Creation Station
Education and Current Events
God's Hidden Nuggets of Truth
Throughout
the Bible are nuggets of scientific fact given to the people of the
ancient world, but these facts were about things that they could not
have fully understood when they received them. These hidden nuggets of
truth are one of the signs of the divine authorship of the Bible.
In the first chapter of Genesis God tells us that He created plants and
animals "after their kind". This is a very succinct statement of the
fact of genetics stated thousands of years before the science of
genetics was discovered by Creationist Gregor Mendel. This statement
was in the Bible at a time when Greeks and other ancient peoples
believed in spontaneous generation of life (Empedocles, 490-435 BC) and
that animals could change from one kind to another (Heracletus of
Ephesus, 540-475 BC). This hidden nugget of truth about the science of
genetics shows an authorship beyond the human knowledge of its time.
In Genesis 22:17, God is speaking to Abraham and promises him that his
descendants will be "as numerous as the stars in the sky and the
sand on the seashore". Although Abraham couldn't have seen them at the
time, God was telling him that there were trillions of stars in the
sky, even though Abraham could only have seen a few thousand stars with
his naked eye. Only in the last century was the reality of this
statement been fully understood as telescopes have been able to see the
trillions of stars that exist in the Universe. Another hidden nugget of
truth in the Bible.
In Job 26:7, Job is replying to his "comforters" by telling them of the
greatness of God, in the process of which he states that the
"earth hangs on nothing". This was an idea not shared
by Job's pagan neighbors. The Greeks of that time believed that the
earth was a solid base, the sky was a solid dome over it and that the
Sun was a chariot that rode across the sky every day. The Hindus
believed that the earth rested on the back of an elephant that stood on
the back of a turtle that swam in the eternal sea. Pagans around the
world believed similar fanciful nonsense.
The real question though is how did Job possess such a scientifically
accurate understanding of the earth's position. God could only have
revealed this knowledge to him. Another hidden nugget of truth in the
Bible.
In Psalm 8:8 the author tells how the fish swim in "the paths of
the sea". This phrase intrigued Creationist Matthew
Maury, a US naval officer in the 19th century. He became interested in
the concept presented in this verse and spent most of his career
studying and mapping "the paths of sea", what we now call ocean
currents. On Matthew Maury's grave at Annapolis, Maryland is the title
he earned for his work, "Pathfinder of the Seas" and the verse Psalm
8:8. But the real question about this verse is how did the Israelites
know about ocean currents? They were a pastoral, farming people who
hired others to do whatever seafaring they needed done. It is another
hidden nugget of truth that could only have been revealed to them by
God.
These examples are just a few of the hidden nuggets of truth in the
Bible that show its divine authorship and authority. God planted
throughout His Bible these nuggets of truth for people to discover
later as our knowledge of His Universe has increased and we can more
fully comprehend His revelation to us.
