The Holy Bible contains many passages which allude to scientific knowledge which could not have been known to the ancient world unless this knowledge were imparted to the authors by the creator himself.
Encyclopædia Britannica documents that in 1845, a young doctor in Vienna named Dr Ignaz Semmelweis was horrified at the terrible death rate of women who gave birth in his hospital. As many as thirty percent died after giving birth. Semmelweis noted that doctors would examine the bodies of patients who died, then without washing their hands, go straight to the next ward to examine expectant mothers. This was their normal practice because the presence of microscopic diseases was unknown. Semmelweis insisted that doctors wash their hands before examinations and the death rate immediately dropped to two percent. Look at the specific instructions God gave his people when they encounter diseases.
And when he that has an issue has cleansed of his issue, he shall number to himself even days for his cleansing and wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in running water and shall be clean. (Lev 15:13)
The book of leviticus was written between 1440 and 1400 BC. Even in 1845 when Dr Ignaz came up with his theory to start washing hands, many doctors thought it was ridiculous. And even as recently as a hundred years ago, doctors would wash their hands in bowls of steel water leaving invisible germs on their hands. In today’s world, it is just common knowledge: wash your hands in running water to kill all the germs. A modern-day doctor wouldn’t even think of washing his hands in a bowl of steel water before he went to operate on somebody. So the question is: how did any man living thousands of years ago in 1400 BC know to write “wash your hands in running water to get them clean”? The answer is: There’s no way any man would know that. No way unless an all-knowing God told him to write it.
Did you know that babies are circumcised on the eighth day because this is the day that the coagulation factor in their blood called Prothrombin is the highest? Medical science has only recently discovered that the blood clotting in a newborn reaches its peak on the eighth day and then drops. But the Bible consistently says that a baby must be circumcised on the eighth day.
Genesis 17:12 He that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generation.
This was written thousands of years before medical science discovered this fact. How did the writer of Genesis know to include this fact in the Bible? Did somebody hop into a time machine and time travel back into the time of Genesis and tell the writer to write it? No, an all-knowing God told him to write it. The many scientific facts in the Bible prove that it is not just a book written by man but a book written by God through man.
For years, astronomers believed that there were somewhere in the neighborhood of six thousand stars. This held in the science of astronomy until Galileo came along with his telescope and suddenly science realized that the stars of the heaven are innumerable, billions of galaxies, billions of stars in these galaxies, innumerable just like God said to Abraham way back in Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
Throughout the Bible, we find insights about the physical universe that the scientific world has only recently discovered. For instance, in the Book of Jonah, we read…
The water compassed me about, even to the soul. The depth closed me round about. The weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. (Jonah 2:5-6)
In this amazing verse, we are told that there are mountains on the ocean floor. Yet scientists did not know this until this century.
In the book of Job, Job proclaims that God hangs the earth on nothing while many holy books declare that the earth sits on the backs of turtles or elephants or is held up by Atlas. The Bible alone declares what we now know to be true. In Hebrews 11:3. We read…
By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Only recently have scientists discovered that everything in the universe is made up of subatomic particles that are indeed invisible to the naked eye. Certainly these authors were inspired by the creator of the universe.
Many other scientific insights were revealed in the Bible centuries before man discovered them. For example, atomic fission, oceanic currents, the hydrologic cycle, the jet stream, dinosaurs and innumerable stars.
We know that when Columbus made his trip to discover India and landed here in America, that when he took off there was tremendous fear that he would come to the edge of the earth, then would plunge off into nothing. And yet had they read the Bible, they would have known that Isaiah talks about the circle of the earth and that the earth is actually round. (Isa 40:22)
I challenge anyone to find scientific errors in the Bible. They’re not there. What’s fascinating to me is the more you know about the scripture and the more you know about contemporary science, you discover the Bible has anticipated it. As a Christian, we can believe in creation and the laws of science at the same time and as a scientist, I’ll a lot rather believe a theory that fits with the evidence that we can really see. Always, whenever we study, whenever we really can observe, we will see that science supports God’s Word. I would challenge those who are declaring that the Bible is filled with myth, to investigate for yourself with an open mind and I know they’ll discover the truth.