The Bible as Science: Four Corners of the Earth

People love to say the Bible can’t survive modern science. We push back hard on that claim and keep our “Bible as science” series moving with a simple question: how could an ancient book stay in step with discoveries that required microscopes, telescopes, and modern instruments to even see?

We start with the deeper reason Genesis draws so much fire. If creation is real, then the fall into sin is real, and that forces a personal reckoning with guilt, pride, and our need for God’s salvation. From there we tackle one of the most repeated objections, Isaiah’s “four corners of the earth,” and explain why everyday language and poetic phrases are not scientific blunders. Then we go to Isaiah 40:22 and the “circle of the earth” to show how Scripture can speak truth beyond the common beliefs of its time.

Next we zoom out to the modern world’s obsession with progress, from fast travel to instant global communication, and ask what really produces scientific discovery. If the ancients lacked the tools that make modern research possible, how did biblical writers record statements that line up with later findings? We end with Genesis examples that touch biology and oceanography, including the gathering of waters and the connected seas, and we call listeners back to confidence in God’s Word rather than fear of changing theories.

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Transcript

Welcome And Series Setup

0:07

Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Delant, Florida. Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs will bring the lost to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and enable the saved to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Savior. Now here's your host, Pastor James W. Knox. And a very pleasant good day to each and every one of you. I'm Brother James, and I greet you once again in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. And I welcome you to the preaching of the Cross, Radio Broadcast, the Ministry of the Bible Baptist Church of Deland, Florida. We're so very happy that you've tuned into the program today and believe that you will be as well. We continue on with our series on the Bible as science. The Bible as science. We're discussing the fact that the only truly accurate book in the world on science is the Word of God. Now that's been the subject of a great deal of debate and controversy down through the through the years, especially the last 150 years or so. But by the time we're all through, we will have settled all those arguments and all those controversies, and the the Word of God stands forever. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but God's word shall not pass away. So those of us that have the Bible, believe the Bible, stand on the Word of God. We're on the winning side. We don't have to worry about some new theory. We don't have to worry about some new finding of science, because we know that when all the dust is settled, when all the smoke is cleared, Jesus Christ will be on the throne, his word will be set before him, and those that put their faith and trust in his revelation shall be with him for all of eternity. Now we were finishing up last time, on the last broadcast, we were trying to get through a discussion that had run for several broadcasts on the harmony of science and the scriptures, and we want to finish that up on the program today. Just take a few minutes to do that, and then we're going to talk about the the consideration of what was known to the ancients as recorded in the Bible. And was it a testimony to their incredible wisdom, or is it proof that they received a revelation from God?

Creation, The Fall, And Pride

2:35

So let's finish up our talk about the harmony of science in the scriptures. We were discussing with you the fact that the Bible teaching of creation starts man as high as he can possibly be and portrays his fall into the lowest depths. We saw a completely opposite theory, that theory of evolution, that showed man beginning as low as he could possibly be, and then working and evolving upward until he became a man. Now I understand why educators and men who are filled with pride, the pride of the flesh, would reject the Genesis account of creation. It's got to be clear to you if you think this thing through that if the story of creation is true, the story of a fall into sin is equally true. And if we accept the fact of the fall into sin, then we've got to accept the certainty of our own guilt and iniquity. If this is accepted, in turn there remains no possibility of escape except that which is offered in the Scriptures. And this is why men reject the early chapters of the book of Genesis, because it shows them completely and totally lost and in need of God's salvation. Or as Pope John Paul II said in an interview with Omni Magazine, Genesis is a myth. Well, I don't believe that. I believe the Word of God. Now the single means of redemption from the effect of the fall is to humble ourselves before the cross of Calvary and to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. This is the one thing that the proud and stubborn hearts of self-satisfied men will not do. So in order to escape the necessity of the confession of sin and the humble plea for pardon in Jesus' name, they deny the foundational fact and seek to change the predication. But when the tumult and the shouting have died, and the captains of science and the kings of education have departed to their long and final place of torment, the world will come again to a truly scientific investigation of the evidences of the origin of man. And the Word of God will emerge triumphant in that hour because it has courageously opposed the false theories of a mistaken philosophy. Now,

Isaiah, Four Corners, And A Circle

4:53

giving you three reasons on the last broadcast to show that the Bible is in harmony with modern science, let me give you one more. That reason can be stated simply, the Bible is in harmony with modern science in that it has anticipated many of the discoveries of recent centuries. I remember some time ago a very excited and dogmatic person wrote and said that there was a ridiculous scientific error that Isaiah had made in his prophecy. This person said Isaiah had made the assertion that the earth was flat, whereas modern science has proved that it is round. Well, if you if you wrote back to the fellow, and this was done, you would find that the reference that he cited was Isaiah 11 and verse 12. Now, this is one of the familiar verses that all the infidels and rejectors of the Bible run to. This person triumphantly stated that if Isaiah said the earth had four corners, then he must have believed it was flat. Well, here's the question. He sa he asked, Would you trust yourself on board a ship whose captain believed that the earth had four corners? Well he he he sunk his argument when he put his cute little question at the end of it. Uh there's many a uh sea captain that uses this exact term. One man said he was uh traveling on a great ocean liner in the Pacific, been on a voyage of several thousand miles, and the captain uh was a friend of this uh particular passenger, and uh in the uh during the voyage he was able to go up and spend some time with him. And the captain, in the midst of a storm, was noticing the agitation of his friend, the passenger. And he said, Don't worry, this isn't a storm, this is just a good stiff breeze. Well, the passenger said, How can you be so sure of that? To which the sea captain said, I've been in the four corners of the earth, and I've seen a storm in every one of them, and this is only a strong blow. Now, it's amazing how when the Bible uses theological language, uses terms that are not common terms, such as propitiation and uh justification and reconciliation and and biblical terms. People say, well, you the Bible, you know, that's a a religious book with all those big words in it nobody can understand. And then when the Bible uses common language, uses the same phraseology that men use in their day-to-day speech, people say, well, you've got to throw out the Bible because it's not scientific. Not long ago I saw a brochure the U.S. government put out advertising the work of the U.S. Marine Corps. In the leaflet it said, The U.S. Marines are serving the flag today at the four corners of the earth. Now what do you think about that? You think the U.S. government believes the earth is flat? That has a marine with a flag standing on each one of its four corners? You know that's nonsense. The phrase the four corners of the earth is a poetic expression meaning exactly the same as the expression the four points of the compass. You gotta remember, Isaiah was speaking to men. He wasn't writing a science book for a bunch of eggheads. He was speaking to men couching God's words or presenting God's words in language that could be easily understood and comprehended by his hearers. If Isaiah had said the four corners of the earth, he would have had no more intent to define the shape of the earth than did the writer of the U.S. government staff that put out the marine brochure, and he would have meant it just exactly the same way as the sea captain meant it. Matter of fact, uh there are four corners of the earth north, south, east, and west, and when the landmass is put back together at the around the time of the second coming of Jesus Christ, to stand as it originally stood before the earthquake and the division of Pelag's day, Genesis chapter 10, uh it'll probably have four corners. Matter of fact, I'm sure of it if that's what Isaiah says. Now, every infidel knows, every infidel knows enough about the Bible to find some arguments. We don't worry about those things. The uh prophet did speak about the shape of the earth in Isaiah 40, verse 22. The prophet writes concerning the greatness and magnitude of God, and he says, Isaiah 40, verse 22, it is he that sitteth above the circle of the earth. Now, if you wanted to mess around with the Hebrew, you'd find out that uh this word that means roundness. If you uh wanted to go to the Swedish uh Bible and check their translation, you'd find out uh they render this run, R-U-M-D, which is their word for round. Of course, we know what a circle is, and so do you. Now there were doubtless those of Isaiah's generation who believed the earth to be flat. There have been some in every generation, even today there are those that hold to this idea. But the point I'm I'm trying to make is that when Isaiah wrote, he wasn't limited by the extent of his own learning. When the Spirit of God guided his pen, he wrote by inspiration, setting down for our learning things that men had not yet discovered in his day, he wrote of the earth being a circle, though that was certainly not the common belief of his time. Great many centuries went by, thousands of years, before men established the fact that the earth was round. But when by their search and study, their adventure and investigation, men learned this fact, all they were doing was catching up to what the Bible had said thousands of years before. By this unique and remarkable method of anticipating the scientific discoveries of the coming centuries, the Spirit of God kept the word of his truth in harmony with modern science before modern science ever showed up.

Modern Progress And Ancient Greatness

11:27

Now I think it would be folly for any intelligent human being to question the marvelous progress of our age. We're surrounded on every hand by indisputable evidences of the mechanical ingenuity of our generation. It's just uh remarkable how our culture is advanced, if you want to call it culture. With an engaging lack of false modesty, man named himself the genus Homo sapien. There's only one genus of man, and but one species. There are several varieties of Homo sapiens, and it seems as though if you desired to become slightly humorous, you could suggest that it was time to rename our modern variety of man. I don't think he would be denominated as sapient anymore, but anyway, we could classify this generation as the genus uh Homo Scientifacians. They all think they're scientists. They all criticize the Bible, say it doesn't match science. Now I realize if you're not scientific now, you're you just may as well not exist. Science is the big god. Perhaps the best way to get a picture of the cultural progress of our generation would be to contrast it with the culture of uh let's say the twentieth century BC. In almost every avenue and channel of living we've made wonderful progress. Case of transportation alone, we could surely prove our contention that we seemed to be far ahead of our primitive ancestors. Those ancient days when you were in a hurry to take a journey, the swiftest means of travel was the horse. If the horse didn't balk or run out of hay or decide to turn away from the path and go in his own sweet way, man could flee across the terrain at the astounding speed of fifty miles a day. In our day and age, you want to get somewhere in a hurry, you climb into a vehicle, which you've given the wings of a dove, and you cross continents and oceans. Speed of several hundred miles an hour flying through the air. So the genius of this generation, we could say, has conquered the realms of space. I think even more startling is the progress in the field of communication. You think of a time when some ancient businessman entered his innermost office cave and saluted his stenographer, said, uh, Miss Stonehatchet, take a letter. And two strong men would carry in a stone block, and the maiden would grab her chisel in one hand and her hammer in the other and take dictation. I'd like to have been a spectator. See the stenographer get angry at her boss and begin to throw carbon copies around the office. Slabs of stone, you know, but now in our generation, you dictate into a machine, and your office is connected to a machine and another part of the world, and as soon as the words come out of your mouth, uh there did you know something? You listen to my voice right now on this radio station, some of you may be, some of you may be, hundreds of miles from the station where this is broadcast. Do you realize if we were hooked up live to a live satellite broadcast as we've been able to do a time or two? Do you realize you could hear my voice halfway around the world before the people or faster than the people in the back of an auditorium can hear my voice? Now I don't understand all those things. Baffles my mind, this modern communication. I get phone calls sometime, France, Australia, different parts of the world. And I sit there and I marvel to think that that I can converse with those people as as rapidly as I could converse with you if you were sitting across the desk from me right now. I I to me, I I just think it's amazing. It it baffles my mind. How about in the reproduction of the written word? Automatic presses grinding out hundreds of thousands of words a minute, distributed over counties and states before the ink is hardly dry on the paper. Job was premature when he said, No doubt ye are the people in wisdom shall perish with you. We're almost convinced if Job had waited till our generation, he could have made his famous sarcastic fling, and it would have been received as solemn truth by us to whom it was later addressed. But when all this has been said and done, there is in the in the dim recesses of our conscience a monitor which seeks to call attention to what we are pleased to call lost arts. Men talk about perfection and architecture, their minds go back to the ancient Karnak or to the Coliseum, whose ruins astound the tourists even today. When men speak of sculpture, they breathe with awe the name of Phideus. In the realm of painting, voices hushed with reverence comment upon the work of the old masters. Some things we've made progress backwards. The chief sphere in which man must stand humbly before the mystery of antiquity is in the realm of literature. Almost two thousand years ago, the pen of the last writer of the great book, the Holy Bible, was laid aside. No word has been added to the Bible in the long succession of hurrying centuries. Yet the wisest men on the earth still go to this great book of vast antiquity for the highest inspiration that literature contains. One of the greatest wonders of the Scripture is the manner in which its writers have anticipated much of our modern scientific discovery. Now, you can't disregard this. If you're an honest inquirer and you're seeking to survey the problem of science in the scripture, you've got to address this problem. Remembering the

Machines, Microscopes, And Revelation

17:20

Bible was written multiplied centuries before our modern knowledge was gathered. It is inconceivable that human wisdom could have kept that book in harmony with our advancing discoveries. So, when in the laboratory of science we make some marvelous discovery in our generation, and then find that the writers of the Bible had incor incorporated our discovery into their ancient records, we we are on the horns of a dilemma. Now, either we have to decide that the ancients were in possession of our modern scientific knowledge, or that God revealed scientific truth to them. Well, let's consider the first possibility. Were they in possession of our modern scientific knowledge? First, our body of knowledge and wisdom, slowly accumulating by painstaking accretion over hundreds of years, is indeed far in advance of that possessed in those dim dark years when the Bible was being written. Undoubtedly the heritage of recent years, upon which we've built our modern structure of superlearning, has come by painstaking investigation, all of which has been demonstrated by experimentation. We can't forget also that, as Ayers has so truthfully pointed out, and I quote, modern scientific discovery is the result of a machine technology. By that Ayers is meant to convey that a picture, uh, not only of the technique but of the equipment of modern research and study. What's the great advance in biology? Well, you might say it was the discovery of the apparatus uh golgi that uh fluctuates in the cytoplasm of the spell. In that case, you would be wrong. The great discovery in biology is the invention of the supermicroscope that makes apparatus golgi visible to the human eye. When we have the instrument at our command, it's inevitable we shall discover the things made visible by that instrument. The great advance in physics is not the isolation of the atom, but is rather the invention of such instruments of research as the spectroscope and the super X-ray microscope, which make the atom ponderable to the human understanding. When men have the telescope, it's only logical that the solar system shall consequently dawn upon their vision and understanding. Men could not know of the existence of the infinitely microscopic bacteria before the microscope revealed them to human vision. Since our modern advancement is dependent upon instruments of precision that were totally unknown to the ancients, it follows that by wisdom and understanding alone, these men of old could not have possessed our current body of knowledge. Therefore, if these men in antiquity did write in one book things that we are learning today with our new machines of investigation, the only other explanation is that an intelligence higher than human directed their writings, and their material was derived by revelation. So then, the greatest argument for the inspiration of the Bible, and the surest proof of its harmony with science, would be to find in the pages of this ancient book instances wherein the writers anticipated the discoveries of modern science. It is possible for the careful student of science and the Bible to discover literally scores of such cases.

Genesis Order Of Life And Seas

20:44

Where do you want to start? Well, why not the first chapter of Genesis? Here Moses divided the workdays of God into six periods of time, consummating with the creation of man. The modern science of biology places vegetation at the bottom of the scale of life, coming up through the water-dwelling creatures to the lower forms of the Metazoa, which dwell upon the land, the advancing scale of life climaxes with man. This arrangement of vital life and ascending orders demanded by the science of biology meets the acquiescence of Moses, who has placed the orders of creation in the exact systematic advancement that biologists contend for today. The only difference between Moses and biology is that biologists contend for a superhatching process by which one order evolved from the other, while Moses contends for the more scientific explanation of specific creation of each order in turn. You know, it's somewhat surprising to note that on the third of those creative days, in dealing with physical geography, Moses makes this simple statement. And God said, Let all the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. That that word there, if you wanted to fool around with the Hebrew, which you don't need to, is uh makeom, and it it's uh one bed. The statement of Moses is that in this act of creation, God gathered all the oceans together into one bed. So you know what they call it? That floor of the sea, they call it the ocean's bed at the bottom. And I want to suggest to you that his globe of the earth, if you you take the globe of the earth and trace your finger from point to point, journeying from sea to sea, you'll find that Moses was literally and scientifically accurate in this simple statement. All the waters out of the heaven were gathered together in one place. That landmass, though it's been divided, the waters are still all uh connected. There's no break in them. Now, Moses was careful to keep the ocean separated, in that he put them in the plural in the statement. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together the waters called he seas. Now, in the day when Moses walked the earth, the one sea that was known to man was the Mediterranean. Perhaps some small regions of the nearby Atlantic. When the seven seas were discovered and became known to men, it was not long before all of their magnitude had been explored by the eager interest of humanity. Whereupon we find that Moses had apparently sailed their uncharted bosoms before our ships of discovery and search were built and launched. We know now that the oceanography of Moses was accurate, in that the seven seas do occupy one bed. But how did Moses know this? Had he discovered this fact by human wisdom and research? Now you can say that's just a coincidence, but you might want to look again. If you'll take a careful look, an honest look at the Word of God, you will realize that this is just one, and we're going to give you many, many more cases, many, many more examples. This is one case in point, where the Bible is proved to be scientifically accurate and revealing a scientific truth that was not known and not established until centuries after the completion and the writing of the Word of God.

Stand On Scripture And Closing

24:22

Truly, the Holy Bible stands every test that the critics raise, every objection the critics raise to it, and comes out the winner every time. So if you stand with the Word of God, stand on the Word of God, put your faith and trust in the Word of God, you'll be the winner. You don't have to worry about science falsely so-called overthrowing your faith. The Holy Bible overthrow your faith in science before science will ever overthrow your faith in the Word of God if you get to know the Word of God. Now, that's why you need to be in the right kind of church, a church where the Bible is taught. I like preaching. I enjoy it, and I like to hear men stir me up and get me excited. But it takes more than that to live the Christian life. You've got to be taught the truth. Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of in-depth expository Bible teaching, please visit our YouTube channel, James W. Knox Sermons, our sermon audio page, Bible Baptist Land, or our website, Bible Baptistland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.