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“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’