ANCIENT BRILLIANCE: FOUR CORNERS OF A ROUND EARTH

 Know you didn’t because neither did I!

Because of inventions, scientists think of themselves as brilliant. They have indeed evolved cognitively by learning from others. In ancient days, that was not so. I believe that the ancients learned from God, not from experimentation nor even sharing their knowledge in journals.

Yesterday, a good friend laughed when he said, “We know that there are not four corners of the Earth.” That does seem laughable because now, except for the flat-earthers, it is well established that the Earth is nearly spherical.

That was known long before Christopher Columbus, but he believed it anyhow and risked his life, reputation, and the royal treasury of Spain that it was true. God may have spoken to Columbus in a “journal” of sorts. I mean by that, that the Bible is a journal about the journey that we call “life.” That the Earth is flat is now absurd, but that it is round was once absurd, although it is now the science.

Isaiah was shown the universe and the Earth within. He was shown the entirety of the world:  “It is He that sits upon the circle of the Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isa 40:22).

Therein, a “circle” is obvious to modern people. For instance, to us, the moon is a near perfect circle. Isaiah wrote that the Earth was a “hug” in the Hebrew, meaning that it was a “circle” from where God showed him the Earth from a distance. Circles, when rotated, generate a sphere.

If Isaiah had been orthogonal (at right angles) to the Earth from, let’s say, the throne of God, the Earth would still be a circle. In fact, regardless of where the Earth is viewed, it is a circle in shape. Changing positions while seeing a circle generates a sphere. Isaiah looked at the Earth from all positions and saw a circle each time. His different viewpoints generated a sphere, and Isaiah from wherever he viewed the Earth, his mind was looking, not at a flat Earth, but a spherical one.

The picture that follows is what Isaiah would have seen from any direction above:

 

 

                                                            Figure 1: BUJUS: "The Sphere."

Isaiah saw inside a sphere. A sphere was generated in his mind as he viewed the Earth from different perspectives in the heavens. Wherever Isaiah stood, he saw a “corner” of the earth; in this case, only one “corner” of the Earth is shown.

Isaiah was not stupid. He was wise because God showed him both the external and internal structure of the Earth; that the Earth indeed has four corners if looked at from different perspectives. The four corners of the Earth are a true observation. Isaiah was shown the innermost parts of the Earth from his vantage points;  Isaiah saw the axis of the Earth.

It was written in the beginning that the Garden was eastward (qedem) in Eden (Gen 2:8). That Hebrew word has two possible meanings: (1) Before time since the Sun comes up in the East or (2) that the Garden was in the eastern hemisphere.

The sun was known early to both rise and go down, to wit: “When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram” (Gen 15:12), and “The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zoar” (Gen 19:23).

Contrary to flat Earthers, the Sun does not traverse in a horizontal straight-line movement. In respect to the horizon, the Earth does move circumferential to something. The Sun seems to move up and down because the Earth travels in a circle in respect to the spherical Sun’s center. The thing in the “something” is the center of the round Sun. The Sun is round from whatever viewpoint it is observed. As the Earth rotates about the Sun, the Sun is always a circle, proving that the Sun is also a giant sphere.

Distance blurs time. Our time is Sun based. Although mankind always looked at the Sun from different perspectives, whatever the position of the Sun, the Sun still appeared flat, although the Sun has no edges or corners. Ancient people always thought that the Sun was round, and as a child, so did I. That it was also a sphere was not even considered by us children! We were limited by the distance in what we saw. Perspective can only be seen from short distances. Anything beyond the horizontal perspective is beyond understanding.

Isaiah never described what anyone can see; that things like the Moon disappear over a horizon. They would have known that the surface of the Earth is round whichever way they looked. Wise men would have known it was a sphere but were limited by perspective.

Isaiah saw more than the naked eye can see. We do not know from the what location God showed him things, but the earliest people, before sin, had bright eyes because they were glorious.

Glorious Adam and the woman had bright eyes before they sinned. They could see into the heavens, or even from the heavens to the Earth. They saw that the Earth had “four corners” because they would see the Earth from afar. They surely saw that it was spherical, and like Isaiah, saw it both outwardly and inwardly.

After original sin, “Then God the Lord said unto Adam, ‘When thou wast under subjection to Me, thou hadst a bright nature within thee, and for that reason couldst thou see things afar off. But after thy transgression thy bright nature was withdrawn from thee; and it was not left to thee to see things afar off, but only near at hand; after the ability of the flesh; for it is brutish.’" (1 A & E 8:2).

Adam and Eve, in their glory, could see things that we cannot see. They could see things from a distance and even hidden things. Adam and Eve could have seen the four corners of the Earth; the axis of each quarter of the Earth.

Now for the Greek version: John was revealed the same vision as Isaiah, to wit: “I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the Earth” (Rev 7:1). Corners in the Greek is “gonia,” meaning “an angle:—corner, quarter” (Strong 2006).

John, from his distant perspective, saw the Earth as four quarters. He saw within the Earth to see its axes and saw that the Earth does have four corners but they are inward at the center of the Earth, making four quadrants. God showed John the science!

According to science, what is a “sphere”?

“A solid geometric figure generated by the revolution of a semicircle about its diameter; a round body whose surface is at all points equidistant from the center. Equation: x ² + y ² + z ² = r ² ” (Dictionary.com).

A sphere is a semicircle that rotates around an axis to form a solid object. There are two semicircles in a circle. A semi-circle is further divided into two halves. There are four “corners” in a sphere; hence, there are four corners of the Earth! The evidence of that is that the Earth consists of four parts of spheres: north, south, east, and west. Put them together, that is the whole. Those quarters of spheres resemble a dissected ball from the outside, but on the inside, they have four corners, one for each quarter body of the Earth.

Isaiah saw, not only the Earth from the outside surface, but from the imaginary axis within. He indeed was a scientist in that he observed it from afar, be it in his mind or from the heavens; God revealed to him the truth.

Enoch saw the four corners of the Earth from the vantage point of time soon after the creation. From his vantage point in the realm of heaven, “I surveyed the stone which supports the corners of the Earth” (Enoch 18:2). He saw the center point of the Earth; the exact location of the axes of the four quadrants. He saw the “stone” on which the Earth was founded, stone in the sense of the beginning of matter. That finite point where the four corners meet are the foundation point from which the Earth radiated outward in rays all pointing to the heavens.

Enoch saw into the depths of the Earth because for his tour of heavens, he wrote a journal of what he saw. It was a journal of his journey into the world and beyond.

That Jesus is the ‘light of the world” (John 8:12) means more than this earthly world. In the Greek, it is “kosmos.” Jesus is the light of the cosmos — the light of all things. As such, he lights hidden things, even the four corners of the Earth. He lit those for Enoch, Isaiah, John, and the rest of the prophets. He gave them bright eyes to see things that us blind “brutes” like us acannot see.

I failed to see the four corners of the Earth and so did my fine Christian friend, Larry Barbour. I can now see the four corners of the Earth as real because it is the science.

Paul was a seer as well; he saw that “The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom 1:20)

. The four corners of the Earth are invisible things, but the Earth is visible. This round shape is the evidence that there are four quadrants that make the whole Earth. Now, I understand; there are four corners to the Earth if we look inwardly at hidden things. Because the Earth is spherical means that there are four corners within, emanating outwardly in rays from the origin stone at its center.

I am satisfied. I hope my friend is as well.