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     The rapid scientific advances in the last 150 years (from telegraph and locomotive to video phones and heart catherization) along with the brainwashing of atheistic evolution, cause many to believe that the ancients were primitive, perhaps intellectually inferior and certainly void of scientific knowledge.  The Bible (written between from 2000 to 3500 years ago) is not a science book, but contains scientific facts.
     Through time, there have been many misconceptions about the universe, the earth and their relationship to one another.  Some ancients thought the earth rested on the backs of four giant elephants or a giant tortoise.  However the Bible states that the “earth hangs on nothing” (Job 26:7), indicating that the earth is suspended without any material supports.
     Buddhist writings and the Vedas (Hindu scriptures) both assert that the earth is flat.  Today science, having photographed the earth via satellite, shows us it is a sphere.  About 2900 years ago Isaiah wrote “It is He (God) that sits above the circle of the earth.”(Isaiah 40:22).
     In the first century Jesus of Nazareth spoke of His coming in the day of final judgment.  He referred to what people would be doing in the day and the night.  Since His coming will be in an instant (1 Thess 4:16), it will be day on some parts of the earth and night on others.  This implicitly acknowledges the spherical shape of the earth and its relationship to the sun causing day and night.
     The writer of Job stated that “He (God) stretches out the north over empty space” (Job 26:7).  Not until 1932 when a telescope powerful enough to reveal this emptiness over the north, did man understand this passage.
     Man has always been fascinated by space.  In the third century BC, the Greek astronomer, Hipparchus, numbered the stars.  One Chinese astronomer numbered the stars at 1500.  Chang Hing, wrote that there were 2500 stars and 11,520 small stars.  Man had the idea that he could count the stars with the naked eye.
     In a dialogue with Abraham indicating the countless number of descendants he would have, God told him to count the stars if he was able (Genesis 15:5).  As mankind develops an ever increasing ability to look at our universe, we begin to grasp the enormity of it and why God challenged Abraham to count the stars.  In the seventh century BC, Jeremiah stated it another way “The stars of heaven can’t be counted.” (Jeremiah 33:22).
     How do we explain why the other Ancient holy writings erred and the Bible did not?  How did Moses, the writer of Genesis, know that the stars are impossible to count?  How did the ancient biblical prophets, writing 2700 to 3000 years ago, know these facts about our earth, but we have discovered them only in relatively recent times?  Was it a mere stroke of luck?  Or was it revealed to them by God?

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