Given all the stories lately about scientists falsifying findings and/or corrupting data, I find it interesting how many atheists still use the ever-popular line about how, “My faith is in science.”

In my pastor’s Wednesday night study, he mentioned how he’d read in a publication last week about a secular historian who postulates that the book of Job is perhaps the oldest book ever written in human history—predating every other book anyone’s found or knows about!

“Job, which is for sure the oldest book in the Bible, says God hung the world on nothing,” says my pastor, Richard Jordan, in the study. “It took science a long time to catch up with that and yet people say they’re going to trust science when it contradicts the Bible. Maybe science ought to first catch up to the Bible.”

One day during the big heat wave this past summer in Manhattan, I was so deathly hot in my apartment I sought refuge in a Borders Books café. Among the books I picked out to peruse in air-conditioned comfort was one Jimmy Carter wrote in 1996 about his personal faith as a Christian. It was even called, “The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter.”

Carter’s glaring unbelief and biblical ignorance in more than a few passages led me to copy some of them down in my notebook.

In one chapter, our former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner reported, “As a believer, I have no problem with the discoveries in astronomy, geology and paleontology: that the universe is enormous and expanding, the earth is ancient, and human beings have evolved from primitive ancestors. It is not difficult for me to accept the ‘big bang’ theory of the origin of the universe, at least until it is refuted by further exploration of the heavens and a new explanation is evolved to explain what God has done. Nor does it shake my religious faith to realize that the early authors of the scriptures thought that the earth was flat, that stars were little things like Christmas tree ornaments that could fall on us, that the entire process of creation occurred during six earthly days, and that the first woman cam from the rib of the first man, both Adam and Eve created in modern human form. The gap between their understanding and ours just indicates that knowledge was revealed later to Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Hubble—and to most of us.”

In another passage, he relayed, “Like most other Christians, I read and study the historical evidence about Jesus from archaeology, textual analyses, and sociological and anthropological studies of the Palestine of 2,000 years ago. But when the theories conflict with my basic beliefs and my living experience of Christ, I prefer to rely on faith, confident that further discoveries of ancient texts and other evidence will never disprove what I believe that makes the impact of Jesus on my own life so profound. After all, it is the role of Jesus in reshaping the lives of believers today that matters most.”

Boy, some ringing endorsement of the Bible, huh? Carter may “prefer to rely on faith” but he reveals an utter lack of faith in relying on the volumes of information the Bible gives on history. Instead, it’s all about man’s findings.

In laying out God’s creation of the universe in Genesis 1, we’re told God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”

Jordan explains, “When He created this universe, and it’s really a re-creation or restoration of the creation, it’s full of water. So He divides the water from the water. And what He divides it with He calls a firmament. Now some Bible dictionaries simply say that means ‘an open space,’ but to have a firmament means it can’t be empty; it has to be firm.”

From Job 37:18 we’re told that what’s called the firmament is “strong,” meaning it has a strength to hold things in place.

“When God created this physical structure out there and put in a governmental system (of thrones, dominions, principalities and powers) to govern this natural creation, He set up some laws and rules and regulations as to how the universe is held together; how it’s structured in the physical sense,” says Jordan. “The reason that atoms have valences . . . molecules have valences and atoms have electrons and neutrons and they float around. . . They can’t figure out for the life of them where all that stuff comes from; what it is. They can study it, they can work on it.

“I read about quantum physics and all this kind of stuff the scientists do. I’m fascinated by it. I don’t understand it, but the thing that comforts me is that the people who study it don’t understand it either.

“Do you know they’re now backing off of a bunch of that stuff and they’ve moved into other kinds of ideas? String theory was a big thing for a long time. My point is DNA, the human genome and all that business . . . we’re beginning to unlock all that stuff, but God has all this intricate stuff figured out in the universe.”

Refuting Carter’s nonsense about Scripture treating stars as falling “Christmas tree ornaments” is Job 38. In the chapter, God asks, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?

“Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?

“Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

Jordan explains, “When he says, ‘Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?’ that’s the pillars of heaven. That’s the physics of the universe, and the physics of the universe out there have influence on the earth.

“And what Jesus Christ will do when He comes back down through the heavens to the earth to dissolve the government that’s been usurped by the Adversary—so that He can establish His government there—is begin to literally shake the powers of heaven! These laws that He established to hold the universe together are all of a sudden, for some unknown reason, set free from their moorings.”

Specifically, in Isaiah 24, we’re told, “The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.

“The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.

“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.

“And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.

“Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.”

This is describing what will literally, physically take place in the day of the Lord!

“When he talks about the powers of heaven being shaken, one of the things he’s talking about is the government of the heavens having a shake-up inside it,” explains Jordan. “In fact, they’re dissolved. That’s why that verse in Revelation 12 says, ‘Neither was their place found anymore.’ The position those fallen angels held in the government of the heavens is dissolved. It’s like you going into work and the boss calls you in and tells you, ‘We’ve eliminated your job. We’re laying you off because your job doesn’t exist anymore. Leave.’ ”

So much for all the New Agers expecting to be rewarded by Satan’s cronies with big spots of authority in the heavens!