[Note: The following article was written by my mom. You can visit her blog through this link.]

The term of the day among those who want to discredit God's Word seems to be "bibliolatry." I've heard this term being used more and more from Christians. There seems to be a move among evangelical Christianity to discredit the Word of God and draw His people away from its authority.

Question: "What is bibliolatry?" Answer: The term bibliolatry comes from combining the Greek words for Bible and worship. In a Christian context, simply stated, bibliolatry is the worship of the Bible. Typically, the accusation of bibliolatry is used as an attack on those who hold to the inerrancy, infallibility, and supremacy of Scripture. It is often employed as an inflammatory and derogatory attack on believers who hold to “sola scriptura” and/or a literal interpretation of the Bible. Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/bibliolatry.html#ixzz32GSdo5UH

When the Bible talks of idolatry it talks of putting anything above God to worship, adore, give credence to, submit to, rely on as a god. Those who love His Word truly, love it because it is HIS Word... the very Words given us by God Himself, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate to us, so that we can know HIM and worship HIM. There is no way to know Him if you discredit that Word where He Himself tells you about Himself and what He expects of mankind. There are different ways in our day to reject God. Atheists outright reject Him saying He doesn't exist. They are at least honest in saying they reject Him. But there is a more subtle form of rejection of God and that is to change Him and His Word. While these people accuse those who love, hold to, and rely on the Bible, as His Word, of idolatry, they themselves hold up man's word as an idol, and refer to theological studies or writings of men that discredit His Word, rather than that of God's Word. They hold to the studies of those who try to persuade others to discredit or devalue that Word of God, or to go beyond it. All the while doing this they believe they are going by God's Word. What a delusion!

Recently I have seen a cartoon Jesus saying to a man "follow me" while the man is reading His Bible. The man is saying, "I just have to read this one more chapter." This is the most blasphemous "jesus" cartoon I've seen lately! This cartoon jesus is not Jesus at all, and I wouldn't follow him. He is a man-made jesus, (which in itself is idolatry according to Exodus 20:4 - "You shall not make a graven image for yourself, or any likeness in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth"), and is representing not the authority of God, according to His true Words, but the ideas of man who wants to say that we must walk away from the Word and follow this caricature of Jesus - a subjective jesus. As though this subjective jesus can lead us more into the true heart of God and His ways than the Bible itself which is His objective Word.

It grieves my heart greatly, and I believe the heart of Jesus, to see this subtlety of satan in the evangelical church of our day. It puts subjective experience above God's Word. The true idolatry is subjective experience and books of men being put above God's very Word. As satan does with all things, rather than outright deny truth, he subtly twists it using a little truth, saying it backwards, and making it sound like truth. This is what he is doing today always calling good evil and evil good. Calling idolatry true worship and true worship idolatry. Those who are not of His Word or in His Word are those who find it a convenient way to deny His Word without thinking they are truly doing so. If you don't accept the infallibility and authority of His Word, you deny it, whether or not you do so outright, or in a more subtle form such as this. And if you deny His Word subtle or outright, you deny Christ.

There is a church in the last days that Jesus does not rebuke, and that He commends, who stands against the tide of false and counterfeit Christianity, that has its own word, rather than His. It is the church of Philadelphia.

(Rev 3:8) I know your works. Behold, I have given a door being opened before you, and no one is able to shut it, for you have a little power and have kept My Word, and have not denied My name.

He has a true Word, and a true name. The two cannot be separated.

John Nelson Darby describes this so well...

"The assembly of Philadelphia has a peculiarly interesting character. Nothing is said of its works, but that Christ knows them. But what is interesting in it is that it is peculiarly associated with Christ Himself. Christ, as in all these last assemblies, is not seen in the characters in which He walked in the midst of the assemblies, but in such as faith peculiarly recognizes when ecclesiastical organization has become the hot-bed of corruption. Here it is His personal character, what He is intrinsically, holy and true, what the word displays and requires, and what the word of God is in itself-moral character and faithfulness. Indeed this last word includes all: faithfulness to God within and without, according to what is revealed, and faithful to make good all He has declared..." " ...He was holy and true, to man's view had a little strength, kept the word lived by every word that proceeded out of God's lips waited patiently for the Lord, and to Him the porter opened. He lived in the last days of a dispensation, the holy and true One, rejected, and, to human eye, failing in success with those who said they were Jews, but were the synagogue of Satan. So the saints here: they walk in a place like His; they keep His word, have a little strength, are not marked by a Pauline energy of the Spirit, but do not deny His name. This is the character and motive of all their conduct. It is openly confessed, the word kept, the Name not denied. It seems little; but in universal decline, much pretension and ecclesiastical claim, and many falling away to man's reasonings, keeping the word of Him that is holy and true, and not denying His name is everything." - JN Darby

In the end it will be the Word of God that judges mankind, not the word of man.

(John 12:48) The one who rejects Me and does not receive My Words has that judging him: the Word which I spoke, that will judge him in the last Day.

If some other jesus, other than the Jesus of the Bible, says to me, "follow me" I'd have to say, "No, I don't know you. I only know this Jesus, and I won't hear the voice of another."

John 10:1-5

(1) Truly, truly, I say to you, The one not entering through the door into the sheepfold, but going up by another way, that one is a thief and a plunderer.

(2) But the one entering through the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

(3) The doorkeeper opens to him, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.

(4) And when he puts forth his own sheep, he goes in front of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

(5) But they will not follow a stranger, never! But they will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of the strangers.

(John 5:43) I have come in the name of My Father, and you do not receive Me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive that one.

When one rejects the Word of God, thinking He is following God, he is becoming willingly blind, convincing himself that he has not rejected God. It is the most subtle deception of all. If a person is not comfortable with God's Word, I have found it's because they simply don't like something it says to them, or demands of them, or reveals about their life or about God. Rather than face it and face God, and be brought up to His level, it's so much easier to have a feel good subjective experience with another jesus, who is much more accepting of your sin and your lifestyle, and then try to bring Jesus down to your level.

But this jesus has no true salvation for you, but only a delusion to keep you from true salvation. True salvation is to confess (agree with God) your sin... that which God Himself calls sin, in His Word, or transgression against Him, and turn to Him alone, in faith believing all Jesus is and has done for you, for His cleansing of that, and His empowerment through His Spirit coming in to make you a new creature in Christ... born again of His Spirit, not of the flesh, so that you can live according to His Word in faith, being made into His image and ultimately being made holy as He is holy that we might dwell with Him in His presence forever. This is the Gospel of salvation revealed in His Word. No wonder the enemy wants to dilute it and discredit it. No wonder the world works so hard to silence it. How sad that those who call themselves His church join in with them!