or centuries, man believed that the earth was flat-
but not the Bible.
People in the 15th century feared sailing because
they thought they would fall over the edge of the
flat earth. Yet the Bible revealed the truth more
than 1,000 years before man discovered it for
himself.
It took a long time for science to discover what was
recorded in the Bible more than 2,500 years ago.
Copernicus invented the first globe in 1475 to
demonstrate that the earth is a sphere. Galileo
constructed the first astronomical telescope which
he used to study the sky. Columbus believed the
sphericity of the earth with his voyage to North
America in 1492. Finally, Magellan and his men
sailed around the earth and thus proved it to be
spherical in shape. This major event did not occur
until the 15th century.
The fact of a spherical earth was clearly proclaimed
in the Bible by the prophet Isaiah nearly twenty
eight centuries ago. In chapter
40 verse
22 of the
book of
Isaiah we read:
“It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth,
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers;
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and
spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”
When Isaiah wrote this verse he used the Hebrew word
“khug” to describe the shape of the earth. Although
this word is commonly translated into the English
word “circle,” the literal meaning of this word is
“a sphere.” It is also used in
Proverbs 8:27
“When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he
set a compass upon the face of the depth:
The word “khug” is here translated “compass”
referring to surface of the ocean taking on a
spherical shape.
The earth is also said to be spherical in other
Bible verses like
Job 26:10, and
Amos 9:6:
“He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the
day and night come to an end.”
“It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven,
and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that
calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them
out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his
name.”
The Bible has shown itself to be scientifically
accurate in another observation cited by the
Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical
Services Administration:
According to Mr. Elmor Escosia, Chief of a
Planetarium Unit here Manila, during the early
period, the proof that the earth is round is during
the observation of a lunar eclipse, because during a
lunar eclipse, you will find the one covering the
moon is a round object and that round object is the
earth.
As Mr. Escosia said, the earth’s shadow always takes
a circular bite out of the moon during a lunar
eclipse, which would only be possible with a
spherical earth.
This scientific principle is just one of the
evidences that demonstrate the Bible’s historical
accuracy… a discovery that proves how authentic the
Bible is.
