Now, let me give you some of the elements of this sci-fi religion, this science fiction
religion.
It has the elements that you'd expect to find in a religion.
What would you expect to find in a religion?
Well, you'd expect to find preachers or apostles of that religion.
You'd expect to find evangelists and teachers of that religion, wouldn't you?
You'd also expect to find certain rules governing morality, certain ideas about right and wrong
that come from that religion.
Whether we were talking about Hinduism, Islam, whatever, these are the type of things you'd
expect to find.
Usually you'd expect to find a creation story in a religion, right?
All the different religions of the world have a belief about how it all started, the creation
story.
And another element that you'd expect to find in a religion is an end times teaching, what's
called eschatology, the study of final things.
The religions of this world will point to some kind of a future apocalypse, whatever
they see that as.
Obviously the Bible is no exception.
We have the book of Revelation telling us how it all ends.
So I'm going to go through these elements.
Let's start with, first of all, the preachers of this sci-fi religion.
Oh, this religion, this science fiction religion definitely has some preachers.
Here are some of the big name preachers of this science religion.
Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Christopher Hitchens,
Bill Nye the Science Guy.
These are the apostles of this false religion.
These are the false teachers and false prophets.
Now the Bible says, and if you would turn over to 1 Timothy 6, the Bible says in Psalm
62 verse 9, surely men of low degree are vanity and men of high degree are a lie.
To be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.
So God is saying here that men of low degree are nothing in God's sight.
God doesn't respect any man's person, but that men of high degree are actually less
than nothing in his sight, lighter than vanity, because they're a lie.
What does it mean men of high degree are a lie?
That they're a fraud, that they're not really as smart as they think they are, that they're
not really as great as people are making them out to be.
And of course, these preachers in this sci-fi religion, they love to glorify themselves
through their degree.
They've reached the degree of bachelor.
I was glad to get out of the degree of bachelor, you know, when I got married.
But you know, oh, I reached the associate's degree, the bachelor's degree, the master's
degree.
You know, that comes back to he-man, you know, masters of the universe.
So the master's degree, the doctorate, the PhD, and in their world, this is what exalts
them amongst their peers, well, he is a PhD.
But God says that men of high degree are a lie.
They're lighter than vanity.
They're worth less than the guy that's of low degree, the Bible says.
But God doesn't respect any man's person.
So the first one of these apostles, well, before I do that, let me just show you something
in 1 Timothy 6.
This kind of jumped out at me while the scripture was being read.
I love reading the Bible in church.
Have you ever noticed that when the Bible is read in church, things jump out at you
that you don't always get when you're reading the Bible at home?
Because we're gathered here together and God's Spirit is in the midst of us.
And when we read the Bible as a church, it seems like God really speaks to us.
That's why we read the whole chapter before the sermon.
That's actually a profitable time in the service to listen and learn.
But one of the things that jumped out at me, because we're in this chapter that's talking
about science falsely so-called and people erring from the faith.
You know, I like this verse 3, if any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome
words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the doctrine which is according to godliness,
he is proud knowing nothing.
See, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, the Bible says.
So it would make sense that God's saying, well, if anybody is rejecting the words of
Jesus Christ, he's proud and he's knowing nothing.
So these people that think they're so smart, the Bible says the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with God and that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.