Now, the first thing you should know is, I’m no Scientist or Scholar so just remember that when reading this. I am going to take you through my own research in studying the questions that I’ve had about the creation of the World.
I got to pondering God’s work in creation and what some of the writers might have been wondering. How could ancient writers of the Bible know so much about creation if they were just ordinary men? How could they have written about them in such detail and accuracy without the aid of the Lord truly telling them what to write?
We can look around and know there is a God that created all that we see but the details in which the ancient writers describe things can only be known because God told them.
In Romans 1:20~ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Psalm 19:1 ~ The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
After reading that, I wondered, did any of the writers of the Bible ever think that what they were writing sounded crazy? Maybe they were a tad confused about the facts on certain stories and didn’t grasp what they were writing down, like in Genesis, with the creation of the Earth? How could they know the Earth was round or flat? Could they have been writing things down and thinking, “Uummm, this can’t be right”.
They had no way of testing many things to prove it right or wrong. No one could have known back then if the Earth was round or flat. I decided to do some research on all this and see how many things were described in Scriptures that were proven true only in recent years.
*Is the Earth Round?
So, what about the Earth being round or flat? Click on this link below we see it’s been a lifelong belief for centuries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
‘The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth’s shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century.”
“The Israelites also imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water with an arched firmament above it that separated the Earth from the heavens.[13] The sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars embedded in it.[14]”
The image above is an Imago Mundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BC Babylonia
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/the-universe-confirms-the-bible/
“Curiously, many astronomy textbooks credit Pythagoras (c. 570–500 B.C.) with being the first person to assert that the earth is round.1 However, the biblical passages are older than this. Isaiah is generally acknowledged to have been written in the 700s B.C. and Job is thought to have been written around 2000 B.C. The secular astronomers before the time of Pythagoras must have thought the Bible was wrong about its teaching of a round earth, yet the Bible was exactly right. It was the secular science of the day that needed to be corrected.”
This video above talks of the earlier beliefs of a flat Earth and how the idea grew to become around Earth. Although this is not a video that is based on Christian views or writings it does show how many believed the Earth thousands of years ago to be flat and then later changed the belief it to be round. God described how the Earth was round but 1,000 of years ago the world described how it was flat.
In Ray Comforts’ book, “How to Know God Exists,” Ray says, “The Book of Isaiah was written between 740 and 680 B.C. This is at least 300 years before Aristotle suggested, in his book, “On the Heavens”, that the earth might be a sphere. It was another 2,000 years later (at a time when science believed that the earth was flat) that the Scriptures inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world.”
Even though many started to believe the Earth was round back then they still had no way of proving it till resent years.
Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth”.
Now, some that believed in the flat Earth believed that this verse was talking of a flat circular Earth, kinda like a frisbee.
Again in Ray Comforts book, “How to know God Exists”, Ray talks of the earth floating in space: “At a time when it was believed that the earth sat on a large animal or a giant (1500 B.C.), the Bible spoke of the earth’s free float in space: “He…hangs the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7)“.
Ray points out how Scriptures say the Earth floats in space when most believed odd ideas of something holding it up. It is clear today Scriptures is correct and the Earth is in fact just floating in space and “hangs on nothing”, just as the Bible teaches. We’ve proven it true through technology and inventing rockets to go into space and take pictures to show it is not propped up or carried by any animal and most importantly that it is a circle (a spiracle orb).
We see further that Genesis hints to spherical Earth in this following verse because it says “light separates day from the night”.
In Genesis 1:4~ And God said, “let there be light in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,”
Imagine for a second, if the Earth was flat and floating like a frisbee in water, slowly floating in a circular motion, to my understanding we wouldn’t have both day and night but we would just have day forever or night forever. Flat Earthers believe that we have night because the sun goes behind the mountains. Today, we know that’s not true just simply by flying in an airplane far above the mountains. For example, staying within the borders of America, flying just a few states away, shows how we can start out flying in the daytime and it turns dark after a couple of hours because the obvious happened, it became night time not because a mountain was in the way of the sun and blocked it and not because the flat Earth flipped upside down but because it’s an orb and it rotated away from the sun.
Revelation 7:1~ After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth…”
Revelations talks of four corners of the Earth which became another reason to cause many to believe the Earth to be flat, with corners. However, in examining this verse closer we see that John was only using symbolic speech to describe the “four directions” just as we see on maps and compasses with north, south, east, and west. It’s not much of an argument though in proving the Earth to be round in my opinion.
As I pondered the directions mentioned, another verse came to mind, the verse that talked about God’s forgiveness because that one talks of directions as well. I looked it up and realized this verse makes the point of a round Earth…for me at least. The verse Psalm 103:12 uses two of the cardinal directions. It reads, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
When we look at that verse it is speaking of a span of distance that is infinite. North and south only go so far till it stops. If you start out flying from the North Pole southward and just keep flying south eventually you would reach the South Pole and once there all of a sudden you would be flying north until of course, you reach the North Pole again. However, if you were to travel east going around the Earth and keep going in that eastward direction you would always be going east. It would never stop and the same with the west, you will forever be going west and it would never stop.
The purpose of that verse is to show us that the forgiveness of God is forever, it doesn’t stop which is why in His infinite wisdom He chose to say, “as far as the east is from the west” and not “as far as the north is from the south”. This way we can know for certain we have been restored to the Lord.
Now, looking at this verse to support whether the Earth is round or flat we see that because God uses the directions to make the case for how far He removes our transgressions from us, then it does make a strong case for a spiracle Earth. If the Earth was flat then saying “as far as the east is to the west” wouldn’t be very far because it would eventually stop at the edge of the Earth just as the other directions would. With a flat earth, you can obviously see by the image below that for God to tell us that He forgives us as far as the east is to the west would not make much sense.
It wasn’t until modern times that we could know for sure the Earth was round because we were able to send rockets into space and see it was in fact round and see that it rotated, and see that nothing was holding it up. The Bible was right.
*The Creation of Light on The Earth
Genesis 1:3-5~ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Take note here that God hadn’t created the Sun, Moon, or Stars yet until the 4th day. The darkness was mentioned from the start of creation (in Genesis) as God says, “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.” Nothing is said about where the light was brought from or anything about the darkness even, only that God spoke light into existence and then separated it from the darkness.
In Job 38:18-20, God Challenges Job… “Have you surveyed the extent of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this. Where is the way to the home of light? Do you know where darkness resides, so you can lead it back to its border? Do you know the paths to its home?”…of course Job couldn’t have known any of this.
I can’t help but imagine how confused the writer was when writing this because God had them record as one of the first things created was light yet when they write about the fourth day God sounds like He repeated Himself and talks of light again. This time saying, “let there be lights in the expanse to separate the day from the night”. Here God is explaining that the light will come from the Sun and the Moon.
So, my thought is, did they ever wonder where the light came from on the first day? They knew God spoke and said, “let there be light” but from where did it come from? Or in God’s Words, as God questions Job by saying, “Where is the way to the home of light?” The answer: From God Himself. For the first three days of creation, He was the light just as it says in John 8:12~ “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
God will also be the source of light for the new Earth as well, as said in Revelation 22:5~ “There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever”
*The Creation of Stars
Genesis 1:14-19~ “And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”
When we look into the night sky depending on if it’s a clear night or not, we can only see so many stars with our naked eye. With a telescope we are able to see much more however the people back then didn’t have telescopes. Telescopes weren’t invented yet as this link below explains.
“The telescope traces back to early makers of eyeglasses and lenses. In the 1400s, glasses were used widely across Europe. These lenses were not powerful, not polished, and not clear. Due to their imperfections, they were not useful for astronomic observation.”
https://nineplanets.org/questions/who-invented-the-telescope/
Psalm 147:4 tells us that “He counts the number of the stars, He calls them all by name.”
How great is God to be able to count the stars and name them, what fear that should produce in us out of respect and aw?
I can just see them looking up at the night sky counting as many stars as they possibly could (which some claimed the human eye can view about 1,000 ) and then looking at the sand and knowing they couldn’t possibly count each piece of sand and that there were way more sand particles than what they saw in stars. When compared to each other, the two probably don’t even seem equal. Did that make any sense to them? Today we could see the planets and galaxies and so many other billions of stars and comets and other things through telescopes. I’m sure, for them, knowing that Scriptures say in Jeremiah 33:22, “host of heaven can’t be numbered, or the sand of the sea measured” made them wish they had a way of seeing all those stars.
Another interesting fact God points out about stars is in 1 Corinthians 15:41 ~ “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory”
This verse uses the example of stars all being different. I’m sure this had to be perplexing for them as they looked at the stars from Earth, all the stars look like sparkly spots in the sky, without a telescope, how could they have known the stars could be so different in size or color? But it’s recorded in Scriptures and again this wasn’t a known fact until modern times.
*The Wind Having Weight…
Scriptures tell us wind has weight in Job 28:25~ “When he gave to the wind its weight…”
Barnes’ Notes on the Bible explains Job 28:25 this way: “To make the weight for the winds – That is, to weigh the winds and to measure the waters – things that it would seem most difficult to do. The idea here seems to be, that God had made all things by measure and by rule. Even the winds – so fleeting and imponderable – he had adjusted and balanced in the most exact manner as if he had “weighed” them when he made them. The air has “weight,” but it is not probable that this fact was known in the time of Job, or that he adverted to it here. It is rather the idea suggested above, that the God who had formed everything by exact rule and who had the power to govern the winds in the most exact manner, must be qualified to impart wisdom.”
When this was written in Job it was not discovered or understood yet how wind or air had weight.
*Creation of Water in Scriptures
We read about another question that God asks Job 37:16 ~ “Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds, the wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge?”
Good question! Did Job know how the clouds balanced in the sky? Probably not. I wonder what they knew about the clouds as far as how the clouds held water? Clouds can look so different from one day to the next but, just like what we see today, I’m sure they understood rain came from clouds but how it worked was probably a whole different question. Did they understand that very small droplets of water make up clouds and when they remain small, they float but if they join together with other droplets, they get heavier and become rain? Did they know that wind and temperature play a part in the reason it rains a lot or a little? They didn’t have the technology we do today so I’m sure that they had questions about it.
More in the following link below.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-clouds-float-when/
Genesis 1:6-8 tells us: “God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”
Below, explains what this verse is saying…
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary “Second Day.
firmament—an expanse: a name given to the atmosphere from its appearing to an observer to be the vault of heaven, supporting the weight of the watery clouds. By the creation of an atmosphere, the lighter parts of the waters which overspread the earth’s surface were drawn up and suspended in the visible heavens, while the larger and heavier mass remained below.
So how could they have understood any of this back then? I’m guessing they didn’t. The balancing of the clouds was not known until modern times when we had the ability and equipment to study it.
* Springs of The Sea
Genesis 1:9-13~ “And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
Job 38:16-18~ “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.”
We see here that God asks if Job ever journeyed to those places and if he comprehends everything God has done and if Job even knows of all those things. I guess it’s possible some of those things Job could have known about or read about because it was talked about in Genisis with the flood such as the phrase “springs of the deep” but there is no way he could have seen it with his own eyes to verify it, there is no way he could have walked in the “recesses of the deep” or went to see the “springs of the sea”. Most everyone knows today the ocean is very deep and very dark. Job didn’t have any way to go to any of them. It wasn’t as if he could swim down to the ocean floor to investigate it because he wouldn’t be able to hold his breath very long to go all the way to the seafloor. Also, the floor of the ocean is extremely dark so how could he even see the floor or observe anything down there once there. Not to mention the pressure at the bottom of the sea is deadly to humans, Job would not have been able to survive that alone. It’s only been just recently that humans could explore the seafloor thanks to a specially made submarine and confirm that there are springs in the seafloor but even then, we still do not know all there is to know about the sea. Back in Jobs day, there was no way for Job to have experienced any of that personally, it would have been impossible. So, I just wonder again how odd this must have sounded for Job.
*The Earth Will Not Be Moved
Psalm 93:1~ The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
I will end with these scriptures below where God tells us the Earth will not be moved. I know the Earth moves…it turns on its axis as it rotates around the sun. Again, we know this to be true because we have the technology and pictures that show it does but I still just wonder what the writers thought about these verses. God is saying in these verses that nothing is going to happen to the world we live on and noting will cause it to fall apart or knock it out of orbit. This should be comforting to us because when I was much younger my fear was that someday a meteorite could hit us and knock the Earth off its axis sending it flying through space or shake it so badly that we would stop rotating or something to that effect. Yeah, the imagination of a young kid! Below I have scriptures and meaning of each of the verses I quote that shows that God is telling us the Earth is securely in place.
(Barnes’ Notes on the Bible explains Psalm 93:1~ “The world also is established – Is firm; is on a solid foundation. It cannot be shaken or destroyed by natural convulsions, or by the power of man. That it cannot be moved – Moved out of its place; overthrown; destroyed. This seems to have been spoken in view of some impending calamity as if everything were to be swept away. The psalmist consoles himself with the thought that the world was firmly established; that no storm or tempest could be so violent as to remove it out of its place. The ground of consolation is the essential stability of what God has ordained.”)
*Psalm 104:5~ He set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be moved.
(Benson Commentary on Psalm 104:5~ Who laid the foundations of the earth who hath founded the earth upon its own bases, or foundations, that is, upon itself, or its own center of gravity, by which it is self-balanced, and by which it stands as fast and immovable as if it were built upon the strongest foundation imaginable, which is a most stupendous work of divine wisdom and power; that it should not be removed — Out of its proper place; forever — Or, till the end of time, when it must give way to the new earth.)
*Psalm 96:10~ Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.
(Barnes’ Notes on the Bible explains Psalm 96:10~ The world also shall be established … – Under the reign of God. The meaning is that the world is fixed or immovable. It has its place, and it cannot be moved out of it. The government of God is fixed and stable. It is not temporary, changing, vacillating, like the dynasties of the earth, but is steadfast and abiding, and is well represented by the earth – so fixed and firm that nothing can move it from its place.)
*Ecclesiastes 1:4~ A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
(Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible explains Ecclesiastes 1:4 ~… “but the earth abideth for ever; for a long time, until the dissolution of all things; and then, though that and all in it will be burnt up, yet it will rather be changed than destroyed; the form of it will be altered, when the substance of it will continue; it will not be annihilated, but renewed and refined.”)
God makes sure we know the Earth’s foundation is so strong and solid that nothing can move it. What I found interesting was this video below that shows how Jupiter serves as a shield against danger to Earth. It says, “Without a massive gravity rich planet like Jupiter nearby to draw away asteroids, Earth would be more like an interstellar dartboard”. Not saying Jupiter is the only reason Earth is stable because we know God does this but it’s just amazing how God designed it all to have the planets where they are. I suggest you watch this 5 min video below that shares why the Earth that God created is so amazing and even overwhelming.
https://www.prageru.com/video/does-science-argue-for-or-against-god/
I hope this causes others to seek God more and to see His glory in all of His creations. To stand in Aw with respect to God in all that He has done. I realize that there are those out there that just don’t believe or have faith in God. With that said, there is still no excuse for them because everyone is shown God’s invisible attributes and power in all that has been created. It boils down to faith.
Romans 1:19-20~ since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Tulips & Honey 