The Bible does not limit the universe to a box or a domed plain with lamps nailed into a metal ceiling. It does not overstate the size of the earth, nor present the earth as flat. Stars are not referred to as gods. In fact, worshipping the heavenly bodies is soundly forbidden by the Bible. The heavenly bodies are explained to be just another part of the creation of a God far greater than any of them. Astrology, so widely embraced by other major cultures in ancient times, and even played around with among the Jews, is soundly discredited in the Bible. You just don’t find the errors in the Bible that you find in other ancient writings.

Three Sundays ago I began a series of sermons called God’s Word – the Bible: A Most Remarkable Book. This morning I want to continue that series with a third message. Because I have much to present this morning, I’m going to get right to it.

I showed you in the first message that the Bible is a remarkable book because:

In the second message I showed you that the Bible is remarkable because:

In this message (and a couple more) I want you to see that the Bible is a remarkable book because of its scientific foreknowledge. By "scientific foreknowledge" I mean that though it was written in ancient times when man didn’t have anything near the level of understanding of his surroundings that we have today, the Bible shows an extraordinary harmony with scientific facts known to be true today.

Let me clarify as we begin that the Bible is not a book of science. It was not written for that purpose. However, in areas where its subject matter touches certain disciplines of science the Bible has an uncanny ability to be accurate - an ability not seen in any other ancient writings, sacred or secular.

This morning we’ll touch on statements made by the Bible that correspond with the science of astronomy. While the study of the stars began in ancient times, only recently have we made the great strides we have come to know today. For thousands of years the study of the stars was locked down by limited methodology and superstition. Let’s begin then with a look at:

When ancient man looked up at the starry sky at night and pondered its nature and meaning to him, he was limited to what he could observe with his naked eye. Without the benefit of optical or radio telescopes to help him peer into the vast array of lights above him, it isn’t surprising that speculation ran far ahead of accurate assessment.

History tells us that the most ancient astronomers were Chaldeans living in Mesopotamia – the birthplace of civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Chaldean star-gazers envisioned an enclosed universe consisting of a wall that surrounded the earth and sea. A dome of hard metal was thought to cover the sky which served as a backdrop for activities of the gods, which is how they assessed the nature of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. In their minds the size of the universe was limited to what they could see. The earth was considered to be the center of it all, a flat plain at the bottom of the universe. Mesopotamia was the center of the earth and to them the earth was much larger than that sun, moon and stars combined.

When these ancient astronomers sought answers to explain what they saw, wild speculation filled in the blanks that their study could not. This gave birth to the pseudo-science/religion of astrology. The movements in the heavens above them were seen as omens, controlled by gods and demons. Astrology would dominate the study of the stars for thousands of years, influencing civilizations in Egypt, India, China, Greece, Rome, and Arabia. Even such great ancient thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy were believers in astrology, a series of fanciful teachings that has adherents even today.

In ancient Egypt, great strides were made in mathematics and architecture, but this same pseudo-religious view of the heavens persisted. Besides their belief in astrology, the Egyptians viewed the sun as a god and the stars as the souls of departed Egyptians. They envisioned the universe as a large rectangular box with the earth at the bottom. To them the earth was flat and Egypt was the center of it. They understood the skies as a huge vaulted ceiling held in place by four mountain peaks. Stars not thought to be the souls of men were viewed as lamps hung from the ceiling by cables. The sea was understood to be a river that encircled the earth. The perceived movement of the sun was explained as the great god "Ra" riding in a boat on the river.

The ancient Greeks made some important strides against these faulty views of the universe. They recognized the earth as a sphere, theorized its rotation, and managed to estimate more accurately the distances between the objects above them. Yet error was still the rule of the day. They thought the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun was the same size as the earth. Some of them believed that the planets were flat, the moon was inhabited, and that the stars were held in place by nails. Plato surmised that the entire universe rotated around the earth every twenty-four hours. Aristotle believed that the earth was the center of it all and that comets and the Milky Way were closer to the earth than the moon.

These same kinds of misconceptions continued throughout the ancient world. The Chinese are thought to have made some progress yet they still were steeped in pseudo-religious superstition, believing that the appearance of various comets were omens of good and bad things to happen in their future.

Kenny Barfield, in his book called Why the Bible is Number One(1) quotes F. von Oefele as saying, "until about 1500 A.D., astronomy remained an inextricable mass of confusion."

Given this level of error among ancient men in understanding the nature of the universe, one would expect that religious writings coming out of those times would reflect the same errors of the day. That, in the large part, is exactly what happened. We move now to:

Ancient religious perception of the nature of the sky above and the universe wasn’t any better than secular understanding. The various texts that form the roots of man’s non-biblical religions were nearly universal in their errors.

At this point we need to stop and make an assessment. That ancient man was unable to figure out the nature of the sky above him to any great extent isn’t surprising. But if a god or gods were behind any of these ancient religious writings and those gods are greater in intelligence than man, you would expect that their writings would not contain such errors. Surely supernatural power would give supernatural knowledge and freedom from mistakes. Yet in the non-biblical religious writings we find the same kinds of errors whenever the nature of the universe comes up.

Consider the ancient Hindu writings. They are full of statements that are inaccurate. In fact, there are so many such erroneous statements that Hindu apologists make no claims of the accuracy of the writings, explaining that it was not the intent of the writers to deal with things like astronomy. The Rigveda, the oldest and most basic of the Hindu writings, presents the sun, moon, planets and stars as beings to be worshipped. Hindu scriptures erroneously present the moon as being farther away from the earth than the sun. They take the position that the moon produces its own light, and that this light provides vital energies necessary to life on earth. The earth is said to be flat and triangular, structured in seven stories, each of which is inhabited and has its own ocean. Hindu sacred writings present the earth as resting on the backs of four elephants that stand on the back of a turtle swimming in a sea of milk. If there is a god behind these writings, he, she, or it didn’t know much about the cosmos.

Buddhist sacred writings are little different than those of the Hindus with respect to astronomy. Stars and planets are presented as either gods or vehicles of gods. They are referred to as "guardians." The earth in these writings is seen as flat with a mythical Mount Meru as the earth’s center. The sun in Buddhist writings is said to be made of crystal on the outside and gold in the center. The moon is said to be made of silver and jewels. Eclipses are explained as an evil being that occasionally swallows the sun and moon and gives them up only at the order of Buddha.

Chinese religious writings make many of the same errors, including worship of the earth and various heavenly bodies as gods.

The Koran, the major text of Islam, is somewhat unique in that it is the newest of these religious writings, having originated nearly 600 years after Christ. Mohammed had access to some of the Bible’s writings as well. Yet aside from the first five books of the Bible that Mohammed recognized, the Koran is far from free of errors when considered from the perspective of astronomy. The few statements it makes in this area are clearly false. It speaks of seven literal heavens in which all things are said to move. These heavens are solid and contain lamps (i.e., the stars) which are posted to keep demons from entering the heavens and tempting the inhabitants. Each of the heavens has a roof. The stars are spoken of as the guardians of the earth. The sun, wrote Mohammed, sets in a sea of black mud. All these things, plus a few more, are found in a book that claims that its god does not lead people into error.

Especially interesting to me is the fact that even extra-biblical Jewish writings (writings originating with the Jews outside the Bible) are also filled with such errors. Writings of some of the Talmudic rabbis, for instance, endorse astrology. People born on certain days of the week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.) are said to possess certain character traits. If one is born on the Sabbath, he will die on the Sabbath. Reference is made to seven heavens. The sun is said to go under the ground at night. The stars are believed to be merely tiny lights in the sky, the size of grains of mustard seed."

I mention these later Jewish writings to show you that not even the Jews themselves, when they wrote aside from the Bible, were free from error, indicating that if the Bible were written solely by human illumination, we should expect to find the same kinds of errors there. The question is, do we? That is what we’ll look at next.

What happens when we put the writings that we called The Bible to the same test of accuracy? What we might expect is that since it is the product of these same ancient times, it would be filled with the same kinds of error. Yet such errors are conspicuously absent.

The Bible does not limit the universe to a box or a domed plain with lamps nailed into a metal ceiling. It does not overstate the size of the earth, nor present the earth as flat. Stars are not referred to as gods. In fact, worshipping the heavenly bodies is soundly forbidden by the Bible. The heavenly bodies are explained to be just another part of the creation of a God far greater than any of them. Astrology, so widely embraced by other major cultures in ancient times, and even played around with among the Jews, is soundly discredited in the Bible. You just don’t find the errors in the Bible that you find in other ancient writings.

Ancient cultures were terrified of eclipses of the sun or moon. The Chaldeans (who worshipped the moon) explained a lunar eclipse as the moon deity showing displeasure by turning her bright side away from men. The Hindus and the Chinese thought an eclipse was the sun or moon being eaten by a demon. Some of the Confucian writings claimed that gathering together and beating drums would drive the demon away – and after all, it had to be true because every time they tried it, it worked! The sun came back.

Here is what the Biblical writer Jeremiah said of such things in Jeremiah 10:2-3:

I wonder how Jeremiah, going against all of the great minds of his time, knew that such things were a delusion.

Biblical writers did not impose limits in the size of the creation to what could be seen by the naked eye. In fact, they did just the opposite. In Genesis 22:17, Moses quotes God as saying to Abraham, "I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed [descendants] as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore…."

Jeremiah spoke of the same thing this way in Jeremiah 33:22:

Admittedly, this was not intended as a scientific statement. However, you’ll note that the comparison between stars and descendants is founded upon an assumption that we know to be true today – there are many more stars than we can see or count.

We find a number of "star catalogs" among ancient people, including the Greeks and Chinese, where they attempted to number all the stars. Claims were made that some had actually done so or would soon do so. As late as 1932 attempts to account for all the stars were still being carried out. Today, of course, with our huge radio telescopes, we’re still discovering whole galaxies of stars.

An interesting statement is made in Psalm 147:4 on this subject. It says,

He [God] counts the number of the stars;
He gives names to all of them.

Does this mean that there actually are a finite number of stars? It could. But if the number is limited, it is far greater than any of the ancients imagined, aside from the writers of the Bible.

You might recall that the Hindu writings contain reference to the moon producing its own light. You can understand why such ancient people would make a mistake like that. A big bright moon in the night sky, not touched by anything, with the sun nowhere to be seen, might lead anyone to make such a conclusion. Did the Bible make such an error? It did not. The Hebrew word used many times in the Old Testament for "sun" means literally, "the hot one." The word for moon means "the white one." This isn’t an earth shaking revelation to us living today, but certainly it is in full harmony with what we know to be true today, written in a time when it wasn’t possible to know much about the nature of these bodies.

In Job 38:7 we find God rebuking Job for his doubtful statements. In the midst of a very poetic passage He speaks of the time in which he made the earth. He says that the stars "sang together." The Hebrew word used for "sang" is ranan. According to Strong’s Lexicon it means "to emit a stridulous (i.e., shrill) sound."

Did you know that stars produce sounds? You didn’t? Well, have you ever turned on a radio and heard "static"? Radio engineer Karl Jansky first noted the origin of this radio static in 1932. Ten years later a man named Grote Raber sought to find out the source. As late as World War II scientists believed that radio static was the result of Nazi Saboteurs. The origin was finally discovered, however, and it turned out to be the sun, the star that is nearest to the earth. Was this mention of the stars emitting sounds just a coincidence or a reflection of the mind of a God who would know such things intimately?

The Bible accurately represents the stars as appearing small because of their great distances from earth. The writer of the book of Job remarks in Job 22:12,

"Is not God in the heights of heaven?
And see how lofty are the highest stars! (NIV)

Some stars are high, others are "highest," that is, farther away from the viewer. Put this up against some ancient writings that describe the stars as tiny sparks in the sky or holes in the vaulted dome ceiling that encircles the earth and you can see that it is a statement in stark contrast.

Two constellations of stars are referred to in Job 38:31:

Chains? Cords? We know today that constellations of stars are bound together with gravitational forces so strong that they have maintained their relation to one another for thousands of years. But there is more…

Some familiar arrangements of stars, take the Big Dipper for instance, while they may seem permanent, are actually not bound together at all. In fact, some stars that make up the Big Dipper are moving in one direction, and others are moving in another. They are not bound together and are thus, not a true star group – though they appear that way from earth. The Pleiades on the other hand constitute a true star group or constellation. All stars in the group are moving through space in the same direction at the same velocity.

How did Job know that?

In Genesis 1:14-17 we read,

These verses describe the sun, moon, and stars as placed in "the expanse of the heavens." The root for the Hebrew word translated "expanse" means "spread out" or "stretched out." Sun, moon, stars, placed in a spread out expanse - Today we refer to it as "space." That surely sounds different than the ideas of non-biblical writers that described these bodies as encased in some kind of box or dome, as pinholes in a roof, or sparks.

We understand today that the universe is not eternal. It is degenerating. This is not a theory. It is fact, born out in the first and second laws of thermodynamics. This can be stated many ways – the universe is running down, it is cooling off, it is slowing down, energy is being dissipated, progressing to what scientists call an ultimate "heat death."

The Greeks especially, believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging. After all, what they saw today was the same thing they saw yesterday and the day before and there was no way to measure to prove otherwise. In fact, even the famed Greek philosophers differentiated between the changing earth and what they thought was the eternal sky.

What did the Bible writers say?

Psalm 102:25-26 puts it this way:

The Apostle Paul, a man deeply involved in the Greek culture was not taken in by the views of the ancients around him. In Romans 8:21 he described the creation as being in the grip of "corruption." The Greek word he used meant "decay" or "ruin."

Jesus spoke of a time when "heaven and earth will pass away" in Matthew 5:18.

Ancient writers outside the Bible conceived the earth as resting on the backs of four elephants (Hindu) or on the back of a god named Atlas (Greek). What did the Bible writers say?

Job 26:7 says,

We know today that the earth is suspended in space by unseen forces of gravity.

What about the flat earth idea so prevalent in ancient times?

Proverbs 8:27, refers to wisdom being present at the creation of the earth.

When He established the heavens, I [wisdom] was there,
When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep….

Isaiah 40:22 says,

"He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth…." (NIV)

The Hebrew word Isaiah used for "circle" is "kug." It means just that: "circle." If the "face of the deep" (ocean) is inscribed with a circle, then what we have is a curved surface of the earth, which ultimately becomes a sphere.

In the New Testament in Luke 17:31-36 Jesus speaks of the event of His return in the Second Coming. There He says,

When Jesus returns some will be in the daylight hours, working in the field. Others will be in the nighttime hours, in bed. That could not be true if the earth were flat. In a flat earth, all would be in the day or all would be in the night.

We are out of time. I wish I could show you more. We’ll need to stop here for now.

What is the point of all this? The Bible was written in ancient times – times when what man understood of astronomy was primitive and superstitious. Evidence of this is universal. Yet somehow, the writers of the Bible, living in the midst of all this error, managed to get it right – not once, but many times. How can we account for this? I think was must acknowledge that the Bible is a very remarkable book – so remarkable that there are sound reasons to believe that those who wrote it were guided by a power greater than what was available to men in their day. That power, we believe, was the God described in the Bible – your Creator and mine – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Creator of all we see around us and the one who has every right to hold those He has created to account to Him on that day when we will be judged. Are you ready for that day?

Footnotes: Please use your back button to return to your place.

1. Kenny Barfield, Why the Bible is Number One, The World's Sacred Writings in the Light of Science, 1988, Baker Bookhouse, Grand Rapids, MI, 49516. I am indebted to Brother Barfield for compiling in his book most of the material I have used in this sermon. The book is currently out of print but might still be available in used bookstore outlets. I highly recommend it.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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