An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, the wise seeks knowledge.
Proverbs 18:15
At 12 years old, Jesus, the only Son of God, went missing. On their way back from Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph traveled a day without noticing His absence. They thought He was with relatives somewhere on the way. Imagine losing the most important person that ever walked on this planet.
“After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.” Luke 2:46-47
He was the friendliest person who broke the taboo who talked and ate with almost anyone, whether extortionists or harlots in the market. He is God, and He is interested in everyone, especially the bad ones who need help in changing their mind for better.
Knowledge is paramount in worship. After 20 years, Jesus told a Samaritan woman that God is to be worshiped “in truth (knowledge) and spirit”. Otherwise, we worship a God we don’t know stuck in a building. God is to be worshiped everywhere by knowing His character. Faith is not blind; we should know whom we believe and experience what we believe. About 3500 years ago, God met Moses on Mount Sinai so he could learn and write the bible, which contains God's character, the history of the world, the law they should live by and the future of Israelites. This was to be read, studied, and taught by the leaders of society. Thus started a lesson in being the best of citizens.
God’s primary command for Joshua, Moses’s successor, was to meditate on the Book of the Law day and night to be successful in his conquest of the Promised Land. He studied and meditated the principles, values, and wisdom in the bible to apply them in his leadership.
Ignorance is deadly in religion. “My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge,” said God.
Through generations God has always raised prophets, writers, and priests to “feed His people knowledge” that comes from Him. Jesus spent most of His time teaching and healing. His teachings are applicable and prosperous in all parts of life.
The Bible has 43 chapters dedicated to knowledge, understanding and wisdom. It emphasizes “Wisdom is to be valued more than diamonds”, “Whatever you do get wisdom” and warns about the perils of ignorance.
Paul
Apostle Paul preached the good news of the forgiveness of our sins because Jesus paid for our sins on the cross, successfully. The success of Christianity on earth was the fruit of his dedication with the help of Jesus and the spirit of God. One of the reasons for his success was he loved to read, even insisted on his books while in prison. His advice for his mentee, Timothy, was to be a reader and “to study to show yourself approved before God”.
One of the qualifications for leadership before God is the ability to study and teach. This has led to the founding of seminaries, schools, and universities. Some of the best universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Oxford started as theological seminaries or Bible schools, which produced scientists who have won hundreds of Nobel prizes because of their discoveries, inventions and contribution to science, arts and politics. The contributions who came from such universities are unparalleled by any others.
Not only God inspired these institutions and blessed it by making it a means of blessing the world, by teaching the leaders of society. Knowledge is the light by which we see since ignorance is darkness.
Medical quarantine and microbiology
Plagues plagued history. The Antonine Plague (165-180 AD) took 5 million lives, the Black Death (1334) about 60% of Europe population, the Third Plague Pandemic (1855) 10 million, the Great Flu Epidemic (1918) killed approximately 30 million, Typhus fever in World War 1 (1945) 3 million, and HIV/Aids global pandemic (1960s – present) 25 million.
God contributed to science directly and indirectly by giving revelation and insight about His creation. In the bible, the book of Leviticus or the priests chapter 13 and half of 14 deals with infectious diseases. They detail the diagnosis of infection, quarantine rules and treatment, and checking the progress of a patient’s recovery. This method has saved millions of lives throughout generations. The priests thought they didn’t have scientific training yet they applied measures proven effective by science to stop a plague from spreading and avoided mass death. Imagine how many lives taken by Covid-19 that many of them we could prevent if self isolation applied more effectively.
Every day nearly 50,000 people die of easily treatable infectious diseases. That is 17 million needless deaths a year. It is like losing the population of London and New York in one year. Knowing the infectious nature of some diseases, God instituted quarantine of anyone infected until they are healed. In cases where the house was infected, He even ordered the demolition of the house.
Louis Pasteur who read the Bible argued and demonstrated that life comes from life by experimenting with the spreading of bacteria, which led to the knowledge about the silent and invisible killer that have plagued humanity for generations.
The principle of producing antibiotics is laid out in the Bible. In the wilderness when snakes bit the Israelites God’s instruction for Moses was to kill a snake and hang it on a tree, so whoever had been bit by the snake came to look at it to be healed. And they were healed. This was a supernatural event. However, in developing antibiotics, the same principles apply.
Antibiotics are made from dead bacteria that have infected someone. They are injected into the blood system as a serum. When the body recognizes the dead infectious substance, it triggers the defense mechanism and gets rid of all contagious bacteria out of the body. This principle was not applied for three thousand years as we gave little attention to the Bible.
God said that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. By walking closer to Him many were able to invent, discover and produce things that changed our life immensely, for good. We have never been the same since. As Jeremiah 3:33 said “Call unto me and I will show you great and mighty things”. The individuals we are about to read, walked close to God and made our life better.
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