Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
On today's show, we'll be joined by Dr. Jim Johnson, Associate Professor of Apologetics with the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Dr. Johnson. What does Scripture say about the sun and the moon?
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars, which you have ordained. What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? David said in Psalm 8. Genesis I begins our information about the heavens. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.
Let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light, that would be the sun, to rule the day, and the lesser light, that would be the moon, to rule the night. He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light over the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good.
That's Genesis 1 14 through 18. We see in Psalm 147, verse 4, that God tells the number of the stars. He calls them all by their names. But how many stars are there? There are more stars than we can possibly imagine.
By current estimates there are ten to the twenty second stars now known. To name them all if we name them one per second would take three hundred trillion years. and yet God made two great lights, the sun and the moon, to rule. But how do they rule?
Well, first, recall that ruling is not the same thing as giving advice or giving suggestions. To rule something involves providing force, limiting the behavior of someone or something else by the use of force. You might think of this in comparison to a speed limiting device that is put on some trucks so that the truck drivers don't drive too fast. We call those speed limiting governors.
Now the gadgets on the engines are not humans who make decisions, although they are governing the behavior of the truck. But actually a very intelligent inventor devised the speed limiting governor to be used on the truck engine to put limits. to force physical limits on how fast the truck can go. And God has done that with the sun and he's done that with the moon. He has provided physical traits to the sun and how it operates and the same to the moon which control activities on earth.
For instance, the sun governs the sunlight that we need. By controlling sunlight needed by plants, the sun is indirectly controlling the animals who are depending upon plants for life. Yeah. And of course, the plants, the green plants, have chlorophyll that use the sunlight and Powered by that sunlight, combine carbon dioxide and water to make oxygen and carbohydrates, which, of course, the plants use for energy, as well as animals that eat plants use for energy, as well as animals that eat animals. That eat plants for energy, and that would include basically everything in the food web, humans included in that.
So, God is wonderfully employing the sun, which powers photosynthesis, to give us the energy foundation for all the world's food that's needed by all humans, and animals, and plants. And God is wonderfully employing the sun, which powers the photosynthesis, to produce breathable oxygen, continually released as land plants and algae consume the CO2. We breathe in the oxygen and the plants breathe out the oxygen. It all works together because it was designed to fit. But God also made the moon to rule.
But how does the moon rule? What about periodic ocean tides? Because the moon is the primary body in the heavens that is responsible for the ocean tides on earth. Like a speed limiting governor on a truck, the Moon regulates tide waters. Oysters, which are stationary, they need their food to come to them, and the tide waters do that.
Instead of meals on wheels, they have meals on tide water. And if the food doesn't come to them, they would starve. We would have no oysters. But it's not just oysters, it's many, many things in the animal kingdom that rely on the tide, such as even red crabs. For their reproductive cycle, red crab mothers release their fertilized eggs into the sea at the turn.
of the strongest high tide, which are based on the phases of the moon. These hatch on contact with seawater, live at sea as larvae for about four weeks, and then return as baby land crabs. In the next segment, we will think about a controversy involving the sun, the earth, and the moon. We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.
Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures. Seeing their fossils inspires a sense of awe and wonder that sparks the imagination. We're learning more about them all the time, but many questions still remain: Are dinosaurs really millions of years old? Did they live at the same time as humans? How do they fit with the Bible?
And why are they extinct today? The Institute for Creation Research addresses these questions and more in their full color and easy-to-read book, Guide to Dinosaurs. Guide to Dinosaurs delves into the history of dinosaurs, fossil discoveries, dinosaur kinds, and what the Bible has to say about these mysterious creatures. It serves as a helpful resource for parents and kids alike. Order your copy of Guide to Dinosaurs from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org.
That's 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. Welcome back. Here's Dr. Johnson. Ecclesiastes 1.5 says, The sun also arises, and the sun goes down, and hastes to its place where it arose.
In other words, there is a cycle. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. We're all used to that. and yet that has provided a controversy to some who had great questions about the movements of the sun, and of the earth, and for that matter of other parts of the heavens. Certainly the heavens are orderly.
that much every one can know. In fact, Romans one twenty says For the invisible things of Him, talking about God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen. We don't have to use our brains very vigorously in order to see the orderliness that God has put into his universe. The invisible things of God are understood by the things that are made. That would include the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth.
Even gods. eternal power and deity. are displayed in that way. As a result, anyone who denies God's Creatorship and His glory does so without excuse, says the Apostle Paul.
Well, there was a controversy about the movements of the sun and the earth, and this involved Galileo. Galileo Used his telescope. and looked up into the night sky, and looked at the moon, and looked at the stars, and noticed the mathematical patterns, and concluded that the earth goes around the sun. But many in Galileo's lifetime thought the opposite was true, that the earth was stationary, and that it was the sun who went around the earth, and that would match the verse we just thought about, Ecclesiastes one five. But there are other verses that talk about the motions of the sun and the earth.
Psalm ninety three one was one of those. And those who criticized Galileo used Psalm 93.1 to do that. Which says, The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty, the Lord is clothed with strength. Whereby he has girded himself, the world also is established that it cannot be moved. And the word that is translated moved there is not a word that means absolute motionlessness, and during the controversy with Galileo it would have been good if those involved had been more careful in doing their Hebrew homework.
The word that is translated moved. is related to the word for yoke. And the idea is not motionlessness, but rather whether movement is pulled off course or not. If you can picture yoked animals plowing a field, they have a particular course that they're supposed to stay on in order that the field has a straight line. But if for some reason the animals were pulled off course, then that would not be a straight line.
There are other times when related Hebrew words are used to describe celebrating festivals and even dancing.
So when we put all this together, what do we get? What we see is that scripture is suggesting that the earth travels in a choreographed dance.
Now I can appreciate that. Once I tried out for a folk dance club and after a few practices I was told that I would be better off standing on the sidelines with a camera taking pictures of those who knew how to dance and could do so without hurting the person next to them.
So I can appreciate choreography. It's very precise. There's a lot of math and geometry that's involved. And God has instituted that into all the moving bodies, including the sun and the moon and the earth, as well as all of the many stars. And Isaiah 40, 22 indicates that there is a circuit That the earth is on.
And there are other passages that indicate the same thing.
So, when you think of the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars and the earth itself, think of a celebratory choreography. Think of a celebration in the skies. illustrating just how Precise God is in programming these heavenly bodies. The Bible teaches that God made the cosmos in an orderly way, so the created cosmos. is not chaotic, it is not produced by any kind of accidents, such as some kind of imaginary Big Bang.
The Big Bang fable that the sun and the moon are explosion by products is basically a lie, what I Timothy six twenty calls science falsely so called. Because God created and formed the heavens, and did so very cleverly, He owns them and they glorify him. Real knowledge about the cosmos and especially its origins can only be learned by starting with God's Word. If we are serious about learning the truth about the cosmos, we will study the cosmos carefully and with an open Bible. And the hugeness of the heavens is a reminder of how valuable we are to God because He chose to give us, as small as we are compared to the heavens, the amazing value of having life as creatures made in His own image and having those lives presented with the wonderful redemption offer of Christ as our personal Savior.
So we can thank God for the Sun and the Moon. As Psalm 136 says, Give thanks to the Lord who made the great lights, Sun, Moon, and Stars. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org. For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account.
Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences. Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you. All of this and more at icr.org. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe to Science, Scripture, and Salvation on iTunes. Also, do us a favor and rate and review the show so that more listeners can find us.
Thanks for listening and God bless.
