Flat earth : is there scriptural evidence for it?

[Brother-Paul]

To a point we should.

I'm by no means anti-reason and I firmly hold to the truth of scripture, but on this particular issue, my response is "so what?" or "who cares?" On topics like this I've only ever seen arguments that go around in a circle and end with everybody more or less where they started. It seems to me that in the entire Bible there is zero interest in the shape or size of the universe..

I appreciate your reply was to Dovegiven but, I feel the need to reply also, I do hope you don't mind. There are, as I see things a number of issues here, the first is someone started the thread, the thread was misleading, if left it could be taken as correct and acceptable. Another issue is, as previously stated, it is a common issue babe's in Christ pick up on and even more so those who have not accepted Christ. Satan at work so it cannot be left unanswered.

If we are to defend the Bible, lets defend it on ground that the Bible actually has an interest it. Such as - what is a human? Is history going somewhere or does it just repeat itself? What can we say about frustrated hopes? How does God answer prayer? what can we say about justice? For those of us in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East we are dealing with daily news about conflict, refugees and hospitality. Does the Bible have anything to say about these things? You bet it does!.

Anyone can start a new thread to discuss these matters and more.

The Bible has so much to say to all of us regarding Heaven and Earth, Earth and Heaven, which one and everything in between. I agree with you regarding some topics, not pointless but are not as important, certainly not life or death. But we have to accept we are all at different stages in our faith, new comers may ask questions that may seem silly or not worth discussion to some members, but to the person who created the topic it was important to them. Some may read some information and think what they read is true, like this one, the good thing about sharing information it is that it can be clarified, which in turn should prevent others being confused. But it is a forum, a worldwide forum, if a topic is raised, it has to be replied to so as to reveal the truth, part truth or no truth in it, sadly if left unanswered it may be accepted by some as being correct that can never be. We all have a responsibility to make sure what we share is, The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth. In Jesus Name.

'So what, who cares', we all do my friend, we all do.

God Bless you

 

[Hekuran]

All good points Brother Paul.

And - in danger of completely contradicting myself here - if anyone were really struggling with the Bible's cosmology against scientific discoveries, then I hope I'd be able to help them out. It very much depends on the context of the conversation and the angle that the other person is coming from.

Now my memory is serving me a little better, when I was much younger - 17 or so - I got myself into an intellectual tangle on this sort of thing. I read at school a theologian who poured cold water on the idea of the ascension because he said it was completely enmeshed in a "heaven up there, earth down here" worldview.

I got into a bit of a tizzy about it for a week or so until I talked to my vicar about it. As I remember he managed to put me straight in a few minutes.

Bless you

 

[Sebastian]

Read this and thought of this thread: revelation 7:1 "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree." Could just be the 4,,, eeh,,, whatever they are called (north, west, etc).

Bless you, but you cannot compare or use North, South, East or West, as they define direction, longitudinally or laterally, the farthest distance left or right, top to bottom is not the farthest distance, the farthest distance has to be the 'four corners'.

I just wanted to give a sort of verse the thread-creator asked for. What I meant with "Could just be the 4,,, eeh,,, whatever they are called (north, west, etc)" was just saying "Could just be meant figuratively, symbolically or whatever else".

 

[Dovegiven]

To a point we should.

I'm by no means anti-reason and I firmly hold to the truth of scripture, but on this particular issue, my response is "so what?" or "who cares?" On topics like this I've only ever seen arguments that go around in a circle and end with everybody more or less where they started. It seems to me that in the entire Bible there is zero interest in the shape or size of the universe.

If we are to defend the Bible, lets defend it on ground that the Bible actually has an interest it. Such as - what is a human? Is history going somewhere or does it just repeat itself? What can we say about frustrated hopes? How does God answer prayer? what can we say about justice? For those of us in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East we are dealing with daily news about conflict, refugees and hospitality. Does the Bible have anything to say about these things? You bet it does!

In short, I would not expend any energy on a Bible and flat earth debate because I cannot see any value in winning it, or any harm in losing it. I would be happy to talk until dawn about what the Bible says about the value of human life.

I am persuaded this topic is right alongside the heresy of life form evolution in impact upon letting people begin to trust anything from the Bible. Billions of people on earth have been deceived into thinking there are too many science errors to trust any doctrine in the Bible. It's these kind of topics that draw people away from "hearing" the word, especially when there is no challenge back to false teachers. Today our children are indoctrinated in many hypotheses that directly void Bible facts. Bringing up "Flat Earth" usually takes place in a setting where someone repeats an old secular claim that God taught a flat earth concept instead of a round one, desciving even the very elect for millennia. So, they are taught not to follow the advice of goat herders wearing camel hair (us).

My 8 & 10 year old grandchildren have always been raised in a strong Christian environment at home and church. If daughter had to work, us grandparents took over.. They are already embroiled in the great debate, learning different "facts" at school, coming home confused, troubled, having been ridiculed by peers and teachers for raising hand and giving the Bible answers. 8 years old! I pop in an ICR nature video and they are calmed down, then we review scriptures. That calms them....until the next science lesson....until Facebook.....until a movie......until their best friend says.

Genesis 28:14 (KJV)
14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Very soon we see the concept of a limitation on cardinal directions distance-wise. From world literature it's learned that all nations in earliest times were fearful of going too far in any direction, coming to an "endless" sea. That was easily taken as an edge of a flat world, but God never tells them that. In that verse he declares men will spread/disperse in different directions. They typically confined that breaking out to not cross oceans, but to stay close to land. Today, knowing more about the earth, should we travel back in time we could have told them there are people living on the other side of this earth ball from us, which would likely have gotten us stoned to death. They wouldn't have comprehended families in India being included in that promise.

There being practical limits on how far one might travel, reaching the farthest known edge could be taken as the known earth having four geographical quarters, areas based on divisions of the cardinal directions God established as North, East, South, and West. "North" itself was based on the star we call Thuban, then currently the star Polaris, followed by the star Vegas in the future, then back to Thuban. It takes the earth's pole to rotate a full circuit every 26,000 years. That way every generation spanning eras of thousands of years can count on a steady star roughly to the North. That was known in 130 BC., but not noticed as anything significant earlier, the changes being very slight as earth's rotational axis precession continues.

The "Flat Earth" concept began in very ancient times among most cultures on earth based on simple fears and unscientific observations, technically should have ended with Pythagoras in 520 B.C. It effectively ended in Hellenistic times, but is revived among atheists in our times wanting to pin those beliefs on Christians, when that concept existed thousands of years before even Moses.

 

[Brother-Paul]

All good points Brother Paul.

And - in danger of completely contradicting myself here - if anyone were really struggling with the Bible's cosmology against scientific discoveries, then I hope I'd be able to help them out. It very much depends on the context of the conversation and the angle that the other person is coming from.

Now my memory is serving me a little better, when I was much younger - 17 or so - I got myself into an intellectual tangle on this sort of thing. I read at school a theologian who poured cold water on the idea of the ascension because he said it was completely enmeshed in a "heaven up there, earth down here" worldview.

I got into a bit of a tizzy about it for a week or so until I talked to my vicar about it. As I remember he managed to put me straight in a few minutes.

Bless you

Bless you my friend

Interesting you state Heaven up there, earth down here! Another topic worthy of discussion, I plan to come back to that but have a few family matters at present so need to wait until I have the time.

Heaven up there, earth down here! Which Heaven and which earth are leading questions.

Meanwhile back to the current discussion. I always view things the following way, and as far as faith is concerned it is probably more important, I think, to think this way.

Always encourage questions (God loves a searching heart)

Never say any questions is silly, to the person who asked it, it was a serious question, they were searching for a serious answer. By putting them off they back off, we build a wall between and how easy that is at times. But the wall we created, innocently at the time, may have set back God's plan for saving a soul.

I to got in a tangle in my teens but in a different way. I was made go to church between 11-12, to learn how to be good, broken marriage, etc! Between 13-15.5 I was sexually abused by the vicar, so was my brother and Alan and Anthony (no surnames for obvious reasons). I hated his guts, I then hated everything he stood for, no one would ever mention Jesus, God or Church to me or they really got put in their place, some tried but they were really put in their place. I tried to take my life several times, once in the period up to 15 and a couple of times after it. In my 20's my wife wanted the children Christened, I refused, she won but I couldn't wait to get out of the church. In my late 30's something happened, unbelievable really, it caused us to move away, 300 miles away a lace we had never been before. Then something else strange happened, I was with my wife in a book shop, I had gone to look at computer magazines, my wife craft magazines, but I passed the end of a section and a Bible stared at me. It was a King James Bible though them it meant nothing to me, other than it was a Bible! I couldn't believe I was looking at it but couldn't take my eyes of it, so strange, but that is what happened. My wife came to see what I was doing, she saw me staring at it and asked what I was doing. I said, looking at that Bible. After all the years of my hate for anyone who mentioned Jesus, God, Church she couldn't believe it. She said what are you doing we have to get to the car park time is running out, i said I was looking at the Bible. Buy it if you want it she said, I don't know was my reply. Come on make a decision we have 5 minutes to get to the car park. I will leave you to guess what happened.

This was the start or a wonderful journey but not a smooth one, the spiritual battle that followed almost cost me my marriage, I had counselling that opened up my past, much more than just the vicar, some amazing things happened but through turmoil I had to go through, a minister told me the good items were like a bunch of flowers from the Lord to say, hang on Paul I am in charge here, I am in control, trust me. I was being set free though I had to come through it to appreciate it, that was almost 27 years ago.

Sorry we have gone way off topic, don't know what happened there. Now I have typed it I will submit it, everything that happens has a reason.

Back on topic, every question has a reason, someone wants an answer, a question must never be considered silly, to the person there was a genuine for asking it, it is our duty to make sure they get the right answer.

God Bless you

 

[Dovegiven]

My final comment to the OP is "No", the Bible doesn't promote a flat earth, but does refer to roundness. A typical scripture answer is Isaiah 40:21-22 (KJV)
21 Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 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:

People realized the earth had a circular shape just from seeing eclipses of the moon long before any of the Bible was written. Various cultures used mathematics and observation of the stars to have some idea of a round earth just 200 years after God gave that to Isaiah. It wasn't ever the scholars in general of any period that held to a flat earth belief, but the ignorant masses of populations, especially mariners, did to various degrees, mostly during European Medieval times when knowledge was replaced by superstition in many populations.

The video defies proved mathematical measurements of old and new, documented trips around the world by many people who never observed a flat earth, by astronomers on earth and from space, and by the observation of the other round planets revolving on an axis, and many other facts of science, and of course the Bible not directly describing a flat earth being like a coin or other flat plane.

 

[Hekuran]

Thanks for posting that Brother Paul.

 

[Brother-Paul]

Bless you

Jesus Loves you, we do too.

 

[Listening]

We know how science exalts itself over the minds of men
Gnosis to Know is t he root word where we get The word knowledge, to know.
Indeed science claims to be the source of knowledge, but we as christian's have a duty to not listen to the fairy tales of science so called, which claims monkeys are the image of God.

We all know how water behaves in gravity at an angle.
You can check this out yourself.
Get a cup of water and slowly tip it and observe how the water moves until it falls out of the cup.
Now again, get a cup of water and an orange or apple, now poor water over the apple or orange and see if it clings to the surface of the apple or orange or does it fall off the apple or orange.
As for the earth spinning at 1,000 miles per hour. you are holding your cup of water and the apple while both are said to be spinning at 1000 miles per hour anyway.
Although the bible says the earth is fixed and so is NOT spinning.
But, none the less, if it were both your cup of water and the seas and the apple would be under the same so called conditions of gravity and spin.
As for size , the experiment could be repeated using a dumpster truck full of water instead of a cup and the results would be same, so the mass of the water makes no difference, neither would salt in the water make a difference.

We all know that water always will become level
We all know that water will not cling to the side of a globe
And we all know the sea cannot cling to a curvature.
The continents of the earth are surrounded by seas, this is only possible on a flat surface,
As the land masses Whole continents would be Constantly flooded iF the seas were Held at an angle on a curved globe, a globe who's whole surface area is curved. For there is no part of a globe that is not curved.
Sea water is level at the surface.

 

[Bendito]

We know how science exalts itself over the minds of men
Gnosis to Know is t he root word where we get The word knowledge, to know.
Indeed science claims to be the source of knowledge, but we as christian's have a duty to not listen to the fairy tales of science so called, which claims monkeys are the image of God.

We all know how water behaves in gravity at an angle.
You can check this out yourself.
Get a cup of water and slowly tip it and observe how the water moves until it falls out of the cup.
Now again, get a cup of water and an orange or apple, now poor water over the apple or orange and see if it clings to the surface of the apple or orange or does it fall off the apple or orange.
As for the earth spinning at 1,000 miles per hour. you are holding your cup of water and the apple while both are said to be spinning at 1000 miles per hour anyway.
Although the bible says the earth is fixed and so is NOT spinning.
But, none the less, if it were both your cup of water and the seas and the apple would be under the same so called conditions of gravity and spin.
As for size , the experiment could be repeated using a dumpster truck full of water instead of a cup and the results would be same, so the mass of the water makes no difference, neither would salt in the water make a difference.

We all know that water always will become level
We all know that water will not cling to the side of a globe
And we all know the sea cannot cling to a curvature.
The continents of the earth are surrounded by seas, this is only possible on a flat surface,
As the land masses Whole continents would be Constantly flooded iF the seas were Held at an angle on a curved globe, a globe who's whole surface area is curved. For there is no part of a globe that is not curved.
Sea water is level at the surface.

I think you'll have to show where the bible says that the Earth is not spinning.

1 Chronicles 16:30 (CJB) Psalm 93:1 ...Psalm 96:10...Psalm 104:5...Isaiah 45:18

These verses say that the Earth is set on its foundation and will not fall from it. It does not say that it will not spin on it's axis. It does not say that it will not circle the sun. It says it will not be moved from its foundation. The ferris wheel you rode on as a child was firmly fixed on its foundation. Did it turn for you?

Job 26:7 Describes the way the Earth is set on it's foundation. Isaiah 40:21-22 and Proverbs 8:27 Talk about how the earth is round.

 

[Listening]

Science opposes reason and God's words, and relies on theoretical absurdities

Experience & reason as well as the word of God tells us the earth is not spinning at 1000 miles per hour.

Theoretical mathematics are as true or as false as works of literal fiction.
Fiction is fiction but uses observation of reality to create its fiction,
It is the same with science..

 

[Bendito]

Science opposes reason and God's words, and relies on theoretical absurdities

Experience & reason as well as the word of God tells us the earth is not spinning at 1000 miles per hour.

Theoretical mathematics are as true or as false as works of literal fiction.

And yet science is proving the bible true every day. Keep that too

 

[Listening]

The Prophets and God knew what a disk or circle is
And they also knew a human head was globular in shape
And not flat like a disk or circle.

 

[Bendito]

The Prophets and God knew what a disk or circle is
And they also knew a human head was globular in shape
And not flat like a disk or circle.

Yes but you have not said where the bible says that the Earth is fix and thus not spinning.

 

[Listening]

And yet science is proving the bible true every day. Keep that too

I do not support the awe and shock of ignorant men who say Man was made in the image of an ape
And so saying God is an ape.
Neither should you defend such wicked liars.

 

[Listening]

Yes but you have not said where the bible says that the Earth is fix and thus not spinning.

If you read my post you will see what i had to say on the matter.
As for God, he gave you a brain and discernment of the devils lies.

 

[Bendito]

I do not support the awe and shock of ignorant men who say Man was made in the image of an ape
And so saying God is an ape.
Neither should you defend such wicked liars.

That does not change the fact. Science if proving the bible is true Every Day

 

[Bendito]

If you read my post you will see what i had to say on the matter.
As for God, he gave you a brain and discernment of the devils lies.

You seem to feel a great need to be rude. Or is it my winning smile?

 

[Bendito]

If you read my post you will see what i had to say on the matter.
As for God, he gave you a brain and discernment of the devils lies.

Ok I read it and now you read it...You said "
We know how science exalts itself over the minds of men
Gnosis to Know is t he root word where we get The word knowledge, to know.
Indeed science claims to be the source of knowledge, but we as christian's have a duty to not listen to the fairy tales of science so called, which claims monkeys are the image of God.

We all know how water behaves in gravity at an angle.
You can check this out yourself.
Get a cup of water and slowly tip it and observe how the water moves until it falls out of the cup.
Now again, get a cup of water and an orange or apple, now poor water over the apple or orange and see if it clings to the surface of the apple or orange or does it fall off the apple or orange.
As for the earth spinning at 1,000 miles per hour. you are holding your cup of water and the apple while both are said to be spinning at 1000 miles per hour anyway.
Although the bible says the earth is fixed and so is NOT spinning.
But, none the less, if it were both your cup of water and the seas and the apple would be under the same so called conditions of gravity and spin.
As for size , the experiment could be repeated using a dumpster truck full of water instead of a cup and the results would be same, so the mass of the water makes no difference, neither would salt in the water make a difference.

We all know that water always will become level
We all know that water will not cling to the side of a globe
And we all know the sea cannot cling to a curvature.
The continents of the earth are surrounded by seas, this is only possible on a flat surface,
As the land masses Whole continents would be Constantly flooded iF the seas were Held at an angle on a curved globe, a globe who's whole surface area is curved. For there is no part of a globe that is not curved.
Sea water is level at the surface"

 

[Listening]

The heliocentric earth does not move