In the modern astronomy, Continents, Oceans, Seas, and Islands, are considered as together forming one vast Globe of 25,000 miles in circumference. This has been shown to be fallacious, and it is clearly contrary to the plain, literal teaching of the scriptures. In the first chapter of Genesis, we find the following language: “and God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas.” Here the Earth and Seas—Earth and the great body of waters, are described as two distinct and independent regions, and not as together forming one Globe which astronomers call “the Earth.” This description is confirmed by several other passages of scripture.
2 Peter, iii., 5—“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the Word of God the Heavens were of old, and the Earth standing out of the waters and in the waters.”
Psalms cxxxvi., 6—“O give thanks to the Lord of Lords, that by wisdom made the heavens, and that stretchet out the earth above the waters.”
Psalms xxiv., 1, 2—“The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein: for he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.”
Hermes (New Testament Apocrypha)—“Who with the word of his strength fixed the heaven; and founded the earth upon the waters.”
Job xxvi., 7—“He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the Earth upon nothing.”
Some think that the latter part of this verse, “hangeth the Earth upon nothing,” favours the idea that the Earth is a globe revolving in space without visible support; but Dr. Adam Clark, although himself a Newtonian philosopher, says, in his commentary upon this passage in Job, the literal translation is, “on the hollow or empty waste,” and he quotes a Chaldee version of the passage which runs as follows: “He layeth the Earth upon the waters nothing sustaining it.”
It is not that He “hangeth the Earth upon nothing,” but “hangeth or layeth it upon the waters” which were empty or waste, and where before there was nothing. This is in strict accordance with the other expressions, that “the Earth was founded upon the waters,” &c., and also with the expression in Genesis, “that the face of the deep was covered only with darkness.”
If the Earth were a globe, it is evident that everywhere the water of its surface, the seas, lakes, oceans, and rivers, must be sustained the land, the Earth must be under the water; but if the land and the waters are distinct, and the Earth is “founded upon the seas,” then everywhere the sea must sustain the land as it does a ship or any other floating mass, and there is water below the earth. In this particular as in all the others, the scriptures are beautifully sequential and consistent:—
Exodus xx, 4—“Thou shalt not make unto thee any likeness of anything in heaven above or in the Earth beneath, or in the waters under the Earth.”