Several times now in Manhattan I've inadvertently flustered someone "in the know" by informing them that the great Greek sages—Plato, Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, etc.—were actually plagiarists who grew up with the Old Testament and stole from it.

I found out this eyeopener myself several years ago from a Bible study given by my pastor.

"You know what Plato had in front of him before anyone ever burped him or weaned him off the pabulum?" says my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church in Chicago (graceimpact.org), in the study I have on tape. "He had a Bible in front of him. The fellow got his philosophy out of the Old Testament. The wisdom literature—Job, Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes—is the source for all those big shot philosophers. Aristotle's Golden Mean is found in Ecclesiastes 7… Every philosophy known to man has been plagiarized out of the Book of Ecclesiastes…written by Solomon literally 500 to 600 years before these guys ever showed up."

At the same time these sagacious wonders made a living and name for themselves cheating off God's Word, though, they spouted absurd hokum as if they grew up reading nothing but Dr. Seuss.

Concerning the earth, for example, as Jordan explains, "these presumed masterminds came up with such bizarre, hare-brained ideas as to be found laughable by any civilized intelligent standard.

"If the Bible were to assert that the earth was carried on the shoulders of the god Atlas, who stood on the backs of giant tortoises, which stood on the backs of elephants, this would be more than sufficient reason to discredit the Holy Scriptures as being of God. And still the Greek scholars are revered today by those who refuse to recognize the wisdom of God and His Holy Book."

In contrast, Job, the oldest book in the Bible, explains that God spread the skies over empty space and "hangeth the earth upon nothing." (Job 26.7)

Isaiah, a book dating, in part, as far back as 698 B.C., confirms that the Lord sits enthroned above the "circle of the earth." (Isaiah 40:22)

Up until the 15^th century, without the benefit of a telescope or a knowledge of the physics of astronomy, no one knew nor would many people believe the earth was not flat.

"Noted Bible teacher, J. Vernon McGee, has stated that the word 'circle' is synonymous with 'globe,' a round geometric figure," says Jordan. "The Bible is not a book of science and yet not even in one point does it contradict any principle of modern science that has been established as fact rather than mere theory."

About a year ago I had a conversation with a New York City fireman (on sick leave due to a lung condition from being on the scene at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and then helping with the clean-up) who was adamant there could never have been a flood covering the earth because there's simply not enough water for such a thing to happen. He used this as one argument why the Bible could not be true.

Of course, the Flood is another long-time puzzler solved in the pages of the Old Testament. Moses perfectly explains in Gen. 7:11 that fountains, or springs, of the "great deep" burst forth at the same time rains fell from heaven, creating the flood Noah built his ark to escape.

It has only been in recent years that scientists have discovered that there are indeed great water fountains erupting from the ocean floor.

A pocket-sized paperback I picked up last year at the Christian bookstore on 43^rd and 8^th Avenue, called "Hidden Wealth; Scientific Facts in the Bible," explains that even the man considered to be the "father" of oceanography, Matthew Maury (1806-1873), used the Bible—in this case Psalms 8:8 and its reference to "paths of the sea"—as his jumping off point to his eventual discovery of warm and cold continental currents. Maury's book on oceanography remains a basic university text today.

Detailed in the paperback, written by Ray Comfort, are many other examples—in areas of medicine, biology, astronomy, archaeology, etc.—where the Bible pre-dates by thousands of years scientific findings and thereby proves its supernatural origins.

Take, for example, radio waves and wireless communication:

"God asked Job a very strange question in 1500 B.C.; He asked, 'Can you send lightnings, that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are?' (Job 38:35)," writes Comfort. "This appears to be a scientifically ludicrous statement—that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech. But did you know that all electromagnetic radiation—from radio waves to x-rays—travels at the speed of light? This is why you can have instantaneous wireless communication with someone on the other side of the earth. The fact that light could be sent and then manifest itself in speech wasn't discovered by science until 1864 (3,300 years later), when 'British scientist James Clerk Maxwell suggested that electricity and light waves were two forms of the same thing.' "

When it comes to increasing entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as another example, Comfort explains the Bible nailed this eons ago in three different places (Isaiah 51:6, Psalm 102:25, 26; and Hebrews 1:11). Both Isaiah 51 and Hebrews talk about how the earth "shall wax old as doth a garment."

In the field of medicine, notes Comfort, the Bible's ancient commands vastly pre-date medical breakthroughs regarding laws of hygiene, laws of quarantine, food-borne bacteria, the immune system, saturated fat intake and the correlation between mental and physical health.

As one example Comfort gives, epidemics such as the ravaging Black Death of the 14^th century, while attributed at the time to "bad air" or "evil spirits," could have been avoided by minding God's decree on leprosy to the children of Israel in Leviticus 13:46: "All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be."

Leviticus and blood biology meet in verse 17:11: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood."

"In 1616, William Harvey discovered that blood circulation is the key factor in physical life—confirming what the Bible revealed 3,000 years earlier," writes Comfort. "Blood is far more complex and has far more to do with life than science ever imagined…The blood carries water and nourishment to every cell, maintains the body's temperature, and removes the waste material of the body's cells. It also carries oxygen from the lungs throughout the body...The great biological truth concerning the importance of blood in our body's mechanism has been fully comprehended only in recent years. Up until 120 years ago, sick people were 'bled,' and many died because of the practice. If you lose your blood, you lose your life."

Editor's note: This is all leading somewhere, trust me. To be continued…