Our hypothetical nutter's just found something else to scare us:
Revelation Chp 7 Vs 1:
"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth...."
Now he's fashioning a big poster proclaiming "THE EARTH IS FLAT" and getting ready to run around the streets with it.
He's got a point. A spherical earth can't have four corners, however you try and look at it. But it is a scientific FACT that the earth is a sphere. So what's going on here? Well, it's obvious to all of us that this bit of scripture is a metaphor, like a lot of Revelation. But for hundereds of years, people argued the world was flat because it said so in the Bible. We think them idiots now, but they were deadly serious at the time. Poor old Copernicus got a bit narked about this general attitude as well as me.
So, what do we need to do? On the one hand, we've got scientific fact. On the other we've got a piece of scripture that can be interpreted in two ways, metaphorically or literally. Which combination are you going to choose?
God Bless
Nick