The Bible as Science: Spectroscopy and Meteorology

If someone told you the book of Job contains scientific questions that still corner modern thinkers, would you roll your eyes or lean in. I lean in, because Job 38 doesn’t read like a vague religious poem. It reads like a series of direct challenges about the physical world, asked thousands of years before modern instruments existed, and that tension is exactly where today’s conversation lives.

We walk through the startling line “By what way is the light parted?” and connect it to what we now call spectroscopy, the method scientists use to analyze light and even identify the composition of distant stars. From there, we move into meteorology, exploring lightning, thunder, and precipitation, and why rain falls on wilderness where no man dwells. Along the way, we contrast God’s providence with the enormous human cost of moving water into cities, and we ask what that should do to our pride.

Then we slow down and stare at something we all take for granted: water. Why does ice float, insulating life beneath it all winter, when so many substances sink as they solidify. We talk about heavy water, the strange expansion near freezing, and why describing a phenomenon is not the same as explaining it. The deeper theme is simple: when science can measure so much yet cannot control drought, storms, seasons, or the basic mysteries of water, maybe the honest response is humility before the Creator.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Gospel

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 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. Okay, here we go again. I'm Brother James. I greet you, whoever you might be, 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 Bible says the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unus which are saved, it is the power of God. We're so thankful that God has manifested his great power in ordaining and establishing a way of salvation, so simple that anyone might find it. Nobody has to miss the way, nobody has to fail and come short. Whosoever will may come, drink of the water of life freely, be saved, be born again through the death, burial, and resurrection of our dear Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You know, if if the Bible's not true, the things written in the Bible aren't true. That's clear enough. That ought to be simple enough to anybody. If you can't trust, if you can't trust the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Holy Bible, if you can't trust their truth, then you cannot trust anything contained therein to be the truth. Now, on these radio broadcasts, for the last uh several times, I believe this is the twelfth broadcast in our series, we are dealing with a subject of great importance to the Christian in this generation. We are dealing with something of great importance to the unbeliever in this generation.

Why The Bible Is Scientific

2:06

We are presenting to you a series of radio broadcasts entitled The Bible as Science, and we are showing you absolute absolute proof that the Word of God, the Holy Bible, the authorized King James Version that we have before us is indeed the most accurate scientific book on the face of this earth. It has never had to be rewritten, or revised, or corrected, to bring itself in line with the findings of modern science. Now, modern science has oftentimes, with red face, oftentimes with embarrassment, had to remove some of its most coveted theories from its textbooks because they were proven wrong. This has never been the case with the Bible. And we are showing on the last two broadcasts, and this will be the third, in which we are showing you that the questions that were put to Job forty, five hundred years ago in the book that bears his name, the thirty eighth chapter thereof, are questions that to this day science cannot answer. In fact, a group of eminent scientists, as we pointed out to you, at a convention, once took an exam in which they gave themselves ten points for answering correctly each of the forty questions put to Job regarding scientific matters, and the best man among them could only get three and one-half questions out of forty answered rightly after four thousand five hundred years of scientific learning and advancement.

How Light Is Parted

3:41

Now it's impossible it's manifestly impossible that Job could have known the answer to the question embodied in the twenty-fourth verse of Job 38. In fact, he couldn't have even framed the question by what way is the light parted? That's what God asked Job. In what way? By what way? How how is light parted? Now imagine any man asking that question over four thousand years ago. Now it is of course a simple one in this day, and the student instant instantly answers by passing it through the prism of the spectroscope. But who could have known that in Job's day? And since it is manifestly impossible for any human mind to frame a question that the mind knows nothing of, a greater than man is obviously the questioner here. When we heat a metal red hot, or heat any substance until it is incandescent, it gives forth rays of light. These rays, after passing through the prism of the spectroscope, divide themselves on the graph according to the content of the matter that sent them forth. Thus, when a ray of light reaches us from some far flung star, we need only to pass that light ray through the spectroscope to see the composition of that star and the proportion of each of its ingredients. This division of light rays is always constant and does not vary in the least particular, so that we may always rely upon the results. Spectroscopic analysis is an exact science, and this is now the manner by which the light is parted. But this places us in a quandary. Either Job knew this, or supernatural wisdom is revealed here in the pages of the Holy Bible. This question, concerning the nature and division into mathematical portions of the element that is called light, very logically leads into a series of questions

Lightning, Rain, And The Wilderness

5:39

that touch upon the very modern subject of meteorology. In the days of Matthew Fontaine Maury, M-A-U-R-Y, who was perhaps the greatest man of science who has ever graced the American Hall of Fame, this science of meteorology was really born through his work, or in his days at least. Other men, both in Europe and at home, collaborated with Maury in the correlation of data until finally a foundation was laid for the structure that has grown since into a marvelous body of established information. Thus, you and I today, we are almost in within touch of the generation that learned the function and purpose of lightning and thunder. Although the heavens might be dark and overcast with clouds of H2O dust, freighted with a life-giving fluid for which the thirsty earth was panting in desire, no precipitation would alleviate the dryness of the ground were it not for the tremendous forces set in operation by the flash and crash of God's artillery. Lightning is essential to the orderly production of precipitation. You can call it rain if you want to. This fact was advanced as a possible theory, later to become established as an unquestioned principle, almost within reach of our own times. It's only been within a few decades that this was found to be true. And yet here we have the prophet Job anticipating the wisdom of this age, again by some four thousand years, for he plainly says that some unknown power, force, or person prepares the way for the lightning and thunder which cause the rain upon the wilderness wherein no man dwells. Now there is, of course, an element of humor in that latter suggestion. It might not be too strong a word if we said that it was highly sarcastic on the part of God asking this question. It's as if he's saying, You men seem to be able to take care of your cities after a fashion, but who provides for the wilderness and the beasts that live there? Certainly the grass has got to grow in the unpeopled places or the creatures of the wild couldn't eat. Therefore, rain is essential. Certainly water is absolutely essential to the continuity of life in jungle or wilderness, and rain is important to supply the source of drinking water where no man builds reservoirs, pumping plants, and systems of distribution. Of course, underlying all this, there is the certainty that were it not for the rain that falls in uninhabited places there would be no water left for the cities. For in our urban centers we draw upon the surplus of the wilderness and drink only what they can spare us. And at what cost do we thus care for the needs of the citizens who dwell in the teeming centers of population? In the city of Los Angeles, there are billions of dollars invested in waterworks. Across the deserts and the mountains for many miles, a giant aqueduct brings from the wilderness the life-giving fluid for those who dwell in that pleasant place. This marvelous aqueduct, the hydroelectric plants, the reservoirs, the settling pools, the filters, the pumping plants, together with all the machinery necessary to give the citizens water to drink, totals a fabulous amount of invested money. There's probably no one to this day knows how much in total has been spent in getting water to the residents of those Southern California cities. Not content with this, the city of Los Angeles then spent another colossal fortune to bring water from the distant Colorado River to the city to supply its needs. All this tremendous fortune is taken out of the income of the tax weary citizen by an added levy just to get a drink of water. And yet, the beasts living in the wilderness get the water for nothing. It's no wonder people are heading movements to get back to the wilderness. At least there's free water there. There's no dearth or want there. No tax assessments, no levies, no collections, just the providence of the Heavenly Father, established to take care of the wild places where no man is. How humble humanity should be in the face of the mechanism ordained and established for the preservation of life and the continuity of its functioning purpose upon this planet. What an odd spectacle it must be. To those who dwell in eternal wisdom, up in heaven's glory, to see puny, finite, earthbound mortals, whose knowledge doesn't progress beyond the dim attempts to grasp the alphabet of creation, vaunting themselves against the supernatural wisdom of God, that by a gesture and a spoken word set all of this universe in motion. I think we ought to pray that we might be kept safe from the sad and childish error of self-esteem. Well indeed might we echo the ancient one who said in the book of Psalms, What is man that thou art mindful of him?

Winter Mysteries And Water’s Oddities

10:26

Now in the course of this series of questions on meteorology, there is introduced as well the mystery of winter. The question is phrased in words that perhaps many modern men have pondered. When the waters are hid as a stone, why is the face of the deep frozen? Now we're not going to get into a study about the deep that sits below the throne of God, separating the second heaven from the third heaven. We're going to speak now of the earthbound deep. But it's been stated by some authorities that water is the major mystery with which science deals today. It was supposed at one time that this common combination of two gases and the universal proportion of two molecules of hydrogen to one molecule of oxygen was a natural composition which never varied. However, the work of the famous Harvard physicist which resulted in the production of what is termed heavy water has shown that this was a baseless postulation. This so called heavy water will not support life, and it is theoretically presumed at the present time that to drink a glassful of this strange substance would unquestionably result in the death of the hardy soul who tried it. But it wasn't an accident of creation that caused water to be formed into the usual or usable shape that sustains life upon this planet. Nothing in this world can live without water in some form or quantity. Yet almost nothing is known about it. We know that it's composed of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen is essential to all combustion. Hydrogen is ignited more easily than any other gas. The natural supposition would be that combining these two inflammable substances would result in the production of a highly explosive force. But the contrary is true. When these inflammable substances are combined, they put the fire out. Now it'd be a dangerous experiment to try that method with any other inflammable substances such as kerosene and gasoline. The experimenter would probably go out before the fire did. This mysterious substance, called water, can be expended twelve hundred times and called steam. We can then turn this vapor into a stone, and call it ice. Once more we reduce it to a fluid and never lose a drop of the amount we started with. This mysterious substance will purr with contentment as it grinds our food and lights our homes, or it will roar like a devil when it gets out of control and destroys the homes and cities that it helped build. Water will give us life one minute and take it away the next. It is indeed a mysterious factor of the physical universe, and nowhere is its mystery more enhanced than when considered in the light of the thought about its winter conduct, as suggested in Job chapter thirty eight. Job is raising the question here, what is the scientific reason for the strange conduct of ice? Why does it hide the face of the water when it ought to sink like a stone? If it did, of course, the seas, lakes, and streams would all be frozen from the bottom to the top, and a period of glaciation or glaciation would ensue. All life would perish from the waters, the earth would soon become a dismal waste under a fresh encroachment of polar seas, but instead of this ice floats. And in the winter season life is preserved beneath this strange mantle of stone. This is an apparent violation of an established law of physics. This law, applied broadly to all the substances of nature is heat expands objects and cold contracts them. Water, however, is in rebellion. When it starts to freeze, it first follows this law and begins to contract. If you had the optical apparatus to make this conduct visible and could watch the water freezing, you would see it losing bulk as the molecules huddled together for warmth. As the temperature dropped dangerously close to the freezing point, the water would lose bulk, becoming smaller and smaller. Within a few degrees of the point where the water will be ice, and because of this law of contraction will necessarily sink like a stone, the water goes on a rampage and violates what might be called known law. Of course we understand it is acting upon an unknown law that is peculiar to its own nature, but at any rate an apparent miracle happens. Suddenly, the contraction ceases, and in the next few degrees of lowered temperature the freezing water gains back all the bulk it has previously lost, plus almost one third more. And thus the ice floats on the surface, and the life that God made is preserved by this ingenious method from year to year, contrary to what might be called established law. Now you explain that. You can describe it, but you can't explain it. At other times the water obeys this law, for when heat is applied to fluid water, it begins to swell and expand until it forms a vapor which we call steam. Decreasing temperature applied to this steam shrinks it back into the normal bulk of water again. But when that shrinking has gone so far that it endangers life in the ponds and streams, these molecules of water become flushed with indignation, and heated by this outrage, puff out their tiny chests and expand to their utmost capacity to present this puzzle to Job. Not only to Job, but to the modern man as well, is this conduct of water highly intriguing? Now we presume Job in his simplicity would answer the question why does ice float instead of sinking? By the ingenious reply, because God made it that way. How do the scientists answer it? They say it just happens that way. I'll choose God over nothing any day of the week. Science has no answer. They may criticize the Bible and say it's not scientific, but when the Bible pins them to the mat and says, Alright, Mr. Scientist, give me the answer, they have no answer. Certainly water is beyond the power of man's production and control.

Droughts, Dust, And Human Limits

16:09

With humility Job hung his head and answered in the negative when God said to him, Canst thou lift up the voice of the thy voice to the clouds that abundance of waters may cover thee? With that same humility we shake our heads in sorrow and despair when dust storms devastate our terrain today. You may remember the scenes and the pictures from the Great Depression, that horrible barren landscape, moving off in lots of thousands of tons as it was stirred by the relentless wind, and a banner was placed out there shortly after the prohibition came to an end. You gave us beer, now give us water. What could the President of the United States do? He couldn't bring one drop of water. He was absolutely powerless. Various experimenters have dreamed of the possibility of causing rain. Someday we'll tell you about the rainmakers, so you'll find it interesting. Some men have claimed to accomplish this, and yet when put to the test, their efforts sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. There's a strong sense of uneasiness stirring the hearts of many of the leaders of the United States because of the continuance of these frightful droughts that they can't control and rain falling in such torrents of flood and they can't turn the faucet off. Something also happens beyond the power of man to direct. These deserts. How do you stop them? These spreading deserts, sweeping and eating up entire continents now or threatening to. What can you do about it? We had a fellow came out here one time and every time a plane would go over and a vapor trail behind it, he'd say, Oh, they're seeding clouds, they're making clouds so it'll rain. You can try that foolishness all you want. When God tells it to rain it'll rain, when God tells it to stop, it'll stop, and you can't control that. Now we recognize the fact that there are some things we can do that were beyond the power of Job.

Harnessing Lightning For Communication

17:59

In the day of Job, no man had ever dreamed of harnessing lightning to the will of a human driver. So when Job was asked in the thirty fifth verse, canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto thee, here we are. We may well imagine the stupendous wonder of the ancient patriarch. Who ever dreamed of making a messenger of the lightning in Job's day? Yet in our day, because we've captured some of his thoughts about after the Creator, we see in the lightning a common convenience. Sometimes you go to the wall, you pick up a telephone, you push some buttons on the telephone, it keys in a certain number by electric current, that's controlling the lightning. Those lightnings are commanded, they go through a cable, through a wire, and I can sit in in my living room, I can sit in my living room and converse with a man in France, with a man in in Australia, with a man in Canada, as though he were sitting across the room from me. Now that's amazing. Here we are, you pick up the telephone, you say, Hello, I'm here. Are you there? It's incredible, isn't it? There's no time lapse in this communication. As fast as you can speak, your words will be borne by the lightning at the speed of light. Now, as we noted in a in an earlier lesson, it's a very common common thing for this now to take place. It's incredible, it's remarkable. But even more remarkable in the conquest of space is man's ability to broadcast his spoken words through the airwaves as we're doing right now. The human while the human voice is traveling now now get this. I don't understand these things, I'm just telling you what's so. The human voice, while the human voice is traveling thirteen feet, the radio will fling that voice 1,000 miles around and around the earth, the voice of radio goes, so that before a second and a half have elapsed, it is possible for a message to circle the globe and bring back a reply. Isn't that amazing? If we were broadcasting live from the Bible Baptist Church on a 50,000 watt radio station, clear channel station at night, do you realize that that someone listening to my voice in Louisiana or Virginia or Tennessee would hear my voice before the person in the back of our church auditorium heard my voice? That's incredible. So I'd explain that. I have no explanation for that. It's remarkable. Now Job never dreamed of marvels like this over four thousand years ago. When he was alive, lightning was one of the wildest and most implacable enemies that man possessed. It struck wherever it willed. Man could do nothing but cower in terror before its awful power. In a sense of the word, lightning is still sovereign today. For when it crackles across the inverted dome of the upper atmosphere, men still shudder in fear before its awful power. But from the time that that old reprobate fornicator Benjamin Franklin flew his historic kite, down to the present hour, men of this marvelous age have been gathering this lightning out of the firmament. I know, I'm sorry, I just I have to say those things. It's my responsibility to make you think, and I know, that see, that took your mind entirely off the train of thought. Let's get back to it. Uh before, before Ben Franklin, lightning had never been harnessed. But since that time, down to the present hour, men of this marvelous age have been gathering this lightning out of the firmament. They have made of it a homing pigeon, if you will, with gentle and faithful uh service. It'll bear the words of men. What a marvelous book this Bible is that anticipated this triumph of man's ingenuity by several thousand people. Years. I'd recommend that you take the time to thoughtfully and carefully study the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. If there were in all the scripture no other evidence of inspiration and the certainty of revelation, I believe it'd be found in Job 38.

Pleiades, Orion, And The Seasons

22:16

One of the most suggestive of all these questions, and one that may well cause the modern mind to ponder deeply, is found in the thirty-first verse. Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? There was a man once who spent the first forty years of his life in ancient Mesopotamia, the land where Job lived, and he brought some light upon this question. He said that though there they are, of course, close together in the sky, in that faraway eastern land, the Pleiades and Orion are the constellations which introduce the spring and winter seasons. So this is a pertinent question that God asked of Job, nor can it be answered by any man since Job, including the present generation. When the Pleiades shone in the sky at night, the men of that land knew that spring had come. Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades? That's to say, when the sap has begun to flow, when the leaf has appeared on the bough, and the tree has put forth her blossoms, when the grass springs forth from the sod, and the rill and the brook begin to sing, is there any human influence that can lock them again in the still bands of winter? In a word, when God begins to make spring, no man can stop him. In the same sense of finality, when Orion flamed in the sky of that land, winter had come. How utterly fantastic for man to seek to reply in the affirmative to this question of God, canst thou loose the bands of Orion? No man can loose the bands of winter. When the blossoming leaf disappear, and all the singing waters are locked in the icy manacles of winter, who can hinder God in the progress of the season? I say again, this is almost a humorous suggestion from God. To Joby said in effect, get some experience with the little things first. Learn to control the seasons. When you can turn back the winter or stop the spring which I've begun, then you may have the power to change the weight and authority of my words. And there's no modern science that can do so here. There is no man of learning, no man of power who can bind the influence of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion. This is indeed a striking example of modern science in an ancient book. In the archaic day of Job, how could he even have asked these questions, which twentieth century wisdom still can't answer? Again we reply that in the book of Job, holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Spirit of God to record a book that is indeed the greatest marvel of scientific genius ever to appear on the face of the earth, the precious holy Bible. Amen and amen.

Final Challenge And Where To Listen

24:58

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 the Land, or our website, Bible Baptisttheland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.