Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?
(Job 11:7-8) KJV
Can we by searching find out God? The clear implication is that no, we can’t, but there’s something important to remember whenever we contemplate passages from the book of Job: Who’s speaking?
The passage above is part of a speech by Zophar the Naamathite. He’s one of the people who God, when he personally intervened, told us was totally clueless.
Who is this who darkens counsel By words without knowledge?
(Job 38:2) NKJV
Can we by searching find out God? We’ll never know unless we try. We, me and the Holy Spirit, started wrestling with the reconciliation of science and the Bible in 1998. We were reading the Bible, studying whatever reference material we could get our hands on, faithfully attending church and listening to Bible-based preaching. We were impressed by the way that preachers and commentators could take passages of scripture that didn’t seem particularly interesting and mine them for information. They developed complex explanations that thrilled us with the insight that they brought out. It struck us that the passage from Genesis 2 must be holding a secret that would help us to understand what happened on the third day.
In 1999 we were working as the Custodian at a large Presbyterian Church. On a Monday morning our top priority was to sweep and vacuum the sanctuary, a large assembly hall with a lower level and balcony capable of seating about 600 people. We decided to see if we could chant a phrase from the Bible constantly while we were sweeping so that it would eliminate all other thought. The hope being that God would give us the insight we needed to understand the passage. The phrase that we were going to chant (under our breath so no one would hear us) was:
Holy, holy, holy. The Lord God the almighty. Who was, and is, and is to come.
(Revelation 4:8) KJV
That was the plan. Not much of a plan but we were sure that if we could focus all of our thought on that phrase then God would bless us with understanding. It took all our concentration to repeat the chant the whole time we dust mopped the tile floor under the pews in the lower level of the sanctuary. When we went up to the balcony we stood by the rail overlooking the room below and we had the insight that we had been craving: If water flowed from Eden and watered the surface of the Earth, then Eden must have been the highest point.
There was no lightening bolt from heaven, just the peace of knowing that there’s a simple explanation. Not only that, but God can teach us truth by the power of the Holy Spirit if we’re calm enough to listen. This was the first time that we realized how the Bible can be used as a predictive testable hypothesis, it’s Hypothesis 22.
The Logic of Eden
- IF Eden was the highest point on the surface of the Earth,
- THEN the Bible should include the concept of topography in the context of Eden.
It does. The Hebrew word rosh is the key to the creative process of the third day. Here’s our earliest attempt to sketch this idea.
| Where did you get here from? | |
| 1 | March 3rd – The Logic of Eden |
| 2 | November 15th – Living Waters |
| 3 | My Testimony |
Matty's Paradigm 
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