Science Ministries - The Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” (Genesis 1:1-2)

From these two verses it is not hard to imagine that the contents of the whole universe first appeared as a gigantic mass of materials lumped together within a confined space.  Perhaps when the matter comprising heaven and earth was first created, it existed within the confines of a gigantic black hole.  Recent evidence supports this theory.(1) Did God, then, pour out the contents of this black hole and stretch them across the expanse we now recognize as the universe?  Does the Bible suggest that this event occurred?  The answer is yes.

In Jeremiah 10:12 the Bible says that God “stretched out the heavens” after it was created.  As a matter of fact, there are at least 17 other verses found throughout the Old Testament that affirm that the universe has expanded, and is still expanding.  They include: Psalm 104:2, 144:5, 18:9; Zechariah 12:1; Job 9:8, 26:7, 37:18; Isaiah 40:22, 48:13; 42:5, 51:13, 44:24, 45:12; II Sam.22:10; Jeremiah 51:15; and Ezekiel 1:22.

All 17 of these verses use four different Hebrew verbs and occur in a wide variety of contexts.  The four Hebrew verbs are natah, matach, raqa and taphach which all mean “to spread out.”(2) Their frequency and diversity provide biblical support for thinking that the universe was much smaller in the past.  Yet, consider carefully that these words were written over 4,000 years ago!

It is only recently that scientists have established that the universe is expanding.  The work of scientists Hubble and Einstein affirmed an expanding universe and that galaxies far outside our own are all retreating from us at high velocities.(3)  Today, many view the expanding universe as “sort of like a lump of dough, whereby every galaxy (like raisins in the dough) is getting further apart from all the other galaxies.  [And], if you ‘reverse the film’ on the expanding universe, you would end up with all the matter in the universe located in one small area, which would be the beginning of heaven and earth after they were created.”(4) Such a beginning is consistent in many ways with what secular scientists call the “Big Bang” theory.

The many Bible verses that refer to God “stretching out” the heavens, therefore, are clearly more than good metaphorical images of the expanding universe.  They are an accurate scientific depiction of the universe, as we understand it today.  But these verses do more than confirm our scientific theories.  They affirm God as Creator.  They tell us He was there.  Who else but God the Creator could have provided such insight, and placed it in recorded history over 4,000 years ago?


Notes:

1) Starlight And Time by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., p.24 (1998).
2) Id. at 66.
3)Show Me God by Fred Heeren, xvii (1997).
4) “Science Facts Confirm the Bible” by R.Totten: www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/8830/evolcreation.html