What Causes Clouds of Vapour?

Reprinted from “The Earth.” an old flat earth publication

What causes clouds of vapour to be precipitated in showers of rain? There must be some definite active motive power. Electricity, which is in itself a “mode of motion,” is a subtle agent or power in Nature, evolved in some disturbance of molecular equilibrium, whether from a chemical, physical, or mechanical cause, and exhibiting itself in a variety of ways, e.g., electro-chemistry: that science which treats of the agency of electricity in effecting chemical changes; electrolysis; the process of chemical decomposition by electricity as to send it to the earth in showers of rain. This brings to the statement made by Lord Kelvin in the Natural Philosophy Class Room, when referring to some experiments, he remarked: “I believe there never is rain without lightning.”

Bearing in mind the last quotation, and the remarks preceding it, if we again turn to Psalm 135:7, we read: “ He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh lightnings for the rain; He bringeth the wind out of His treasuries.” So, as Roger, in his Reasons, truly says, “Here is the very discovery towards which the biggest electrician of his day is only now feeling his way!” I have thought over the same verse of the Psalm, and have come to the same conclusion. This should strengthen our belief in the Bible and its Divine source, and that any statement not in harmony therewith will be found to be fallacious. How do the clouds become rain? “There is one kind of electricity in this cloud, and the opposite kind in that which meets it. The contact begets the lightning flash; the shock inasses the globules together, the rain is precipitated; and the waiting earth is refreshed.”

God has stretched out “the heavens as a curtain.” I do not say that the Hebrew word dok, translated ‘curtain, does not mean thinness; but to argue that “a cupful would make a globe of ether as big as the earth,” is going outside sense and reason, as well as out of the context and other portions of the Bible. We read in Isaiah 11:22, R.V.: “He that sitteth upon the circle (vault) of the earth…… that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in,” and we are told in Job 37:18, R.V., that He spread out the sky which is strong as a molten mirror;” and again, in Prov, 8:27, 28, R.V., “He set a circle upon the face of the deep; when He made firin the skies above.”

“You cannot deny, at any rate, said one of the speakers in Roger’s Reasons, that the Bible teaches the flatness of the earth. We left Rome to fight that battle out with Galileo, was the quoted reply, but we have to own that Rome had the Bible on its (her) side. The last speaker cannot be contradicted in this respect, although the author of the pamphlet quibbles, and endeavours to show that the language of the Bible is in accord with a whirling sea earth globe. But who ever heard of a globe having ends?

Yet the Bible refers to the ends of the earth and how can a globe, moving at the rate of about 1,100 miles a minute, be fixed on “foundations” and “pillars”? Hannah said and sung: “The pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and He hath set the world upon them.”  I Sam. 2:8. Again, we read: “He founded the earth upon her bases that it should not be moved for ever; the world also is established that it cannot be moved.” The foundations of the earth (land) an outstretched and motionless plane, proved by the fact that water everywhere is level. We read that he spread forth the earth above the waters; and again we are told  heaven above…earth beneath… water under the earth  not empty space all round a whirling globe, nor the sea resting upon the earth, but the earth resting in and upon the waters of the mighty (“He hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7), that is, as one learned Hebrew scholar says, “upon no thing.”

I have frequently reminded my readers, and hearers, that the correct translation is not that of a suspended globe in empty space. “He stretcheth out the north over the empty space, and does not hang the earth (or land) upon any thing.” This passage of Scripture is frequently brought up by our opponents, but it does not prove the globular teaching at all. In dealing with this verse, in the first place, we hold that the word ‘earth’ means the land portion of the world, and the land only; and therefore it does not include the sea.

Now Job was referring to the land in the north, over which the northern heavens are spread. And the earth beneath it (the land in the north) hangeth upon “no thing,” having neither “pillars” nor foundations, save the waters of the great deep. Job proves his inspiration by this statement of fact, written hundreds of years before any man had attempted to explore the north magnetic centre. A thing hung up is motionless.