Part One: Science Facts in the Bible

Except where specifically cited, many of the following facts were found in: http://www.raptureforums.com/BibleProphecy/101science.cfm. "101 Scientific Facts and Foreknowledge From the Bible”  by Eternal Productions and Jim Tetlow And/or  “A Closer Look at the Evidence” by Richard and Tina Kleiss (Search for Truth, Midland MI, 2003).

Advanced Scientific Knowledge in the Bible

The Bible, as an ancient text, demonstrates a truly astonishing understanding of microbiology and medical science. As you read the following, keep in mind that “germs” were not exactly a well-known ancient concept. For example, “Egyptian medical practices included smearing the blood of worms mixed with donkey dung into open wounds…” (A Closer Look at the Evidence, December 4). In the verses below, notice how startlingly “modern” the Bible’s understanding of germs and contamination is.

Leviticus 11:33-36 “If one of them[unclean dead animal] falls into a clay pot, everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot. Any food that could be eaten but has water on it from such a pot is unclean, and any liquid that could be drunk from it is unclean.  Anything that one of their carcasses falls on becomes unclean; an oven or cooking pot must be broken up. They are unclean, and you are to regard them as unclean. ³⁶ A spring, however, or a cistern for collecting water remains clean, but anyone who touches one of these carcasses is unclean.” God’s instructions about safe drinking water were recorded long before medical science found that water could be contaminated, causing typhoid and cholera (a fact only discovered in the last hundred years or so).

Leviticus 17:12 “Therefore I say to the Israelites, ‘None of you may eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood.’".  Many ancient religions called for the ritual drinking of blood, but God specifically told His people not to.  Of course, now we know that consuming raw blood is dangerous.

Leviticus 22:8  “He must not eat anything found dead or torn by wild animals, and so become unclean through it. I am the LORD.” How did the Bible, written so long ago, know about the disease-causing micro-organisms found in decaying carcasses?

Leviticus 13: 45-46 "The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.”  In his book, “Scientific Facts in the Bible”, Ray Comfort also pointed out that “During the devastating Black Death of the fourteenth century, patients who were sick or dead were kept in the same rooms as the rest of the family. People often wondered why the disease was affecting so many people at one time. They attributed these epidemics to ‘bad air’ or ‘evil spirits’. However, careful attention to the medical commands of God as revealed in Leviticus would have saved untold millions of lives. Arturo Castiglione wrote about the overwhelming importance of this biblical medical law: “The laws against leprosy in Leviticus 13  may be regarded as the first model of sanitary legislation’ (A History of Medicine).”  P.23

Leviticus 11: 9-28 “'Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales...you are to detest…These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, ¹⁴ the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl,  the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat….Every animal that has a split hoof not completely divided or that does not chew the cud is unclean for you; whoever touches the carcass of any of them will be unclean. Of all the animals that walk on all fours, those that walk on their paws are unclean for you… Anyone who picks up their carcasses must wash his clothes, and he will be unclean till evening… The Bible warns against eating birds of prey, bottom feeders (sea creatures without fins or scales), and land animals that don’t have split hooves and chew cud. Some of its instructions are still a mystery to us, but others are becoming clear: scavengers, bottom feeders, and carnivores can be a source of disease for humans. Animals which eat other animals (or carrion) regularly are much more likely to be exposed to disease and then pass on disease when eaten by humans. We found this out the hard way when we gave cows feed which contained ground up dead cows. By changing what cows naturally eat, we introduced Mad Cow Disease into our food supply. Similarly, SARS may have been introduced to humans through consumption of a carnivore (the civet cat).

Deuteronomy 23: 12-13 “Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself.  As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.” Before World War I, it was common for soldiers to die from disease because they didn’t do this.

Leviticus 15:13 " 'When a man is cleansed from his discharge [body fluids], he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing; he must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean.” . For centuries people naively washed in standing water. Today we recognize the need to wash away germs with fresh water. Even as late as the mid- 1800’s doctors would examine corpses and then, without washing their hands, go examine expectant mothers, resulting in a high death rate during childbirth (Ray Comfort, p. 20). But when they started washing their hands, the death rate dropped significantly.

Other interesting and surprisingly “modern” medical and scientific facts found in the Bible:

Leviticus 7:23 "Say to the Israelites: 'Do not eat any of the fat of cattle, sheep or goats.” Only fairly recently have doctors found that fat contributes to heart disease by clogging arteries.

Leviticus 12:3 “On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised.” On the eighth day after birth the blood clotting substance prothrombin is at its highest levels, making it the safest day for the circumcision of baby boys.  What a coincidence that the Bible told them to circumcise on that day.

Deuteronomy 22:9 “Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled.” The Bible warns that mixing seeds will “defile” the crop. There is mounting evidence of the harmfulness of genetically engineered crops. 

Leviticus 18:6" 'No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations.” In the ancient world, marrying near relatives was common, but beginning about 1500 B.C., God forbade this practice. This makes sense if we understand that Adam and Eve were created without genetic errors, but as generations passed genetic mutations (resulting from the fall of man) increased. Their children could marry because the gene pool was still fairly pure, but by the time of Moses genetic defects had increased. Today, geneticists understand that the risk of passing on genetic defects is greatly increased when close relatives marry because they are more likely to carry the same defective gene.

Psalm 102: 25-26  “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,  and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment...” People used to believe that the universe was unchangeable, but science has discovered the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the universe is running down, going from a more organized state to a less organized state, essentially “wearing out”.

Ecclesiastes 1:7 “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.”  Job 36: 27-28 “He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind. In the above verses, the Bible describes the hydrological cycle. But in ancient times, people didn’t understand the origin of rainfall. They saw that streams emptied into the oceans and wondered why the sea level never rose. Meteorology now knows about the hydrological cycle.

 Psalm 8:8 “…the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.” The father of oceanography was a man named Matthew Maury. After reading Psalm 8, he researched data from thousands of ships logs, and eventually found those “paths of the seas”, which are the ocean’s circulating patterns. 

Isaiah 40:22 “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth…” People used to think that the earth was flat, but Bible described it as round.

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Modern science has found evidence that the universe had a beginning.

Job 38:31 "Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?  Can you loose the cords of Orion? Orion and Pleiades are star clusters. Orion is flying apart due to insufficient gravity, but Pleiades is bound together. We only knew this recently, but the Bible recorded it thousands of years ago.

Ecclesiastes 1:6 “The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.” Three thousand years ago, the Bible described the jet streams. In modern times, it wasn’t known until discovered by airmen in World War II.

Job 9:8 He alone stretches out the heavens…The Bible repeatedly says that God stretches out the heavens. Early in the last century, many scientists including Einstein thought that the universe was static. In 1929, it was demonstrated by astronomer Edwin Hubble that distant galaxies were moving away from the earth. This revolutionary discovery only verified what God told us thousands of years ago - the universe is expanding!

Genesis 2:7 “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Scientists now know that the human body is made up of some 28 base and trace elements which are all found in the earth.

Leviticus 17:11 “For the life of a creature is in the blood”. Up until about a century and a half ago, a common medical practice was to “bleed” sick people (make an incision and let out blood). It was thought that this could help to remove disease, but it actually resulted in unnecessary deaths.

Jonah 2: 5- 6  “The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down…” This description of Jonah in the ocean reveals what science didn’t know until the last century or so- that there are mountains in the ocean depths.

 Job 38:16 "Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” Oceanographers didn’t discover springs on the ocean floors until the 1970s, and only then with the aid of special research submarines that could withstand very high pressures. How did Job know about these springs on the ocean floors? 

Leviticus 23:22 “'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.". Leaving the “edges” of the field serves as a hedgerow to limit wind erosion, and leaving the gleaning for the poor provides a food source for the less fortunate. Much of the modern top soil depletion that occurs could be avoided if God's commands were followed.

Job 26:7 “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.” Other ancient religions declared that the earth sat on the back of a large animal or was held up by a giant, but the Bible correctly observed that the earth is suspended in space.

In the Bible, God gave Noah the best dimensions for a stable water vessel Genesis 6:15 “This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.” Today, ship builders know that the best dimensions for a stable ship are a length six times longer than the width.

“In addition to the Bible, which clearly presents the Worldwide Flood as a factual event in which eight humans were saved on a floating ark, every culture in the world has a flood story. The very symbol in the ancient Chinese language for “boat” is a combination of the symbols for “eight”, “people”, and “vessel”. Every culture from the Chinese to the Aztecs, Aborigines to the ancient Greeks, and Eskimos to the Africans, have an account of a universal Flood. Many of these stories include details of a righteous man being saved on a floating vessel and attribute the event to judgment from God. If this really happened, people would have spread across the globe after the catastrophe. As centuries passed, the account of the Flood would have been distorted but remembered. This is exactly what we find. “ A Closer Look at the Evidence, February 24