[Biblemat] A> The Final Frontier

[Steven C. Harper]

From: TRUTH & REASON, a bulletin of the Glendale church of Christ, Glendale, AZ. 
Editor: Steven Harper 
September 30, 2007
The Final Frontier

 

     By now, some of you already have the theme from "Star Trek" in your head - just admit it! But that is not the "final frontier" of which I will be speaking today, so bear with me while I lay the groundwork for this article.

    I was - again - reminded this week by an article online about some new creatures that have been discovered in the deep oceans, and some discoveries a few months ago in the regions around the remote areas of the Hawaiian Islands, that man hasn't even really begun to discover all the creatures that populate this earth. I find it sadly humorous that man [who thinks he is so intelligent nowadays and who prides himself on what he knows] rejects the revealed knowledge of God and trusts in his own abilities to discover the things God already knows. For every new discovery of some sea creature or land-dwelling creature in the remote jungles of Borneo or Madagascar, man swells with pride about his new discovery. And as I read this, I get a picture of God sitting up in heaven saying, "So what? I knew about that a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time ago. Who do you think put it there?!?!"

    Each of these new "discoveries" must be put in the proper perspective, to be honest. Let us admit, first of all, that all of the searching man will ever do, and all of the creatures, chemical solutions, and medical cures and discoveries that man will ever know or experience will not even begin to scratch the surface of the depths of God's knowledge. Let us admit that all these "discoveries" of man are common knowledge with God and we fall far short of the knowledge He has. The wise writer acknowledged many years ago, "all the work of God,.man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out" (Eccl. 8:17).  We can spend billions of dollars in our quest to discover new things, new creatures, and medical cures that God already knows!

    The underlying motivation behind this is varied, but a great majority of these attempts to discover some new thing lies in the original [and erroneous] premise that God does not exist and, based on that, an attempt to prop up the arguments by weighted evidence. [Publish the evidence that supports the theory, while ignoring the evidence that refutes it.] Today, even well-known scientists are trying to argue for alien life on Mars as the source of all life on earth, and it all begins with the rejection of God as Creator. Fifty years ago, their theories would have made great science fiction reading, but now we are supposed to believe it is "scientific fact"!

    Consider just a few examples of what man "discovered" but which were written and revealed in God's word many years before:

    A round earth? For many years, man believed the world was flat and if you went far enough in one direction, you would literally fall off the edge of the earth. Aristotle [4th century B.C.] was the first recorded promoter of a "round earth" theory, but it was mostly his own students who were willing to accept his theory. It wasn't until about 500 years ago that the world was proven to be spherical by sailors who circled the earth.

    Maybe someone should have pointed out that the Bible talked of the "circle of the earth" (Isa. 40:22) about 600 years before Christ was born, and a "circular horizon" (Job 26:10) about 1700 before that!

    The earth is held up by.WHAT? Up until 1543, there existed many theories about how the earth was supported and held in place, ranging from Atlas, to giant cables, to oxen [and these theories were put forth by supposedly intelligent men of their era]. It wasn't until 1687 that Newton published his scientific paper, Principia, that argued that the earth was held in place by an attraction of the sun. It wasn't until 1839 that astronomic observations proved the earth rotated and the sun was fixed.

    Maybe someone should have looked at Job 26:7, where we find Job talking about how God hangs the earth on nothing and the north is spread out over empty space. This was written about 4000 years before Newton's Principia!

    From where does rain come? Up until the middle fourth century B.C., when Aristotle wrote his 'Meteorlogica' men had some strange ideas about where rain came from and what happened to the water that flowed through rivers. It wasn't until about 1770 that man figured out that rain evaporated up into the atmosphere and was carried as clouds to other locations, where it would come down as rain, defining what we now know as the "water cycle."

    Maybe they should have read Elihu's words about how God draws up the water which the clouds drop down on man (Job 36:27, 28), written about 4000 years before man figured out the water cycle.

    Reproduction of life. Up until 1865, there were various theories floating around about how life sprang up. Aristotle [whose wise theories we have already noted] actually thought life sprang from rotting meat because he saw flies emerge from meat that had been left out [he missed the fact fly larvae - maggots - had been deposited on the meat]! Only in 1865 did a man prove that life was a matter of heredity [Mendel's Law].

    Maybe someone should have shown them in the opening chapter of the Bible how we are told each living being - whether plant or animal - produces after its own kind (Gen. 1:12, 24).

    We could list many more of these "discoveries" that stumbled upon some information God had already revealed hundreds [or even thousands] of years earlier, but this should be sufficient to show that, sometimes, man just needs to open up his Bible to "discover" something they just might be looking for!

    And, really, that is the point of this article: How many spiritual "discoveries" are just waiting to be found by us if we would just open our Bibles? How many answers to life's problems would be "discovered" by us if we would just spend some time in a diligent and thorough search of God's written word? We don't need to scale the utmost height or plumb the depths of the deepest ocean to find these things; we just need to open our Bibles!

    It seems that even some of us [we who are Christians] are hesitant to take the time to open our Bibles and search for the answers to our questions and our problems. Maybe it is because we might not want to really know what God says about it; maybe we already know what God says about it and we don't want to be reminded; maybe we have mixed up priorities and trust the advice of worldly men over the wisdom of God. Whatever the reason, we need to start looking in the right place and quit wasting our time looking for alternative opinions or advice. It will be within the revealed word of God - the Bible - that we find the answers we need. It may take some time, but it will definitely be worth the effort.

    And don't take the easy way out, either. Don't ask the preacher for a quick, one-minute, one-sentence answer to your problems because it is rare that such an answer would be sufficient. As a regular student of God's word, I can tell you that some answers will not be easy to find, but when I have found them, I am not likely to forget them easily. When you put forth the effort to find God's answers, your spiritual growth will be a beneficiary of the time and effort and you will have something on which to build, spiritually-speaking.

    Just remember it will be the words of Jesus that judge us in the last day, not the "wisdom" of men (John 12:47, 48). Take time to discover God's word!                                                -- Steven Harper
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