<tanbible.com> - CREATIVE QUIZ

1. When the Israelites entered Canaan, God told them to
    exterminate the Canaanites. Why?
    (A) Baal worship with abject immorality prevalent.
    (B) The land was too small for both peoples.
    (C) God did not love the inhabitants.

2. The Amorites, against whom Joshua fought this battle, formed
    an alliance against:
    (A) Israel
    (B) Gibeon
    (C) Jerusalem

3. The evening before the battle, God assured Joshua at Gilgal that
    He would:
    (A) Give them victory
    (B) Cause the sun to stand still
    (C) Send supernatural hailstorms

4. The battle started with a surprise attack by—
    (A) Joshua
    (B) The 5 Amorite cities
    (C) Both at the same time.

5. Joshua’s prayer for the sun to stand still shows his:
    (A) Big faith
    (B) Love for drama
    (C) Rash nature

6. In the original Hebrew, the miracle was written two times in this
    Bible passage:
    (A) First as poetry, and then as prose
    (B) first as prose, then as poetry
    (C) both as poetry
    (D) both as prose.

7. The prayer of Joshua, if literally fulfilled, would affect the
    following
    (A) major celestial movement:
    (B) Earth’s going around the sun
    (C) Earth’s turning on its axis
    (D) Sun going around the earth.

8. The Bible says the Sun was over Gibeon and the Moon in Ajalon.
    That makes the moon on which side of the sun?
    (A) North
    (B) East
    (C) South
    (D) West

9. Which view requires the most faith:
    (A) Earth’s rotational motion slowed from 24 to 48 hours
    (B) Sun’s rays on earth refracted to extend the daylight
    (C) Hailstones with clouds covering sun to cool Hebrew warriors

10. The miracle given by God was to give the Hebrews:
    (A) More lands to conquer
    (B) More time for Jewish reinforcements
    (C) More time to complete a winning battle

11. The sun and moon--
    (A) Stood still for 1 day and suddenly go down,
    (B) Were held back, set very slowly and thus daylight was
           lengthened,
    (C) Figuratively means that the Jewish warriors did two days work
           in one day.

12. This miracle is made most unique and forceful with the Bible
    statement that it--
    (A) Did not ever happen before,
    (B) Will not ever happen again.
    (C) Did not happen and will never happen again.

13. According to the Bible, this miracle demonstrated that “God
fought for His people”. (True/false)

1 (A) Venereal and other diseases must have run rampant.

2 (B) Because Gibeon had allied with Joshua.

3 (A)

4 (A)

5 (A)

6 (A)

7 (B)

8 (D)

9 (A)

10 (C)

11 (B) Joshua 10:13: The sun… delayed going down about a full day. The sun was thus abnormally slow or tardy in getting to sunset. The Bible Knowledge Commentary says: “God stopped the cataclysmic effects that would have naturally occurred, such as monstrous tidal waves and objects flying around.” See also Warren Wiersbe’s comments below.

12 (C) God, who made the universe, can momentarily stop it without the catastrophes that most of us would envisage according to the laws known to us at this time.

13 True

[12] Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

[13] And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

[14] And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.

Warren Wiersbe in Be Strong (Publisher: Victor Books/Scripture Press, 1994), writes:

This event is questioned by those who deny the reality of miracles and look only to science for truth. “How could God stop the rotation of the earth and extend the length of a day,” they ask, “without creating chaos all over the planet?”

They seem to forget the fact that days are normally of different lengths in various parts of the world without the planet experiencing chaos. At 2 o’clock in the morning, I read the newspaper by sunlight in Norway.

But how do you explain a miracle, any miracle? Of course, the simplest answer is the answer of faith: The Lord is God and nothing is too hard for Him (Jer. 32:17, 27). Day and night belong to God (Ps. 74:16), and everything He has made is His servant. If God can’t perform the miracle described in Joshua 10, then He can’t perform any miracle and is imprisoned in His own creation, unable to use or suspend the very laws He built into it. I have a difficult time believing in that kind of a God.

An Old Testament expert, Gleason L. Archer, points out that the phrase “hasted not to go down” in verse 13 indicates “a retardation of the movement” and not a complete cessation. The sun and moon didn’t stand still permanently and then suddenly go down but were held back so that the daylight was lengthened. God stopped the sun and moon and then retarded the rotation of the planet so that the sun and moon set very slowly. Such a process would not create chaos all over the globe.

Mr. Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, Maryland, and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development:

“They were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets out in space where they would be 100 years and 1,000 years from now. We have to know this so we don’t send a satellite up and have it bump into something later on in its orbits.

“They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards.

“Well, they have found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time. They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was no answer!

“One religious fellow with them said, ‘You know, one time I was in Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still.’ The Lord saying to Joshua, ‘Fear them not: for I have delivered them into thine hand: there shall not a man of them stand before thee.’ Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and if darkness fell they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That’s right!—‘The sun stood still, and the moon stayed...and hasted not to go down about a whole day’ (Joshua 10:8, 12, 13).

“The spacemen said, ‘There is the missing day!’ They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua’s day was 23 hours and 20 minutes—not a whole day. They read the Bible and there it was—‘about a day.’ ”

“These little words in the Bible are important. But they were still in trouble because if they could not account for 40 minutes, their satellite would be off course 1,000 years from now.

“This religious fellow also remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went backwards. The space men told him he was out of his mind. But they got the Book and read these words in 2 Kings:

“Hezekiah, on his deathbed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof Isaiah said, ‘Do you want the sun to go ahead ten degrees?’ Hezekiah said, ‘It’s nothing for the sun to go ahead ten degrees, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees’ (2 Kings 20:9-11). Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees backward! Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes!

“Twenty-three hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings make the missing 24 hours the space travelers had to log into the logbook as being the missing day in the universe! Isn’t that amazing?”