oceanography is still in print today.
COUNTLESS STARS
Jeremiah 33:22 (written 2,500 years ago): ‘As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured.’ The Bible casually asserts that there are countless stars, called here the ‘host of heaven.’ When this was written, no one knew how many stars there were, as less than 1,100 were observable to the naked eye. 1,100 was how many Ptolemy was able to catalog in The Almagest a thousand years after Jeremiah wrote. Yet now we know that there are countless billions of stars and that no telescope will ever number them all. Just more support for the Bible’s inspiration.
BLOOD IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE
Leviticus 17:11 (written 3,500 years ago): ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood.’ The Bible declares that blood is the source of life. Until two hundred years ago, sick people were bled by doctors by slicing into external veins or attaching blood-sucking leeches. Many died from this unscientific (and unbiblical) practice. Science now sees that blood is the source of life. It carries water and nutrients to our cells, purges waste, and regulates the body’s temperature. Blood also vitally carries oxygen from the lungs throughout the body. If you lose your blood, you will lose your life. It’s just that simple.
BLOOD CLOTTING
Genesis 17:12: ‘He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations.’ Now, why did God command circumcision to be performed on the eighth day? Why not on the day of birth or a child’s first birthday? Medical science has only recently discovered that blood clotting in newborns peaks on day eight. Vitamin K hits sufficient levels on day seven, and day eight is when prothrombin peaks, reaching 110% of its normal level. Too much coincidence to be coincidence, if you ask me.
LAWS OF HYGIENE
Leviticus 15:13 (written 3,500 years ago): ‘And when he who has a discharge is cleansed of his discharge, then he shall count for himself seven days for his cleansing, wash his clothes, and bathe his body in running water; then he shall be clean.’ The Bible says that when dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water. Until the 1800s, doctors washed in basins of still water, leaving behind unseen germs that caused countless deaths. In 1845, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was horrified at high death rates on Viennese maternity wards. Almost 30% of mothers died post-delivery. Semmelweis saw doctors examine deceased patients followed by expectant mothers without any kind of handwashing. When Semmelweis had doctors wash their hands before examinations, the death rate dropped to just 2%. Just more support for the Bible!
LAWS OF QUARANTINE
Leviticus 13:46 (written 3,500 years ago): “All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” Long before medical science saw the need to quarantine, the Bible instructed it. Leviticus says how to quarantine against leprosy, yet we didn’t implement the same laws for three thousand years. During the devastating Black Death of the 1300s, people blamed ‘bad air’ or ‘evil spirits.’ Careful attention to God’s medical commands could have saved millions. Medical historian Arturo Castiglione says this about the vital importance of biblical laws of quarantine: ‘The laws against leprosy in Leviticus 13 may be regarded as the first model of sanitary legislation.’
Now catch your breath and honestly weigh the incredible implication of these many, many scientifically true statements in Scripture. If God inspired the Bible by the hands of men, supporting His word with facts predating science by thousands of years, then the terrible warning of hell and the incredible promise of heaven are true too. No other religious text or tradition comes close to the Bible in the arena of scientific truth. The test is whether we assess these facts honestly and realize Bronze Age men only wrote accurately about creation, nature, and anatomy due to their otherworldly source.
And as a disclaimer, in case you still aren’t convinced, take heart that the Bible doesn’t expect all who hear its claims to accept them and rejoice. Some reject God and Scripture their whole life. Others come around in time. A.W. Tozer, a pastor and author, said this: ‘The Bible is not addressed to just anybody. Its message is directed to a chosen few... Whatever may have taken place in eternity, it is obvious what happens in time. Some believe and some do not; some are morally receptive and some are not; some have spiritual capacity and some have not. It is to those who do and are and have that the Bible is addressed. Those who do not and are not and have not will read it in vain.’
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