Why Moses' Version of the Flood is the Most Reliable Ancient Account

[Music] well it turns out that no one on the wall is describing an event that they actually saw and by the way either are the author of the akkadian version they're not describing something they saw firsthand they're all describing an event that occurred prior to them does that make sense so really the question isn't about whether didn't work to figure out this I gotta figure out which of these early versions should I trust that's what this comes down to I know I had a murder in 1981 I know what had certain characteristics the question is which witness afterwards should I trust right same thing I know I've got an early event I've got three people describing it which one should I trust make sense what I want to do this morning is help you figure out which one to trust and we do it by looking at the scripture and asking ourselves is it right about other features other features that the author's should not have known about because they couldn't see those features either you know they couldn't see this flood but they described it oh that's not me guys I promise that's not me just wanting to know turn mine off so we want to know is there anything else that the authors describe that's hidden that might make us believe that this thing they're describing that was hidden to their own experience is also true first before we start with this we have to talk about what is the Bible really is the Bible supposed to be a science manual I mean am I supposed to know every hidden scientific truth by reading the Bible if I wanted to know how DNA forms the formation instructs the formation of proteins can I go to my Bible to find that out why wouldn't God write about DNA shouldn't God have written about DNA no it's not that's nothing other than Popples about the Bible was about God and his relationship to man it's about that worldview those three worldview questions how did we get here how did it get so messed up and how do I fix it the three most important questions any of us asked in a worldview are addressed in the Bible if you want to know how to fix your computer or mow your lawn or fix your heart yard tools or even plant a good garden you can't go to your Bible to get that there may be features about gardening in the Bible but just not construction but for gardening does that make sense so we shouldn't expect to see other features but I'll tell you this if I see something in the Bible that happens to describe something scientific I think I should expect that it would be should be correct if I see something mentioned by the Bible the eopns reference some scientific fact in my world I think they should line up even though the Bible is not written to describe that thing does that make sense so my question for you we're gonna play a little game here is there any hidden science in the Bible that really does make sense of the world around us that should not have been known by an ancient author writing in the Old Testament first of all I think I was struck by as a as a new believer was that if I as an atheist I accepted a certain order of appearance of life on the planet Earth and it turns out that as you read the Bible there is a very much a similarity between how the Bible describes the appearance of life on the earth and how science describes the appearance of life on Earth that water separates from the land the life begins in the water then it moves to the land and then for long man is a late arrival all these are features of the ancient biblical account from Moses and by the way these are not features from the Akkadian account or they kept akov Gilgamesh you could not take those accounts and marry them to what we know in science you'll see why in a minute only the Old Testament could you hold the Old Testament a group of us in this room this morning and be believers in the Old Testament there are no believers meeting right now who are holding the epic of gilgamesh in their hands there aren't any now we'll play the game close your your your handout that I gave you gotta turn it over you can't look at it for a few minutes okay because I want the answers are in there just turn it over and don't be cheating by reading ahead and getting the answers we have to not cheat here we go we're in church by like a cheat in church I think that's really bad so read this scripture with me and you tell me where the hidden science is we're gonna go through the few passages of Scripture tell me if you see the hidden science and ask yourself how would somebody that ancient know this stuff here's our first verse okay from Isaiah he sits enthroned above the circle of the earth and its people are like grasshoppers she stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in look at how he describes the earth they're going on one more verse another Old Testament verse in Proverbs when I when he preached and he prepared that preached when he prepared the heavens I was there when he set a compass circle on the face of the depth you will see repeatedly in the Old Testament of the shape of the earth that is remarkable given its antiquity I want you to think about it for a second there are people who have claimed how you if you believe the Old Testament must believe in a flat earth because you know it talks about the four corners of the earth okay well that's a bit of a stretch because the four directions on a compass usually as the description is meant the four corners of the earth it's always used in the context of talking about direction but that's okay clearly you see many passages in Scripture that describe the earth as a circumference around the earth or a circle is inscribed that's very unusual given the antiquity of those writings of course you realize that most ancient cultures did believe that the earth was flat everyone believed at this time that if you sailed off in any one direction too far you would fall off the edge right that was actually that the consideration until about 1500 when people started doing a lot of travels to see if they could circumnavigate the goal the globe both Hindu and Buddhist scripture affirms this notion that if you travel too far in any one direction in the ocean you will fall off but Old Testament scripture never affirms that notion Old Testament scripture always talks about the earth in the shape the way it really is and how is the old testament talk about how the earth is seeded how it is positioned in the heavens take a look at the CPUC the hidden science first of all understand this if you've got to fill in I hate to have you turn it over to fill it in I'll just send it to you next week don't turn over a cheat let's go to the next one what does this say about how the earth is seated in the heavens look at Jill now Jobe is very likely the oldest book in the Old Testament I know if it'll come back to that in a minute here's what Jill writes he spreads out the northern skies over empty space he suspends the earth over nothing now I know it's easy to read through that verse and think well so what doesn't seem all that remarkable to me but Joe most scholars believe is the oldest text a text written even before Moses penned the Pentateuch describing events that are so ancient that's why Jobe is so think about it in that oldest of all text is the only place in the scripture that you hear about huge dinosaur sized beings like behemoth and Leviathan where is that found its found in Jobe the oldest text so it's really interesting to me that this in the oldest text job describes the earth in this way why because most ancient civilizations did not believe that the earth floated in space they had no concept of this the stability the firmness of the earth led them to believe typically that it was seated somehow on something else firm so Greek mythology would put on the back of Atlas or it might be in the back of an elephant or the back of a lot of Asian cultures a turtle it's seated on something that is holding it up from the book myths and legends I want to read this to you when one examines the writings of the Hindu Buddhist and Greek page pig and worships for example one finds clear reference to the concept of the earth being held up by a man elephant catfish or some other physical support but not the Bible the Bible alone writes it this way at the same time that Hindu scripture was riding this wall Hindu scripture is the one that has actually the elephant or the all that each turn scripture has either the elephant the turtle or the catfish holding up the earth and at the same time you've got ancient Israelites authors believing that it's suspended in nothing what's this concept of nothing even coming from how can they even imagine a space the way we know it yet it seems to be accurate record you see any hidden science in this Isaiah writes it is I talking about God who made the earth and created mankind upon it my own hand stretched out the heavens I am marshaled their starry hosts it's so easy to read over that right just to read over that expression and the last time I was here we talked about this a little bit we know we're in a you know first its expanding and every time the Old Testament are most times the Old Testament describes God creating this expanding universe the expression is used that he stretched out the heavens and maybe nothing but it seems to me an interesting concept that really I don't see how Isaiah or anyone in his time could even know such a thing so I think again the Bible actually describes the universe expanding the way it actually does how about this piece of hidden science this is easy to read over Genesis 1 in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth I'm gonna skip over to the New Testament version of the system in first Corinthians it also affirms this idea so this is the one time we're going to step on maybe twice we'll step out of the Old Testament to get some information in first Corinthians Paul writes we do however speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing we know we speak of God's secret wisdom a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began we take it so for granted this expression beginning of time before time began but he began time but this is a notion in cosmology that not everyone accepts even today this idea that we are in a universe that had a beginning to space time and matter all this the standard cosmological model affirms this but not everyone wants to believe it and certainly not every ancient cosmology believed it you know I I think the last time I was here I mentioned this that my dad remarried and I have six brothers and sisters all raised LDS and Mormons do not believe in a universe that has a beginning because God's got a father who had a father who had a there's no first father it's an infinite regress of fathers of gods hit here polytheistic to actually be riding in antiquity about a universe that has a beginning sounds like it also what but it's really quite remarkable given that nobody else was thinking about these things and no no other ancient text describes universe this way do you see this idea of Kosmic point of singularity seems to be consistent with the teaching of scripture I can believe in a cosmic point of singularity and still call myself a Christian because our scripture teaches it how about this he took himself outside they took him outside of my Abram this is God taking Abram outside and said look up the heavens and count the Stars if indeed you can count them then he said to him talking to Abram so shall your offspring be look at how he's talking about calmly about just comparing the Stars to Abraham's offspring and then you have Jeremiah saying and don't be terrified by the signs of the heavens although the nations are terrified by them no kidding the nations the ancient nations were extremely terrified by the heavens an ancient Chinese cultures believe that an eclipse was simply when a dragon or a beast or an animal ate the moon ate whatever was being covered up and then barf it out later and they were afraid of any kind of activity that had occurred in the stars they couldn't understand because he interpreted these things as being living gods they must be angry it must be moving must be doing something there's an entire I think the entire Mithras religion and Persia is really based on the movement of the Perseus and Taurus constellations above and below the horizon when they saw this kind of movement as the earth would tilt they interpreted the gods were moving they're doing they're fighting and I guess Taurus was losing he's underneath the horizon horses back up again he's above the horizon the people in antiquity looked at the Stars not as things benignly created by God but as gods themselves but this is not what Scripture teaches do something very very different it teaches what we know is true about the universe around us that these are not gods who are actively fighting with each other they are not when these things occur they're not the gods making movement in the space these are things that Jeremiah says do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens let's move back to down to planet Earth for a second and talk about things we see in the water because there's some remarkable features of the water remember the water was largely unavailable aside from the surface to ancient people yet you see 2nd Samuel this the valleys of the sea were exposed in the foundations of the earth laid bare the rebuke of the Lord at the blast of the breath from his nostrils wow look what they're describing there you'll see it again in this verse have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses the valleys of the deep now we kind of read over that and so what that's pretty unremarkable stuff this is from Joel this is the oldest book of the Bible talking about the bottom of the ocean floor having valleys and in Jonah the great deep engulf me weeds were wrapped around my head I descended to their roots of the mountains this idea that the bottom of the ocean floor has certain characteristics and features is not common to ancient mythology as a matter of fact that's not even all that common to modern knowledge this idea there being valleys in this most people until about the 19th century believed that the ocean floor was sandy like a desert in a bowl and if you want to find the deepest part of the ocean you simply went to the middle of the body of water and that's where the deepest part was and that was common understanding of the oceans floors until explorations were capable around the 19th century they discovered that Marianas Trench in the Pacific that's a trench a valley that's so deep that if you put Mount Everest in that valley it would still be a mile and a half below the surface of the water it stopped but nobody had any idea these valleys and mountains we've discovered a mountain range in the Pacific I'm sorry yeah in the Pacific no it's not the Pacific it's in the Atlantic it's an ocean it's a mountain range that's ten thousand miles long and it's it's a range of mountains but it's underwater now that sounds like I could probably guess that but that's not what ancient cultures were guessing the only people who actually captured that notion correctly were the Jews in the Old Testament everyone else is either silent on the issue or mistaken about the issue staying in the water for a second so this is a feature I think is important the Bible actually describes the ocean floor and how in the world would any of these folks know the ocean floor how deep do you think they can go before they can't discover the ocean floor anymore look at this description of water as well and the sixth and here grass day in the epic story of Jonah the six hundredth year Jonah's life on the 17th day of the second month on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth and the floodgates of heavens were open well maybe the floodgates is disfigured of speech and the springs are also just figure of speech I don't know Genesis says but God remembered Noah and all the while animals and livestock that were with him on in the ark and he sent a wind over the earth and the waters receded now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens have been closed and the rain had stopped falling from the sky this expression Springs of the deep is an interesting one you see something similar here in Proverbs I was there when he set the heavens in place when he marched out there her eyes on the face of the deep when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the Fountains of the deep where are the Fountains of the deep do you realize that for centuries no one bought this as anything other than figurative language nobody thought there were such a thing as fountains in the water or springs in the deep we figured that it's got to be an expression that can't be actually true no one discovered it until 1977 when they discovered the first spring off the coast of Ecuador a mile and a half under water it's pumping out water at 450 degrees there was no discovery you can go on the geological Society's website you'll see there's no other mentioning anywhere on the globe of Springs and the deep until that discovery in 1977 it's just interesting to me that again either this the writers of the Old Testament are just consistently lucky or they're accurate which is more reasonable so I think the Bible describes something that no other ancient text describes most rot modern writings prior to 1977 don't describe this staying in the water a little bit Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is your name and all the earth when I consider your heavens the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which have been set in place you made him man ruler over the works of your hands you put everything under his feet the birds of the air and the fish of the sea all that swim the paths of the sea really the paths of the sea you know the path is in this woods right it's where the woods aren't is where people have and you see this all beaten down that's a path can you have paths in the ocean what is he describing here do you think any idea scream it out currents well he run over that I was describing currents what do you think they discovered currents well they discovered him back in no they didn't discover currents until the 1800s and they discovered the currents a guy named Morrie he discovered the currents Matthew Morrie he was an officer in the Navy and he was a Christian and he was reading you know that verse and he said paths in the ocean he started to look it up and see if he can actually discover this now all the time he'd been in the Navy he'd never seen such a thing he'd never known of such a thing but he ended up writing a book about it and now he is known as the father of modern navigation and he's called the Pathfinder of the Seas he discovered something that was accurately described in an ancient text I'm not quite sure how these folks could know and why is no other ancient text writing about it so I think we get the currents or accurate described and we're the only place where you see it here's something that maybe you couldn't understand if you just watched the atmosphere enough maybe they did the same thing so bear with me two several verses here that explain this in job again an ancient text job he wraps up the waters he wraps up the waters in his clouds yet the clouds are not burst under their weight but he says job says he draws up the drops of water which distill as rain to the streams the clouds poured down the moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind and the wind blows to the south and turns the North around around it goes ever returning on its course all the streams flow into the sea yet the sea never gets full never full to the place the streams come from there they return again what's he describing here yeah absolutely the water cycle as long as the earth and Dewar's seed time and harvest cold and heat water and winter day and night will never cease look at this though God made decrees rules for the rain and he sent away for the Lightning of the Thunder this idea of rules of a certain process that's repeated there a certain we would call them natural laws God's laws he who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth the Lord is the author of those laws so this idea is pretty unique to Jewish scripture you won't find other descriptions of this hydrological cycle like you see in our scripture this idea that you know the Sun beats on the ocean surface evaporates water into the clouds forming clouds eventually these come near mountains or other turbulence this situation has caused them to rain back out on the ground if it's on the ground it rains back on the streams back into the retin to the ocean or it rains out all over the ocean this cycle is described in the Old Testament kind of interesting how about this 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 like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded Wow the heavens you see one kind of version of this in the New Testament I thought but this is the other New Testament from Hebrews in the beginning oh Lord you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens of the work of your hands they will perish but you remain they will all wear out like a garment no talk to us last time I was here what do you think is being described there the idea of the heavens wearing out like a garment a maybe the idea yeah it's describing the second law of thermodynamics of entropy of heat dissipation of usable energy in a contained environment but there's no outside influence a closed system so it seems to me it's interesting that the Bible describes entropy in a closed system in a way that I can't imagine how they can understand that think about this for a second just to say that the heavens will wear out what evidence did an ancient Jewish writer have that the heavens would wear out they've been looking at the Stars for generations their grandparents drew those constellations their parents drew those constellations nothing has changed every time four generations they look at the nighttime stars to the sky nothing is different so why would you just throw out there that all this is gonna wear out do they have any evidence to tell this is true it is true but how do they know and that's interesting well in today on what I think is the most remarkable piece of hidden science in the Bible when I first saw it I was really struck by it and it really involves the description of the Stars oldest book job chapter 38 can't I wrote it an old in a form that King James I thought was sounded ancient can't style bind the sweet influence of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion can style bring forth mazzaroth into the season nor canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons isn't this sound ancient when you hear it in the King James well what is he describing there he's describing a series of constellations in the nighttime sky and if you remember a job was sometimes pushing back on God a little bit kind of like mad about how things worked out right and so what does God do what he talks to job he's constantly saying who do you think you are are you God no remember I'm God and then Joe finally gets it yeah yeah he figures it out he's not God so what you have here is God scolding job repeatedly and using the constellations as a way to scold job so let's go back to it for a second I think he does accurately describe the nature of these constellations but I want to show it to you cuz if you didn't really know the constellations as well you may not even see it Pleiades Orion and our tourists let's just take a look at the first one more time here it is and let's separate out some pieces that we're going to talk about individually we'll talk about Pleiades or Ryan and Arcturus Arcturus we'll start with this one can't spell bind the sweet influence of Pleiades here's the constellation you're looking at it right here God is kind of looking at job and saying hey job you think you're so good you think you can keep this constellation together you can keep Pleiades together I can keep playing these together okay what's you're trying to get at here well now we know what Pleiades really is it looks like seven stars but they aren't really seven stars there are seven clusters of stars our 250 sons in those seven clusters but they look like one star because they're so tightly clustered together and it turns out they're all moving in the same direction so they'll always look this way Isabelle Lewis was the United States Naval Observatory astronomer and she wrote in a book called wonder worlds astronomers have identified 250 stars as actual members of this group all sharing a common motion and drifting through space in the same direction Lewis says they are quote journeying onward together through the immensity of space unquote it's true God could keep this together and it will be together from our perspective but how would job know that you think this constellation looks anything different in the entire history of Judaism than Orion that hasn't changed you can still look in the nighttime sky and see Orion how would job know that this is stay together this will stay together no matter what maybe it's coincidence lucky guess let's take a look at some of the other features of this verse the bands of it's almost as though God is doing the same thing with this constellation now it's think you can loosen the bands of Orion well what does a Ryan here's the Orion constellation well the bands what are the bands what's that what you're talking about there well the band of Orion is this belt and it's made up of three stars mean taça on alum and on the talk it's almost like God is saying hey Joe you think you're this good you can loosen these bands I can loosen them and sure enough this is a very different situation than Pleiades Garrett service is a famous astronomer wrote a book called curiosities in the sky he wrote say this band consists of an almost perfectly straight line of second magnitude stars that are equally spaced and very beautiful in the course of time however the two right-hand stars men talking on hollom will approach each other and form a naked-eye double so in essence these two stars on the right are eventually going to move together and they will form a naked-eye double the other star will drift away eastwards so that the ban will no longer exist unlike Pleiades from job's perspective God can loosen this ban but how would job no let's go to one more constellation in the three we still can't figure out what he's talking about with Nazareth lots of estimates on that but to be sure it's gonna leave it out we'll go to Arcturus there's no but no one's identified with the constellation he's talking about there what about our tourists though can you guide our tourists and the Suns do you think you can guide our Taurus anywhere you want you think Arcturus can be guided at all well you can't do it job only I can do that what's he talking about here let me read to you about our a little bit about our tourists Garrett service again wrote that dr. Arcturus is one of the greatest Suns in the universe is a runaway star whose speed of flight is about 257 miles per second it is massive so massive in fact is positioned right there in that unusual position there and the constellation and it happens to be so massive that it is not affected by other gravitational objects it's like it's like a bull in a china shop it goes wherever it wants to go and it's huge and fast is traveling a lot faster than say our Sun this is a fast heavy star that Charles buck halter of the Showboat Ellis Observatory he wrote a book called wonder world's he says Arcturus is high velocity places that in a very small class of stars that apparently are a law unto themselves so when this passage of Job was written to this expert and he was asked to comment on it it took him back and he spent some time studying it and Pleiades and Arcturus to see what in the world how could this be so coincidental he says what he wrote when he got done this is mister berkhalter the study of the book of Job and as comparison with the latest scientific discoveries has brought me to the matured conviction that the Bible is an inspired book and was written by the one who made the Stars I was interesting I thought because he happens to get the features of these three job happens to get the features of these three constellations right now we started we asked this question we got ancient accounts of the flood how do we know that these ancient accounts aren't the ones we should trust rather than the biblical ancient account well we can simply ask a question do these ancient accounts get other hidden features of science accurately correct and we've talked about a few of these and if we said hey can we go to this source can we go to either the Epic of Gilgamesh or the epic of Atrahasis to get answers you know we can't but it turns out there is an ancient text that describes the flood that gives us persuasive answers to all of those questions it's called the Old Testament and if you talk about we didn't talk about this today but I talked about it in the book of how carefully these documents were transmitted how carefully they have been confirmed by archaeology and even how they've been confirmed by prophecy that's been fulfilled I think we have a persuasive argument that this is a reliable text we can trust as it describes what happened with Noah there's lots of things have been written about the ancient flood from lots of different sources I just think that our account is the one we can trust [Music]

Channel: Cold-Case Christianity - J. Warner & Jimmy Wallace

Views: 515,461

Keywords: apologetics, noah, noah's ark, noah and the flood, christian apologetics (literature subject), noahs flood, genesis apologetics, presuppositional apologetics, noah and the ark, noah's flood, noah (person or being in fiction), catholic, proof of noah's ark, baptist, genesis, flood, as it was in the days of noah, christian, apologia, faith, world, ken ham, noachian deluge, one minute apologist, minneapolis, anthropology, answers in genesis, aesthetic, Moses, The flood, Old Testament, Noah ark

Id: XMnjX-VgPMk

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020