There are lot of things in the Bible that some find hard to swallow. I am sure you can ask any Christian, Jew, or Bible scholar if there is anything in the Bible that befuddles them and it they will undeniably say yes. But with all the confusing and hard to swallow passages in the Bible, we can all agree that there are things that no one can dispute. Like lets say some of the Ten Commandments. It doesn't take much faith to believe that it is wrong to murder, lie, or steal. We can all agree that when Jesus spoke of the Golden Rule that he was pretty much hit it right on the head whether or not he was the Christ or not. The stories that are spread through out the Bible cover a wide spectrum of believablitly. Some stories take flat out faith, i.e. Jonah and the Whale, The Parting of the Red Sea, or maybe even the deity of Jesus Himself. But the many, many other stories that speak about normal people in normal everyday situations either losing, sacrificing, triumphing, learning valuable lessons, and just making it through life do not take any faith what-so-ever. We have all learned something very important in sometime in our life be it either reading the Bible or having the BIble read to us.
I would like to look at a few amazing things of the Bible
Science
The naked eye can only see about 3000 stars on a very clear sky. It wasn't unitl the telescope that we found out that they are way too many stars to be numbered. The Bible was ahead of the curve.
Genesis 22:17 Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.
Jeremiah 33:22 As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minister to Me.
Again with the naked eye, All stars look similar and some look exactly the same. It wasn't until scientist could measure wave length that this scripture was understood. We can see here that the 'glory' that the scripture is talking about is the light that is emitted.
1 Corinthians 15:41 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
When did sceince find out that we were traveling through the nothingness of space, well the oldest book of the Bible spoke of this
Job 26:7 He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.
The Bible describes the circulation of the atmosphere.
Ecclesiastes 1:6 The wind goes toward the south,And turns around to the north;The wind whirls about continually,And comes again on its circuit.
The Bible includes some principles of fluid dynamics.
Job 28:25 To establish a weight for the wind,And a portion the waters by measure.
The fact that air has weight was proven scientifically only about 300 years ago. The relative weights of air and water are needed for the efficient functioning of the worlds hydrologic cycle, which in turn sustains life on the earth.
The Bible includes reasonably complete descriptions of the hydrologic cycle.
Psalm 135:7 He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth;He makes lightning for the rain;He brings the wind out of His treasuries.
Jeremiah 10:13 When He utters His voice,There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.He makes lightning for the rain,He brings the wind out of His treasuries.
The Bible refers to the surprising amount of water that can be held as condensation in clouds.
Job 26:8 He binds up the water in His thick clouds,Yet the clouds are not broken under it.
Job 37:11 Also with moisture He saturates the thick clouds;He scatters His bright clouds.
The Bible described the shape of the earth centuries before people thought that the earth was spherical. I love this one because Galileo is held up so high because of the conflict of the Church and himself. But everyone forgets that Galileo was the only vocal scientist at the time to debate the heliocentric theory. MOST scientiest believed that that the earth was the center of the Universe. The Church was just going along with the acepted thought in the scientific circle. This verse is quite amazing because it says first that earth is a circle or round and that the heavens are stretched out. I think it was Hubble in the 40's that figured out the universe was expanding.
Isaiah 40:22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
How about the Sun's Movement...
Psalm 19:4-6: "In them has He set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. His [the sun's] going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."
Bible critics have scoffed at these verses, saying that they teach that the sun revolves around the earth. Science told them that the sun was stationary. Then they discovered that the sun is in fact moving through space at approximately 600,000 miles per hour. It is traveling through the heavens and has a "circuit" just as the Bible says. It is estimated that its circuit is so large, it would take 200 million years to complete one orbit.
How about the true importance of the Woman in life
Genesis 3:15: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
This verse reveals that a female possesses the "seed of life." This was not the common knowledge until a few centuries ago. It was widely believed that the male only possessed the "seed of life" and that the woman was nothing more than a glorified incubator.
God asked Job a very strange question in 1500 B.C. He asked,
"Can you send lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, Here we are?" (Job 38:35).
This appears to be a scientifically ludicrous statement; that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech. But did you know that all electromagnetic radiation; from radio waves to x-rays; travels at the speed of light? This is why you can have instantaneous wireless communication with someone on the other side of the earth. The fact that light could be sent and then manifest itself in speech wasn't discovered by science until 1864 (3,300 years later), when scientist James Clerk Maxwell suggested that electricity and light waves were two forms of the same thing" (Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia).
And for my favorite Verse of all time concerning Science and the Bible:
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the Beginning (or Time - Past, Present, and Future) Got Created the Heavens (or Space - Length, Width, and Heigth) and the Earth (or Matter - Solid, Liquid, and Gas). The trinity of trinities. In the first verse of the bible we have the Space-Mass-Time continuum.
Now a verse that sums it all up. In this verse the writer tells us that faith helps us to understand that God created it all, but then he lets us in on something that science is still grappling with today. The atomic level of everthing around us.
Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
There is enough undeniable fact in the Bible to allow us to take the hard parts with faith. Phynerk always told me to put the hard stuff 'on the back burner' and pay attention to what is really imporant which are the things we know.
