the Flat Earth has believe it or not become a a moment a movement in the last few years about 2015 it started up and people may Wonder well Danny why are you so concerned about this why are you talking about Flat Earth so much well you see our critics for a long time have been equating belief in Creation with belief that the Earth is flat and so I view the Flat Earth movement as a personal assault really upon my calling and upon the ministry of Answers in Genesis didn't we answer this question settle this question five centuries ago I mean after all didn't Christopher Columbus prove that the Earth is a globe well actually we didn't settle it 5 centuries ago we settled it 25 centuries ago and in fact I think that's part of the problem we have here is the fact that people's understanding of history on this whole matter is rather poor well how do we know it goes back that far well Pythagoras you may have heard of him with the Pythagorean theorem and a few other things that he did in the late late 6th Century BC he actually talked about the Earth being a sphere we don't know what his reasons were we can only speculate about that but uh it went forward from there but within a 100 years most Greek thinkers were thinking the Earth was a sphere and so we have some good reasons for believing the Earth is a globe how do we know that well here we have a photograph of a total lunar eclipse I took this in January of last year about 15 months ago now and it was quite a last total solar eclipse lunar eclipse visible from here and this is during totality this is about a 12-second exposure cuz the moon was very dim but I also took photographs during the partial phases before and after the eclipse and here's one of those photographs right there I show the moon moving in from the right upper right in fact and that's exactly how the moon moved in on the Earth's Shadow and you can already see the edge of the Earth's Shadow there and you can get an idea of the shape of the Earth's Shadow it's kind of a curved section there now I took this about an hour before totality I took another one afterwards totality and I put it in the St right position here and I think you can understand now a little better what kind of shape the Earth Shadow is if you're really not see it at all I can help you out and put a circle in for you turns out the um the circle of the earth Shadow is about 2 and 1 half times that of the circle of the moon so the moon can be entirely engulfed inside of that shadow giving us a total U lunar eclipse Aristotle in 350 BC argued to wrote a book called on the heavens and he wrote that in his book this is one of the arguments why we know the Earth is a sphere he gave a couple others here's another one I like he looked at the altitude of stars in both the northern and southern parts of the sky have a photograph here of the Ark en counter many of you will recognize exactly where that was taken over near M Zara's Cafe looking at the front there this Photograph was taken by a good friend of mine Jim bonser from Iowa a pastor there a good friend of the ministry and we had special permission a couple years ago we went down there and spent about half a night shooting this this Photograph and a few others and this is a half hour exposure you can see the stars are going in a big circular pattern near the center of that just above the ark you'll see one single star that's Polaris the North star and the uh Polaris or the North Star is within a degree of this point of Sky we call the north Celestial Pole to the eye and even to this Photograph it's going to look like the North Star stays still and all the other stars spin around it now less known is the fact that that angle that it makes with the northern Horizon is equal to your latitude so at the arc it's around 38 39° so that's how high that the North Star is and as I travel around the around the country and around the world I always make it a point to look at where the North Star is in the sky if I can find it some parts of the world you can't now this was Samuel robotm he was a 19th century Englishman he um wrote some books did a lot of lecturing and speaking he made a lot of what he called the Bedford level experiment the Bedford level is this region in eastern place in eastern England where the land appears to be very flat there's a very there's a canal basically that's been dug it's very straight and the with no real tilt there's not much of a current at all and uh they've got this long thing goes on for 6 miles that's reasonably flat and what he did is he got down into the U the water there point a on the right in the diagram 8 in above the uh surface of the water that's key because if the Earth is a globe 25,000 Mi around then if you're 8 in above the water in one M's distance your view will be blocked by that edge of the Earth anything beyond that sitting right on the water theoretically will not be visible so what he did is he had somebody get in a boat a rowboat and they rode away away from him the entire 6 miles first mile of course he's in view but beyond that he reasoned being 8 in above the water with his telescope the bottom of that boat should start to disappear and the boat should continue on disappearing and disappearing they had a you can see a flag or a marker sitting up there about 6 ft up in the boat well Rob botom was able to see that boat the entire length he said aha if the curvature would block out my view of the boat over over six miles and yet I'm still seeing the boat then the Earth must be flying you see this little this little red line I'm showing you here uh draws from the boat back towards the Observer but because of the curvature of the earth it's greatly exaggerated here of course it ex exits out into space moving off on a tangent so it's not visible now I put down there that the problem is he ignored atmospheric refraction caused by temperature inversions I don't have time to talk about the physics of all of this but the speed of light depends critically upon in in air at least depends critically upon the temperature of the air in warmer air the light travels more quickly and colder air it travels more slowly as it turns out bodies of water stay relatively cool during the summer time because water has a large specific heat in the winter It generally stays warmer that's why if you have a location near a very large body of water the temperature is moderated tremendously the Gulf Stream for instance moderates the temperature in the British Isles and parts of Northern Europe if you do this in the summer or in spring on a warm day the air temperature is almost always going to be warmer than the water temperature temp the water temperature will chill the air close to it so you end up with a layer of very cold air and the air light moves more slowly in that as it starts to move on that tangent leaving the cooler air into the warmer air it cannot do that it's going to be refracted or bent downward it's going to curve along the edge of the Earth there's a perfectly reasonable and logical and physical explanation as to why people sometimes get these results as Road bottom did 150 years ago 80 years ago now there on the Bedford level well I got a photograph here of a of a of a drawing a depiction of um the uh the creation of day two you have there on the left Jesus the creator of course according to Apostle John in the New Testament and you have there the Earth and it's surrounded by this expanse this roia firmament the King James says around the earth with Waters above that's very clearly day to creation and I want you to look at the shape of the earth you get the impression that it is flat no you get this distinct impression it is a globe it's a ball it's a sphere now where did this depiction come from it comes from a Bible that belonged to King John the good of France now we know how old this Bible is because I think it was in the year 16 uh 1356 uh he was de defeated by the English in the battle PES and this was taken by the English as part of the prize Spoils of War and we think the Bible was actually put together around 1350 this is 150 years or so before Columbus's Voyage so Again by 1350 people clearly were believing the Earth was a globe common knowledge actually in the west so um I would like to talk a little bit about some of the supposed biblical Arguments for a flat Earth I don't have time to do all of them I will talk about the rakia that's a Hebrew word this is something that God made on day two its purpose was to separate the waters above from the waters below people have debated exactly what those Waters above are we'll continue to debate that but this appears to be the cosmology of the Bible if you will now on day four two days hence the uh from the day two creation God put the luminaries or the lights in the sky he said he made the greater light and lesser light he made the Stars also and I think that's referring to basically all astronomical bodies there's a reason why I would say that many flat earst today want to use the word star in the modern context and enforce it back on what most people throughout time thought stars were for instance the planets were stars as it turns out today we still sometimes refer to them as say the evening star or the Morning Star I taken some photographs and put photographs up of this of some planets recently and I referred to them the Stars why because that's what they look like in the sky I've had people recently asked me about this very bright star in the evening Sky it's Venus folks it looks like a star and I'm have no trouble calling it that because that's what it looks like now in the early translations of the Bible into uh into English they translated this word rakia into firmament however many more modern translations translate it as expanse and there's a very good reason why they do that because that's probably the best meaning for the word I happen to know several worldclass hebraist people who really not only know Hebrew but they know probably uh 18 to 24 other ancient related Semitic languages and by knowing the full range and all those other languages helps you to understand what the Hebrew means and they say unanimously it means expanse it doesn't mean this hard thing up in the sky despite what many flat earthers try to claim now they also argue flat earthers say well the Earth was made before the sun uh how how can that be well we've always belied that the Earth was made before the sun several days before the sun that's not a problem all right doesn't doesn't automatically mean that the Earth is a globe or it means it's flat it just means that the Earth was made before the sun no problem at all I don't I don't understand what the point about that one is they're saying well God If he if he made the Earth First it can't be a sphere opening the sun well why can't he he is God he can do what he wishes now ultimately you have to ask the question if the Bible teaches the Earth is flat then shouldn't there somewhere be in the Bible some sort of verse that says something like the Earth is flat but there is no such verse there is no such verse that says that now what flat earthers do is they take a number of passages number of verses and they choose to read them in a manner that's consistent with the Flat Earth and then they say aha this is the meaning of what the scriptures say and I'm saying well no you're going to be hardpressed to find any Bible scholars any hebraic anybody who's going to agree with you on that sometimes they'll say well those are just man's ideas yes but you are a man too so why should I believe you when you know very little about these things and these other people know far far more than you do it doesn't really work the the complaint that they're merely men works both ways you see but somehow flat earthers don't seem to realize that now one verse the flats love is Isaiah 42 40:22 that's one of their favorite ones it is he who sits above the circle of the earth and inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in they say aha Circle a circle is two-dimensional it's a flat plane it is a round thing uh equal distant points from a center in a plane therefore a circle this means the Earth must be a circle aha the Earth is flat and round as you can see here well if you want to take that definition of the word Circle your particular peculiar definition of it and you want to impose it upon ancient Hebrew well that's fine but again that is is Jesus what does the Hebrew word there refer to well it refers to something round now is a circle a two-dimensional thing is it round the answer is yes is a sphere a globe a ball is it round and the answer is yes so both are round and the word here is a bit ambiguous it can refer to something that is a two-dimensional Circle it can refer to something that is a ball they try to argue the flat Earths do that it means only a circle and not anything else and that simply is false some some flat earthers and I can't believe they go here they ask they they point out the Earth having Four Corners well does it have four corners let's look at it Isaiah 11:12 it says he will raise a signal for the Nations and will assemble the banished of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the Earth or how about this Revelation 71 after this I saw four Angels standing at the Four Corners of the Earth holding back the Four Winds of the earth so that so that no wind might blow on the earth or against any tree again the Earth scripture says has four corners there are no corners on a globe so therefore the Earth is not a globe it must be flat case dismiss slam dunk we're done as I said I can't believe some flat earthers actually make that argument which is it is the earth round or is it Square well at least one flat earther in the 1890s Orlando Ferguson kind of split the difference he had what I call here the roulette wheel model of the Earth it's square with angels in the corners but then there's a round portion in there and it's kind of I call it the roulette wheel because it's kind of high in the middle and kind of dimpled like this like a roulette wheel is sort of shaped that was his model and some flat earthers today at least half-heartedly talk about this one I think most flat earthers however realize that the Four Corners talked about twice there in scriptures once in the old once in the new are references to the four cardinal directions North South East and West even today we talk about weather the wind for instance coming out of the west southwest well we you're relating at the four cardinal directions that's the way most of us understand this okay what about the ends of the Earth they 28 times the phrase ends of the Earth appears in the Old Testament for instance Psalm 67:7 it says God shall bless us let all the ends of the Earth fear Him they say aha if you go to a globe you go around and around and around that Globe you will never reach the end of that Globe so this cannot be talking about a globe Earth but if the Earth is round and flat like this there definitely is an edge we call it the ice wall of Antarctica slam dunk the Earth is flat well hold on a minute let's look at this just a little bit I've got an underline there there's a parallel passage here it says God shall bless us and then let all the ends of the Earth fear Him Now I ask you if you're talking if it's talking here about the ends of the Earth being a physical Edge then you're talking about geography can geography fear God no it's not talking about geography it's talking about people here's another one I can't believe some flat oors used the tree of Daniel 4 they read Daniel 4:11 it says the tree grew up and became strong and its top reached to heaven and it was visible to the end of the whole earth they say aha on a globe if you have a giant tree grow up no matter how tall it gets half of the earth can't see it it's on the other side of the Earth but if the Earth is round and flat like this then you can have a tree anywhere on the earth and people can see this tree well let's dig into this this is not a standalone verse in chapter 4 it's actually part of entire narrative nicely encapsulated the entire fourth chapter is an complete Narrative of an event that happened to Daniel there in Babylon and we can look at this it says the previous verse says this the visions of my head as I lay in bed were these I saw and behold a dree a tree in the midst of the earth and its height was great this was Nebuchadnezzar talking the king and he was having a dream several points I want to make it was a dream I I could have several verses listed there Verses 4 and 5 6 7 8 9 10 and 18 and 19 that many times it says it was was a dream it was a dream it was a dream I think we can be pretty certain it was a dream what the current Flat Earth model this is a diagram that I've seen on many of their websites again you've got that Circle disc there with a dome over top and you've got the stars there and what happens every day is that the Stars the whole Sky spins around you got this axis right here above the North Pole and the whole thing spins around now right away you'll realize that if it's all spinning around then nothing is rising or setting they're just going around and if the Sun is up there then why do don't we have daylight all the time in fact how can flat ears explain day and night well it's very simple they explain they say U you have the little dotted Circle there representing the motion of the sun throughout the day and the Sun is a spotlight it shines down a conical shape of light like this and so when we're under that cone we see daylight and we're not it's dark so this is a little little um video that shows uh illustrates this nice this came from again from a flat Earth website the little white thing over in the dark that's the moon the bright thing in the light that yellow thing that is the Sun as it goes around it goes around and notice it's going to be night for me then day and then night and then day cuz I live in North America and then night and notice as it does that the sun gets progressively closer and farther from my location for right right here it will be very close here it'll be far away here it will be close and there it'll be far away so throughout the day and throughout the night for that matter the sun's getting progressively closer and farther away from me if the sun's closer to me it's going to appear larger to me if it's farther away it's going to appear smaller that's pretty clear stuff that's what we call perspective folks flat earthers like to use that term I hope they understand at least a little what that means more distant objects look smaller to us so I tested this claim I tested this be 3 and A2 years ago I took a photograph of the Sun at 7:30 a. m. eastern daylight time when the sun was 8° above the Horizon and then I did took another photograph of the Sun at 1:45 p.
m. eastern Daylight time that was local noon that day when the sun was as high in the sky as possible and so I did the numbers on this I determined from the figures I had that the sun ought to appear 6.
