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Questions and Answers: Does The Bible Teach A Flat Earth? NO.

 

If you have not read Stories Versus Truth, you may want to read that before reading this. And don't forget where you are going. You get past the questions/attacks so you can proclaim the Gospel. It is the proclamation of the Gospel, not argumentation, that transforms minds. See Give Them the Gospel.

Lies About the Bible and Flat Earthers

This straw man argument is typical of many attempts of liberalism and other cults to say that there are errors in the Bible. The Bible talks about the circle (literally sphere) of the earth. It says that this sphere is hung on nothing at all.

The term, flat Earth, is used as a slur. When you hear a slur using the term, flat Earth, it is a signal to be very skeptical of the claims of the person using the slur.

The Flat Earth Myth

The flat Earth myth is the notion that there was a time when it was generally believed that the Earth was flat. There was never a time when it was generally believed that the Earth is flat, but a hoax that was successfully perpetrated in the 1800s and 1900s by a few influential people. There have been some who wanted to believe this hoax for religious reasons; they wanted to discredit the Christian Church. A false attribution of a history that never happened was the tool they used to this purpose. This tool is now known as "the flat Earth myth." It has been used by U.S. Presidents to shout down those who expose their political agendas. It has been used by those who don't want to acknowledge God to discredit those who personally know Jesus Christ. It continues to be used to direct government funding, control messages, and distort what is taught in schools.

There have been a handful of people who believed in a flat Earth through history. Most have been in aboriginal tribes and primitive societies. Every once in a while, someone comes up with this idea, but it has never been generally accepted. There are five instances of isolated Christians from the Middle Ages advocating a flat Earth, and writings from these five people exist along with writings that refuted their theories. The Christian leaders from the Middle Ages left writings about the Earth being a globe, as the Bible says it is.

Washington Irvin, Auguste Comte, Antoine-Jeane Letronne, and Andrew Dickson White used their combined influences to perpetrate a hoax complete with false attribution of something that never existed: the flat Earth belief. Not only did they make up the idea that "it was generally believed that the Earth was flat," but they also falsely attributed this belief to the Church. The belief that they falsely attributed to the Church was not really a belief at all, since there was never a doctrine of a flat Earth. There were some from primitive tribes who believed in a flat Earth, but that has nothing to do with the Church. There have been some isolated people who believed in a flat Earth in civilized nations. There was a man who tried to start a Flat Earth Society in America, but it never had many adherents and fizzled when the man died. There was never a general belief in a flat Earth anywhere.

Washington Irvin (1783-1859), made up a flat Earth story about a general belief in a Flat Earth. This is the real flat Earth myth.  Irving’s fictionalized history was later accepted as a “fact” by those who had an interest in discrediting the Church.
The myth was further propagated by Auguste Compte (1798-1857), who believed, without evidence, that there has been gradual, step by step progress from superstition to science.

At the same time, a Frenchman, Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), vented his strong anti religious feeling by misrepresenting the church fathers through history as believing in a flat Earth, in his book, "On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers" (1834).

Then, in 1896 Andrew Dickson White, wrote “History of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom.” In this book, White attributed this belief (flat Earth) to the Christian Church.

There was a hoax that was perpetrated by these few influential people. There never was a general belief like this. It was certainly not held by the Church or taught in the Bible. There are some who take a couple of verses from the King James translation of the Bible (not literal renderings of the original text) and make a case that the Bible teaches a flat Earth. This is also a hoax and a false attribution fallacy. God never said such a thing.

Yet, there are some people, even some who teach history in Universities, who are still following the old hoax, the flat Earth myth. This hoax is further propagated through history text books that have been used for decades. There are people who have been educated into ignorance in this way.

They use the term "flat Earth" to denigrate Christians, yet, they are the ones who believe a hoax: the hoax that there ever was a widespread belief in a flat Earth. In an effort to make Christians look stupid, these so-called intellectuals look very stupid. They are willingly ignorant. That is, they are stupid on purpose.

But the Bible also speaks of the four corners of the Earth, a figure of speech still used today that is not used to indicate a flat earth. Actually the four corners is not a literal translation from the original Biblical language. The Hebrew word, kanaph, means extremity in this context. The same word is translated as "borders" in Numbers 15:38. Kanaph is translated as "ends" in Job 37:3 and 38:13. Kanaph is translated as the idiom, "four corners" in Ezekiel 7:2 and Isaiah 11:12. The Bible claims that the Earth has four extremities, probably meaning North, South, East, and West.

Revelation 7:1 says, "And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree." This is the Greek word, γωνια, gonia meaning corner in the sense of an external angle or an internal corner or a secret place. It could be referring to four prominent mountains or something in the spiritual realm--we don't know. We do know that it is foolish to make the claim that the Bible is saying that the Earth is flat or a square--this in no way implies that. Of course, you will see a pattern. People who are trying to discredit the Bible don't concern themselves with truth. They make the most outlandish assumptions, filter the Biblical passage through their assumptions to create a straw man argument, and then attempt to knock down their straw man, claiming that the straw man is the Bible.

Intellectuals have repeatedly had some fun trying to attach this flat-Earth label on Christ and the Bible. It is a tactic that is emotionally childish and ungodly. This distortion of history is consistent with an Atheistic worldview in which lying would not be a disgusting thing but the only object in life is winning.  Read more about this distortion here: http://creation.com/flat-earth-myth

"Without a doubt, Earth is round, or nearly so. Using careful measurements from the ground and observations from space we can be certain it is essentially a sphere, with only minor bulging near the equator. If reduced to the size of a billiard ball, it would be perfectly smooth, and we wouldn't even be able to feel the highest mountains or deepest oceans."
Read more at: http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=2703

Given the fact that an earth the size of a billiard ball would be perfectly smooth so we would not even be able to feel the highest mountains or deepest oceans, it makes us realize the foolishness of the claims made by such religions as atheism regarding the flood. These ungodly people tend to claim that there is no way that water could have covered the whole earth during the flood. They'll ask such naive questions as, "Where did all the water go then?" The Bible says that, after the flood, the ocean floors dropped and the mountains arose. Their assertion that the water could not have covered the mountains is almost a "flat earth" type of claim. You drop those mountains a little bit and raise the oceans a little bit and you have a total flood. Not only that, but they never thought through the reality that a flood could never remain on a flat Earth. Even a child would realize that.

Here is a great read: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tba/universe-confirms-bible


Evolutionists often falsely accuse creationists of believing in a flat Earth. But neither history nor modern scholarship supports the claim that Christians ever widely believed that the Earth was flat. And the Bible doesn't teach it.

AnswersInGenesis.org


Christianity has often been held responsible for promoting the flat Earth theory. Yet it was only a handful of so-called intellectual scholars throughout the centuries, claiming to represent the Church, who held to a flat Earth. Most of these were ignored by the Church, yet somehow their writings made it into early history books as being the official Christian viewpoint?.

AnswersInGenesis.org


One person, who was trying to prove that there must be one error in the Bible, was grasping at a Bible verse to show, at least in his mind, that the Bible does teach that the earth is flat. Well, he insisted that you had to make certain assumptions and accept his personal rendering to the meaning of certain words. His basic assumption is that his own mind is superior to God's, who wrote the Bible. God states very clearly that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation and that the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit. This poor mans useless mind was casting about for some sort of a way out of the fact that the Bible is without any errors. Thinking himself wise, he proved that he is a fool.

The Flat Earth Society was started by, and is perpetuated by, Atheists.  Why would Atheists use such strawman arguments agaisnt God?  Because they have no real arguments.  They cannot use observation.  They cannot use logic.  They must use lies and looney thinking. 

So that they don't need to acknowledge God, the enemies of Jesus Christ accept, as part of reality, unreal presuppositions that are really just simple-minded assumptions/lies.  They are filters and a way to censor out any information that supports the existence of God.  They set up a web of rules to filter out God.  They will only accept those things that conform to Naturalism, materialism, and uniformitarianism.  Naturalism claims that God does nothing.  Materialism claims that there is no God or spiritual realm.  Uniformitarianism claims that there was not creation and that there was no violent worldwide flood, as the Bible and numerous other historical accounts record.  Whatever they observe that does not conform to this complex filter is censored.  The way that it is censored can take several forms.  The ungodly may boldly proclaim that, though the data appears to support God's version and refute the version of the ungodly, yet it still must be interpreted to mean just the opposite of what it does mean.  A backup method that ungodly people use is to prophecy that in the future, science will be able to explain what they see as an anomaly.  If that fails, they will hide the data, set it aside, or lie to keep the public from knowing the truth.  The data clearly demolishes the story of the ungodly and clearly supports the reality of the Creator God, His Bible, and His abiding Presence in His people.  When confronted with the obvious, a closed-minded ungodly person says, "I can't understand it."  They are willingly ignorant because they refuse to hold God in their knowledge.  The reality is that these people, for whatever reason, don't what to know the Creator.  They don't want to truly know Jesus, their Creator.

 



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Last updated: Aug, 2014
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