A popular Christian song a few years ago was titled “Days of Elijah.” It focused on the coming of the Lord, a worthy and relevant topic. However, if these are indeed the days of Elijah, God is calling us to do what Elijah did – to boldly confront idolatry and challenge people to choose between serving God and the devil.
Baal worship was prevalent in Elijah’s day and still exists, but an even bigger and more ubiquitous idol confronting the church in our time is the false god of science.
In Daniel’s day, king Nebuchadnezzar erected a giant image of himself and commanded all his 
subjects to worship it in a grand display of devotion, unity, pomp, and ceremony. Any who refused was condemned to death. We know the story of three brave young men who chose to endure the king’s wrath rather than betray the one true God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego courageously stood against enormous peer pressure and the threat of imminent death.
We are faced with a similar situation today, but now the golden idol is called science. Let us consider how we Christians have prostrated ourselves to this idol, perhaps unwittingly.
I think most of my Christian readers will agree that God’s Word in the Bible is true. If we are evangelicals, Sola Scriptura is a motto from the Reformation with which we are familiar. We believe that the scriptures are infallibly accurate and true as found in the original autographs and are authoritative regarding faith and practice. Jesus taught that God’s Word cannot be broken. (John 10:35)
What the Bible says should not be contradicted or changed. It stands against all competitors claiming to be the truth.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for altering the Word of God to suit their purposes.
He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. Mark 7:9 (NASB95)
Altering the clear meaning of God’s Word to make it compatible with an external version of truth is a favorite trick of religious people who do not take God’s words seriously. Here Jesus made it plain that changing the meaning of a text is the equivalent of invalidating or rejecting it.
Whenever we reinterpret God’s Word to make it conform to a tradition or some other standard of truth, even if it is “scientific,” we are in error.
We now call the time when the Old and New Testaments were written as pre-scientific. Science emerged as a false god in the Renaissance when man determined that he is the measure of all things, not God and certainly not the Bible.
Highly esteemed scientists embarked on the scintillating quest of discovering the truths of the universe without being limited by what the Bible says.
This may have seemed like a new idea, but it is as old as humanity. This quest is the same one that Adam and Eve set out on in the garden. They likewise did not want to rely on God for information. They wanted to figure out things for themselves. This desire to gain knowledge without God’s help is rooted in pride and extremely appealing to us. It is the lure of Satan that has taken down multitudes and still deceives the nations, even those who proclaim allegiance to Jesus.
Any time we choose to dismiss the obvious meaning of Scripture in order to accommodate it to the claims of science, we have bowed the knee to a false god.
Here is a relevant example. Genesis Chapter One gives us God’s explanation of how he created the heavens and earth. In this section of the Bible we are told the sequence of creation and how long it took. The authors of the Bible believed this to be literally true, and God’s people thought the same for millennia. But when Renaissance scientists proclaimed that the Bible is not true after all, a gradual transition began to occur. Heliocentrism met with strong resistance at first from such notables as Luther and Calvin, but over time, as these defenders of orthodoxy died out and as the new theories were taught to the young, this new way of viewing the universe ascended to being considered true, not just a theory. This put the church into a crisis of faith.
Would God’s people hold to the traditional and obvious meaning of Genesis Chapter One, or would we reinterpret those verses to accommodate to a new standard of truth called science. I think you know the answer.
For the last five hundred years or so the Word of God regarding the creation and shape of the earth and heavens has been held captive by the false god of science. In a cunning stroke of evil genius, Satan attacked the foundation of truth, the Scriptures, by undermining our faith in the very first chapter.
It is no wonder that so many have chosen to reject God altogether because he cannot be found in the Big Bang universe. Only the true version of things gives glory to God.
The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Psalm 19:1 (NKJV)
Today God is peeling back layers of deception and restoring people’s confidence that Genesis Chapter One is literally true and accurate.
Today people are standing up to the monolithic giant in the land called science, just as Elijah stood against the prophets of Baal.
It takes courage to make a stand for God’s truth just as it did for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. May God make us bold to proclaim our loyalty both to Jesus and his words, which includes Genesis Chapter One!
For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Luke 9:26 (NASB95)
