Signs and Wonders (46 page)

“Who has divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning and thunder?

“Can you bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?

“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that abundance of water may cover you? Can you send lightning?

“And who has put wisdom in the inward parts? Who has given understanding to the heart?

“Does the hawk fly by your wisdom and stretch her wings toward the south? Does the eagle mount up at your command and make her nest on high?

“Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like Him? Can you deck yourself with majesty and excellency, and array yourself with glory?

“Shall you contend with the Almighty? Shall you instruct Him? Shall you reprove your God? Declare yourself to me.

“Will you annul my judgment? Will you condemn me that you may be righteous?”

But these questions have also been questioned. Each generation has questioned them—and been variously answered.

E
NTERING BIBLE TIME, WE
have come into a place where our clocks and calendars are useless; we have entered myth. Its numbers dance away from our arithmetic.

We can put a date on those Egyptian records that first used the word
Hebrew
to describe a loose federation of tribes dwelling in the hills of Canaan. The date for Abraham, then, would be about 2000 B.C. And Abraham’s father, Terah, might have listened to the tales of a very old man named Methuselah, who would have told him tales he had been told in his boyhood by a very old man named Noah, his great-great-grandfather’s great-great-grandfather. Now, since Methuselah lived for about nine hundred years, and Noah eight hundred, we can count backward until we come to Creation, which would have been about 4000 B.C.

However, we are told that the world is much, much older than this—although those who tell us so allow themselves a margin of error of several billion years without blinking an eye. We shall simply have to accept that Bible time is Bible time, and real time is God knows what.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 1981 by Bernard Evslin

Illustrations copyright © 1981 by Charles Mikolaycak

cover design by Omar F. Olivera

978-1-4532-6445-4

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