Each time I speak, there are always interesting people to meet afterward. Many tell me how much they appreciate what AiG is doing to provide answers to the lies of evolution and millions of years and call the church back to the authority of the Word of God. Some have biblical or scientific questions, and I do my best to provide answers.

On Saturday about 160 came to the talk, including a number of Chinese graduate and undergraduate university students who were brought by a church that ministers to internationals students. I was told that many of these Chinese students are not Christians, and for some this visit to the museum was their first exposure to anything contrary to evolution. Lift up a prayer that the truths these bright Chinese students heard will bear fruit in helping to bring them to faith in Christ to be witnesses back in China.

Another person I met is a biology professor at a Christian university, whom I’ll call Sue (not her real name, and she didn’t tell me the name of her university). She is up for vote to receive tenure, and she told me of the very real possibility that she may actually lose her job because her school holds to theistic evolution and she is a young-earth creationist. The irony is that some of the theology, philosophy and history professors have accused her of naivety and not really understanding evolution. The arrogance and ignorance of these non-science professors is breath-taking. I encouraged her to be faithful to the Word and pointed her to some books and DVDs that would help her be better prepared to deal with the professorial committee she has to stand before this week, and to better teach her students to think critically.

She also told me that many of her students had gone to a recent conference at Wheaton College, where theistic evolution and other compromised views were promoted. She said the students came back very confused because “there were so many nice and intelligent Christian scholars who have so many different views from the young-earth view.” I pointed out to Sue that this could actually teach these students a vitally important lesson, namely, that regardless of the position we take on this subject of origins and the meaning of Genesis, we cannot escape the very disheartening fact that some very good, nice, intelligent Christian people are seriously wrong. We simply can’t say that everyone who disagrees with us is wicked and ignorant and probably not saved. That would not be true to reality.

When I say that old-earth creationists and theistic evolutionists are wrong and their views are undermining the authority of Scripture and the truth of the gospel, I am not saying that they are not Christians or that they don’t believe in the death and Resurrection of Jesus for their salvation, are not sincere, are not moral, don’t love their spouse, and don’t care about evangelism, missions, and the poor. I’m sure that most old-earthers and theistic evolutionists are Christians, do love Jesus, do live moral, upstanding lives, do have good marriages and care about the lost and suffering. But they are still wrong about the age of the earth and evolution and the proper interpretation of Genesis, just like Peter was a true believer in Jesus as the Messiah but wrong about the death and Resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 16:13–23), and just as he was an apostle mightily used by God but still succumbed to the fear of man and hypocrisy and undermined the gospel (Galatians 2:11–14). The views of old-earthers and theistic evolutionists simply will not stand up under careful scrutiny with an open Bible and when the assumptions driving evolutionary, old-earth interpretations of the scientific evidence are exposed. “Good Christians” can be seriously in error.

Would you lift up a prayer for Sue right now as she prepares over the next couple of days for her meeting with her tenure committee? Pray that God will keep the door open for her to continue to teach her students the truth of science and how to think critically and spot the faulty logic and erroneous assumptions used by evolutionists to promote ideas that undermine the Word and the gospel.

This past weekend, I spoke eight times in Rockford, Illinois.

We had about 60 at the middle school for a church plant outreach on Saturday night. Probably half were teens, several of whom thanked me—and most of them came to my Sunday night talks at another church. Several men at the meeting decided as a result to go to the pastor’s Bible study meeting tonight. Also a sharp, young man, who is an agnostic that the pastor has befriended and has been witnessing to for several months, attended the talk and told the pastor afterward that I had really given him some things to think about. He wants to process things for a few days and then get with the pastor to discuss his remaining questions. Would you lift up a prayer right now for that young man that he would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? Lift up those three men who are coming to the Bible study tonight, that God would work in their lives, too. I don’t know if they are already believers or just investigating Christianity.

The lectures at the other church on Sunday and Monday were well attended and seemed to be well received. This church understands the importance of Genesis and has had an AiG speaker two years ago and another AiG speaker four years ago. But they were eager to learn more and there were also a lot people from the surrounding area who came to hear the talks. A lot of resources were purchased for further study and sharing with others. A number of people came up to me after the talks to ask more questions.  One questioner on Sunday night—after I talked about where the millions of years idea came from historically and Noah’s Flood—was a high school foreign exchange student from Germany, who asked what in the Bible ruled out millions of years. I quickly gave him these responses:

1. There is no biblical evidence for millions of years—the idea is shoe-horned into the Bible from outside. But it doesn’t fit, if we pay careful attention to the details of the Biblical text.
2. You can’t put millions of years into the Bible because then you would have massive death, disease, extinction and other natural evils in God’s very good creation before the Fall of man in sin.
3. The numbering of the days and repetition of “there was evening and there was morning” and the creation of the sun, moon, and stars for man to tell time (days, seasons, and years) shows that the days of creation are literal.
4. Exodus 20:11 rules out millions of years because God said He created everything in six days that were equal length with the six-day work week that God told the Jews to maintain. So there are not millions of years before day 1 (gap theory) nor millions of years in each day (day-age theory) nor millions of years between each of the literal days (day-gap-day theory). And there is abundant Old Testament and New Testament evidence that Genesis 1 is history, not poetry, allegory, myth, or some other kind of non-literal, non-historical literature.
5. Jesus said in Mark 10:6 that Adam and Eve were right there at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning (as would be the case if the earth and universe were billions of years old. Jesus also believed in the global catastrophic Flood of Noah’s Day. So Jesus was a young-earth creationist.
6. Paul says in Romans 1:18–20 that the witness of the creation to God’s existence and at least some of His attributes have been seen and understood by people “since the creation of the world,” implying that, like Jesus, Paul believed man has been in existed as long as the rest of creation. (Minus a few days—which, when plotted on a thousands-of-years timescale from Paul and Jesus to creation, is essentially the beginning of creation. This is understood when speaking in non-technical, everyday language, as Paul and Jesus were.)

This German boy is not a Christian but is living with a family from the church this year and seemed to be really thinking about what I said. Lift up a prayer for him to come to know the Lord Jesus, please.

Thanks for praying.

Terry

I recently returned from a very busy 17-day trip (January 13–30) to Russia and Albania, speaking on creation (almost always through a translator).

In Russia, I spoke 10 times at a seminary in Samara for a conference on creation attended by about 120 seminary students, pastors, and other church leaders—some of whom traveled over 300 miles to attend. All the talks were videotaped, and most were streamed live on the Internet. Several hundred people from other parts of Russia and Ukraine either watched live or downloaded the lectures since the conference.

In Moscow I gave two public lectures at a college of economics. It was exam time so only about 50 students and laypeople came, but 12 of them (including some non-believers) stayed afterwards for an hour to ask questions. The next day, I gave two lectures to about 150 at Second Baptist Church. Later at the national headquarters of the Russian Baptist Union I did a one-hour, video-taped interview that will be put on the Internet in the future.

From Moscow I flew three time zones east to frigid Novosibirsk, Siberia (about -25 degrees Celsius). I spoke seven times for a seminary conference of about 120 people (many were seminary students and pastors). Some men traveled up to 700 miles to attend. People were very hungry for the information I shared.

The last night there, I participated in a three-hour “discussion” with scientists before an audience of about 90 students and lay people. This meeting was also sponsored by the seminary. One of the men on the panel was a polytheist geneticist with some doubts about evolution. Another was an atheist astrophysicist. Then there was a young-earth creation biologist and me. It was an interesting evening and all the questions were aimed at the geneticist and astrophysicist, neither of whom gave much evidence for their views.

I left the Russian PowerPoint slides for all 10 of my talks with leaders in Samara, Moscow, and Novosibirsk. People were eager to duplicate them for use in churches. Just the other day, I got an email from Moscow saying that my PowerPoint talks will also be made available at a national conference for youth leaders from all over Russia this week.

From Novosibirsk I flew to Albania—a long day from 4 AM until midnight across five hours of time-zone change. In Tirana, Albania, I enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of the Campus Crusade for Christ national director and his family, Ylli and Nikki Doci. I spoke four times in the large auditorium of the CCC office building to a group of university students, a group of high school students, a mixed group of students and lay people, and then a Sunday morning church service that meets in that facility. At most of these sessions many of the people stayed after the lecture for 30–45 minutes of Q and A. I also spoke to three different groups of students at the K–12 international Christian school in Tirana for the kids of missionaries, business people, and diplomats from many countries. One of the children was quite impacted by my presentation, and after talking to his mom, she is now open to consider the gospel.

Additionally, I had a two-hour discussion with one of the teachers who had a lot of questions about creation, especially regarding the age of the earth. He found the discussion helpful, and I sent him a follow-up email with links to AiG articles that I think will further stimulate his thinking. Even though I only used a few of my translated talks in Albania, I left all 10 of the PowerPoint talks in Albania, and I know of at least one man who wants them all to use in his own budding creation ministry.

Not only did many Christians tell me that the talks were informative and encouraging, but several non-Christians also thanked me for the thought-provoking lectures. One was an economics professor (and his wife) and another was an Italian man (and his wife) who works with INTERPOL (the international policy organization). Ylli and Nikki have witnessed to all of these four in the past and will continue to follow-up with them. After the church service Ylli, Nikki and I went out for lunch with the Italian couple and we had further opportunity to talk to them further about creation, the truth of the Bible and the gospel. Later I learned from Nikki that this all had made quite an impact on the husband so that he is much more open to consider the gospel than he was in the past.

So here is a summary of the known results of the trip.

• 28 lectures and 10 Q and A sessions
• All my translated PPT slides in two languages left in five cities for people to copy and use (including Albanian ITS guy)
• Eight lectures videotaped in Russian and streamed on Internet. These will be made into a DVD set for sale hopefully in June (with all the video talks, all my PPT slides, three published papers that have been previously translated into Russian, and a link to the Ukrainian creationist website where people can purchase the Russian version of Coming to Grips with Genesis)
• One TV interview taped for an potential audience of 300,000
• Two videotaped interviews for two Russian Christian web sites
• One talk videotaped and two radio programs recorded for Albanian CCC
• Many non-believers challenged in their thinking
• Many Christians (including some missionaries and many pastors and seminary students) encouraged, challenged, and equipped
• Russians and Albanians want to translate more AiG literature and DVDs to get more truth into the hands of believers for strengthening their own faith and for witnessing to the lost.

Before joining AiG in 2001, I spent almost 20 years ministering in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. That part of the world has a special place in my heart, and I praise God for the privilege of serving Him there this past month. To Him be the glory for what He did and will do through these efforts! Now it’s back to work on a myriad of things related to a full spring schedule here in the U.S.

Terry

Her article begins as follows:

I am open-mouthed. The BBC Trust is recommending that its journalists ditch balance for propaganda.

A report being published today has apparently decided that the BBC no longer needs to interview man-made global warming sceptics because there is a consensus on this issue that the theory is true.

Its conclusions are said to be based in part on recommendations by the geneticist Professor Steve Jones. Astonishingly, he is said not only to have found no evidence of bias in the BBC’s output on climate change, but suggests that on issues like this where he says there is a “scientific consensus” – also including the MMR vaccination and genetically modified crops – there should be no need for the BBC to find opponents of the mainstream view.

This is as terrifying as it is outrageous. First of all, the claim that there is a consensus on man-made global warming is itself false. The wickedly cynical propaganda strategy to promote this false belief in a consensus was described in an eye-opening blog post by James Delingpole in the Telegraph last year . . .

The media and scientific establishment’s leadership are not only suppressing scientific evidence that refutes the global warming agenda. They are doing the same to any scientists (young-earth creationists or Intelligent Design proponents) who raise biological and genetic scientific objections to microbe-to-microbiologist evolution. And they are trying to silence or slander any scientists (young-earth creationists) who raise geological and astronomical scientific objections against the consensus view that the earth and universe are billions of years old. It is a complete myth, generated by the media and scientific establishment, that young-earth creationists are not real scientists with real and significant scientific reasons for rejecting evolution and millions of years.

There is no consensus on man-made global warming. There are in fact hundreds of scientists at the very least, amongst them some of the most distinguished in their field, who are sceptical about the theory. Some of them, such as the meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, have testified to the outright fraud and intimidation used to support the climate change scam. Some have been subjected to professional ostracism, loss of grant funding, vilification and even death threats because they have stood up for scientific evidence against the gross perversion of science involved in what is probably the most intellectually corrupt episode in scientific history. Such wholesale intimidation means that without a shadow of a doubt many more scientists are climate change sceptics than are registered in public debate.

There is also no scientific consensus about evolution and millions of years. There are in fact thousands of MS and PhD scientists around the world who are young-earth creationists. Many thousands more reject molecules-to-man evolution. But most of them remain silent because of the professional and occupational dangers of doing otherwise. As shown by the movie Expelled and Jerry Bergman’s book, there is tremendous persecution of those who make public their skepticism about evolution and even greater opposition to those who deny evolution and millions of years.

This is nothing less than a totalitarian agenda. Indeed, why stop at science? If “consensus” dictates what is to be reported, and consensus is itself subjectively determined on the basis of the presumed weight of expert opinion (which can never be truly known) or the presumed agreement of the population (which can never be truly known), then it follows that on issues such as abortion, membership of the EU or immigration (on which even the BBC has been forced to admit it got public opinion terribly wrong) the BBC would similarly see ‘no need’ to allow alternatives to chattering-class opinion to be heard.

A free society requires toleration of dissent. Progress depends upon the recognition that today’s dissent may turn into tomorrow’s orthodoxy. Science is littered with examples of this, from Galileo onwards. Indeed, the idea that a presumed consensus should wipe out dissenting voices is positively anti-science. If science doesn’t have an open-mind, it is no longer science but propaganda. And that is what the BBC Trust is proposing.

The BBC Trust is supposed to be the guardian of the public interest. Its role is to ensure that the BBC adheres to the high standards of its charter. But with this recommendation, the Trust has shown that it will destroy the BBC’s duty of fairness and impartiality and replace it by an Orwellian double-speak on the grounds that there are certain ideas which cannot be challenged. This is not guarding the sacred flame of journalistic integrity. It is a secular Inquisition.

The totalitarian, secular inquisition against young-earth creation scientists has been going on for 200 years, ever since the Scriptural geologists were effectively ignored and eventually silenced in their opposition to old-earth geological theory—which laid the foundation for old-universe, big bang astronomical theory—and Darwinian evolutionary theory.

And why is all this happening? Because science is not the objective unbiased pursuit of truth that most people think it is. Every scientist has a worldview that he brings to his work. And for the last 200 years scientists have been dominated for the most part by an anti-biblical, atheistic, naturalistic worldview. As a result, most of the world has believed a gross lie: millions of years of evolution. And millions of Christians, including most Christian leaders and Bible scholars, have abandoned the clear teaching of Genesis about a literal, six-day creation about 6,000 years ago followed by a global, catastrophic Flood at the time of Noah.

Christians need to wake up to the powerful anti-God bias in science that is turning science into vehicle of double-speak propaganda to manipulate the masses and take away our freedoms. They need to wake up to the “newspeak” going on in most Christian colleges and seminaries that are compromised with evolution and millions of years, as this eye-opening book documents.

We need to stand on the authority of God’s Word and become informed about the scientific evidences that confirm His Word, so that our children and grandchildren, lost neighbors, friends, and co-workers are not deceived by the propaganda and so reject the Bible’s message of salvation in Jesus Christ.

For the first time in my ministry experience, someone has written an article warning people not to attend my seminar. Here’s what this atheist had to say:

On Sunday, Feb. 13, the fundamentalist Christian organization Answers in Genesis will be giving multiple presentations at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Hebron. This organization spreads pseudo scientific ideas such as the teaching of a 6,000-year-old universe/Earth and a belief that man coexisted peacefully with dinosaurs until very recent times.

Apart from their extreme literal interpretation of Genesis, they also claim that merely teaching the scientific theory of evolution to children results in genocide, abortion, racism, drug use and many other social ills. They even go so far as to claim it responsible for the Holocaust, which is beyond absurd.

This is an organization that actively spreads anti-science propaganda and is strongly denounced by the scientific community as well as many prominent Christian organizations. The information they advance is harmful to the minds of children and is directly opposite to established scientific consensus. They have the most basic tenants of evolution completely wrong and are not in any way academically qualified to speak on such matters.

While I am an atheist, my intention isn’t to silence the group’s right to free speech. I have no problem with religious groups speaking on matters that pertain to religion. However, when a group goes to the extreme lengths that Answers in Genesis does to discredit science by spreading false, anti-evolution propaganda, I have a problem.

Children have a right to an unbiased scientific education from reputable sources. The best thing you can do is this: if you were planning on attending, do not. Encourage others to skip it as well.

Trust me when I say that they’re not giving you the truth. There are multiple volumes of literature you can read if you truly want an thorough understanding of evolution. The best way to deal with this organization is to simply not attend their presentations.

– Riley Reynolds, Wheatfield

Riley is evidently a 21-year-old college student (http://www.flickr.com/people/45266712@N03/) with a love for photography and tattoos but no apparent expertise in science. So why should anyone “Trust [him] when [he says] that [I] am not giving [people in northwest Indiana] the truth”? On what grounds does he know that I and AiG are “discrediting science” and feeding people “pseudo-science” and “anti-science propaganda”? If I were a betting man, I would bet that he is just parroting what his high school teachers and university professors have told him, without any critical analysis on his own of the arguments for and against evolution.

Certainly we creationists are “denounced” by the atheist-controlled scientific majority. But most evolutionists are grossly ignorant about what creationists actually say, because they have done exactly what Riley is advocating—don’t even listen to or read what creationists say. I know because I have listened to or read what many, many evolutionists say about us.

Furthermore, truth (scientific or any other kind of truth) is not determined by majority vote or “scientific consensus” or by just hearing one side of an argument. Truth is determined by carefully weighing the evidence and arguments for and against a truth claim. But most people have only been brainwashed with the evolutionary propaganda dished out in the schools, science programs on TV, state and national parks, naturalist history programs, etc.

Notice Riley’s elephant-size claim that I and AiG “have the most basic tenants of evolution completely wrong.” Bold claim, but without a specific example of evidence to support the claim. And we are not “in any way academically qualified to speak on such matters”? Hmm. I wonder what his academic qualifications are to make that statement.

As for me, I have a Master of Divinity degree from a leading evangelical seminary, am a very active member of the Evangelical Theological Society, and have a PhD in history of geology from a secular evolutionist-controlled university in England. In my six presentations at the church this weekend, I will speak a lot about what the Bible has to say on the question of origins because I have given quite a bit of study to that subject. I will give a lecture based on my PhD thesis and a talk on the biblical and geological evidence for a global Flood at the time of Noah. I’ve also done a considerable amount of independent study of evolutionist literature on the question of biological evolution in general and human evolution in particular (my last two topics of the seminar).

As for my colleagues at Answers in Genesis, one has a PhD in geology, one has a PhD in astrophysics, one has a PhD in biology with an emphasis on cell structure, one has a PhD in molecular genetics, and one has an MD in internal medicine. All of those degrees were earned from secular, evolutionist-controlled universities. Thousands of other creationists around the world are just as equally qualified, and some of them are described here.

Isn’t it interesting that the atheists essentially control the whole public education system in this country (and most other countries) and yet their decades of graduates are apparently so poorly trained in how to think carefully that it is dangerous for them to hear creationist criticisms of evolution because they simply don’t have the mental skills to see through all our “bad, anti-scientific arguments”?

I’m not afraid to go hear an evolutionist or read evolutionist writings or be in a debate with a PhD evolutionary scientist (as I have done seven times in four countries) or speak in a secular university classroom where most of my audience strongly disagrees with me. In fact, I do these things on a regular basis because I want to know first-hand exactly what the evolutionists are saying (so I don’t misrepresent them or their arguments) and because I learn all kinds of truths in their writings and speaking that actually help me to refute evolution and millions of years and to confirm the truth of Genesis.

If the evolutionary view was really the truth, evolutionists wouldn’t be so afraid of creationists, could have calm respectful discourse with us (I have talked to a few evolutionists who can), and would actually benefit from listening to us so that they could write better refutations of our views. Instead they generally resort to ad hominem attacks, gross misrepresentations of what creationists teach, fear tactics and legal threats to try to stop people from hearing and considering the truth. That alone, without even considering the scientific arguments, should tell any thoughtful person that the evolutionary view must be false.

Riley says “children have a right to an unbiased scientific education from reputable sources.” I agree. But the only way to get an unbiased education is for the teachers to expose the students to the arguments on both sides and to teach the students to think critically and examine the biases (or presuppositions) behind the arguments they hear. I seriously doubt that Riley has gotten that kind of education, and neither have most children in America, so I hope that he and many other children (with their parents) will come to my lectures or other creationist lectures and think carefully in pursuit of the truth. Unlike most evolutionists, creationists are fully aware of their presuppositions and don’t hide them from the audience and they welcome questions and objections. I certainly do.

So, pray for me this weekend, that I will speak the truth clearly, boldly and graciously, and that the truth will challenge and encourage and change lives. And pray that God will use this atheist article in the local media to draw more people (even just one lost soul) to come to my seminar than would have otherwise come. Pray, in fact, that Riley will come. I’ve written to his two email addresses and invited him.

Thanks for praying,

Terry

Dr. Mohler (president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is absolutely right. Compromise with evolution and millions of years never makes a person respectable in the eyes of the secularists.

And it certainly doesn’t make non-believers be more open to the gospel and more trusting of the Bible. Proof of that is the last 200 years of history, when most of the church has compromised with millions of years and increasingly in recent times has compromised with Neo-Darwinian evolution. During this time the church in Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America has increasingly drifted away from the truth and authority of the Word of God and the culture in those countries has become increasingly godless, immoral and hostile to Christianity. Whereas increasingly over the last 50 years, those Christians who have returned to faith in God’s Word in Genesis 1–11 have been revived in their faith and obedience to the Word and their boldness and confidence in evangelism that has led many evolutionized unbelievers to faith in Christ.

Also, I would add to Dr. Mohler’s critique that Karl Giberson’s comments in the web article reveal that as a biologist he is absolutely clueless about how astronomers and geologists measure the age of the earth or universe. “The measurements that scientists make to determine the age of the earth and the universe” are hardly simple. But more importantly, when they observe things such as tree-rings, red-shift of starlight, thickness or position of rock layers or the fossils in them, and radioactive isotopes used in dating methods, they are using anti-biblical, atheistic, uniformitarian presuppositions (assumptions) to interpret those observations to mean that millions of years of history have elapsed.

Without those anti-biblical, atheistic, uniformitarian assumptions, there would be no evidence of millions of years. Rather, creation scientists using biblical assumptions based on the history recorded in Genesis (i.e., as they are wearing “biblical glasses”) are increasingly seeing the abundant evidence of Noah’s Flood and a young earth and young universe, just as the Bible clear teaches. This is no surprise, for creation must confirm the truth of God’s Word because God’s Word (as an eye-witness testimony of God) tells us what truly happened in the past to produce what we see in the present.

Dr. Derek Ager was a prominent evolutionary geologist in the United Kingdom before his death in 1993. He was an ardent anti-creationist, even warning creationist readers in his last book (published posthumously) that they had better not try to use anything in his book to support their view. But he’s dead now, so I do it anyway, because what he said is so true.

As a result of studying geological formations in over 50 countries, Dr. Ager had come to largely reject the uniformitarian assumptions dominating geology (and so became a “neo-catastrophist”). In his book, which discusses numerous examples (with pictures) of geological formations that could not possibly have formed over millions of years (as conventional geologists have been brainwashed to believe), but rather show evidence that they were formed catastrophically in hours, days, weeks, months or a few years. He stated the following:

I should, perhaps, say something about the title of this book. Just as politicians rewrite human history, so geologists rewrite earth history. For a century and a half the geological world has been dominated, one might even say brain-washed, by the gradualistic uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell. Any suggestion of “catastrophic” events has been rejected as old-fashioned, unscientific and even laughable. . . .

Derek Ager, The New Catastrophism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. xi.

Later in the book he adds the following:

Perhaps I am becoming a cynic in my old age, but I cannot help thinking that people find things that they expect to find. As Sir Edward Bailey (1953) said, “to find a thing you have to believe it to be possible”.

Derek Ager, The New Catastrophism (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 190-91.

The majority of scientists (including the majority of Christian scientists, such as Dr. Giberson and Dr. Francis Collins) have been brainwashed with “smoke and mirrors” evolutionary arguments during their education from grade school all the way through their PhD programs (as well as by science programs on TV, the natural history museums, and the state and national parks) so that they can’t see the overwhelming evidence in the creation that confirms the literal truth of Genesis.

The Christian compromise with evolution started with the church’s acceptance of subtly atheistic and deistic interpretations of the rocks and fossils and its simultaneous rejection of the biblical teaching about the Flood and the age of the creation, which took place way back in the early nineteenth century (50 years before Darwin published On the Origin of the Species), as I explain and document in The Great Turning Point. Compromise with error always leads to more compromise with error.

We can expect to see more theological and moral corruption of the church as Christians become deceived by the false arguments coming out of BioLogos, Reasons to Believe (headed by Hugh Ross), Discovery Institute (leading the Intelligent Design movement), and other old-earth (progressive creationist) or theistic evolutionist organizations that claim to be “evangelical” or at least believing in God. And we can also expect that wherever individual Christians, churches, schools, universities, and seminaries return to faith in the literal truth of Genesis 1–11 and get equipped with solid apologetic answers (from groups such as AiG) to defend their faith, we will find believers on fire for the Lord and His Word, growing in godliness and motivated to lovingly, graciously, and boldly share the gospel of Jesus Christ with a lost, evolutionized world.

For the glory of God,

Terry

Many of them had not studied the question of origins much before they started reading the 1100–1500 pages of books we assigned them to read before the lecture week. They were very attentive and asked good questions. Most of them grew up believing Genesis and many commented that they had no idea how much compromise there is in the church today regarding Genesis 1–11. They were also shocked to see some of the video clips or quotes from compromised theologians and Bible scholars by whose writings they have previously been helped.

A youth pastor who had not studied this issue before said that he now realized that he had a lot to learn and he needs to teach his youth on this subject.

A Christian school principal who also teaches AP biology likewise said that, although he has taught his kids some on this topic, he needs to do a lot more and make sure the other teachers do the same to equip the kids with the knowledge to defend against the false ideas they will get in Christian and secular universities. He shared that one of their school’s brightest students had gone off to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he lost his faith in Genesis (he had not been taught adequately to defend that faith). Then he went to Bethel Seminary, where he got more compromise. Now his life calling seems to be to show that “young-earth fundamentalists” are wrong.

A missionary in Latin America told me that he is training national pastors who are the fruit of CI Scofield’s ministry and that he has a task in weaning these national pastors from Scofield’s compromise via the gap theory, which he taught in the marginal notes of his famous study Bible.

So, these grad students in ministry are better equipped to teach the kids and adults in their ministries, and it is exciting to think of the ripple effects of this course in their diverse ministries scattered around America and the world.

Thanks for praying for this ministry as we equip others to proclaim and defend the truth of God’s Word,

Terry

Good to hear from you. Coming to Grips with Genesis is a constant reference material for me now. I had read it before the 2010 Grand Canyon trip, and it is a most scholarly written book. Thank you so much for your part in putting it together. It is a recommended book by me now. Also, The Battle for the Beginning by MacArthur was a good read. I have watched many of the DVDs and read some, if not all, of the other material as well, having particularly enjoyed Thousands…Not Billions. I “check-in” on the website of answersingenesis.org frequently and do some research there on questions I have or that have been asked me. What a wonderful source of information at the fingertips! I am reading through the Answers books at this time.

After this opening paragraph, he then told me about three questions that have come up after he has taught on Genesis recently. He wanted my help in answering them, which I gladly did. It is exciting to see what speaking at his seminary in October 2009 and then his participation in the Grand Canyon trip has done in his life. He is so excited about the truth of God’s Word and is influencing many who, like him in the past, have been led to embrace the compromised view of the gap theory.

Thanks so much for your prayers and financial support that makes possible this ministry to scholars and key Christian leaders.

Terry

First, they tell us that since the Pentecostal movement was born at the beginning of the 20th century until the late 1900s, Pentecostals almost universally rejected evolution and most also rejected the millions of years. They believed that Genesis is a scientifically accurate historical narrative.

But times have changed. Today, based on their survey of faculty and students at AoG institutions of higher learning, these two professors say that only 35% hold to the young-earth creationist view, 31% favor one of the old-earth views that accept millions of years but reject evolution, and 16% are embracing theistic evolution. (They don’t say what the other 18% believe.) Why the change? They tell state the following:

. . . today many people who are technologically savvy and immersed in the popular media’s representation of science are members of our congregations. Many of them are uncomfortable rejecting out-of-hand the findings of science that seem to conflict with traditional interpretations of the Genesis creation account. They are increasingly interested in fostering an integrated view of Christian faith and natural sciences.

But here we encounter problems. It is not the “findings of science” that seem to contradict “traditional interpretations” of Genesis 1–11. Science has not found anything that contradicts the straightforward, literal understanding of Genesis, and it is remarkable that a Christian chemist and biologist would say that science has. Science has not found a living cell spontaneously evolving into existence by chance from non-living matter, as evolutionists claim has happened 3.5 billion years ago. Science has not found transitional forms between different kinds of plants and animals, either living or in the fossil record, to support evolutionist claims that all life is descended from a common ancestor—the first living cell.  And science has not found millions of years of time in the rocks or a gas cloud collapsing to form a star. None of those things has ever been observed by any scientist, so they are not findings of science.

Rather, evolutionary scientists using anti-biblical (naturalistic and uniformitarian) assumptions and imagination have interpreted some of the observations of the natural world (while ignoring other observations) to invent a story about the past that contradicts the time-tested, historically orthodox and exegetically sound interpretation of God’s inerrant Word. It is not a conflict between the “findings of science” and “traditional interpretations” of the Bible. It is rather the conflict between the atheistic and deistic interpretations of God’s creation by people who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18–20) versus the sound interpretation of God’s Word by godly leaders and pastors in the church down through history.

Furthermore, “technologically savvy” people should realize that if the technologies that they enjoy using (cell phones, ipods, computers, telescopes, MRI machines, etc.) are the result of intelligent design, it is the height of absurdity to think that the almost infinitely more complex living and reproducing bacteria, plants and animals came into existence by time and chance and the laws of nature. That these Christians don’t see this absurdity shows that they indeed have been “immersed in [i.e., brainwashed by] the popular media’s representation of science,” which fails to distinguish between operation science and origin science and deceives people by propagating the evolutionists’ “smoke and mirrors” arguments, such as equating natural selection with evolution or discussing beneficial mutations as an explanation for the origin of genetic information.

But there is one more example of faulty thinking in this article, which sadly is widespread in the church today. The authors state the following:

As science teachers, we believe pastors need to seek coherence between these two realms and provide ways for their congregations to see truth in both the general revelation (the world) and the special revelation (the Word). Pastors can use the origins debate to help people more thoroughly integrate these two divine revelations.

The Bible nowhere teaches that by studying the creation (while ignoring God’s special revelation, the Bible) man can work out the history and origin of the creation. As Dr. Richard Mayhue has so thoroughly demonstrated in his chapter in Coming to Grips with Genesis, what the Bible says is that the creation clearly reveals the existence and nature of the Creator (Romans 1:18-20), the very thing that most evolutionists vehemently deny. What these two professors are calling “general revelation” is simply the evolutionists’ stories about the unobserved past. That is not “the world” or “the creation” that God says reveals Himself to us. The only way to accurately interpret the creation for understanding of our past is to do so with the starting-point assumptions of the Biblical worldview, which is grounded in the literal truth of Genesis 1–11.

These AoG scientists end their article this way:

In conclusion, we find conservative, Bible-believing, Pentecostal Christians (including Assemblies of God adherents) in all three theistic camps (YEC, OEC, EC). With this in mind, we think our attitude needs to reflect the Reformation “Peace Statement” (often erroneously attributed to St. Augustine): “In essentials, unity. In nonessentials, liberty. In all things, love.”

But we must object that Christians who accept evolution and/or millions of years are not “Bible-believing” when it comes to Genesis 1–11 and all the other passages of Scripture in the OT and NT that confirm the literal truth of Genesis. They are instead believing the faulty interpretations of God’s creation by people who in their sinful rebellion against God are suppressing the truth, rather than believing God’s Word. The authority of the Word of God over the words of men is what is at stake here.

And since Genesis is absolutely foundational to the Bible’s teaching on death, the character of God and the redemptive work of Christ, then the truth of Genesis 1–11 falls in the category of “essentials,” not “nonessentials.” Certainly, we must be loving as we confront error in the church, but we simply cannot “just agree to disagree.” The spiritual health of the church, the lost souls of people, and the glory of God are at stake. We must believe Genesis to be faithful to God and His Word.

Terry

P.S. As an endnote, the authors of the article appear to be out of touch with recent YEC literature. In their list of “origin resources” they point to recent works by atheists and compromised Christians, but under “young-earth creation” they cite only Morris and Whitcomb’s The Genesis Flood (1961) and a section of a 1999 debate-format book written by two men who are not mainstream YECs, and in their section of the book do not adequately represent the YEC position. Much stronger scientific and biblical YEC arguments have been published in recent years: Earth’s Catastrophic Past (2008), The Great Turning Point (2004), Coming to Grips with Genesis (2008), Evolution: the Grand Experiment (2007), Genetic Entropy (2005), Creation: Facts of Life (2006), The Fossil Record (2010).

The ETS annual meeting in mid-November in Atlanta was, as usual, a mixture of joy and sadness. On the encouraging side, 35 people attended our private ETS Creation Fellowship meeting—the most that have ever attended. We had very good discussions about the growing compromise with evolution at ETS and our need to speak out more against it through papers. We also found four or five men who will likely come on our by-invitation-only Grand Canyon trip next summer for seminary and Christian college professors and other key Christian leaders. We now have 11 “yes” replies, so there are only 13 more seats to fill.

Before the first plenary session, a few other young-earth creationists and I placed on the chairs about 2,000 copies of a leaflet that drew people’s attention to a young-earth creation geologist’s refutation of an article by old-earth geologists. We also encouraged the theologians to purchase and read our book Coming to Grips with Genesis, which is a defense of young-earth creationism at a level that can be used in seminary but is also understandable to serious-minded lay people. If you haven’t read Dr. Reed’s excellent critique, I would strongly encourage you to do so. We did sell about 30 copies of this book, including to two men manning the booths of two other organizations. One of those men was a young seminary student who attends a prominent seminary that is compromised with millions of years.

At the presidential banquet, a young pastor at our table recognized me and told me how much AiG has been such a blessing to him and his church. We had a great conversation, and it is possible that I may be able to speak at his church next spring when I am in his city for another meeting. The out-going president of ETS this year is a young-earth Old Testament professor; his presidential address was excellent and gently defended the truth of Genesis 1–11. I thanked him afterward and offered to send him a copy of my book, The Great Turning Point, as it would complement some of the historical points he made in his paper. He said he would be delighted to read it.

On the discouraging side was the evidence of a growing rejection of the truth of Genesis. In our Creation Consultation sessions (which are required to represent all views), Dr. Bruce Waltke presented what I would say was a very poorly reasoned paper defending theistic evolution. He very clearly stated that he is “trying to go along with mainstream science as much as possible.” And that is the very heart of the problem. The evolutionist majority view in the scientific world is hostile to Christ and His Word, and the evolutionary stories about the past are being believed and used to distort and deny the clear teaching of God’s Word.

Dr. Waltke also indicated that in a survey of evangelical seminary professors he conducted last year, about 45% said they would have no biblical objections to the acceptance of theistic evolution. Evidently a good number of the 250 people attending the session where his paper was presented were in agreement, though some others were also strongly opposed. Of course, mainstream science says that virgins don’t have babies and dead men don’t rise from the dead. So Dr. Waltke and other theistic evolutionists are being grossly inconsistent when they believe in the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus but deny the literal historical truth of Genesis 1–11.

This year, a new group had a booth at ETS. It was manned by a PhD geologist advocating millions of years, along with two assistants. The geologist has come to several of my seminars in the past. At the last one in Norman, Oklahoma, he talked to the pastor and tried to set up an appointment later to talk to him and counter what I had taught at the seminar. He came to our AiG booth and said he wanted to talk to me, which frankly I really didn’t want to do. In the past, I have had face-to-face conversations with him and several email exchanges.

While he says on his business card that he believes in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, it is obvious that he really doesn’t. Rather, “science” (especially radiometric dating methods) is his final authority. I challenged him in my last email to him some months ago and again at the ETS meeting to show me from Scripture that the Flood of Noah was localized in the Mesopotamian Valley and that millions of years of death, violence, disease, and extinction in the animal world occurred before Adam (as he believes). He never answered my email, and at ETS he tried to evade the challenge and said that he was not a Hebrew scholar. But I told him that is no excuse and repeated my challenge. He never even attempted to give an answer. So I told him he really doesn’t believe God’s Word.

So the battle for truth rages. While AiG and the Creation Museum are reaching many kids, adults, and pastors with the truth of Genesis and apologetic resources to equip them to defend the truth, the “tribe of the intellectuals” (evangelical theologians) is much harder to reach.

Thanks for your prayers and financial support of AiG that enables us to be involved in this battle.

Terry