The Bible's been accused of being an outdated book of superstition,
written by people who didn't understand the scientific workings of the real world.
This accusation is patently false.
Not only does the Bible not contain errors and superstitious statements,
but it contains amazing scientific facts that were written down thousands of years before we--
in modern scientific times-- understood how important they were.
I'm going to give you a list of six scientific facts that validate the Bible.
Number 1: Blood being the liquid of life.
In the 21st century, we understand how important blood is.
We have studied it and seen its capabilities and its importance to life.
But that knowledge was not well known in the past.
In fact in the past, ignorance of just how important blood is has caused
some learned men to do some very tragic things.
Up until the 19th century, doctors believed that harmful vapors
entered the blood and caused sickness.
For this reason, those doctors would literally bleed their patients by putting leeches
on them or cutting the veinS and arteries in the elbow and getting that blood out.
The first president of the United States of America--
George Washington-- came down with a cold
and his doctor was called and he literally bled him to death.
So what's that have to do with the Bible?
Well, thousands of years before this lethal practice of bloodletting was en vogue,
the Bible stated in Leviticus 17:11, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood."
And just a few verses down it said that an animal’s "blood sustains its life."
Today, we completely understand the truthfulness of this biblical statement.
But how did an ancient shepherd like Moses in 1450 BC know that
the life of the flesh is in the blood?
It took the modern scientific medical community thousands
of years and thousands of lives to discover this truth.
Scientific Fact Number 2: Sanitation Practices.
Some of the worst plagues in modern times have been caused by improper sanitation practices.
In 1846, the city of London had a terrible cholera epidemic.
Sixteen thousand people had been killed.
Why could the doctors of the day do nothing to combat this deadly disease?
You see, the city of London had a serious problem with sewage.
The streets were filled with raw sewage that people would literally open
their second and third story windows and dump into the streets.
Now, as we know in our modern scientific era,
raw sewage carries disease and causes all types of medical problems.
If the people in London in 1846 had turned their Bibles to Deuteronomy 23:12,
they would have read this: "Also you shall have a place outside the camp,
where you may go out; and you shall have an implement among your equipment,
and when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and turn and cover your refuse."
Thirty-three hundred years before London's epidemic,
the Bible had implemented a plan to stop such epidemics before they started.
Amazing Scientific Fact Number 3: An Understanding of Germs.
In 1847, about 18% of women who went in to a modern medical facility to give birth would die.
That's 1 out of every 6. Why was the death rate so high?
The medical professors and the students, before they would give the treatments
to the live women, they would do autopsies on dead women.
And then they would not wash their hands properly.
They would many times wash them in a bowl with no germ killing agent whatsoever,
dry them on a dirty towel, and then perform those examinations on live women.
If you're looking at that from a 21st century observer’s point-of-view,
you realize that's terrible.
They're passing germs from the dead bodies of ladies of dying and giving those germs
to the live women because they're not washing their hands.
But to Europeans in the middle of the 19th century,
that idea of passing a germ? It was a completely foreign idea to them.
When the doctors and medical students implemented handwashing procedures,
the death rate plummeted from 18% to about 2%.
These doctors in the mid-1800s had made an amazing discovery!
Or had they?
Is it possible that the doctors simply rediscovered
something that had already been known?
Almost 3500 years before the 1850s the Bible stated,
"He who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days.
He shall purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day;
then he will be clean.
But if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean."
You'll find that in Number 19:11-12.
The Israelites were instructed to wash their hands in water with germ killing agent in it,
3500 years before in modern medical times we knew that should be done.
Amazing Scientific Fact Number 4: Ship Engineering.
While you don't go to the Bible for blueprints for a huge barge, you don't think,
it just so happens that maybe that it is where you go.
In Genesis 6:15, the Bible says that a man by the name of Noah builds an ark that's
300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits high.
And it just so happens this is a ratio of 30 X 5 X 3--length to breadth to height.
For thousands of years, the ark was the largest floating ship on record.
In 1844, a man name Isambard K. Brunel built a huge ship called the Great Britain
and he used a similar ratio to that of the ark--30 x 5 x 3.
As it turns out, the 30 x 5 x 3 length to breadth to height ratio is the perfect ratio
to build a huge boat that doesn’t need to go anywhere very quickly,
but needs to stay afloat and carry tons and tons of supplies.
That same ratio--30 x 5 x 3--was used by ship builders in World War II when they built
ships called Liberty Ships that were designed to carry tremendous amounts of cargo.
You see, Brunel and those engineers that were building those Liberty Ships,
they had generations of ship building knowledge.
But Noah’s was literally the first of its kind.
Where did he get that kind of information?
I would suggest to you from the Master Ship Builder.
Amazing Fact Number 5: Quarantine.
In today’s world of advanced medicine and understanding of germs,
the idea of quarantinin sick patients and separating them
from those who are well, well it’s standard practice.
But it certainly wasn’t in the ancient world because
they didn’t understand germs until about 200 years ago.
And they didn’t see a need to keep sick people separate from people who are not sick.
The Bible, however, thousands of years before modern medical science understood
the spread of germs, detailed measures to prevent their spread.
In the book of Leviticus, we read that people with diseases such as leprosy
were instructed to dwell alone-- outside the camp.
We read that in Leviticus 13:46.
And if and when and individual got close to somebody who was not diseased,
this diseased individual was told to cover his mustache or upper lip and cry, “Unclean!”
Why? Why do we tell our children to cover their mouths when they cough?
Well, to keep that diseased spittle from going into the air and from infecting others airborne.
When we look at these instructions in Leviticus and we see that Leviticus had an understanding
of contagion and quarantine that surpasses that of any other nation,
it’s interesting that the Encyclopedia of Medical History says this:
“The idea of contagion was foreign to the classic medical tradition
and found no place in the voluminous Hippocratic writings.
The Old Testament, however, is a rich source for contagionist sentiment,
especially in regard to leprosy and venereal disease.”
Here again, the Old Testament exhibits amazingly accurate medical knowledge that surpasses
anything known that the humans who were alive at the time during the writers’ lives
could have possibly come up with on their own.
Amazing Scientific Fact Number 6: Food Regulations.
In the United States, we have the Food and Drug Administration. It’s the FDA.
And it is designed to make regulations that keep people from getting sick
from food borne diseases mostly.
Knowing that certain kinds of food such as pork are more prone to carry disease,
the FDA will make a regulation like this: You can go into restaurant.
You can order a beef steak that is rare.
But if you go into that restaurant and you order a pork chop, you can’t order rare.
Why? Because pork-- if it’s not cooked properly--
has a much higher probability of causing some types of disease.
We know that in modern times.
But the Bible—especially the Old Testament-- written some 3000 years before modern times
exhibits a knowledge of food borne diseases that surpasses anything that was around
during the time of the writers.
For instance, when you look in Leviticus 11, it mentions that pork was not to be eaten.
That’s a wise regulation, as we have seen.
Even the modern FDA puts regulations in along those lines.
The text also forbids the consumption of bats. You say, “Well, I don’t want to eat a bat.”
Well, some people do.
In fact, around the world bats in some places are a delicacy.
Why not eat bats?
It just so happens that bats have a very high probability of carrying viruses that can be
caught by humans, especially the rabies virus.
Also in Leviticus 11, we read that things like
lizards, salamanders, amphibians are not to be eaten. Well, why?
Lizards, salamanders, amphibians, etcetera have about a 90% contamination rate of Salmonella.
Salmonella, a bacteria that causes many people to get violently sick and some of them to die.
You see, the Bible never gets a single medical fact wrong and it exhibits a knowledge of
scientific facts that is thousands of years ahead of its time.
That scientific accuracy proves the Bible’s Divine origin.