August 1931
T h e
353
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
HOW SCIENCE SUSTAINS THE BIBLE . . . By HARRY RIMMER, Los Angeles, Calif.*
TT n th is day of inquiry and re search, when -science is investigating and testing every foundation that has so long been accepted, it is perhaps inevitable that the ancient Scripture should also come in for its share of scrutiny and study. It is a fact that science has been doing just this ; and the Bible has been weighed in the scales and tested in the crucible of impar tial investigation. Many who did not know that the Bible is the inspired Word of the living God feared for the fate of the Book in the hands of scientists, but that vast company of men and women who have long accepted the Bible as inspired of God knew it had nothing to fear from any honest investigation. So it was no surprise to most
the text. Men of old, who were the amanuenses of God, did not write according to their limited knowledge, but according to the revelation given to them. The writings of Moses are a case in point. The Bible says of Moses that “God spake to him face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend,” that Moses wrote in the book all the words God had spoken, and that thus the book of Moses was the literal Word of God. At the dic tation of an employer, a stenographer may inscribe a let ter, but it is the letter and the thought and the expression of the employer who spoke the words. Moses, we read, was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians. He was reared in the schools of ancient Egypt, edu cated to rule the land, and given the characteristic training of a prince of the royal house. If he wrote from purely human sources, we would expect to find in his writings the wisdom of Egypt. The science of archaeology has recovered for us the ancient beliefs and teachings of Egypt. We have excavated her libraries, uncovered some of her text books, and have obtained a com prehensive idea of the fallacies of her mistaken ideas of science. But we find none of these in the books that Moses wrote. The Spirit of God, who supervised the writing of the Bible, care
of us that the Bible emerged from this period of testing, hav ing been so magnificently vindi cated by science that we have an established basis of fact for all we previously have been accept ing on faith alone. As one of the greatest scientists of America, who has been watching the scien tific testing of the Bible, recently wrote, “Science is today merely acting as a beacon to illuminate the great pathway to God that is the Bible!” Every branch of physical sci ence that it was possible to mar shal to the task of investigation has applied its tests to the page
The Heavenly Origin of the Bible 7V I' h ence but from heaven could vILj men, unskilled in arts, In several ages born, in several parts, Weave such agreeing truths? Or how or why Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie? Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, Starving their gain, and martyrdom their price. —J ohn D ryden .
of this blessed Book, and the stamp of approval of each in turn has been added to the Bible, to shed, if possible, fresh and new luster upon its pages. S cience and th e B ible In the day when the Bible was written by the dictation of God, the facts of modern science were not known to men. It was, of. course, impossible for men to know such things as the germ theory of disease, before the invention of the microscope that made bacteria visible to the eye of man. It was impossible for men to know of the planetary system of which this earth is only a small unit, before the invention of the telescope that made the other heavenly and solar bodies clear to the human eye. It must pass without contradiction that men of old could not know of the physics of light and sound before the invention of the spectroscope, the photo-electric cell, and the other amazing instruments of physical research so common in the laboratories of the twentieth century. E rror R uled O ut The first fact science established in favor of the Bible was that ancient scientific errors were all excluded from ♦President, Research Science Bureau, Inc.
fully kept out all these scientific errors. The Egyptians, for instance, believed that the earth was flat and rested on four stone pillars, one under each corner of the earth. Moses was taught that, but in all his writings, he refrained from introducing such false ideas. The schools of his day taught the quaint evolution ary idea that men came from fat, white grubs in the slime of the Nile, as the butterfly comes from the caterpillar. In his account of creation, however, Moses introduces no such fallacy as this, but gives us the sublime picture of God forming the body of man and breathing the breath of life therein. The schools of Egypt taught that the sun was a crystal that reflected the light of the earth, but Moses was kept from making such an error in his writing. He reversed the teaching and called the sun itself the ma-or, which literally means “light holder.” He was scientifically right when he said that the sun was the source of light. The science of chemistry affirms that the Bible is true. Let us consider one illustration of this. The late Dr. Ed win E. Slosson, a chemist of international fame, said: The greatest miracle of the Bible is its chemical accuracy. The first book of the Bible says man was made out of the dust of the earth, and this is literally and scientifically true. In the dust of the earth, there are fourteen different chemical elements, and in the body of man, there are those same fourteen chemical elements.
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker