Scientific foreknowledge in Bible

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.