Month: October 2017

More About Water

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flood

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the heaven were opened.”  Gen. 7:11

Before reading this post, you should read my previous posts “Was Moses Dumb and Did God Lie?”, and also “What’s in the Water?”.

I read an article yesterday by Joseph Farah, the editor of WND.  You can find it here.  The article talks about how scientists believe that the earth makes it’s own water deep beneath the mantle, giving validation to the Genesis flood and in particular the floodwaters that erupted from the earth. 

It’s a fascinating article with very important implications, not only with regard to the Genesis narrative, but also for potential benefit for mankind.  But that is not the focus of this post.  I want to comment on the last part of Gen. 7:11 – the floodgates of heaven.  Is this metaphorical or literal? 

I pointed out in my previous posts mentioned above that the ancient Hebrew believed that there was a solid dome firmament over the earth and above that firmament was the throne of God in the ‘waters above’.  I have no doubt that they also believed that Moses literally meant that God opened the firmament and water blasted through to the earth along with the water that exploded from the deep. 

The Hebrew word in Genesis 7:11 is ‘arrubah’ and it means window, lattice, sluice or floodgate.  Secular science says that it is metaphorical because a literal translation does not jive with the Copernican Helios-centric concept.  It’s interesting that if this same science now implies that the first part of the verse is literal – that there is unimagined amounts of water beneath the mantle that could have added to the Great Flood, yet it dismisses the ‘window of heaven’ as a whimsical way of describing a huge thunderstorm that lasted for 40 days. 

Also, the word for heaven in this verse is ‘shamayim’, which is the same word used in Gen. 1:8 for heaven as God named the expanse, or firmament.  Most would like to translate this word in 7:11 as sky, but there is no basis to do that other than to make it fit the Helios-centric viewpoint. 

In the creation narrative the only ‘heaven’ to be used as singular is the firmament or expanse.  The other times in the creation narrative the NASB uses heavens as plural but gives no indication that sky is included.  In Genesis, ‘shamayim’ is only singular when describing the firmament or where God resides (the 3rd heaven).    

Jacob saw a gate in the firmament when the angels were ascending and descending the ladder.  He said it was THE gate of heaven (Gen. 28:17). The word here is ‘sha’ar’, which means entrance, as to a palace.  In this verse it makes sense as the main entrance because Jacob said it was the house of God and the gate was the entrance to His house.   This spot where Jacob’s head rested became the location of the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple.  This indicates there are different openings (windows and entrance) through the firmament.

Moses was literal when he said water erupted from the deep.  Why would he not be literal when he says God opened the firmament and dumped water from the third heaven?

Dan Baker

Was Moses Dumb and Did God Lie?

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moses-writing

Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s family as a son.  He would have received the best education in the most powerful kingdom of the world.  The ancient Egyptians were a highly advanced society fluent in mathematics and engineering.  Acts 7:22 says Moses was “educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds”.

Moses was chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land.  God counted on him to organize over two million people after defying Ramses and He entrusted Moses to disseminate and administer His Holy Law. 

The Torah, or first 5 books of the Old Testament, was written by Moses.  The Bible says that God’s Law was dictated through angels to Moses, the mediator (Gal. 3:19).  Parallel with that truth, ancient Hebrews believed that God revealed the creation history in Genesis directly to him, as well.

So the question is, with regard to Genesis Chapter 1, did the angels tell Moses a phony childish story because he and the rest of the Israelites were too simple-minded and unsophisticated to understand a heliocentric cosmology? 

Got your Bible out?  Follow along.  Look at what Genesis teaches:

Vs. 1 – God created the heavens (plural) and the earth.  A general statement, no chronology intended.

Vs. 2 – Earth, before it was technically called earth, was just a ‘blob’ of water, if you will.

Vs. 3-5 – God created light.  This was light BEFORE the sun, moon and stars were created.  End of Day 1.

6-8 – God then created the firmament (expanse) to separate the waters. This firmament, or dome, is ‘raqiya’ in Hebrew which means a ‘solid extended surface’. This firmament made a separation of the water ‘blob’.  The ancient Hebrew understood this dome or vault as solid and that is what Scripture says (Job 37:18).  It is a structure. 

God called this expanse or firmament heaven and David said in Psalm 19:1 this structure – the expanse (same word ‘raqiya’) – this work of His hands – is His glory!  So this heaven was created after the water blob.  This heaven is the solid expanse that separates the waters from above it (Psalm 148:4) and the waters below it.

I refer to ‘this heaven’ because there are 3 in Scripture.  Remember when Paul said he went up into the 3rd heaven (2 Cor. 12:2)?  There is the heaven that God lives in (Psalm 104:3; Psalm 148:4; also see my post ‘What’s in the Water?’) , the heaven of the expanse or firmament, and the heaven where the birds fly and clouds form (Matthew 6:26 – the word ‘air’ is literally heaven).  Paul went up to the 3rd heaven where God is.  Day 2.

9-10.  God then gathered the waters below, or the formless earth, into one place and made dry land materialize.   He called the dry land earth.  So technically, earth was not earth yet in verse 2.

11-13.  God created vegetation and it sprouted.  Still NO SUN yet the vegetation was growing!  Day 3

14-19.  God created the lights and put them IN the firmament heaven. Verse 14 is differentiating the firmament heaven from the other heavens.  In other words He created the sun, moon and stars (16) and put them inside the solid expanse (17).  The sun and moon are their own light source (‘two great lights’).  The moon is not a reflection of the sun.  The lights are INSIDE the firmament or dome.  If the lights were under the firmament, it would have said under or below as God said the ‘waters below’ in vs. 9.  Since the sun and moon are inside the firmament heaven, what we see must be some sort of projection.  End of day 4.

20-23.   God created all the creatures that live in the waters.  Day 5

24-31.  God created all the animals and man.  Day 6

The Israelites could understand God’s highly technical Law, but they couldn’t understand the solar system.

The ancient Hebrew believed that the earth does not move, it’s stationary (Psalm 93:1) with a solid dome or firmament over it and God’s throne is on top of the firmament in the waters above (Psalm 104:3).   The sun and moon follow their own circuits (Psalm 19:5-6), and they are moving but the earth is stationary.  This is what the Bible teaches and this is what they believed. 

Modern day Christianity tries to find ways to reconcile the Bible with the solar system model but fails.  So we say that the Old Testament writers wrote their narratives in quaint, superstitious, poetic ways because they didn’t have modern technology and knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics.

But they had Yahweh, the Creator Himself! 

So, if God gave Moses this information through angels, then God must have assumed that Moses and the rest of the Israelites were too dumb to understand the heliocentric model and the angels lied for God.  Therefore,  God must have lied because the angels would have only spoken what they were given.

But Yahweh cannot lie and Moses was extremely intelligent.

Dan Baker

Did the Sun Stop?

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Joshua commanding the Sun

“Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,

            ‘O sun, stand still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley of Aijalon,’

So the sun stood still and the moon stopped, until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.”  Joshua 10:12-13

I watched one of my favorite movies the other day for the umpteenth time.  It is ‘Inherit the Wind’ starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.  I love it for the acting, writing and directing, not the message of the film. 

It is based on the true story of the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ which is the famous trial of the teacher in Tennessee who broke the law by teaching evolution.  Tracy plays the Clarence Darrow character and March the William Jennings Bryant character.  They both bring a phenomenal performance to the screen. 

It was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, including best actor for Tracy and best screenplay, but surprisingly won none.  I say surprisingly because not only was it a brilliant film with incredible performances and cinematography, but the message of the movie was decidedly left-wing, anti-Biblical and anti-traditional propaganda, just the type of garbage the Hollywood left loves to promote.

The film portrays the townspeople as backward, ignorant, bigoted hayseeds and the William Jennings Bryant character as a fanatical Bible thumping egotist.  But a critique of the film isn’t what I’m writing about here.  It was the dialogue in a scene that spurred me to write.

In the scene in question, Henry Drummond (the Clarence Darrow character played by Tracy) asks Matthew Brady (the William Jennings Bryant character played by March) to take the stand and testify as a Bible expert.  Drummond is defending the evolution teacher and Brady was brought in by the prosecution to try the defendant. 

Brady agrees to testify.  Drummond proceeds to break down Brady’s ‘radical’ Christian viewpoint and eventually makes him look like a foaming at the mouth fool.  Here is the portion of dialogue I wanted to focus on:

Drummond: You believe that every word written in this book should be taken literally?

Brady: Everything in the Bible should be accepted exactly as it is given there.

Drummond: Now what about this part right here, where it talks about Jonah being swallowed by the whale? You figure that really happened?

Brady: The Bible does not say “a whale.” It says, “a big fish.”

Drummond: As a matter of fact, it says “a great fish.” But, I guess that one’s pretty much the same as the other. Now, what do you think about that business?

Brady: I believe in a God who can make a whale, and who can make a man, and make both do what He pleases.

Lady in the audience: God Bless you, Matthew Harrison Brady.

Audience: Amen, amen….

Drummond: I want those “amens” in the record. Now I recollect a story about Joshua — Joshua making the sun stand still. As an expert, do you tell me that that’s as right as the Jonah business? That’s a pretty neat trick.

Brady: I do not question or scoff at the miracles of the Lord, as do ye of little faith.

Drummond: Have you ever pondered what would actually happen to the earth if the sun stood still?

Brady: You can testify to that if I get you on the stand.

Drummond: If, as they say, the sun stood still, they must have had some kind of an idea that the sun moved around the earth. You think that’s the way of things? Or don’t you believe that the earth moves around the sun?

Brady: I have faith in the Bible.

Drummond: You don’t have much faith in the solar system.

Brady: The sun stopped.

Drummond:   Good! Now, if what you say actually happened — if Joshua stopped the sun in the sky — the earth stopped spinning on its axis, mountains toppling, tectonic plates crashing into one another,  and the earth, shriveled to a cinder, crashed into the sun. Now, how come they missed that little tidbit of news?

Brady:   They missed it because it didn’t happen.

Drummond:   But it had to happen. It must’ve happened, according to natural law. Or don’t you believe in natural law, Mr. Brady? Would you ban Copernicus from the classroom along with Charles Darwin? Would you pass a law throwing out all scientific knowledge since Joshua?

Drummond asked a lot of important questions.  Of course his questions were aimed at trying to demonstrate that the Bible is comprised of a bunch of stories that are ignorant of scientific “facts”.

My point of discussion is if the sun did stop, and the earth does spin on an axis and orbit the sun, then Drummond’s description of what would happen is dead-on.

Try to envision yourself on a cruise liner at sea and you are sitting in the dining room having dinner.  Pretend this cruise liner is traveling at 1000 miles an hour and its giant anchor accidentally breaks loose and sinks to the ocean bottom and lodges fast.  The ship comes to an immediate stop – 1000 to 0 at once.  What would happen?  Catastrophe!

That’s what would happen to the earth if it suddenly went from spinning 1000 mph to 0.  The incredible centrifugal force WOULD cause mountains to topple!  Tectonic plates WOULD crash into each other causing global earthquake devastation!  People WOULD be hurled forward smashing into anything in their path.  The earth, now no longer spinning, WOULD start to be sucked toward the sun, its orbit decaying.  It would be the end of the world.  So why didn’t that happen?

There are 3 possible reasons.

The first is that it never really happened.  It’s just a fable, a myth.  Joshua never ‘stopped the sun’.

The second is that God, in stopping the earth from spinning, used His power to make sure none of the disastrous things would happen because of the earth’s rotation coming to a sudden halt.  It’s a very convenient explanation.  But that’s usually what Christians employ when trying to reconcile the Bible with mainstream science.

The other explanation is that the Bible is true.  The sun stopped, not the earth, as it says.

Drummond says that if you believe that this story happened as the Bible described, then you deny Natural Law, you deny the solar system.  In the solar system model, I totally agree with him.  So that rules out the second explanation, in my opinion. 

And I don’t believe the story is a fable.

It’s interesting that Drummond linked Copernicus with Darwin.  Mainstream scientism says evolution is a fact – the science is completely valid.  It says if you think that God created man in a day, you are a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. 

Yet we know today, after many years of creation science research, that evolution is a horribly flawed, and frankly, fraudulent theory.  It requires way more faith to accept than Genesis.  But they have all kinds of visual aids (read artist renditions), science babble and mainstream support to help keep it alive as ‘real’ science.

So do you accept Darwin as you do Copernicus?

What do you believe, Christian?  And why?

Related: see my post ‘Every Eye Will See Him’