Science is the discipline of discovery, and science must be benign to Scripture because our Abba Father is the creator of both. Believers do not rejoice in science enough as the reveal of our Abba Father’s creation. We should herald every discovery as a gift from our Abba Father. But ELB pushes us in the opposite direction, making science an antagonist toward our faith. That illustrates the power of ELB.

I have my own exegesis rules (interpretation) regarding the Scripture and science that are very straightforward. The first rule is science and Scripture must converge in the end. That must happen because they have the same creator. Any other thought is weak faith in ELB, which is critical. Holy Bible scholars should never paint themselves into a science corner with Scripture interpretation.

But they can’t help themselves. Men in ELB wrote the Doctrine of Inerrancy which has a grounding in Scripture, but the doctrine is not the Scripture. I am not suggesting the Scripture has any errors, only that human interpretation is subject to errors. As man’s instrument, the Doctrine of Inerrancy is also man’s self-inflicted wound. Our Abba Father’s words must prevail, and we suffer the consequences of weak faith by rewriting them.

My second rule is that a verse can never mean what it never said. That also is straightforward. An enormity of Scripture does not say what scholars tell us it says, and that is a severe problem. A significant part of this book discusses that reality.

My third rule is I do not engage in apologetics, debating the existence of our Abba Father with reason (science). I find it to be a heresy that defeats the whole point of our Abba Father. Mathew 13:11, “And he answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” Non-believers are simply not equipped to debate our Abba Father. Preach and teach to them, yes. Debate them, no. Why give ELB a platform with our Abba Father?

Non-believing scientists tend to believe that the discovery of what our Abba Father created is somehow proof that he did not create it. That is silly, but it seems to put fear in many believers that science will find something someday that negates Scripture. That is weak exegesis and weak faith in an ELB world, and our goal is to strengthen our faith by strengthening our relationship with our Abba Father.

Science is simply the discovery of our Abba Father’s creation. Rejoice in that. For example, we discovered electricity, and we put it to work. Our Abba Father’s design is that the current in an electric circuit is equal to the voltage applied divided by the circuit resistance every time it is measured. That is what our Abba Father created, and electricians design with it. It is not evidence against our Abba Father because we can figure out how something he created functions.

Our Abba Father’s laws of physics, gases, motion, gravity, aerodynamics, chemistry, atomics, etc., are well known today. Airplanes fly because man makes wing shapes that cause atmospheric pressure under the wing to lift a plane with force greater than gravity when propelled through the atmosphere above a certain speed. With no atmosphere, we need a rocket to fly. Our Abba Father’s physical sciences are very formulaic and precise.

Science presents an excellent opportunity to bathe in our Abba Father’s glory. Believers will benefit from seeing our Abba Father’s hand in all science and marvel at its majesty and precision. ELB does everything it can to drive believers from the public square, and the result is that science is allowed to be claimed by the secular and feared by the believer.

But there is a nature of science that we often overlook. It starts with a theory or an idea of what might be true. A scientist thinks they observed something and then tries to prove it true. When science cannot prove something, science often goes with the best-sounding theory and forget it is a theory. We should not let unproven theory weaken our faith, ever.

The Big Bang theory is honest enough to call itself a theory. That is an excellent example because as its discovery grows, it grows closer to our Abba Father, not away. E=mc2 is the formula for the theory of atomic energy. Very little is now missing in atomic theory because of continuous research. Nuclear science is close to complete. There is little theory left to discover in the physical and chemical sciences.

I gave up paying attention to atomic discovery when scientists discovered the “quark.” A quark is sort of an elemental particle. If you ever doubted the complexity of our Abba Father’s design, check this out, “In the strong interaction between quarks, they exchange gluons, which are massless vector gauge bosons that carry a pair of color and anticolor charges. When exchanging gluons, the color of the quarks change. This color force is weakest when the quarks are close together and becomes stronger as they move apart.” (Source, https://www.thoughtco.com/quark-2699004)

Somewhere in there is an atomic bomb. That is a cool paragraph that about five people in the world understand. I am not one of them, but it reminds me of our Abba Father’s greatness in his creation. Believing that discovering his creation’s inner workings means he must not have created it is just crazy. We should rejoice in the complexity and awe of our Abba Father’s creation.

Sometimes theory is used as a weapon to say the Scripture lies. The enemy has been saying our Abba Father lies since Genesis 3, and both are still here. Here is on earth; a sphere we live on with a molten core at a temperature of 8,000 to 11,000 degF. We are hurtling through space at about 67,000 mph while rotating with a surface speed of about 1,000 mph at the equator. Speed it up a tick, and we fly off, slow it down a tick, and we cannot stand up or walk. What could go wrong? That data is science, God’s children’s gift of discovery that we tend to separate from our Abba father. Do not separate it; it glorifies him!

And why is science separated from our Abba Father by our Abba Father’s children? Because we can see science. But the world was not created by science; it was created by the supernatural, and science is simply man’s discovery of our Abba Father’s incredibly complex creation. It is almost comical watching scientists figure out where the “bang” came from in the Big Bang Theory when it can only be the leap back to our Abba Father in creation.

The Scripture survived the discovery that our spherical earth orbited the sun, and it must survive any other discovery science uncovers. Revelation 7:1, “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth . . .” The Scripture says the earth has four corners (or angles); what do we do about that? We assume it does not mean the world is rectangular but has four compass points. Problem solved, but it highlights the role intermediary’s translations and interpretation play in our understanding.

Science draws believers into two areas where a response is helpful for believers to live with, not debate. The earth’s age is one, and human evolution is the other. We will start with the age of the earth. If we look at day one in Genesis and follow the life spans of the early people in the Scripture forward, we soon overlap with recorded history and end up with 6,121-year-old earth to date or possibly up to 15,000 years old. “Science” says the earth is billions of years old. That is a pretty huge difference. But so are 6,121 and 15,000 for the “young earth” team.

The young earth/old earth debate was my first assignment in seminary, and we had to choose a side. I refused to choose because the professor could not convince me why it was necessary. To this day, no one has convinced me of the necessity to choose. I am happy to embrace a nature of mystery to the Scripture throughout.

I will share where the young earth believers fail to convince me; their foundation is man’s definition of what two words mean, day and creation. It would be super cool if they were correct. But I am not willing to bet my faith on man’s definitions in the full context of physical science. Unity is more important to me.

There is too much mystery in the Scripture, too many parables, too many symbols, styles, and too many interpretations. I will never understand the ELB-driven need to force a human-interpreted meaning onto a verse that might conflict with science. I am perfectly content to wait until I meet our Abba Father and ask him. Many church leaders are not, and that is ELB.

There is also the nature of the continuous revelation of our Abba Father’s plan from beginning to end. Genesis 1 is just what it says, the beginning. For example, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God then reveals Yahweh, the Angel of the LORD, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Genesis 1 does not mention Jesus, so how can he exist? Oh, he tells us later. Wait a minute; there are four spirit beings on the list. Whoops!

Genesis 1:3, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” What is the light exactly? Genesis 1, “. . . darkness was on the face of the deep.” Maybe the light was created as part of the heavens in verse 1, and God just moved some clouds out of the way in Genesis 3. (Only kidding.)

Jesus tells us he is the light in John 8:12, “Again therefore Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.” There is a stunning mosaic of Scripture revelation as we proceed through its revelation of the creation. It is one of the glories of Scripture lost in man’s doctrine.

Intermediaries in ELB destroy the Scripture’s majesty arguing about the two Hebrew words for “create” and “day.” I embrace the debate as very interesting. I object to multiple people declaring they know something that they cannot know. By definition, that cannot be so; multiple opposing views cannot all be true.

Tradition plays a role in this debate because science could not seriously discuss a realistic age for the earth until the 19th century. Until a scholar (or anyone) can show us the verse that requires us to solve all of our Abba Father’s mysteries in ancient Hebrew and Greek, the exercise is just an intramural sport. It is really up to the Holy Spirit to reveal.

Once the earth age discussion started, the church appeared to have frozen. It was about the same time as psychology birthed itself out of philosophy as a science, and enemies of the church embraced it as a weapon. That is why I believe so strongly in the relationship teaching of our Abba Father in contrast with human-declared truths as the foundation of faith, i.e., creeds and doctrines. The list of truths required for redemption is relatively short, and there is zero need to go beyond that except to learn how to grow closer to our Abba Father and experience his full creation. But ELB gets in the way.

I make a clear distinction between our redemption and my learning afterward. I mine the Scripture looking for nuggets to grow our relationship with our Abba Father and share them with others. That is quite exciting. But if we are not thinking about relationships, knowledge for the mind is all we are left with when our heart cries out to be fed.

I will not go into the linguistics of the creation debate here because this message is about the intersection of Scripture and science in ELB. Overall, I can find zero connection between redemption and the universe’s age, which should be the context of our study. Evolution is another scientific theory that challenges the Holy Bible. Chapter 3 explains how our Abba Father’s human creation works with its spirit and physical parts connected. I never see any of the spirit parts included in the evolution debate. The very essence of human existence, our spirit and soul, are not included in the debate so what is the point of the debate? But no matter what, science and the Scripture must converge. For me, on this issue, humans and apes open a banana from the opposite end, which settles it for me.