(This is the Preface to my forthcoming book entitled Preparing a Body for Eternity: From Adam to Christ to All Believers)
“It all started with the Big Bang!”
So goes the theme song of the popular, bone-tickling sitcom “Big Bang Theory”. Four genius (“geeky”) friends regale viewers with their idiosyncratic views of the Universe – and of each other. They sort of help us forget or laugh at our problems, which is what sitcoms do and should do. Laughter, of course, is the best medicine in life and for many of its mishaps.
This book, however, will not give us answers about the Universe nor bring us fits of laughter with well-phrased and well-timed tech-loaded puns and gags. It only hopes to provide readers with some apt views and, well, useful answers to many of life’s sublime and even not-so-sublime issues and, hopefully, some stress-relieving laughter.
To illustrate further the parallelism and differences between this book’s purpose and that of science-oriented programs and publications, let me deal with one of the biggest issues between theologians and scientists -- and even among theologians themselves: the firmament or, in Hebrew, raqia’.
Gen. 1:6 says that God created the firmament that separated the waters that were below (i.e., the seas) from the waters that were above (apparently, what poured down during the Great Flood).
Job 37:18, further:”With Him, have you spread out the skies, strong (or firm) as a cast metal mirror?”
Psalm 19:1, on the other hand, states: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.”
Put together, these verses will lead, as they have, many to conclude that the firmament is a solid or firm material that made up what the ancients described as the vault of the sky. Since this solid, metal-like firmament no longer exists (if it really did), we have no way of proving whether the ancient writers of the Old Testament were talking of one and the same object or if they were at all referring to something that really existed before. Hence, later translators referred to the firmament as the “expanse” between the waters to remove apparent confusion in our times. Our reluctance or resistance to the elementary, unsophisticated or unadorned accounts of those scribes has somehow led many to eventually invent their own newer views.
It is easy then to see how this old “science of the day” produced the ancient vocabulary and the concept that naturally arises from following those “scientific observations” (the ancient writers wrote what they saw or what people said they saw). Modern interpreters, however, have clever ways of going around the science that the ancients based their writings upon by using our “latest science” to explain away the evidence, hence, distorting or totally rejecting the facts and, ultimately, the truth.
In my book, Noah’s Ark and the Earth Rebuilt, I gave biblical and scientific proofs that there really existed a layer or canopy of water above and around the Earth. In essence, the book fused all available solid evidences and without rejecting the eyewitness accounts of the ancients in arriving at a more convincing picture of the past. Applying this method, we can come up with this workable and plausible picture of the ancient sky.
Here are the facts that arise:
1. God did create the “firmament” to separate the waters above and those below. Gen. 1:6 clearly states that.
2. Logic should tell us that this firmament could have been a visual illusion or a seeming material reality produced by the curved body of water (most probably liquid, as the upper and lower surfaces would enhance the illusion of solidity) that stayed above the atmosphere. Job 37:18 seems to prove this idea of the firmament appearing to be like a “molten looking-glass” (per King James Version). That is to say, the writers did not really mean that the firmament was solid but that it appeared like a solid, curved bronze mirror that held up the waters that lay behind or above it. Furthermore, the fact that it stayed there motionless must have made them think it was as solid as the ground they stood on.
3. As such, Psalm 19:1 is in keeping with that idea of a literal translucent mirror up in the sky which actually reflected the surface of the Earth at daytime and even at night-time while letting the stars and moon shine through. The fusion of the glowing images of terrestrial and celestial bodies in one encompassing canopy throughout the evening is a magnificent vision we can only imagine but which the ancients saw daily as a reality. This is the only way the firmament effectively, logically and scientifically “shows or declares the handiwork of God.” No one can see beyond several kilometers beyond the horizon; but the literal mirror up in the sky reflected the seas, the mountains, the fields and the valleys in a multicolored display via a circular, panoramic, blown-up image of the Earth’s surface due to the concave-shape of that mirror.
4. The vault of the sky was, therefore, not like a gray-cement-plastered cathedral dome but a majestic Sistine-Chapel-like canopy daily and nightly exhibiting the grandeur of God’s handiwork to either humble or haughty human eyes. The Sun’s shifting light and position (in the absence of clouds, the canopy may have refracted sunlight variably) made a moving show of the Earth’s surface, something we cannot see today but can appreciate from the photos taken by astronauts in outer space.
Do we still see this today? No, and it is no wonder why so many people do not know God nor give back glory to Him. He left us a record of His grandiose work and we do not even believe it. Well, even those who saw it during Noah’s time did not really feel compelled to obey God, so there is not much value in trying to convince people that the canopy really did exist. But we try just the same, as obedient servants should. (Unfortunately for those unbelievers, what they saw and thought would not fall on them, did fall and kill them. Today, what we do not see and do not also believe will also kill us.)
Is there science and logic in this interpretation? There is and it is because the Old Testament writers have provided us with the real, basic framework that allows us to apply our own modern science to come up with an acceptable universal concept.
This then is the dilemma in our modern era: our blindness to eternal things and ignorance of the reality of the eternal God. With this book, I hope many will feel compelled to look at God’s written evidences with more openness, honesty and humility.
That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Highlighting provided) - Col. 2:2,3
(Photo simulation above done using Google Earth image.)
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