There was a day long ago when the sun stood still, but time did not. It was a most unusual day that lasted much longer than other days. It was the day that Joshua commanded the sun not to go down until the battle was finished.

Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, “O sun, stand still at Gibeon, And O moon in the valley of Aijalon.” 13 So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. Joshua 10:12–13 (NASB95)

I think it is safe to say that most people will regard this account as mythical, even some who say they believe the Bible. They likely will assume that either it did not happen at all or whatever did take place was misinterpreted by a primitive pre-scientific people who did not yet realize that the sun’s apparent motion in the sky is caused by the earth’s approximate rotation speed at that latitude of 875 mph. Rather than be embarrassed by having to admit the Bible is wrong on this point, heliocentric Christians will try to explain things some other way.

So why did the Holy Spirit have Moses write about this day in the Bible? I am assuming my reader agrees that every word of the Bible was inspired by God. (2 Timothy 3:16) Here are a few possible reasons that come to mind.

1. It illustrated God’s total control over his creation, showing that he is not the far-away disinterested God of the Deists.
2. It showed that God allows humans to command nature at times when it is in agreement with his will, as when Jesus stilled the stormy sea.
3. It demonstrated that God was assisting Joshua and the Israelites to conquer Canaan.
4. In his foreknowledge, God knew it could be used later to refute the heliocentric lie.

This passage completely contradicts heliocentrism, if we believe the Bible is 100% true.

Heliocentrism holds that the apparent motion of the sun and moon are actually caused by the rotation of the earth. This contradicts the Bible’s claim that the sun runs a circuit over the earth and its rising and setting are due to visual perspective. (Psalm 19:6)

One can, no doubt, find information online that claims to refute the above video’s assertion, which requires us to choose which “authority” to believe. Ultimately, this forces us to decide whether it’s God or men. We know that men lie, but God never does. (Romans 3:4)

Since our chosen text, Joshua 10:12-13, clearly says the sun and moon stood still, those who accept the presupposition that the earth rotates on an imaginary axis must come up with some kind of alternate solution. Here are two possibilities.

1. The earth stopped rotating. This somewhat fits the heliocentric model, at least with respect to the sun. However, it would require the 1000 mph spin of the earth at the equator to come to a dramatic stop, setting off enormous tidal waves and earthquakes and throwing people and animals into whatever remained anchored to the ground, killing them instantly. In addition, although this solution would solve the problem of the sun appearing to stand still, it would not explain the stillness of the moon, for it is said to revolve around the earth. Therefore, not only would the earth to stop its rotation, the moon would have to cease orbiting the earth. Since this contradicts the clear meaning of the text and seems unnecessarily complex, I will throw this one out.
2. God can do anything. This is what people have said to me after I point out the contradictions that accompany the first “solution.” I believe this is an ill-disguised attempt to hide from the truth. While it is generally true that God can do anything, and we can agree that God need not explain how he does something, one thing God cannot and will not do is lie. Since the Bible says that the sun and moon stopped moving for several hours, that must be exactly what happened. Saying that God can do anything does not mean that the text ceases to mean what it says. Therefore this is no solution at all, which leave us with the simplest explanation – that 

   it happened exactly how the Bible said it did, proving that heliocentrism is a lie.

Martin Luther, a contemporary of Copernicus, was a principal leader in what is called the Protestant Reformation, in which one of the rallying cries was “sola scriptura,” meaning that the Bible is the highest standard for truth in all matters. He refuted the astronomer’s claim simply by referencing the above quoted passage from Joshua, regarding which he made the following statement.

In the midst of the cataclysmic upheaval called the Protestant Reformation, which rearranged nations and delivered people from the bondage of Roman Catholic doctrine, the devil instituted his own religious “counter reformation” spearheaded by the Jesuit order. Additionally, the scientific community underwent its own revolution, which Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others spearheaded. These men, unlike Luther, had a much lower regard for Scripture, if any at all.

Francis Bacon popularized the “two books” metaphor, saying that God wrote Scripture to reveal His will, and the book of nature to reveal His works and power. He warned against “unwisely mingling” them by using biblical texts to “dictate” natural philosophy. He advocated studying both, but keeping their domains separate. This sounds eerily like the modern argument of separation of church and state. When a trick works, Satan reuses it.

If you want to learn more about this devilish strategy, I recommend that you watch the Heliosorcery documentary. 

Satan and godless men refuse to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over all truth. He claims to “own” science, education, media, and government. God can have Sunday school.

Sadly, we Christians bought the lie and currently believe that moral truth and “the gospel” are the only things concerning which we need to be concerned, not realizing that God’s truth in the Scriptures extends to every area, including cosmology. You may wish to read my article entitled The Counter Rebellion to learn more about how to overcome this satanic strategy.

It should be clear to us that such an argument as Bacon’s justifies rejecting as untrue anything in the Bible that does not agree with so-called science.

This is exactly what German theologians did a couple of centuries later when they eliminated the miraculous from the Bible to try to sift down to the “historical” Jesus.

The separation of “religious” truth from physical reality is something with which the biblical authors were unfamiliar.

For them, and us, all truth is God’s truth. The Bible does not pretend only to speak about moral and metaphysical matters. Is Jesus’ bodily resurrection a metaphysical metaphor or did it actually happen? It cannot be explained scientifically, but the Bible says it took place. If we can reject what the Bible says about the sun and moon, we can reject whatever we like, including the resurrection. It is definitely a “slippery slope.”

Joshua’s command to the sun and moon spoken so long ago challenges our loyalty to God’s Word today.

Oh, that modern Christians regarded the Bible with as much reverence as did the Reformers! How I wish that we would esteem the Holy Scriptures more than what goes for science! Let us repent, if we have bowed our knee to that false god. Let us choose to honor the Lord and his Word rather than seek the world’s approval.

Click here to see my other articles on biblical cosmology.