Lightning and God

Jeff Miller, Ph.D.

Existence of God

“Can you send out lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, ‘Here we are!’?” (Job 38:35). 

In Job chapters 38-40, God highlights for Job many of the amazing wonders of the Universe that He created, including “lightnings.” When the Israelites were standing at the base of Mount Sinai receiving God’s Law in Exodus, God’s presence on the mountain resulted in “thunderings and lightnings”—“lightning flashes” (Exodus 19:16; 20:18). In the Psalms, lightning is often used symbolically to refer to how God scares, strikes, and scatters His enemies. Lightning is amazing and is even proof of God’s existence, because the scientific rules that govern the Universe (Job 38:33), causing lightning to happen, could not exist without God to make them! God highlights lightning 28 times in the Bible, where it is usually mentioned alongside references to God and, in this issue of Discovery, we will see why. 

What is lightning? Have you ever shuffled your feet on the carpet and then touched someone, shocking them? When you shuffle your feet, you are building up a negative charge in your body (that is, you are picking up tiny electrons from the carpet). One of the rules that God set up in the Universe is that unstable situations want to even/balance out so that there will be stability. The built-up negative charge in your body wants to release its charge (its electrons) into another object that has an opposite charge (that is, has fewer electrons), so that they can balance out their charge and become stable. 

Lightning is basically a cloud shocking something—releasing electrical charges (that is, electrons) from the cloud along a path to balance out its charge with its surroundings. 

How does that work, exactly? Scientists are not sure about every step of the process, but they think that as clouds move during a storm, particles in the clouds organize themselves, with lighter particles moving upwards and becoming positively charged (fewer electrons) and heavier particles moving downwards, becoming negatively charged (more electrons). Objects on the ground do the same thing. This causes an imbalance between groups of charged areas that want to “fix” themselves and get balanced. The surrounding air creates a strong insulation that keeps those areas from exchanging their charge. When the difference in the charges becomes great enough, electricity explosively breaks through the air and is released between the groups. The release tries to even out the charge differences between the two oppositely charged areas, creating a “shock”—a lightning bolt. 

The discharge of electricity can travel over 200 million miles per hour—over 2,000 times faster than a meteorite and over 100,000 times faster than a bullet! Like lightning, Isaiah 19:1 describes God as riding “on a swift cloud.”

Most of the time, lightning bolts happen within a cloud or between two clouds in the sky (which looks like clouds flashing from our perspective), but sometimes a lightning bolt travels between the cloud and the ground (especially taller objects on the ground). Interestingly, lightning bolts are not actually one stroke of electricity, but a series of very fast return strokes that move back up into the cloud. 

The charges that the clouds release zig zag through the air (not the rain), taking the path through the air that is easiest for the electricity to travel. Amazingly, the power created by each bolt of lightning carries enough energy to provide power for 30 million people to have electricity for an entire year. 

Like lightning, the power of God is highlighted repeatedly in the Bible. When describing what happened at Mount Sinai, Moses explained, “Then it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain; and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled…. Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly” (Exodus 19:16,18).

Amazingly, the path that lightning moves through heats up to 30,000oC—five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. The immense heat causes the surrounding air to become plasma (a special form that is different from a gas, liquid, or solid) that glows, emitting very strong light. The Bible often describes the intense brightness of God. In fact, God is called the “Father of lights” (James 1:17). Again, accompanying the lightning at Mount Sinai, “The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel” (Exodus 24:17). Habakkuk 3:3-4 says, “God came…. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness was like the light; He had rays flashing from His hand….”

Interestingly, the skin of the angel that rolled back the stone at Jesus’ tomb was “like lightning” (Matthew 28:3).

What is thunder? As lightning moves through the air, the air around its path heats and, therefore, expands. The expansion, however, is faster than the speed of sound, rapidly compressing the air in front of it, which causes the “booms” of thunder we hear. 

Given this information, consider: can you have thunder without lightning? Since light travels faster than sound, unless the lightning is close to you, you can see the lightning before you hear its thunder, which only travels at the speed of sound. Once again, many times in Scripture, God’s voice is compared to thunder. “Have you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like His?” (Job 40:9; see also 2 Samuel 22:14). 

Everything about God is awesome. His almighty power. His lightning speed. His blinding brightness. His thundering voice. While we really cannot fathom just how great God is, since He is an infinite spiritual Being, and we (for now) are bound to the physical world around us, God created physical things that He wants us to study because they can help us to understand to a small degree things about Him (Romans 1:20). When God created lightning, He no doubt did so, in part, to help us understand more about Who He is. 

Very importantly, Jesus’ coming in judgment is also compared to lightning in Matthew 24:27: “For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” Let’s all make sure we’re ready to meet Him on Judgment Day!

Doc’s Corner: Was Behemoth a Dinosaur?

In Job 40:15-24, God shows Job an amazing beast called “behemoth,” and nobody is certain what it was. The description doesn’t match any known, modern species, but several of its features line up best with a sauropod dinosaur (the long-neck, long-tail dinosaurs). One of those features is mentioned in vs. 18: behemoth’s “bones are like beams of bronze, his ribs like bars of iron”—apparently like solid metal. While most animals (including hippos and elephants) have open spaces in their bones which make them “spongy,” sauropod dinosaurs were unique among animals in that their ribs (and certain other bones) were made of solid bone. If God considered behemoth special and worth highlighting, wouldn’t it make sense for Him to highlight some of the features that made it different (like its bones, tail, stomach muscles, and where its strength lay, vss. 16-17)? A sauropod fits God’s description of behemoth better than any other animal we know about.

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