The Bible as Science: The Sun Stood Still

If you’ve ever been told the Bible can’t stand up to modern science, this broadcast is a direct challenge to that claim. We start with a simple observation most people ignore: science textbooks get rewritten constantly, but Scripture hasn’t needed revisions to keep up. From there, we make the case that the Bible doesn’t just speak with spiritual authority, it speaks with a kind of steadiness and accuracy that skeptics rarely expect.

We also go straight at the cultural pressure point of origins. We argue that many people don’t hold to evolution because the evidence is overwhelming, but because admitting a Creator would force a moral and spiritual reckoning. That leads into a frank discussion about faith, proof, and why the peace people chase through education, money, and status can’t compare to peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second half turns to one of the most disputed miracles in the Old Testament: Joshua’s long day, when the sun stood still and the moon stayed. We lay out the battlefield context, read the contested lines, and then address the first major objection from higher criticism, the claim that the story was added later. Our answer is to examine the built-in details of geography and biblical astronomy, arguing the text carries eyewitness fingerprints that a later editor could not have guessed without modern knowledge.

If you care about Bible reliability, Christian apologetics, and honest answers to hard questions, listen through to the end. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review to help more people find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why We’re Here

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 DeLain, Florida. Our prayer is that these half-hour Bible study programs 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, now thank you so much so very much for that kind word of introduction. I'm Brother James, and God has providentially ordered your steps. By his grace and mercy, he has so ordained that you would tune in to the preaching of the cross radio broadcast today. I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is and was and always will be the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. We're so happy that you've tuned in to the program today. We're excited. I know preachers say that all the time. We're excited about what God's doing, but we really are. We are just thrilled at the way God is working in our local assembly here at the Bible Baptist Church of Delane. We're thrilled and excited about the way God is blessing the tape recordings and books that we're sending out all around the world. We're excited about what God is doing through the radio ministry, and it's just a joy. It's just really a joy to see the Holy Spirit of God at work in and through a little ministry such as ours. God has been so very good to us, and we thank and praise his name for all of his benefits and all of his goodness and all the ways in which he works in our lives to make them happy and blessed and fruitful. God is just so good, He's just so wonderful. Isn't it a marvelous thing to know that in spite of all the trouble and all the chaos and all the confusion in this world, that you can have perfect peace in and through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't get that peace from science, you can't get that peace from education, you can't get that peace from wealth or material prosperity. The peace of God which passeth understanding comes in and through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom to know is life eternal. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope you know him. I hope you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior today.

Why Science Books Keep Changing

2:26

We are studying on our radio broadcasts, have been for the last several programs. We are studying the Bible and its relationship to modern science. We are studying the Bible and its uh its uh position in the eyes of those who claim to be scientific. We have been proving, and I use that word because that's the right word, we have been proving to our listeners that the Bible is accurate when it speaks scientifically, speaks of science and matters of science. As a matter of fact, we are we have proven and continue to prove that the Bible is the only accurate book of science on the face of the earth. The fact that it's never had to be changed or altered or thrown away and we've had to start all over again is is much more than than can be said for any science book on the face of the earth. I dare say if you're a college student right now, there isn't one textbook being used in one of your science classes that was in use fifteen years ago. You know why? They were proven to be an error. If you're listening to my voice right now and you have graduated from college, university, and your days of studying science in the classroom are over, I am certain that not one textbook that you used in those classrooms would be of any use to you today were you to go back to school or or begin to refresh your mind by reviewing those things that you learned and studied when you were in school. You see, uh people are continually saying the Bible is outdated. The Bible uh is old-fashioned. The truth of the matter is science and science books are outdated almost as soon as they come off the press. They issue forth with their grand and bold declarations of being the latest truth, the latest advancement in the knowledge of the human race, and almost before the ink is dried on the pages, they've been proven to be just a bunch of poppycock. So much for science. And yet, and yet, men fail to heed the Bible warning, but reject the truth of the Word of God, throw away their eternal and everlasting soul, in order to bring their intellect or their belief system or their faith in line with the ravings of modern science. It's a sad thing, it really is. It's a tragic thing. Here's poor old Charlie Darwin, dead and in hell, burning and bound for a lake of fire, and people are still following his theory, though in over a hundred years no one has yet found one bit of factual proof to support the things that Charlie Darwin dreamed about down there on the Galapagos Islands. It's an amazing thing, isn't it? Why, if I had as little proof for the Bible as you've got for your theory of evolution, I'd throw my Bible in a trash can and and forget all about it. That's what I'd do. But you see, I'm not using the Bible to replace my faith in evolution. Now why do I say that? Because many of you are using your faith in evolution to replace the Bible. Now you know that. You know the only reason you cling to that theory of evolution is because if you reject it, you'll have to turn to the biblical statements regarding God and creation and faith in a creator, and you're not about to do that. So you hide behind a profession of science. By faith, you cling to your belief in evolution, and then make fun of Christians for having no facts to support what they believe, and we've got more facts in two pages of a Bible than you've got in twenty-five books on evolution. There's never been a missing link found, and there never will be. You know that, and I know that. So do the professors that taught you. You say, then why didn't they tell us that? Because it's a religion. They wouldn't want to be uh thought uh heretics, they wouldn't want to blaspheme their god of knowledge, and so they didn't dare tell you the truth about that evolution business.

The Gibeonites And The Coming War

6:34

Now, we started last time preparing for a discussion of the long day of Joshua. We were discussing the Gibeonites who had come to make a league with the people of Israel. I made the statement at the close of last broadcast that these people were probably the shrewdest people that ever lived, because they beat all the Jews in a bargain at the same time. Now, when these ambassadors from Gibeon, and I can't, there is no way to go over all this material again. We've just got to take up where we left off last time. I'm sorry if you weren't with us, but if we went over the material from a previous broadcast every single day, we'd just play one broadcast over and over again, and we can't do that. So we just have to go on. When the ambassadors were rested, the journey of the horde was resumed until they came before the walls of Gibeon. When the princes of Israel prepared the horde for the battle, they said to these mock ambassadors, Stand thou by and see how we overcome this city. The ambassadors replied, Not this city, this is our city, protected by your oath of friendship and peace. The princes of Israel raved with indignation, but they were securely trapped, and they saw no way out. So, characteristically they made the best of a bad bargain, and got what they could out of the deal. They bound the Gibeonites to themselves by an oath and said, Thou shalt be the slaves of our God forever. The Gibbeanites retorted that it was better to be living slaves of a mighty god than dead rejectors of a pact, and the covenant of mutual defense and protection was consummated. There being no further use for the army at the moment, Joshua marched the horde up to Gilgal, where they went in arrest camp to recover from the ravages of their hard campaigns. Now when Adonai Zedak, the genius and head of this League of Nations, heard of the defection of the Hivites from the New World Order, he was alarmed as well as angered. He reasoned justly that if Israel added to their own army the thirty thousand fighting Hivites, the United Nations was hopeless. Not only was the League weakened, but Israel was strengthened by this number. So he did the only logical thing under the circumstances, and called upon the rest of the heads of the nations to join him. He informed them of the defection of the Hivites, and bitterly railed against their lack of faith and fidelity to the pact. He went on all the newscasts, he had articles printed in all the newspapers, and he he prepared lectures to be printed in all the scholarly journals, and he just uh ramm these Hivites right into the ground. He informed the uh people uh that uh what these Hivites had done, and it seems to have been alright in his estimation for the League to betray a member, as he had done to the Hivites, but uh the uh member must not betray the League. That is, it's all right for America to sell out her sovereignty to the United Nations now that's wrong. That'd be a terrible wrong thing. You see, the UN, they don't they don't care if if America is sacrificed for the good of the third world. But how dare, how dare America exert her sovereignty and her uh nationalistic rights? That would be a violation of the peaceful aims of the global community, you understand. Now gathering together the army of the five remaining nations, Adonai Zedak planned to fall upon Gibeon and exterminate the Hivites himself. Thus he would not only punish their treachery to the United Nations, but would at the same time destroy an added menace. He seems to have reasoned that they might successfully resist Joshua or overcome the Gibeonites separately, but that together the combination would be too strong. The king of the Hivites, however, seems to have kept a close watch upon the movements of the League, and his spies at once informed him of the coming of the punitive column. Fearing for the safety of his nation, he sent to Joshua, who was camped with the horde at Gilgal, and he called for help. Joshua immediately answered, and after one of the most remarkable forced marches of history, Joshua's company flanked the army of the United Nations. Thus, when the host under Adonai Zedek fell upon Gibeon, Joshua smote their rear and right flank with a tremendous assault. The Gibeonites made a sortie and attacked the head and the left flank of the column. Caught between the jaws of a pincer movement, the army of the League retreated across the plains of Beth Horon. The retreat soon turned into a rout, until the Gibeonites pressing on one side and the Israelites on the other, the army of the five kings was utterly destroyed. Well, so much for the setting of the battle. Now, now we want to look at the incidence of the battle itself.

Joshua’s Long Day And Skeptics

11:46

It's evident that the historical significance of the battle is usually forgotten, and the event is now remembered almost solely because of the miracle of the long day that occurred in connection with that battle. The higher critic, and we use higher in the scholarly term, they ought to be called lower critics, in fact they ought to be called the lowest critics, but um the higher critic still thinks that this is a weak spot in the Bible's claim to inspiration and infallibility. But then, if it were not for scholarly ignorance, there would be no higher criticism. So we'll meet their objections and show once more that the so-called weak points of the Bible are its strongest defense. Now this is what's under attack. This is where the assault is made. It came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth Horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Ezekiel, and they died. There were more which died from hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with a sword. Then spake Joshua to the Lord, in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Son, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajilon. Now, if you read that thing carefully, Joshua is speaking of the Lord. And then there's a comma, and he said, In the sight of Israel, now this could be Joshua speaking and the people beholding, or this could be God Himself speaking and commanding. He'd already appeared in bodily form once to Joshua early in his campaign, and so it's possible he did so again. We'll not be dogmatic either way on that. But he said, Son, stand thou still upon Gibeon and thou moon in the valley of Agilon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day, and there was no day like it before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. Now, I don't have any problem believing that at all. It's no problem to me to believe that the God who said let there be light and there was light, the God said who said sun and there was a sun, the God who said moon and there was a moon, the God who said stars and there were stars. I I have no problem believing that the God who created the heavenly bodies is able to control them. I don't have any trouble with that at all. But see, once you've rejected God and placed your brain on the throne of the universe, you've got a problem with something like this. I understand if you're if you're a science-worshiping infidel, I understand that this could be a problem for you. Now, in these present days, long after all the witnesses are dead, the modernistic schools say that this is an impossible myth, and that such a thing never happened. To prove their case against this account, they advance three general objections.

Eyewitness Clues In The Sky

14:51

The first one is that this account was not written by Joshua or any of his company, but was an interpolation by later writers. That is, the critics seek to have us believe that some nameless scribe, more than a thousand years later than Joshua, added this story to the record that he was copying. As in all the modernistic efforts to simplify the Bible by removing its supposed mistakes and ruling out the miraculous, the explanation is worse than the so-called error. Not one iota of proof has ever been advanced by anyone to show that this account was not in Joshua's original manuscript. No proof whatsoever. It's it's just another pipe dream, like Charlie Darwin's theory of evolution. The account itself, however, contains uh absolute and scientific evidence that this event was recorded by an eyewitness. Let me show you. Let me let me show you certain statements that prove just exactly what I just said. First, the sun was in the midst of the heavens. Now, if you want to mess around with the Hebrew, the word translated midst in the Hebrew here is chatsi, C-H-A-T-S-I. Appears in the Old Testament 118 times. Of this number, it's translated 105 times by the English word half. Its literal meaning could be a bisection. The sun was at its zenith. In other words, it was high noon. Midst is the right word. It's the perfect word. You never have to mess with the Greek and the Hebrew. If you picked a midpoint in the sky, that's where the sun was. That's why your Bible says midst. Second. We note that while the sun was in the in the midst, in the bisection of the heavens, it stood over Gibeon. The sun was directly overhead in the center of the heaven, right above the city of Gibeon. Now, in the Palestinian summer, the sun is between eight and twelve degrees of absolute zenith at noon. It then rises at five o'clock in the morning and sets at seven o'clock in the evening. Third, the city of Gibeon is in latitude thirty-one degrees and fifty-one minutes north. Now remember this location. If you want to, you can find Gibeon on an old map and take a look, and you'll see this is so. 31 degrees latitude, 51 minutes north. Number four. The moon was in the valley of Agilon. Now the account does not say over the valley, but distinctly says in the valley. Now this valley was a low pass or cleft in the hills. In the modern American West, it would be called a gun sight pass. It was not a distinct valley, but a depression or canyon in the hills. As the declining moon touched the horizon, it would appear literally to be framed in the valley. This valley of Adilon lies 17 degrees north of west from the city of Gibeon. So, if the moon was directly above Gibeon, I'm sorry, if the sun, if the sun was directly above Gibeon, and the moon was in the valley of Adilon, the moon was in the third quarter on this day of battle, and was setting at the time of the cry of Joshua. The moon then rose at 11 o'clock the night before the battle and set at 1 o'clock on the battle day. At noon, when Joshua spoke his petition and cried out to God, the moon, which would disappear at an altitude of five degrees, was just at 7 degrees altitude, or almost touching the horizon. Now the day of battle is thus established. The day of battle is established by these facts. It was July 22nd by our calendar, or the 21st day of the fourth month of the Hebrew calendar. This month was called Tammuz, and was composed of parts of our months June and July. The sun's declinion then was about 21 degrees north, and thus about eleven degrees from the absolute zenith. No unaided eye could tell this from the exact middle, half, or bisection of the heavens. Now this date's not given, of course, in the text, but it's a simple problem in chronology to figure it out from the data unconsciously given in this account of the battle. In the interesting study of this event, which was made by Professor Totten, he sought to show that this day covered the 24th and 25th days of the fourth civil month on the Hebrew calendar and were the 113th and 114th calendar days. He sought to show that the 23rd day of that month was the winter solstice, and reckoning back from the autumnal equinox of 1896, he showed that the battle day was 3370 solar years ago. Now, a factor of error entered into his calculations when he placed the moon over the city of Agilon instead of in the valley that bore the same name. That messed him up a little bit. The ancients kept astronomical records as far back as the third century before Christ. The Egyptians seem to have kept records only of the solstices, but the Chaldeans and other ancient people recorded cycles of eclipses, both lunar and solar, many of which records have been recovered by various expeditions. Disregarding calendar changes and dealing only with a chronology based upon solar motion, we go back to the earliest available records of the ancients and use them for a starting point. Carefully tracing up to Joshua's day of battle from the first and most accurate of those astronomical records, we arrive at the conclusion that the day of battle was Tuesday. Then, starting with the latest eclipse data of our year, and reckoning our way back to that day of battle, we arrive at Wednesday. Deciding that we have made some sort of error in our conclusions, we can go back and start again. We find that our first conclusion was right. When we check up from the early data and arrive at this day of battle, it is what we would now call Tuesday, July 22nd. Then we check over our records from the present year and go backward to the time of Joshua's conquest, and once more we arrive at Wednesday, the 22nd day of July. That is to say, the day of the month seems to be the same, but the day of the week is different. Now you can figure that thing out any way that you can conceive, and you can use all the information in the records of chronology, which a scientist will never do because he doesn't want the proof, and you'll find that there's a day missing in that week. In the record, the exact relationships of the various solar factors are carefully noted, and by correlating these given positions, we are able to state the time and date of this battle. Now, since this account does contain these solar factors, we have the confidence to maintain that it must have been written by an eyewitness. No later writer could have known the scientifically accurate combination of relative positions until the modern science of astronomy was born. No later interpolator could have guessed this. No interpolator could have got it. There in any way. So the sick feeble theory of interpolation breaks down. It was at best only a poor crutch to support infidelity, but now even that even that pitiful crutch is gone. And we're not through yet. That's the first argument, carefully and easily dismissed.

Next Objection Teased And Closing

23:43

On the next broadcast, we'll look at the second, and we'll lay it aside just as easily as we laid that one aside. And we're going to continue this look at the long day of Joshua. And as we do so, we will continue to debunk all the so-called scientific arguments against faith in the Word of God. 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, BibleBaptistteland.com. Until next time and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.