The Bible Held Up Against Higher Critics

Reprinted from “The Earth.” an old flat earth publication

The Bible and Science, is the sub-title of what is known as Roger’s Reasons, a pamphlet in which the Bible is professedly upheld against certain Higher Critics. In this conversational pamphlet one of the Agnostics jeeringly speaks of “the mistakes of Moses,” and starts the controversy by asking, “What do you say to the Creation History in the first chapter of Genesis, and that gem of the collection, light before and seemingly without the sun?” This question is followed by the hackneyed statement, that “the Bible was never intended to teach science.”

But the Bible was evidently intended to teach cosmological science, or knowledge; as appears from the fact that it does teach it. So the writer of the pamphlet is, at the beginning, illogical.

Would it be possible for a theological text-book, purporting to come from the Creator for the guidance of His creatures into the way of obtaining Eternal Life, to contain blunders on the very first subject mentioned in that book? If such were the case, the Bible would not be reliable, and could not be from God.

But the subject of Creation is not only mentioned, it is taught in explicit terms, and the Bible has never been shown to contain a scientific error in its statement, that light was created before the sun. Light is described in a dictionary, as an imponderable ethereal fluid diffused through space, and opposed to darkness light being the result of force, caused by wave motion, i.e., the waves of the ether vibrate with almost infinite rapidity. Thus when the Spirit of God “moved” (or brooded) upon the face of the waters, the movement was made with a purpose which was consummated when the fiat went forth: “Let there be light! and there was light.”

I agree with “Roger” when he states, that the Bible generally explains itself; but he subverts the truth in an unwarrantable and awkward manner when dealing with such portions of the inspired Record as the following:

“God said: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. And God called the dry land, Earth.”  Gen, i, 9.

And in Pet, iii. 5, we read of “the Earth standing out of the water, by the Word of God.”

Also, in Holy Writ, we are told. regarding the waters, that there is “a place which God has founded for them.” And that God “hath set a bound that they may not pass over.”  Ps. civ. 8, 9. “He hath set a compass (circle, R.V.) upon the face of the deep…… When He gave to the sea His decree, that the water should not pass His commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth.” Prov, 8:27, 29. “He hath compassed the water with bounds until the day and the night come to an end,” Job 26:10.