The Bible: Predictions Come True

►Reprint Rights◄

Comments on this article:

» left by Anonymous (118 days 6 hours ago.)

I'm confused. What does "darkness was upon the face of the deep" mean? Does anyone really know? Does "Let there be light" mean that earth existed before the sun? Or, what? I think the creation myth is better left as a vague mystery than a sensible explanation of how life started on earth.

 

Anonymous Rex

Respond to this comment

Since you are the author of this article, you may Mark this comment as not needing a response, Remove this comment.

» left by Wilma E Melendez ⁽⁷⁰⁰⁾ (116 days 22 hours ago.)

Dear Anonymous Rex,

Thank-you for your comment.  It’s great that you are pondering the Bible.

 

The Bible says in Genesis 1:1 that God made the earth and in Genesis 1:2 it says the earth was formless and empty and there was dark at the surface of the deep.  The Hebrew word for ‘became’ there is ‘bara’.  Some scholars  think ‘bara’ means ‘became’.   There was a situation prior to the creation of man where God had made the earth perfectly but when Satan fell away from God, the earth became disordered.  In Isaiah 14:13-15 (New International Version)

 

 13 You said in your heart,

       "I will ascend to heaven;

       I will raise my throne

       above the stars of God;

       I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,

       on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.  

 

 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;

       I will make myself like the Most High."

 

 15 But you are brought down to the grave,

       to the depths of the pit.

 

It is believed that this refers to Satan because he tried to be greater than God.  In Genesis we read about the creation of man, but Satan appears in the form of a snake.  So he must have been made at some point.  The Bible does of give all the details about creation or how long it took.  So you are right that it is a mystery.  

 

The darkness upon the deep could have been a time in which the earth was covered by gas from volcanoes.  Another possibility is t he earth was covered with water or liquid chemicals, which could have been frozen or very hot. 

 

The Bible does not the story of creation in chronological order, but tells the beginning in relevance to when human beings were made.  

 

As far as the light, there are other sources of light in the Bible besides the stars.  In Revelation it says in Revelation 21:23 ‘The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.’ So we really do not k now.

 

2 Peter 3:8

‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.’   Even if the earth took millions of years to from it could be as one second to God because He is so powerful.  And in one human second, God could accomplish what would take a human millions of years.  God is not limited by time.  If God so chose He could have made the Universe in a millisecond or less.  Perhaps he wanted us to understand how long he's been around, how big He is and to learn for our lives that things that are worth making take time.

 

 

By the way there is currently an ad running in this web site aboiut scientology.  That way not put there by the author it is not relted for hte article. 

Since you are the author of this article, you may Remove this comment.

» left by Ben Morrish ^(9,070)
Ben Morrish (117 days ago.)

"It took scientists centuries to discover the conditions necessary for life to be sustained: water, light and atmosphere"

 

Actually scientists have discovered that light and atmosphere are not necessary for sustaining life. There are lifeforms that survive just fine without either.

 

"there are undersea volcanoes on Earth that create environments that can sustain rich colonies of microbes. This is possible because light reaches through the transparent ice"

 

Actually most of the undersea volcanoes are not under ice anyway, and no light reaches the colonies of microorganisms that exist at great depths. The bathypelagic zone (below 1km) contains life forms, but sunlight cannot penetrate to these depths.

 

These light-free ecologies use other things to power them rather than light - such as food falling from the lighter zones above (which arguably would constitute light being a requirement, albeit indirectly), or the heat (and chemicals) from geo-thermal vents (so no light is required at all).

 

"Pasteur discovered that even if you have the right conditions to support life, life will not spontaneously begin to exist".

 

Firstly, the conditions required to support contemporary life forms are not the same as would have been required for abiogenesis. Secondly, science tells us that life can, and did, arise "spontaneously" (i.e. from non-living materials) - there are currently several plausible theories on the precise mechanism by which this occurred, but consensus that life evolved from non-life by naturalistic processes. Science also indicates that it took a LONG time for life to come about - Earth may have been around for something like a billion years before the first life forms came to be.

 

"A star in this passage refers to nuclear energy"

 

Almost certainly not - the description is incompatible with what happened at Chernobyl. There nothing "fell" from above. The passage is much more likely a reference to an impact event.

 

"Nevertheless, they point out that the sun could stop shining for other reasons. Scientists have noticed that the amount of sun spots is increasing. Astronomists fear that if this trend continues, the sun could stop giving Earth most of its light. "

 

This is wrong, in fact times of sunspot activity are linked with an increase in the sun's energy output, and a cold period on earth between 1600-1700 occurred during a lowpoint in sunspot activity.

 

"The majority of scientists believe in God"

 

Perhaps. Only a tiny minority of scientists believe in a literal reading of Genesis however, and a great many of the scientists who believe in God are deists (as Einstein was) rather than theists.

Respond to this comment

Since you are the author of this article, you may Mark this comment as not needing a response, Remove this comment.

» left by Wilma E Melendez ⁽⁷⁰⁰⁾ (116 days 21 hours ago.)

Thank-you for your interest in my article.  There is light in the bathypelagic zone but it is produced by organisms which are bioluminescent.  It is another proof that there are other sources of light besides that stars.

 

It’s correct that the passage of Chernobyl refers to a possible impact, not an explosion, unless there is going to be an impact later.   The Ukrainian government approved the project of a new sarcophagus to cover the exploded reactor of the Chernobyl power plant in March of 2004. This facility will guarantee protection against a possible discharge of radioactive materials from the ruined reactor.  The current sarcophagus is not enough.  If a missile or a meteor impacted, there could be more discharge of radioactive materials.  

 

There are other possibilities for the sun darkening, for example, dust from nuclear war or a massive volcano eruption.  These are speculations, we can’t look at prophecy of the future to know exactly how it will happen.  The purpose of prophesy is after the even ocurs, we see that it was predicted in the Bible and recognize it’s authority.       

 There are currently two mayor Christian ideas about evolution.  One is that it the evolution of life and of human beings happened with God’s help and it could not other wise have occurred. The other is that God made the earth in six days and is a literal reading of Genesis.  There is a healthy amount of debate among Christians as far as how God made creation.  As far as a six day creation, the second reason, there are scientists that have logical scientific reasons how this could have happened.  There are some web sites of scientists who are six day Creationist such as those of Answers in Genesis and Creation Evidence Museum. 

 

The author of this article believes in a third view, a mixture of evolution and creation.  There is evidence in the Bible that evolution occurred in animals.  Genesis tells us that God did not make the animals with his hands; rather he told the earth to make the land animals and the ocean to make the sea animals. It says in Genesis 1:11-12 ‘Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so.  The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.’

 

There is also scientific evidence for animal evolution.  There are plenty of fossils to support the idea that animals evolved. 

However when it comes to the creation of human beings the Bible tells us that God made them out of earth.  And there is little scientific evidence of human evolution. 

 

There is a great poverty of fossils that support the idea of a missing link.  The few fossils found are often just portions of a skeleton, such as a jaw bone and a leg bone.  Paleontologists reconstruct ideas about what the full skeleton could have looked like and try to estimate brain size according to these fragments.  They are just reconstructions. 

 

The size of a jaw or a skull can not tells us that there was a process of steps between an ape and a human.  Estimating brain function from skull shape is called phrenology and it has been proven wrong by neurologists.  The differences between the human brain and the animal brain are so big, they are not completely understood.  It is a vey jump from an animal being to a human brain.  There is a lot we don’t know about the human brain. 

 

So this author believes that animals evolved with God’s help but the first humans were made by God, Adam and Eve.    

Since you are the author of this article, you may Remove this comment.

» left by Ben Morrish ^(9,070)
Ben Morrish (116 days 20 hours ago.)

"There is light in the bathypelagic zone but it is produced by organisms which are bioluminescent"

There is light in the immediate vicinity of the Bioluminescent creatures, but not all the organisms in that zone produce light. They survive just fine without light, so your statement that science confirms that life necessarily requires light in order to be sustained is untrue.

 "It is another proof that there are other sources of light besides that stars."
Another proof? No-one is disputing that there are other sources of light besides stars! Torches, TV screens, bioluminescence.  The point is that some lifeforms can and do exist and thrive in light-free environments.

As to fossils of human evolution, there is no single "missing link" - we have fossils, in varying degrees of completeness, showing the gradual evolution of modern Homo sapiens sapiens back to (and beyond). Any "missing links" found in the future will be links between two quite closely related existing fossil species.

Also, even if there were no fossils of human ancestors, the evidence from molecular biology demonstrates that we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos, and more distantly with all other contemporary apes


Respond to this comment

Since you are the author of this article, you may Mark this comment as not needing a response, Remove this comment.

» left by Wilma E Melendez ⁽⁷⁰⁰⁾ (113 days 22 hours ago.)

Well I admit that not all organisms need light although you did mention that they indirectly depend on light because they consume bits of food that falls down.

 

Christians beleive that the reason God made humans and apes share 85% of their genes is to show us that were it not for God having made us in his image, we would be like an ape.

Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 

Since you are the author of this article, you may Remove this comment.

» left by Mike Eppard (105 days 9 hours ago.)

The reason it is called faith is simply that because it requires some faith, however I don't see where science offers a more conclusive theory, the suggestion that our universe just exploded from a subatomic particle is just as if not more hard to concieve as god saying let there be light, but what do you have to gain trusting in falliable science - nothing! all of its assumptions of time and existence beyond History( which is the known and recorded era of time) are unprovable, per say carbon dating which can supposedly date domething back 50,000 years guess what no man recorded records then and in order for them to prove the theory then the control would be having a known item that was recorded by scientists (who didn't exist) 50000 years ago and checked 50,000 years later to determine carbon content, so again it is just a theory like the big bang. The truth is you have a lot to gain by having a relationship with god and christ if only human moral and ethical values were all you could learn, however there is much more to it than that.

 

If you use intelligence both Science and Creation can exist and both require faith in the unknown. I would have to be pretty bold to say all science is wrong and that all prophecy is easily undrstood, for this purpose the only option is to use religion and science toghether to sculpt a senseible and true depiction or perhaps the most controvesial topic of all time, that is for matters in the bible which are not understood in modern literal terms or are hard to understand.

Respond to this comment

Since you are the author of this article, you may Mark this comment as not needing a response, Remove this comment.

Was this article helpful to you? Leave a Public Comment or Question: