The Bible as Science: Unanswered Questions

Science gets invoked like a trump card in conversations about faith, but what happens when the Bible itself raises scientific questions that still humble the modern mind? We take you to Job 38, where God confronts human pride with simple, piercing challenges: Have you ever commanded the morning to come on time, or made the dawn “know its place”? If you have ever stared at the ceiling at 2 a.m. wishing the night would end, you already understand the force of that question.

From there we follow the text into the sky and out into space, looking at the order behind timekeeping and the staggering precision that our clocks only imitate. Then we pause over a vivid ancient image, “the earth is turned as clay to the seal,” and talk about why that language sounds a lot like Earth’s rotation in sunlight. The goal is not to worship human cleverness, but to put our knowledge in its proper place and let Scripture speak with the weight it claims.

Next we drop into the deep ocean and the mystery of “the springs of the sea.” Even with submersibles, pressure suits, and modern marine research, the seafloor still defeats our tools and keeps secrets locked under crushing pressure. We also challenge a comfortable assumption: mechanical progress and modern convenience do not automatically make us spiritually wiser or morally better. Finally, we explore “the treasures of the snow and the hail,” connecting the passage to real agricultural value through nitrogen compounds that enrich the soil.

If you care about the Bible and science, Christian apologetics, or just want a serious answer to the claim that “science disproved Scripture,” this message will give you plenty to think about. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves big questions, and leave a review with your take: which question from Job 38 exposes human limits the most?

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Style Does Not Matter

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Welcome to the Preaching the Cross Radio Podcast, featuring the radio ministry of Pastor James W. Knox of the Bible Baptist Church of Deland, 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. All right, a very pleasant good day to each and every one of you. I'm Brother James, and I greet you 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 once again to the Preaching of the Cross radio broadcast. Everybody's got a different style, everybody's got a different approach, everybody's got a different way of preaching and teaching and presenting a radio broadcast. So just tune in, listen carefully. It doesn't matter if Brother James doesn't sound like your favorite preacher, doesn't matter if we don't have the pretty orchestra music and a few songs and things to introduce the message. Doesn't matter about the tone of voice being uh something you're not accustomed to. Just listen carefully, and God will bless you. God will speak to your heart as you enjoy this radio program today. Uh truth is truth. And it is the duty and responsibility of God's minister to proclaim the truth. Not in a certain tone of voice, not in a certain style, uh, not in a certain uh systematic way that may appeal to you more than some other way. It is God's uh man's, uh the man of God, it's his duty, it's his responsibility to declare the truth. If you're a child of God, if you belong to him, it is your duty and responsibility to hear that truth and receive it and respond to it. If you're lost, if you didn't trespasses and sins, uh you should be thankful that someone, someone, has come across your path to tell you the truth, whether you like them or not, whether you enjoy what they have to say or not, whether you appreciate the way in which it's said or not, you should be thankful to God that He sent someone your way to tell you the

The Bible As Science Series

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truth. Now, this is the preaching of the Cross radio broadcast. We are studying at present the Bible as science. And one of the greatest arguments raised by uh by scoffers and skeptics and critics of the Word of God in our day and age is that the Bible is not scientific and that modern science has disproved the Bible. We have already spent ten full radio broadcasts showing that modern science is a joke, and that there isn't any way in this world that you could reject the Bible on the basis of modern science unless you were just as ignorant as the scientists and college professors that do so. Now we are discussing at present in our series the fact that uh the Bible asks scientific questions in a book written about 4,500 years ago, the book of Job, that cannot be answered to this very day by the greatest scientists on the face of the earth or all of their combined knowledge. We have discussed the the presence of man's eternal soul at the time of creation. Where was it? You don't know. We have discussed the boundaries of the oceans and the seas, and who sets those boundaries and maintains them, and you don't know. Let's look at some more of these questions. I I think it's remarkable that the Bible asks questions thousands of years ago that modern scientists cannot answer today. In

Who Commands The Morning Light

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Job 38, verse 12, Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days began? How many times have you longed to take up this quotation? How many times have you longed to reply in the affirmative? Have you ever been afraid in the dark? What would you then have given to have been able to command the daylight? Have you ever suffered pain at night? I don't understand why it is that sickness and suffering and pain seem so much greater at night. I don't know why that is. But have you ever ever waited for the dawn while it crawled on in its exorable path with leaden feet? Did you then command the day? Some time ago a group of men were with an expedition in the vast, far-flung wilderness of a mountain region. About nine o'clock one night, the pangs of a toothache assailed one of the members. It was one of those shut-in toothaches that center in an apparently sound tooth. No relief was possible. Till two o'clock in the morning, the man tried in vain to quiet this extreme pain, then saddled his horse and rode to a village across the mountains to the valley beyond. It was two hours before the earliest break of dawn when he arrived in the mountain hamlet. There was no possibility of finding a dentist until one hour after sunrise at the very earliest. How he longed to command the dawning of the day. He would have given all the money he had in his possession if he could have said to the daylight, speed up, come right now. But no one can do that. The hour of dawn changes from day to day. The very second of daybreak changes each succeeding day. Now, how is this kept in order? Who regulates this clock of God? Who cleans its wheels? Who makes those minor repairs which bring the daylight on its predetermined schedule with more than human punctuality? There's a tremendous suggestion in this question. Battles have been lost for lack of light. Empires have fallen, and dynasties have arisen because no man could advance or delay the coming of dawn. But who makes the day to know its place an hour? Can a man learn this secret? Now, in your pocket or on your wrist, or placed upon your wall right now, you carry a timepiece that divides your day and your night into minutes and seconds. That is to say, the wheels and springs of your uh chronometers have been devised by thinking men to keep pace with astronomical bodies. So vast in size and in such gigantic magnitude are these astronomical bodies that this earth of ours compares to them about the same ratio that one drop of water would compare with the Pacific Ocean. Yet, the wheels of our time pieces must travel with these heavenly bodies at their same pace, subject to minor corrections. Now, I want to call your attention to the fact, the indisputable fact, that this earth fits in with a mathematical relationship to every point of light in the entire cytoreal system. Who is there among us who has the power to command the dawn and to cause the day spring to know his place? How how silly is this pride of a puny creature like man who dares to speak against Almighty God, who spake and said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, and instantly this command was obeyed by the appearance of gigantic bodies of matter beyond the power of man to comprehend, much less control. I think more of the humility of Job should be in the heart of modern scientist. These scientists, they read the evidence of God's infinite wisdom in this ancient book. They ought to just humble themselves and apologize for even thinking they know anything against the knowledge and the counsel and the wisdom of God.

Earth Turns Like Clay To Seal

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One of the interesting sidelights of the ancient culture prevailing in the day of Job, as well as a marvelous anticipation of the wisdom of our day, is found in the 14th verse of this exam that God gave Job. Continuing this observation about the dawning of the day, the statement is made that the earth is turned as clay to the seal. This is a continuation of the preceding or thirteenth verse of the chapter. In the faraway days of that twentieth century or so before Christ, it was not customary for men to carry fountain pens and lead pencils wherewith to sign their names and transcribe their thoughts. No reader who's ever visited a museum, no student of history who's ever been to a museum, no listener to my voice right now who's ever visited a museum of archaeology, has failed to note the seals that were commonly in use in those days. These were generally round, composed of a semi-precious stone or some hard substance in which the signature was engraved in the matrix. This seal, perforated longitudinally and rotating upon a tiny axle of some hard material, was pressed against the face of the damp clay and rotated. As the seal was turned in the face of the clay, it left its inscription. The clay was baked in the furnace and then became a permanent record. Now see the marvelous illustration of this ingenious question that God asked Job. Out in space, the sun is shining. Its light flows forth without interruption, day or night. On an established orbit, about that sun, our earth is journeying on her annual orbital revolution. At the same time, the planet is spinning on its axis, turning in the face of the sun like the seal in the face of the clay. Did Job know this? If he knew it, how did he know it? If he knew it, why is it that modern science didn't figure it out until several thousand years later? If he didn't know it, how could he write it down and record it in the pages of the Holy Bible? You see, Bible leaving Christians don't have a problem explaining their beliefs to scientists. You scientists have a problem explaining your beliefs to those of us with God-given intelligence and common sense. Only the hand which started this planet in motion could have directed the penning of those words over four thousand years ago.

The Springs Of The Sea Mystery

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You know, you'd scarcely expect to find the highly modern science of oceanography introduced into a book over four thousand years old. But here it is, the sixteenth verse of Job 38. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked into the recesses of the deep? We have now traveled, I say we, I'm speaking of man. We have now traveled several several miles down into the depths of the sea. To that pale green twilight, at a comparatively shallow depth of fifty feet, it begins to uh change rather dramatically. Life on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. And man has now gone down into the the very depths of of the oceans themselves. They have uh pressurized uh uh uh vehicles, they travel in ships, underground submarine type things, pressurized suits where men can actually uh get out and explore for themselves some of these deep places, they can't go down too far. But um it's an amazing thing. You can go down to the ocean floor, and yet no man on the face of the earth has ever entered into the springs of the sea since the very days of Job. Many men have walked in the recesses of the deep, but no man has entered into its springs. What and where are these springs of the deep? In some parts of the ocean, fresh water, fresh water may be obtained. There are places where strata and currents of fresh water are known to exist. Some men maintain that these are river streams, which have lost their identity in the sea. Other authorities say that they are artesian wells that burst out on the floor of the ocean. No man knows. Perhaps no one ever will know the ultimate secrets of the ocean floor. A great increase of knowledge has come to us with the work of scientists who deal with the sea, but there are some things that still elude our grasp. In one of the uh major institutes for the study of the sea, the United States of America, the curator of this museum in La Hola, California, uh, reveals many fascinating things that ocean biological research has revealed. But even in this present day there are things that are unfathomable. You can learn there at this uh Marine Institute for a Biological Survey that uh men have studied different types of life which are found at an ocean depth never before attempted. Their apparatus allowed them to go hundreds of fathoms below the surface. They hooked some gigantic Leviathan of the deep and started to draw him up with their steel line and uh their winch, and slowly they began to bring him in. Hundreds of feet from the surface, their line suddenly went slack. They said, We've lost him. Bring in the hook and we'll bait up and try again. When the hook came in, they found that they had not lost their catch. Still clinging to the barb was a piece of the mouth and a piece of the head. No man can know or ever will know what the creature was like. He lived at so great a depth, resisting the unthinkable pressure of the ocean floor, that when the pressure was relieved, his muscular energy constructed to resist tons of pressure, continuing to thrust out against the pressure that no longer existed, literally tore him to pieces. The life of the deep is not the only mystery that challenges the interest of man. We cannot now know the exact chemical composition of water at that depth. With great hope, a company of eminent scientists went one day to find the exact nature of water at the deepest spot then known. Their apparatus was especially constructed to thrust a reinforced brass tube down to a great depth, where a cleverly constructed device was to pull the plug from the tube. This would let the tube fill up with water at that stratum, and the operator would then close the tube with this plug so that no water could leak in from other depths on the way up. Thus they hoped to add the item of chemic contents at vast depths to our knowledge of the ocean. But the eminent gentleman came back sadder but no wiser, for when they thrust their brass tube down to the desired depth, they went through the motions of pulling the plug and closing it again, and then gleefully pulled it up, and to their chagrin they learned nothing. For when their tube returned, it was a flat sheet of wrinkled brass. The terrible pressure had flattened their tube to the thickness of a thin cardboard, and it looked as though it had been hammered and pressed into crinkled metal waves. Now you know what the Bible said over four thousand years ago, Mr. Scientist? No man can enter into the springs of the deep. You can go a little way down, but the ocean floor is the secret place where many mysteries of God remain. It is also probable that they will remain mysteries until the day when the sea gives up its dead. We don't know much more today than Job did about the springs of the deep. The wonder of this verse lies in the fact that Job 4,000 years ago even knew that these springs existed. Or is it just possible that he spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost?

Mechanical Progress Versus Spiritual Growth

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Now, however, we may congratulate ourselves that we have learned some things, we can all answer the question in verse 18. It's merely a matter of travel and experience. Did you ever notice what a tremendous amount of our boasted culture and modern advancement are truly mechanical? We are a traveled age, no doubt about that. Job was unable to answer when God asked him, Hast thou comprehended the earth and its bread? Job, of course, said no, but today many of us have been around the globe, and the rest of us have read enough to be able to answer, yes, it's about 8,000 miles in circumference. And so we do advance and we do learn. But I believe one of the most pressing problems that challenged the intellect of primitive man was the problem of how to sit down and go somewhere while resting. Horses were harnessed, oxen were taught to pull great loads, maybe the mighty dinosaurs were utilized as the elephant is today, but all that man might travel in comfort and ease. Not satisfied with animal aids, modern man has made himself mechanical beasts of burden. The air is filled with these metal uh boxes with wings on them. Taking ourselves the wings of a dove and flying to the isles of the sea, because we've mastered the problem of speed and travel, we say that we are the most wonderful generation that ever lived. But with all this new culture, have we really progressed? Are we any closer to God than Job was and the other patriarchs? What is the spiritual and eternal value of a mechanical progress? Are we mentally the better for all our modern conveniences? Are we spiritually more upright for all of our inventions? Now I realize that if Job were suddenly raised in that resurrection to which he looked forward, he would of course be confused. But in one hour, he could learn to push the button on the wall when he wanted light. He could learn to flip the switch downward when he wanted the lights to go out, in the same hour he can learn to put in the fuse when the lights blue, and after all, that's about all the average modern man knows about electricity anyway. It wouldn't take Abraham, the friend of God, more than an hour to learn enough culture so that he could get on a bus when it stopped and wouldn't try to get on it before it stopped, and he'd know enough to stay on it until it stopped again. That's more than some people know now. Every once in a while you'll see a highly modern, cultured man picking himself up because he tried to get off a streetcar before it stopped. But we have progressed. Job had never been around the world to survey it. Modern man has. So with great pride we take ten points in our exam, and we answer this question at least. We've come a long way, haven't we?

The Hidden Treasure In Snow

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Another notable instance of the anticipation of modern scientific discovery by the ancient writers of the scripture is found in the 22nd verse of Job 38, where Job inquires or God inquires of Job, Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail? Now this word treasures has a very exact significance. Fiction is full of references to buried treasure. Many expeditions have been outfitted to recover the treasure of Captain Kidd or some other uh pirate. And we always associate financial return with this word treasure. So the treasury of the United States is the place where we keep our national deficit. The bookkeeper at your church is called a treasurer because he received funds. Well, what can possibly be the treasure that is connected with snow and hail? Well, maybe Job didn't know, maybe he did. But certainly no modern listener knew until Dr. Frank T. Schutt, a Dominion chemist of the Canadian Department of Agriculture, published the result of his 17 years of research in the financial worth of snow and hail. In an article released by Science Service, the results of Dr. Schutt's experiments were first released. He found that there was a definite financial value to snow and hail as they wash out of the atmosphere nitrogenous substances that fertilize the soil. The action of snow and hail, centrifuging through the air, deposits upon the land four kinds of chemical fertilizer: free ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, and albuminoid ammonia. These substances, to the present value of about $94.08 per acre, are deposited in a winter's fall of snow and hail. These are the forms in which the nitrogen of the air can be assimilated by plants as food. This is the equivalent of 44 pounds of expensive imported Chilean saltpeter per acre. If a farmer had 10 acres of land under cultivation, the treasure of the snow and the hail would be about $940 per year. Now, if you ascertain the number of acres under cultivation in your state and multiply them by $94 an acre, you'll learn what the treasure of the snow and the hail really amounts to in your own locality. If you multiply the number of arable acres in North America by this factor, you will get a tremendous sum of real money. So, there is exact significance to this strange suggestion in this chapter of Job. But again, I've got to ask you again, how did he know? How did he know what the modern scientist has just discovered a generation ago? Or could it be that the God who asked the question really spoke through this book called the Bible? It's manifestly impossible that Job could have known the answers to these questions, but more than that. If if ancient man was what modern science claims he was, it is absolutely impossible that Job could have even invented these questions to write them down. There's something at work here far superior to modern knowledge. There is something at work here far superior to the science of our day and age.

Why Scripture Outruns Modern Science

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The Bible is the Word of God, it's true, it's perfect altogether, and you may criticize it all you like, you may seek to cast doubt upon it as long as you wish, but those who are truly familiar with the contents of the Bible, those who have a genuine working knowledge of the truths of Scripture, they will not be the least slay uh swayed or taken by your arguments. They will not be turned aside by your questions and your doubts. They will not fall into the pit in which you have fallen of trusting their knowledge, their intellect, their education above the written revelation of the Word of God. And we have seen now in this series of broadcasts, and we'll continue to see as we progress, that the Bible is not refuted by science. The Bible is not overthrown by modern science. As a matter of fact, the Bible has been waiting for science to catch up with it for several thousand years. And those portions of the Word of God which you you still find beyond the realm of possibility because science has no answer, maybe, just, maybe one day if God allows things to go on as they are, maybe, just, maybe someday, science will catch up. And every time that scientific knowledge advances, it only advances to the point where it confirms the truth of the Word of God. Amen and amen.

Where To Find More Teaching

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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 Baptisttheland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.