Half-Life

Many people know that eventually the earth will be gone because it will be swallowed up by the sun.

Now, what about this biblical verse:


But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. (WEB)

http://bible.cc/2_peter/3-10.htm

Do you think this passage predicts what science is telling us now?

Mageth

No.

Half-Life

It does state that the earth will be burned up.

Mageth

And that "the heavens will pass away with a great noise", which the eventual (billions of years from now) death of our one sun among the billions of stars will not result in.

Toto

"The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night" implies that this day will come suddenly and without warning. This seems inconsistent with a natural phenomenon that scientists can predict which will happen many years in the future.

So can only be answered - no. If science can tell us about it, this verse BY DEFINITION does not apply.

Oxymoron

And there's no noise in space anyway.

Amaleq13

I'll elaborate on that "No".

When the sun expands to burn the earth to a crisp, it will be considerably brighter than "night".

There is no noise, let alone a "great noise", in space.

Two thirds of this passage is contrary to the scenario suggested by science.

No, indeed.

Asha'man

Absolutely not. This verse is implying that the end will come suddenly and unexpectedly, without warning. The sun's red-giant expansion is a very predictable process that will take millions of years. I'd say that this verse is, in fact, the complete opposite of what science is actually predicting.

funinspace

Ah, I get it…the "fervent heat" will come from the filament falling down onto the land… So does this mean that the Sun did stop for Joshua circa 1200BC? And the rest of the world just failed to notice?

Doug Shaver

As others have noted, some parts of it certainly do not.

On the face of it, this part seems to fit pretty well:
But now, when you ask whether it "predicts" what science says, I think your real question is whether it reveals foreknowledge on the writer's part. In other words, was it necessary for the writer to be actually aware of the facts as we now know them in order to think whatever he was thinking and express that thought in these words? I don't believe so.

You're living in the ancient world. You're writing a polemic and want to describe the end of the world in very dramatic terms. What is the most destructive force you're able to imagine? The chances are pretty high that fire will come into your mind as a good possibility.