Biology, archaeology, anthropology, every time the Bible touches on these things, it is absolutely accurate. Friends, there is only one way this truth could have been known, and that is the God who made the world revealed it. Is the Bible believable? My friends, science has never yet refuted the Scripture, but rather confirmed it. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. A few years back, an article in the Washington Post drew attention to activists who want some parts of biblical creation taught in public schools. Scientists and teachers opposed the idea because they said creation is based on theology, not science. As one educator said, anyone who criticizes evolution is, quote, trying to undercut sound science education. Well, the question you need to consider is this, what is sound science? And does science really disagree with what the Bible says? John MacArthur answers those questions today as he continues his study titled, Is the Bible Reliable?
And now with today's lesson, here's John MacArthur. Now, the Bible says that the body of the solar systems didn't even begin to replace the old ideas until the 17th century or so. Do you remember the old idea that the earth was a flat disk like a record? It was a flat thing and it was surrounded by the world river called Oceanus. And they used to say that if you're dumb enough to sail through the gates of Pericles, which is the Rock of Jibrada, you'll fall off into nothingness.
And then some people sailed around the Cape of Good Hope on South Africa and all the way up the coast of Africa and that theory was on shaky ground. Well, you know, that idea of a flat disc-shaped earth just sitting there and the whole solar system, stellar heavens going around and around and around while this flat disc just watched it go, that particular view lasted a long time. In the Ptolemaic view, which of course was the famous view until the Copernican theory came along, the Ptolemaic view was that the Greek philosopher said that the earth is a flat thing and it's in a hollow globe. It's like the inside of a big bubble, a big ball.
Of course, they never got into the question of what's outside the bubble, which is a tough question. But anyway, they had this hollow globe and the stars were stuck in the inside of the globe like little jewels. And the globe just kept going around and the flat earth just watched it go around.
That was the whole ball game right there. The sky was supported, you see, because it was a stick, big one, that was stuck clear through the big ball sky and right through the little flat disc earth. And the whole sky was able to revolve on the stick.
Boy, don't think about that too long. But believe me, that was popular till 1472 to 1543 when Copernicus lived. He came along and presented the fact that the earth was in motion, they thought it was out of his mind. Then came men like Brahe, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo in the 17th century and they really gave birth to modern astronomy. The most amazing fact of modern astronomy is the essentially infinite size and variety of the physical universe.
The thing that they discovered was that there's no end to it, that it isn't a little ball with a bunch of things stuck on the inside of it, that it is endless. This is the staggering thing about modern astronomy. Well you know Isaiah 55, 9 said that? You know Job 22, 12, the oldest book in the Bible, Job says, is not God in the height of heaven? Look also to the distant stars how high they are.
The recognition that it's far off. Jeremiah made such illusions himself for the fact that the solar system was a vast and distant thing in Jeremiah, let's see, I think it's 31, 37, thus saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured and the foundation of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord. Oh, I like that verse for two reasons. It tells me that heaven can't be measured, it also tells me that Israel can't be cast off.
When somebody comes along and says, you know, I'm not too sure about Israel, I believe in sort of a covenant position and I think Israel's been set aside permanently. I say, oh really? Well then tell me how big the heavens are. Because the day you measure the heavens is the day God sets aside Israel.
Oh really? That's what it says. Jeremiah 33, 22, interesting to deal with that. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand or the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant. And again, you have the idea that there's no way to number the stars, there's no way. It's vast, it's innumerable. But you know, before the telescope was invented in the 17th century, Hippartus said there are 1,022 stars, final. Ptolemy said, you're wrong, there are 1,056. Today our scientists tell us there are over 100 billion in our galaxy. Imagine how many billion galaxies are there.
The Bible knew all that. You can't measure them. They're innumerable. They're more innumerable than the sands of the sea. Imagine how many sands you could gather from all the seas of all the globe and you don't have the number of how many stars there are.
There's a long way out there. Can't be measured. Can't be measured.
The Bible said it couldn't be measured, couldn't be counted. And you know, science has recently discovered that stars are all different too. There are tremendous varieties of them, that they're not all the same. The early scientists believed they were all the same thing. Whatever they were, it was just the same thing.
They found today that there are infinite numbers of varieties and sizes and scientists are busy today cataloging these sizes and varieties. You realize 1 Corinthians 15, 41 said that? 1 Corinthians 15, 41 says there's one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars.
Listen to this. For star differs from star. Now all the Bible had to do was one time say all stars are the same and you could throw it away. Right? It would have been wrong.
It doesn't say that. God makes a mistake. See God knows as much about stars as He does about salvation, yeah? Another thing that's interesting is orbits. Always fascinating. Remember when I was a little kid in class? The teacher had some big ball with a bunch of little balls going around it, you know.
Boy, you used to think that's amazing stuff. And then when you start to realize that everything is in orbit around something and everything is in orbit in the whole universe and the whole thing is going around in a mad, panicky thing, it's staggering, everything in the universe is going somewhere, amazing. Science has charted that these orbits are so absolute that they can predict them to the very hour. Do you know that? They can predict an eclipse, can't they, to the very hour.
You know why they can do that? Because the orbits of those planets are absolutely constant. Science was staggered when it realized this. Not shouldn't be, Jeremiah 31, 35 and 36, thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and stars for light by night. Listen, if this fixed order departs from me, then the offspring of Israel shall cease from being a nation before me. The fixed order of the stars, and God says it won't change. I'm telling you, folks, you can measure that stuff because God is upholding all of those things at an absolutely perfect pace so that they can be charted mathematically, staggering. It's all there in Jeremiah. They should have known there was a fixed orbit for everything. You say, did Jeremiah understand what he was saying?
Of course he didn't know all that he was saying. But boy, what a vindication of Scripture. Hmm, it's an interesting one.
Just comes to mind. Psalm 19, 6, a scientist used to have kind of a little fun with this one, laughing. It's talking about the sun. Regarding the sun, it says in verse 6, his going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it. There's nothing hidden from the heat thereof. The old view, of course, the old false view was that the sun revolved around the earth.
Remember that? That was the old view, the sun was going around the earth. And they say, see, look at this Bible statement. His going forth from the end of heaven, the circuit to the ends of it, nothing...they've got the sun going in a circuit around the globe. And they used to laugh, ha ha, isn't it funny, the sun's going around the earth. But the psalmist's word took on some new meaning because you know what science has discovered in recent years? They have discovered that the sun, watch this, with our entire solar system actually does move through space in orbit. It says there that its going forth is from one end of heaven to the other. Science has calculated that our entire solar system dragged along by the sun is going at 72,000 miles an hour in a gigantic orbit that takes two million centuries to complete.
Folks, we are moving from one end of heaven to the other at 72,000 miles an hour, as well as spinning on the way and rotating around the sun. You know, not many years ago scientists believed that the moon was a great luminous body. They actually taught that the moon was a luminous body. Years ago, Job said in Job 25, 5, look to the moon, it shineth not.
Years ago, Job knew the moon wasn't a luminous body. So you see, the Bible is right in its general principles. It's right in its astronomy. It's right in its hydrology. Let me give you another one, geology. When the Bible talks about scientific things regarding geology, incidentally geology is the science of the earth, and I could talk a lot about this, there's all different kinds of things, geophysics, geochemistry and everything else, but just to pinpoint a couple of things. I got an interesting study, I was reading Encyclopedia Britannica, I got into the study of something called isostasy. And this is the study of the balance of the earth.
And this whole study really never came into full understanding until 1959. But it deals with the fact that the earth is perfectly balanced, that there is equal weight to support land mass and mountains and valleys and water, that the whole thing is perfectly balanced, that its equilibrium is astounding. And they came up with this as the foundation of geophysics.
You know that the water in the oceans exerts a pressure against the shore that keeps the mountains up. It's a staggering thing. And the earth has different weights of rocks at different places to balance it out. It's amazing.
Listen. What's amazing? Isaiah 40 verse 12, Behold the Lord God who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, marked off the heavens with the span...that's half a cubit...and listen, calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills with a pair of scales. Now listen to Psalm 104, He established the earth on its foundation so that it will not totter.
Isn't that fantastic? He established the earth on its foundation so it will not totter. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which thou didst establish for them. God said in the Old Testament that I've made the earth so that it's balanced. I'm telling you, folks, the Bible doesn't make mistakes scientifically. There's no contradiction between science and the Bible.
The same God who wrote the Bible is the God who made the world and all the worlds in the universe. Geology has a sub-science called geodesy. And this is the study of the shape of the earth. And it is clear that the earth is spherical, that it is basically round. The ancients taught that it was...what?...flat.
They said, as I told you, if you sail far enough, you'll plunk off into nothingness. That was really dumb because Isaiah told them what it was. Isaiah 40, 22, I just love it. It says, it is He that sits on the circle of the earth.
Can you believe it? Chug, c-h-u-g translated as a Hebrew word, means sphere. And Job 38, the oldest book in verse 14 says, the earth is turned as clay to the seal.
What does that mean? It refers to small clay cylinders. The ancients used to write while they were still soft, they ran a stick through them and they would roll them across the impression like that. Job said it rotates on an axis. Isaiah said it's a sphere.
He thought it was flat. You take, for example, gravity, dealing again with geology. Take gravity. It wasn't until Newton in the 17th century that the gravitational laws were really finalized. And Job said in Job 26, 7, He hangeth the earth on nothing. There's gravity.
Well, there are other things we could talk about. But you see that generally in the area of specifics like hydrology and astronomy and geology, the Bible is accurate, let me give you another thought, meteorology. This is amazing. The basic principle of meteorology is the circulation of the atmosphere. Galileo discovered in the 17th century that wind had circuits. He discovered that winds go in a circuitous pattern.
If you'd have read Ecclesiastes 1.6, you'd have read this, the wind goes toward the south, turns about to the north, whirls about continually and the wind returns again according to its circuits. You see, the Bible knew what it took meteorologists a long time to find out. Do you realize that before Galileo, no scientist ever knew that air had weight? That wasn't until Galileo that it was determined that air had weight. Job 28.25 says he imparted weight to the air.
Again accuracy. Let me give you one other thought, physiology. And you could really go on and on about this, but just take the science of physiology. The Bible is so accurate on that, it wasn't until William Harvey, 1628, discovered the circulatory system as the key to life that men really understood that blood was recognized as the thing that kept you alive. Before that, whenever you got sick, it took your blood out.
Remember? They bleed you. Now when somebody gets sick, we give them blood. We know that makes for life.
It took until 1628 for William Harvey to get it straight. Leviticus 17.11 says the life of the flesh is in the blood. You say, oh, that's a spiritual saying. You're right. It's a sacrificial saying. You're right. It's also scientifically correct, isn't it?
The Bible doesn't make mistakes. In 1953, a medical book came out entitled, Personality Manifestations in Psychosomatic Illness. It really became an important book and today we know a lot about psychosomatic illness and this book discussed how emotions can cause debilitating and even fatal illness. And the book had diagrams in it of the emotional center of the brain from which nerve fibers descend to every area of the body. And because of these intricate connections with that emotional center of the brain sending out all those nervous impulses through that system, it is understandable that any emotional trauma, any emotional stress, any turmoil in that emotional center can send out impulses through the fibers of the nerve system could cause anything from headaches to foot itch and on into serious things.
The book recorded and it's, of course, a recognized accurate book that the emotional center produces illness in three ways. Number one, changes the amount of blood flow. And you can get a good illustration of it by somebody who gets mad, automatically the blood rushes to his face in many cases and he gets red.
Or he gets embarrassed and he gets red. Emotional stress can increase the amount or decrease the amount of blood flow and consequently cause disease. Emotional stress at the center of the nervous system can affect secretions of certain glands.
Have you ever been very nervous before you were to give a speech and have your mouth dry up? The very emotional thing that's going on in your brain sends certain impulses through your nervous system that dries up the glands that provide the fluid in your mouth. Now what happens is, for example, when you get an excess pressure on the emotional stress, for example, excess thyroxine is produced by emotion, it is poured into the bloodstream, it produces goiter and even fatal heart disease. All is a matter of emotion. Not only that, the third way that emotion changes the physical health is by creating muscle tension.
The nerves affect the muscles and the muscles tighten up and become tense. You say, well, that's nice that they discovered all that, what does it have to do with what you're talking about? Well, as you know, the Bible anticipated all of that. The Bible knew that your emotions were very, very important in terms of your health. Listen to Proverbs 16, 24, pleasant words are like a honeycomb.
Now listen, beautiful, sweet to the soul, are you ready? Health to the bones. You see, God knew that emotional stress, that anger, that criticism, that whatever it is that were the sour words could affect physical health and that's right there. There's no way those people could have clinically discovered that.
God revealed it. Proverbs 17, 22, a merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a broken spirit dries the bones. Yeah a happy person is a healthy person, right? An unhappy one is an unhealthy one. I'll tell you, let me add something just in conclusion. The little book that McMillan has written called None of These Diseases had some interesting things.
I'm just going to read you a thought or two here, listen. For many hundreds of years the dreaded disease leprosy had killed countless millions of people in Europe. The extent of the horrible malady among Europeans is given by Dr. George Rosen, Columbia University Professor of Public Health. Quote, Leprosy cast the greatest blight that threw its shadow on the daily life of medieval humanity, fear of all other diseases taken together can hardly be compared to the terror spread by leprosy. Not even the black death in the fourteenth century or the appearance of syphilis toward the end of the fifteenth century produced a similar state of fright. Early in the Middle Ages during the sixth and seventh centuries it began to spread more widely in Europe, became a serious social and health problem. It was endemic, particularly among the poor and reached a terrifying peak in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. What did the physicians offer to stop the ever increasing ravages of leprosy? Some taught that it was brought on by eating hot food, pepper, garlic, and the meat of diseased hogs. Other physicians said it was caused by malign conjunction of the planets.
Naturally, their suggestions for prevention were utterly worthless. Another plague that made the Dark Ages really dark was the black death. In the fourteenth century alone, this killer took the lives of one out of every four persons, an estimated total of 60 million. It was the greatest disaster ever recorded in human history. Sweeping everything before it, this plague brought panic and confusion in its train. The dead were hurled bell-mell into huge pits, hastily dug for the purpose, and putrefying bodies lay about everywhere in the houses and streets. The sexton and the physician were cast into the same deep and wide grave. The testator and his heirs and executors were hurled into the same cart, into the same hole together. What brought the major plagues of the Dark Ages under control?
George Rosen gives the answer. Leadership was taken by the church as the physicians had nothing to offer. The church took as its guiding principle the concept of contagion as embodied in the Old Testament. This idea and its practical consequences are defined as great clarity in the book of Leviticus. Once the condition of leprosy had been established, the patient was segregated and excluded from the community. Following the precepts laid down in Leviticus, the church undertook the task of combating leprosy and accomplished the great feat in methodical eradication of disease. The procedure came from Leviticus 13, 46, quote, all the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he shall be defiled, he is unclean, he shall dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be. Other historians credit the Bible for the dawning of a new era in the effective control of disease. The laws against leprosy in Leviticus 13 may regard it as the first model of a sanitary legislation.
That's a quote from Arturo Castiglioni who has written The History of Medicine. You see, the Bible knew the solution to those problems. There are other problems physiologically that the Bible solves. If you were to read that little book, None of These Diseases, you can read more and more of them.
We could add biology, archeology, anthropology, etc. And again, we would find that every time the Bible touches on these things, it is absolutely accurate. Friends, there is only one way this truth could have been known and that is the God who made the world, revealed it. Is the Bible believable?
My friends, science tells me that it is. Science has never yet refuted the Scripture, but rather confirmed it. In the final analysis, I submit the truth is one and Jesus said this, thy word is truth.
It's true on any subject it ever touches. And lies the product of its inspiration. Our Father, we are thankful for just the joy and the privilege of being able to share and just have our hearts lifted to a new and a fresh confidence in your word. Oh Father, how grateful we are for the fact that the more science discovers fact, the more that it charts the present processes, the more the word of God is vindicated. This book is your truth. God give us a fresh new confidence, a fresh new boldness to stand for the book. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen.
You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today's lesson is from John's current study titled, Is the Bible Reliable? Well, with respect to the Bible and science, or more specifically, with respect to the debate between divine creation and evolutionary theory, there's been so much written from both sides of the argument, John, what sorts of missteps have Christians made in terms of how we have traditionally argued our side?
Would you say there's been a common error that we need to avoid? Well, there is a common error that some Christians have fallen into, and that is to defer to science to the point that they disbelieve the Genesis account. And there are many Christian people who do that.
There are people who call themselves theistic evolutionists or progressive creationists. That is to say, they want to believe that God is the creator, they want to believe the Bible, but they just don't believe the book of Genesis and the straightforward six-day creation account because they think science trumps the Bible. They think that this can't be true, it must be an allegory or it must be a sort of a mystical tale rather than actual history. And I want to remind those people that the Bible only does theology one way. I'll say that again, the Bible only does theology one way, and that is from history.
From history. The Bible doesn't do theology from mysticism, from intuition, the Bible doesn't do theology from any kind of esoteric experience. The Bible does theology from history, and the theology related to God and creation is from the history in Genesis. So it is wrong for Christians to set the Bible aside for the sake of science. Nothing in the world contradicts the biblical account.
That's pseudoscience. I've written a book called The Battle for the Beginning. It answers all your questions about the foundations of believing in the Genesis account of creation. Full length, soft cover book, great reference tool for strengthening your trust in the inerrancy and sufficiency and accuracy of the Word of God. We'd love to get one in your hands, The Battle for the Beginning, free shipping on U.S. orders.
Thanks, Jon. And, friend, when the people you know ask you questions about creation and evolution and the reliability of Scripture, what will you say? The Battle for the Beginning can help. Pick up a copy when you get in touch today. This book is available for $11, and shipping is free. To order The Battle for the Beginning, call 800-55-GRACE or visit gty.org. This book shows you why your beliefs about the biblical account of origins shapes your entire worldview.
Such an important topic. Again, to order The Battle for the Beginning, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. And thanks also for remembering that we are listener supported. Every day this broadcast is heard on radio stations across the country and beyond because of the support of listeners like you, encouraging individual believers and local church pastors and entire communities with the Word of God. To partner with us in this far-reaching ministry, mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace2U, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412, or you can also donate online at gty.org or donate when you call us at 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur and our staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Be here tomorrow as John shows you another reason you can be sure the Bible is reliable and how that truth can bring you hope in any circumstance. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace2U.
