In my book God’s Existence: Truth or Fiction? The Truth Revealed, I present a scientific study to examine scientific evidence to prove the existence of God. I take a different perspective by claiming the Bible and science say the same thing. As I studied writings by scientists and Christian writers, I discovered four key Scriptures in the Bible that now help me to explain why the Bible and science say the same thing. These four passages broaden our understanding of the Bible. These passages are remarkable because of their perceptiveness and applicability to our modern times.
The first Scripture passage that I want to cite is from 2 Timothy 3:16 in which it says,
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
This Scripture proclaims that all Scripture is from God. In essence, God inspired all Scripture even though it was written and organized by people. The Bible is not mainly a history book. Instead, its principal purpose is to teach people to behave in accordance with the teachings of God and Jesus Christ. God wrote and presented Moses with the Ten Commandments that are rules of behavior. When Jesus was asked by his Disciples to tell them which of the Ten Commandments was the greatest, I was taught that Jesus responded by stating, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” So that means we humans are to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor as ourself. Who is our neighbor? I believe Jesus meant every human being on earth regardless of race, creed, color, nationality, or any other factor. That is how simple—and yet difficult—it is to be a Christian.
The point of this passage from 2 Timothy 3:16 is that the Bible can be used to teach, rebuke, correct, and train people to be good and righteous. It’s about our behavior. By these actions, all of us can be prepared to do every good work. This passage is not intended to be about correcting other people about history or other unimportant issues.
The second Scripture that I want to cite is from 1 Corinthians 3:19 in which it says, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” This suggests that even the highest wisdom of human beings is foolish or misguided or false as compared to God’s knowledge and wisdom. If God created our galaxy and other galaxies with billions of stars in every one of them and billions of galaxies in the entire universe, it should be very obvious that his intelligence is so far superior to any human’s intelligence to such a huge extent that it is beyond our human comprehension to understand. So it’s no wonder that human wisdom is foolishness as God sees things. If we can’t understand things at his level, then we can’t understand them. That brings into question the truthfulness of anything that we believe. Is anything we believe actually true? We should really question our beliefs, don’t you think? Nevertheless, Jesus told us that if we seek the truth, it will set us free. So we can understand the truth. However, we need to be careful about what we believe. We must not blindly accept things simply because someone asserts something.
This brings us to the third Scripture that I want to cite which is 1 John 4:1. This text says,
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
This important Scripture has more than one meaning. I used to think that we need to beware of false religions prophets. This Scripture goes way beyond that meaning. It applies to all claims about all subjects by people. It even applies to scientists’ claims about the origins of life, for example. When Paul Davies tells us several theories about the origins of life, this Scripture applies to that. For example, one such theory says microbes developed in a watery substance on someplace on the earth to begin life and its evolution. A second such theory has microbes flying through space from other planets especially from Mars. A third theory claims that microbes developed deep inside the earth to create all life. One significant problem with these claims is they do NOT explain how the microbes were created in the first place. There has to be a source for the creation of the microbes. Since the scientists cannot explain that, the theory fails the Scientific Method, or, in other words, proof of its validity.
This Scripture warns us to test every claim that we encounter to verify that it comes from God. Some people will say many things that turn out to be false or erroneous. If we keep our guard up, we can avoid being mislead by such claims and can avoid making mistakes. The Scripture is simply warning us to be careful. Just check out what is claimed.
Finally, one more passage from Scripture is important to remember. You will find it in the Bible in Isaiah 55:8-9. It says,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
The Bible informs us that God tells us specifically that his thoughts and ways are way above our human thoughts and ways like heaven is above the earth. If God created the galaxies with billions of stars and billions of galaxies in the universe, it should be pretty clear that his thoughts and ways must be far superior to our human thoughts and ways. Isn’t that true? Along with that, God’s concept of time must likewise be far greater than our human concept of time. When we say God created the universe, earth, animals, plants, humans and so forth in six days, we have to concede that God probably performed those acts over millions, if not, billions, of years. If we could measure God’s time, it would probably demonstrate God’s creation lasted over six distinct periods of time that God would call “days.” In other words, that means a day to God is millions of years, if not billions of years, in the way humans count time. How could it be any other way?
So, four significant passages in Scripture significantly alter the way we humans will understand God, Creation, and even evolution. These Scriptures help us to more clearly understand why the Bible and science say the same thing. The four cited Scriptures come from The Student Bible (New International Version), Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI, 1986.
If you have any comments about these thoughts, you are welcome to share those with me by writing to garylindberg85@gmail.com or using the contact page on my website at garyrlindberg.com to express your comments. If you want a response from me, I would be happy to share my thoughts with you.
Gary R. Lindberg 