Before Hebrews 1 … Was Psalm 102 !
After writing my previous, as luck would have it, my daily reading took me to Psalm 102 and there, to my surprise, was what was probably the Scriptural source for Paul’s words in Hebrews 1:10-12. Psalm 102 reads:
25 Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. 26 They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. 27 But You are the same, And Your years will have no end.
Psalms 102:25-27 (NKJV)
FYI, I’m currently working my 5th or 6th “Read the Bible in a Year” plan. And for at least ten years I’ve always been on high alert for verses that describe the creation, and creating the creation, and can give me clues to understand science, and God, and show a skeptical people how the Bible and science are (in the terms of Romans 1:18) both testaments to God as the author of creation. Yet I didn’t remember that one! See why we should never stop reading?
So I came across Psalm 102 and was really surprised to read the Hebrews 1 verse I’d just written about. Pleasantly surprised, I might add. Anyway, I want to preempt a couple of questions someone might ask, realizing that Paul might have been quoting a scripture rather than expressing his own unique revelation, and whether that affects my original point. It doesn’t. In fact, it makes my point even more something to be appreciated. Here’s why:
First: whether Paul got his knowledge about the things of the universe being but short-lived and ephemeral by hearing or reading makes no difference. Indeed, Jesus himself describes reading and comprehending a scripture, as well as hearing Him say something and comprehending, as “hearing”. And one can only comprehend/hear anything God says if the Holy Spirit has allowed or aided us in the hearing. Paul, by whichever means, still knew, and trusted in that knowledge enough to teach it as fact, even to an audience that should have been as skeptical as he, since they also believed that God and all his works were permanent, unchanging, eternal. And, none of them – surely – had no idea whatsoever what the “heavens” really are.
Second: My main point, my reason for bringing our attention to that verse, was that this is totally revelatory knowledge that “the heavens” are only temporary and cyclical – that is, that the heavenly bodies, planets and stars and nebulae, and so on, each have a distinct lifetime and fit into a recycling system, a creative process in itself embedded in the far greater timescape of the universe; that stars and nebulae and even galaxies all come to an end, like garments. And in God’s created order of the universe, all are discarded (recycled, actually) and new ones made and put in place to live out their own “lives” – for our viewing, says the Bible. That should not have been known 2000 years ago. Even modern science has only recently, by hard work and great technology, come to know it. But here, with Psalm 102, we’ve gone back at least another 500 years! The Bible didn’t get the scoop on our sciences by 2000 years – it beat them to the knowledge by at least 2500 years! Paul was, at least, repeating a 500 year old revelation.
And my point? That the Bible tells us many things, big things, that only the Author of the Bible could possibly know, and have told to the scribes who recorded them for our times, some two or three thousand years later. And that is a testimony, which no one can refute, that whoever Authored the Scriptures either knew the history of the universe, or created it.
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on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Bible & Science.
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