After the entertaining story of Harry Ironside, you will read about more than ten examples of people who went from confessing the Christian faith to totally rejecting it, after being convinced of evolution. Then follow testimonies of those who were brought back to faith or strengthened in it after being convinced that biology, geology and astronomy do not contradict the young earth teaching of the Bible.
Here is a wonderful story of the power of the Gospel. It is found on pages 64 and 65 of Boice’s Foundations of the Christian Faith.
Early in the ministry of Dr. Harry A. Ironside, the great evangelist and Bible teacher was living in the San Francisco Bay Area working with a group of believers called “Brethren.” One Sunday as he was walking through the city he came upon a group of Salvation Army workers holding a meeting on the corner of Market and Grant Avenues. There were probably sixty of them. When they recognized Ironside they immediately asked him if he would give his testimony. So he did, giving a word about how God had saved him through faith in the bodily death and literal resurrection of Jesus.
As he was speaking, Ironside noticed that on the edge of the crowd a well-dressed man had taken a card from his pocket and had written something on it. As Ironside finished his talk this man came forward, lifted his hat and very politely handed him the card. On one side was his name, which Ironside immediately recognized. The man was one of the early socialists who had made a name for himself lecturing not only for socialism but also against Christianity. As Ironside turned the card over, he read, “Sir, I challenge you to debate with me the question “Agnosticism versus Christianity” in the Academy of Science Hall next Sunday afternoon at four o’clock. I will play all expenses.”
Ironside reread the card aloud to the audience and then replied somewhat like this. “ I am very much interested in this challenge…Therefore I will be glad to agree to this debate on the following conditions namely, that in order to prove that Mr._____________ has something worth fighting for and worth debating about, he will promise to bring with him to the Hall next Sunday two people, whose qualification I will give in a moment, as proof that agnosticism is of real value in changing human lives and building true character.
‘First he must promise to bring with him one man who was for years what we commonly call a “down and outer.’ I am not particular as to the exact nature of the sins that had wrecked his life and made him an outcast from society- whether a drunkard, or a criminal of some kind, or a victim of his sensual appetite- but a man who for years was under the power of evil habits from which he could not deliver himself, but who on some occasion entered one of Mr.——–“s meetings and heard his glorification of agnosticism and his denunciations of the Bible and Christianity, and whose heart and mind as he listened to such an address were so deeply stirred that he went away from that meeting saying, “Henceforth, I too am an agnostic!’ and as a result of imbibing that particular philosophy found that a new power had come into his life. The sins he once loved he now hates, and righteousness and good-ness are now the ideals of his life. He is now an entirely new man, a credit to himself and an asset to society – all because he is an agnostic.
“Secondly, I would like Mr.__________ to promise to bring with him one woman- and I think he may have more difficulty in finding the woman than the man- who was once a poor, wrecked, characterless outcast, the slave of evil passions, and the victim of man’s corrupt living… perhaps one who had lived for years in some evil resort… utterly lost, ruined and wretched because of her life of sin. But this woman also entered a hall where Mr._______ was proclaiming his agnosticism and ridiculing the message of the Holy Scriptures. As she listened, hope was born in her heart, and she said, ‘This is just what I need to deliver me from the slavery of sin!’ She followed the teaching and became an intelligent agnostic or infidel. As a result, her whole being revolted against the degradation of the life she had been living. She fled from the den of iniquity where she had been held captive so long; and today, rehabilitated, she has won her way back to an honored position in society and is living a clean, virtuous, happy life- all because she is an agnostic.
“Now” he said, addressing the gentleman who had presented him with his card and the challenge, “If you will promise to bring these two people with you as examples of what agnosticism can do, I will promise to meet you at the Hall of Science at four o’clock next –Sunday, and I will bring with me at the very least 100 men and women who for years lived in just such sinful degradation as I have tried to depict, but who have been gloriously saved through believing the gospel which you ridicule. I will have these men and women with me on the platform as witnesses to the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ- and as present-day proof of the truth of the Bible.”
Dr. Ironside then turned to the Salvation Army captain, a woman, and said, “Captain, have you any who could go with me to such a meeting?”
She exclaimed with enthusiasm, “We can give you forty at least just from this one corps, and we will give you a brass band to lead the procession!”
“Fine” Dr. Ironside answered. “Now, Mr._______, I will have no difficulty in picking up sixty others from the various missions, gospel halls, and evangelical churches of the city; and if you will promise faithfully to bring two such exhibits as I have described, I will come marching in at the head of such a procession, with the band playing ‘Onward, Christians Soldiers, and I will be ready for the debate.”
Apparently the man who had made the challenge must have had some sense of humor, for he smiled wryly and waved his hand in a deprecating kind of way as if to say, “nothing doing!” and then edged out of the crowd while the bystanders clapped for Ironside and the others.
Applying this story to our present situation: What has been the fruit of teaching evolution and what has been the fruit of teaching the Biblical truth?
First THE FRUIT of starting out as a Christian and then accepting evolution. These stories bring me great grief:
1. Harvard sociobiologist, E. O Wilson said,
“As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian. When I was fifteen, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion. I left the church when I got to the university of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory.”
- Michael Ruse, the Canadian philosopher of science and anti-creationist:
“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but the creationist Duane Gish is absolutely right- evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution today.
- Charles Templeton. He went from being the most famous evangelist in the 1940’s to an agnostic who wrote Farewell to God because he accepted evolution.
Charles Templeton began with concern about the spiritual state of post-Depression youth, so mass evangelism exploded onto the American scene in the 1940s. Thousands of young servicemen and civilians streamed to arenas to see the programs, which included preaching, music, and various acts.
One of the leaders in this movement was a young man from Canada, Charles Templeton, born in 1915. He was generally acknowledged to be the most versatile of the new young evangelists. Templeton soon rose to prominence, even surpassing another dynamic young preacher, Billy Graham. In 1946, he was listed among those best used of God by the National Association of Evangelicals.4
As the pastor of the rapidly growing Avenue Road Church in Toronto, which he had started with only his family and a few friends, Templeton also became one of three vice-presidents of the newly-formed Youth For Christ International organization in 1945. He then nominated his good friend, Billy Graham, to be field evangelist for the new ministry. Templeton, Graham, and a few others regularly spoke to thousands, winning many to Christ both in America and in Europe.
Newspapers and magazines carried reports of his meetings informing readers he was winning 150 converts a night. In Evansville, Indiana, the total attendance over the two week campaign was 91,000 out of a population of 128,000. Church attendance went up 17%.
However, despite his popularity and seeming success as an evangelist, all was not well with Charles Templeton. The more he read, the more he found he was beginning to question the essentials of the Christian faith, because he could no longer believe God’s Word beginning with Genesis.
In a conversation with Billy Graham concerning Templeton’s desire to attend Princeton Theological Seminary, Templeton stated:
‘But, Billy, it’s simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world wasn’t created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It’s not a matter of speculation; it’s demonstrable fact.’5
Templeton warned Graham that it was ‘intellectual suicide’ to not question the Bible and to go on preaching God’s Word as authoritative.
With this background of doubt about God’s Word welling up inside, and lacking any type of formal education, he decided to pursue a degree in theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Resigning from the church he had pastored for several years, Templeton began, with special permission, his coursework at Princeton in 1948.
Rather than assuage his doubts by providing sound theological answers for the questions he had concerning the authority of the Bible, the historical veracity of Genesis and the deity of Christ, Princeton only served to increase his qualms. This is not surprising, considering the influences that had infiltrated Princeton through people like Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield concerning one’s approach to the Scripture in Genesis. For instance, Hodge, who accepted the millions of years and rejected literal creation-days, taught:
‘It is of course admitted that, taking this account [Genesis] by itself, it would be most natural to understand the word [day] in its ordinary sense; but if that sense brings the Mosaic account into conflict with facts, [millions of years] and another sense avoids such conflict, then it is obligatory on us to adopt that other.’6
Warfield (1851–1921) went further and, unlike Hodge, even accepted Darwinism. Templeton, like generations of others, was taught at Princeton to reject parts of Genesis in favor of man’s beliefs concerning such things as billions of years.7
After graduating from Princeton, Templeton accepted a position with the National Council of Churches, conducting preaching missions across the United States and Canada. However, he faced increasing health problems, specifically frequent chest pains. He visited a specialist in Pennsylvania who encouraged him, after finding nothing wrong with his heart, to clear up the conflict in his life—namely the doubts he harbored about the authority of the Bible from which he so fervently preached to thousands each night.8
This reminds of another who suffered illness because of a great conflict in his life regarding teaching that undermined God’s Word. Charles Darwin, who started out in training to be an Anglican minister, ended up rejecting Christianity the more he believed in evolution. It has been said that inner conflict, because of knowing that evolution would wipe the idea of God from the minds of millions, contributed greatly to Darwin’s psychosomatic illness.9
Templeton’s struggles affected others, too. As Templeton wrestled with the ‘demonstrable fact’ of evolution which made it impossible for him to believe ‘the biblical account of creation’,10 he sought out his close friend, Billy Graham. This caused Graham as well to grapple with tough questions that shook the very roots of the faith he professed and preached daily—namely, ‘was the Bible completely true?’11
With ‘science’ pulling Templeton one way and the Bible seemingly pulling him in an altogether different direction, he resigned from his position with the National Council of Churches and took over the Department of Evangelism of the Presbyterian Church USA. At the same time, he hosted a CBS TV series, called Look Up and Live.
Finally, however, the doubts about everything he stood for became too great and he decided to leave the ministry.
In his autobiography, Farewell to God, Charles Templeton lists his ‘reasons for rejecting the Christian faith’. Most of these relate to the origins issue and thus the accuracy of the book of beginnings—Genesis
- Physicists who say ‘it took billions of years for the universe, our galaxy, our solar system, and our world to evolve to its present … form.’12
- Anthropologists who say that ‘our earlier ancestors did not suddenly appear fully formed, but were anthropoid creatures who lived on the earth millions of years ago.
- Geneticists who say it is ‘nonsense’ to believe that the ‘reason for all the crime, poverty, suffering, and general wickedness in the world’ is sin.13
- Geologists who say ‘there is no evidence whatsoever of a worldwide flood’ as told in Genesis.13
- The two ‘Creation stories … each differing from the other at almost every point.’14
- The ‘fables’ (in Genesis 1 and 2) which have ‘remained the grounds of Christian theology across the centuries.’15
- Noah and his family were too primitive to have built the Ark.16
- All the animals could not possibly have fitted on the Ark.16
- Where did the water come from for the Flood?17
- Those Christians who ‘reject any advance in science or learning that contradicts the Genesis account of the creation of the world, the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and God’s curse on the world and humankind … and who believe that the only deliverance from this curse and eventual banishment to an eternal hell is to be “born again”.’18
- The ‘grim and inescapable reality’ that ‘all life is predicated on death. Every carnivorous creature must kill and devour another creature. It has no option.’19
- Stalin, from a Russian Orthodox seminary student in Georgia (one of the Soviet republics) to the violent atheist. The following is taken from Nancy Pearcey’s book Total Truth. Nancy spoke at Dordt 3 years ago.
Particularly startling is the corrosive impact of Darwin. e.g. Ch 8 Darwins of the Mind p 227: She describes reading a biography of Joseph Stalin
. . .when the young Stalin was a seminary student, studying to become a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. As one of his friends relates, they were discussing religion:
“Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence, Joseph said: “‘You know, they are fooling us, there is no God …’
“I was astonished at these words. I had never heard anything like it before.
“How can you say such things, Joseph?’ I exclaimed.
“‘I’ll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,’ Joseph said.
“‘What book is that?’ I inquired.
“‘Darwin. You must read it,’ Joseph impressed on me.”
We all know what happened after that: Having become an atheist, Stalin went on to murder literally 20 to 40 million of his own people in his attempt to construct an officially atheistic communist state.
Between Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, etc. Darwin’s corrosive principles laid the foundation for the murder of more than 125 million people in the 20th century. About three times more than the 38 million killed in all the wars of the 20th century!
This is detailed in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, et al. Harvard University Press (October 1999)ISBN: 0674076087 (I’ve read this book, by 6 French journalists who simply report on the archives in Russia and elsewhere opened up after Communism fell. Gary)
Pearcey goes on to describe the impact of Darwin on
- 6. 7, 8 . John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, and Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., causing them to loose their faith and develop philosophical pragmatism etc. It is sad to see another victim fall. “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Matthew 7:20
9. Howard Van Til, CRC professor at Calvin College, from around 1970 – 1995. s – from Calvinist to pantheist.
Howard Van Til taught animal ancestry at Calvin, and was told by the Synod of 1990 (I was on the synodical committee that recommended this) to no longer “espouse animal ancestry in a church sponsored college” .
After he retired he revealed his true colors: he said he did not believe in the Creator- creature distinction of the Bible, but believed that God was part of the creation, a being he said we should call the SGT, something greater than.
I went to his church’s blog and found him conversing with his RCA pastor (who was defrocked from the Spring Lake Reformed Church) over how to combine evolution and the Hindu teaching of the transmigration of souls .
- Harry Kuitert 1924 – 2017 – In the 70’s many times the CRC Banner had articles about his teaching of animal ancestry in the free University, and the Banner was warning against that teaching spreading to the USA.
In 1967 he succeeded the illustrious theologian G. C. Berkouwer as professor of systematic theology at the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, and in 1989 he retired from this chair. Kuitert in the course of his life moved from Reformed orthodoxy to Reformed middle orthodoxy following his mentor and Ph.D. supervisor Berkouwer, for whom he wrote his dissertation on the Divine Co-Humanity (Dutch: medemenselijkheid, Afrikaans: Medemenslikheid) (De mensvormigheid Gods (1962); German edition 1967). Then, after writing voluminously, critically, and yet appreciatively on Karl Barth, Kuitert later also moved on to a totally unorthodox stance on Jesus Christ, skipping Neo-Orthodoxy altogether. Kuitert developed his views beyond those of Berkouwer whose views seemed definitive.
According to Ecumenical News International, Kuitert, after his own emeritation in 1989, and by now the most widely read theologian in the Netherlands, broke completely with Berkouwer and “Middle Orthodox” tradition (the theological mainstream of the reformed church) in his book, Jesus, the Inheritance of Christianity (1998). “Jesus supported the Jewish view of God, so he never saw himself as God on earth. He is not a Second God, nor the Second Person of the Holy Trinity,” said the 80 years-old Kuitert, adopting publicly an informal unitarian stance on the key doctrine of Christian faith, much to the grief of those who continue to love and appreciate the work of Kuitert’s mentor Berkouwer.
One could fill hundreds of pages with similar stories.
Now what has been the FRUIT of teaching the Biblical view of creation? I’ll just quote many letters sent to Answers in Genesis, about how their internet site, their books, and museum have strengthened faith in Scripture.
1, R.C. Alabama “My son in law, daughter, and grandchildren paid a visit to the ark. My son-in-law was not saved. We had been praying for him for so long. At the Ark, he surrendered to the Lord Jesus. It was just a wonderful moment. We are all indebted to you for putting together a wonderful place for him to find the Lord Jesus. We appreciate you all for that. Praise God! (Nov. 2017)
2. G. K. Minnesota “The information in Answers in Genesis new book “Replacing Darwin; the New Origin of Species” is what prompted me to write this. Thank you for improving my understanding of God through a better understanding of Genesis. March 2018
3. B.H. Virginia “I am a ministries pastor. My pastor gave me a video series to watch put together by Answers in Genesis. Now I see the world in light of God’s Word. This past week we brought 18 of our kids from church to the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, which amazed the kids. I thank you so much because from the first video got me hooked to this content. I purchased the Foundations 6 DVD set, which has made the Bible’s authority on all things so clear now to me, and it all makes sense now. Oct 2017
4. J. B. Kentucky “Thank you for helping us with our outreach Friday night with AIG resources at a school event. What a source of real science you provided for so many children and their parents. When people see you love them and their children more than you love money, it makes an impact on their hearts and that leads them to a receptiveness to your tracts, magazines, and DVDs. I would also like to thank you for helping me be a better Sunday school teacher. I am so thankful for how God used you to strengthen my understanding of Scripture. I’m also thankful for what our God has done at the Creation Museum ever since you opened in 2007. Dec 2017
5.B.T. I’m a 16 year old junior who is ridiculed in high school for being a Christian, especially as a Christian who believes in Genesis. I want to thank you for providing answers because I can refute evolution beliefs with ease now. Please continue your work for the Lord and may God bless your ministry. Sept 2017
- A.C. Washington Answers in Genesis has greatly strengthened my ability to share my faith in the authority of God’s Word. My confidence in knowing what I believe has soared. It is so exciting. March 2017
- Ray Comfort, President, Living Waters “Many had told me that the Ark is incredible, but they grossly understated it. It is utterly amazing, completely overwhelming, and wonderfully incredible’’ far above anything I was expecting. I have been through the Smithsonian in DC and the Louvre in Paris, and the Ark is so much better in a hundred different ways. It excels in excellence. You don’t just see it. You experience it. Take your family and friends. Feb 2017
- M.M. Georgia “I am a 17 year old college student who grew up reading and watching many of your resources. When hearing that you were coming to my state this weekend, I was thrilled. I have been able to use many of your teaching examples in my biology class as I interact with my professor and my classmates. Thank you. sir. You and all of Answers in Genesis have had a tremendous influence on me, and God has used you to see the truth behind the curtain of darkness that our culture tries to throw over the eyes of many young people! Sept. 2016
I could go on with hundreds more testimonies like this. By their fruit you shall know them.
Musings of Gary From the Heart.