Stretching the Heavens

"Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out..." Isaiah 42:5

Could it be, in the light of how physics is beginning to look at the nature of space and time, that the Scriptural use of the the term "stretch" to describe how the heavens were made is an accurate representation of how the universe was formed?

i think "expand" is a more apt word than "stretch"

The defender's notes don't really help :

"Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out..." Isaiah 42:5

Could it be, in the light of how physics is beginning to look at the nature of space and time, that the Scriptural use of the the term "stretch" to describe how the heavens were made is an accurate representation of how the universe was formed?

Click to expand...

Yeah. I always thought that God used the Big Bang to create the universe. This scripture, I think, describes what's been happening ever since the Big Bang - how the universe is expanding and stretching.

Here are some verses from the qur'an that support the big bang.
"Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then we clove them asunder . . ." (Qur'an 21:30). This is the reference to a separation process of a primary single mass whose elements were initially fused together, recall the small unit of mass.
And it is We who have constructed the heaven with might, and verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it - Surat adh-Dhariyat: 47. This would answer your main idea, and yes the qur'an states that the universe is still expanding. Until the dawn of the 20th century, the only view prevailing in the world of science was that “the universe has a constant nature and it has existed since infinite time”. The research, observations, and calculations carried out by means of modern technology, however, revealed that the universe in fact had a beginning and that it constantly expands. The qur'an which was revealed 14 centuries earlier, stated this fact clearly.

Could it be, in the light of how physics is beginning to look at the nature of space and time, that the Scriptural use of the the term "stretch" to describe how the heavens were made is an accurate representation of how the universe was formed?

Click to expand...

Take a guy that writes a hundred prophecies in cryptic terms and some are bound to be appliable to something that happened (look at Nostradomas).

The Bible says that the skys were stretched out; this is completely consistant with Genesis which describes the sky as "raquya", a hammered dome or plane, which holds back the water above the sky.

Of course there is no "above" in space, and there is no water above the sun; but if we go through enough poeti language, we can try to make it match... unfortunately, in accepting an expanding Nth dimentional universe; you are accepting astrophysics which goes in direct violation of Genesis 1 and 2. You cannot have your cake and eat it too (try to use astrophysics to validate the Bible while at the same time denying astrophysics).

murdocsvan said:

i think "expand" is a more apt word than "stretch"

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Great, then why did they not have your intelligence and use your word instead? And if your word is correct how did those simple nomads understand an expanding universe when it wasn't even theorized for centuries to come? Huh?

michel said:

The defender's notes don't really help :

"This is a remembrance that God had created the plants, the animals and man out of the elements of the earth, and He had also given breath and spirit to man (compare Genesis 1:12,24; 2:7)."​

But you might well like to look at http://www.geocities.com/denis_giron/zaariyaat-isaiah.html entitled "Expansion of the Universe in the Bible and the Qur'an Comparing Isaiah to Soorat az-Zaariyaat"


The article goes into great detail.
​

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Maybe too great a detail. I'm not interested in an arabic lesson. What ,couldn't a simple explaination cover it?