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The earth is square: Difference between revisions
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Our question is, why should someone listen to VoG when they teach about William Branham or how to get to heaven, if they can't be honest with facts? | Our question is, why should someone listen to VoG when they teach about William Branham or how to get to heaven, if they can't be honest with facts? | ||
=Blockheads?= | =What the Bible says= | ||
We must understand that the Bible comes out of a different culture and linguistic setting than today. Metaphors used in scripture can mislead the reader into thinking the Bible is saying something, when it means something different. In Hebrew, as in English, one can speak of the four “corners” of the earth: | |||
:''...you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”;<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Is 41:9.</ref> | |||
:''The end has come upon the four corners of the land.<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Eze 7:2.</ref> | |||
:''He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Is 11:12.</ref> | |||
Is the Bible saying that the world is square? William Branham thought so. | |||
Yet the earth is also described as a circle or globe: | |||
;''It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers...<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Is 40:22.</ref> | |||
Is it possible that corners is metaphorical language that may mean the geography covered by the four “quarters” of the compass, just as it means when we say it today?<ref>Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 269.</ref> | |||
The Bible describes nature as it appears to be and uses the same language that we use in everyday speech. For example, Ecclesiastes 1:5 refers to the sun as “rising and setting” (NET). Such statements are not scientific, but then neither are they unscientific. They are just expressions of the way ordinary people have always talked. Because the Bible is not a scientific textbook, it does not speak “scientifically” any more than television weather forecasters do when they tell us what time the sun will “rise” and “set” the following day.<ref>Dan Story, Defending Your Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1997), 134.</ref> | |||
==Blockheads?== | |||
If you believe the world is square because the Bible says it has four corners, then how do you explain this passage of scripture? | If you believe the world is square because the Bible says it has four corners, then how do you explain this passage of scripture? | ||