The Scientific Accuracy Of The Bible Proves It To Be Superior & Important ! Series

INTRODUCTION

1. Open your bible please to Psalm 8:8.

2. How many of you like science as your favorite class in school?

3. Science can be a hard class.

4. Science can also be a fun class when you cut up frogs and insects or when you mix up different things and cause explosions.

5. In this lesson and other similar lessons we are going to look at statements in our bibles that relate to scientific information that the bible writers would not have known based upon scientific discoveries that had already been made by men.

6. Most of the statements refer to information that was not made know through scientific discoveries until a few hundred years after the bible writers wrote them.

7. How could these bible writers have written scientific statements before men and women knew anything about those scientific facts?

8. What do you think is the explanation?

9. Could the explanation be that God (the number one and chief scientist) told them what to write in the bible? Is that a possibility? I think it has to be the correct answer, don’t you?

10. Since finding scientific accuracy in the bible proves that the bible originally came from God; doesn’t that prove that the bible is more important and superior than all other books?

11. The bible itself is not necessarily a book of science. However, in this lesson and others similar in the future, we are going to read some scientific statements from the bible.

(1) Finding these scientific statements in the bible and written hundreds of years before men discovered them will give proof that the bible is from God.

(2) These scientific statements should cause us to appreciate and obey the bible, with great respect and sincerity.

DISCUSSION

I. FIRST, TURN TO PSALM 8:8. PSALM 8:8 TEACHES THAT THERE ARE “PATHS IN THE SEAS”. THIS IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT THAT MEN DID NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT UNTIL THE MID 1800’s.

1. Let’s read Psalm 8:8, “The birds of the air, And the fish of the sea That pass through the paths of the seas.”

2. To appreciate what it means to learn that there are “paths in the seas” it is important to get well acquainted with a man named Matthew Fontaine Maury. Matthew Maury was born 1806.

(1) Mr. Maury entered the US Navy in 1825 at age 19. In 1839 he experienced an accident that partially disabled him, so he left active sea duty. He remained in the navy.

(2) Three years later, still with the Navy, he was appointed superintendent of the US Naval Observatory in Washington, and also of the US Depot of Charts and Instruments.

(3) Over the next 19 years Mr. Maury devoted himself to studying the winds, clouds, weather, and ocean features ... as well as the Bible.

(4) On one occasion, Mr. Maury was sick and in bed.

(1) Mr. Maury asked one of his daughters to read to him from the bible. She began reading to her father from the eighth chapter of Psalm.

(2) As Mr. Maury’s daughter read the words “whatsoever walketh through the paths of the sea,” her father interrupted and repeated “the paths of the sea, the paths of the sea, if God says the paths of the sea, they are there, and if I ever get out of this bed I will find them.”

3. After Mr. Maury recovered, he took God at his word and began his efforts looking for the paths of the sea.

(1) Mr. Maury studied old ships’ logs and documentation from those sailing naval and commercial ships. From these he compiled charts of ocean-wind and sea currents.

(2) To study the speed and direction of the ocean currents Mr. Maury placed out in the ocean weighted bottles known as ‘drift bottles’. These floated slightly below the surface of the water, and thus were not affected by wind.

(3) Instructions were sealed in each bottle directing anyone who found one washed ashore to return it. From the location and date on which the bottles were found, Mr. Maury was able to develop his charts of the ocean currents—the ‘paths’ of the seas—which greatly aided the science of marine navigation.

(4) Turn to Psalm 62:11 and hold your place for a moment.

4. In 1855, Mr. Maury wrote the first textbook on modern oceanography, The Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology.

(1) In this work, Maury presented oceanography from a Christian viewpoint.

(2) Mr. Maury, during this same period of time prepared charts of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean between the United States and Europe, which showed the practicability of laying undersea cables.

5. Mr. Maury made charts of the North Atlantic; and as time passed he made other charts-of the South Atlantic, the North Pacific, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean.