[Faith-talk] Men Who Were Converted Trying to Disprove the Bible - Part 3 of 3
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Men Who Were Converted Trying to Disprove the Bible - Part 3 of 3
May 13, 2014
__________
Above all other books, the Bible has been hated,
vilified, ridiculed, criticized, restricted,
banned, and destroyed, but it has been to no
avail. As one rightly said, “We might as well
put our shoulder to the burning wheel of the sun,
and try to stop it on its flaming course, as
attempt to stop the circulation of the Bibleâ€
(Sidney Collett, All about the Bible, p. 63).
In A.D. 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian issued
an edict to stop Christians from worshipping
Jesus Christ and to destroy their Scriptures.
Every official in the empire was ordered to raze
the churches to the ground and burn every Bible
found in their districts (Stanley Greenslade,
Cambridge History of the Bible). Twenty-five
years later Diocletian’s successor,
Constantine, issued another edict ordering fifty
Bibles to be published at government expense (Eusebius).
In 1778 the French infidel Voltaire boasted that
in 100 years Christianity would cease to exist,
but within 50 years the Geneva Bible Society used
his press and house to publish Bibles (Geisler
and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, 1986, pp. 123, 124).
Robert Ingersoll once boasted, “Within 15 years
I’ll have the Bible lodged in a morgue.†But
Ingersoll is dead, and the Bible is alive and well.
In fact, many who set out to disprove the Bible
have been converted, instead. The following are a few more examples:
Gary Parker
Gary Parker has an Ed.D. in biology/geology from
Ball State University. Following is his testimony:
“I wasn’t just teaching evolution, I was
preaching it. ‘It was millions of years of
struggle and death that brought mankind and all
the other animals and plants into being,’ I
told my college students. I praised Darwin for
being the first to understand how evolution
worked. ... I let students freely express their
religious beliefs, but would not let them use
their personal faith to challenge what I
considered the rock-hard science of evolution. I
thought it was part of my duty as a science
teacher to deliver my students from silly old
superstitions, like taking the Bible literally
and trying to refute evolution with ‘creation science.’
“The change began when Dr. Charles Signorino, a
chemistry professor at the college where I was
teaching biology, invited my wife and me to his
home for Bible study. ... I started studying the
Bible, primarily to criticize it more effectively. ...
“Make no mistake about it--creation/evolution
is a salvation issue. I do not mean you have to
have a detailed knowledge of creation science to
be a Christian; I simply mean that belief in
evolution can be for many, as it was for me, a
powerful stumbling block to accepting (or even
considering) the claims of Christ. Paul warned
Timothy to avoid the oppositions of science
falsely so-called, which some have erred
concerning the faith (1 Tim. 6:20-21). Evolution
is really ‘humanism dressed up in a lab
coat,’ a man-centered worldview that uses
scientific jargon to put man’s opinions far
above God’s Word (as Eve did in the Garden).
“My extensive knowledge of, and zeal for,
evolution certainly prevented me from even
considering that God might be real and the Bible
true. So what happened? Well, Dr. Signorino, the
colleague who invited me to the Bible study, was
not only a superb Bible teacher, he was also a
scientist respected internationally for his work
in chemistry. He challenged me to look again at
the science I thought I knew so well. Confident
that science would support evolution and refute
biblical literalism, I gladly accepted the challenge.
“The battle began. For three years, we argued
creation/evolution. For three years, I used all
the evolutionary arguments I knew so well. For
three years, I lost every scientific argument. In
dismay, I watched the myth of evolution evaporate
under the light of scientific scrutiny, while the
scientific case for
Creation-Corruption-Catastrophe-Christ just got
better and better. It’s no wonder that the ACLU
(actually the anti-Christian lawyers union)
fights by any means to censor any scientific challenge to evolution! ...
“About that time, I got a copy in the mail of
the first book I ever wrote, a programmed science
instruction book called DNA: The Key to Life. Up
until that time I thought people who wrote books,
especially textbooks in science, knew what they
were talking about. I had a nearly straight A
average and earned numerous academic awards, and
my book had been reviewed by experts on DNA, but
I knew all the uncertainties that went into it.
(Indeed, when I published the second edition five
years later, I put the first edition aside and
started fresh; so much additional knowledge about
DNA had been gained.) It finally dawned on me: if
experts in science can write books that have to
be continually corrected, revised, and updated,
perhaps God could write a Book in which He said
what He meant and meant what He said: eternal and
unchanging truth, an absolutely sure foundation
for understanding life useful to all people at all times in all places!
“Looking now at the Bible as the truly true
‘History Book of the Universe,’ I was lifted
out of the prison of time, space, and culture,
and enabled to see past the shallow and
ever-changing words of human experts to the deep
and never-changing Word of the Lord God, Maker of
heaven and earth! I experienced who Jesus is and
what Jesus meant when He said, ‘You shall know
the truth and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8:32). ...
“I could now look at familiar facts in
unfamiliar ways--ways that made more sense
scientifically and helped me to solve some of the
origins problems that had puzzled me as an
evolutionist. As I looked at biology with the
blinders of evolution finally removed, the
biblical theme of
Creation-Corruption-Catastrophe-Christ was reflected everywhere! ...
“... some said that if I only knew more about
fossils, I would give up this creationist
nonsense and accept the ‘fact of evolution.’
Then the Lord did something fabulous for me: a
fellowship from the National Science Foundation
for 15 months of full-time doctoral study. With
fear and trembling, I added a doctoral minor in
geology, emphasizing paleontology and origins, to
check out the fossil evidence firsthand. I had
excellent professors, including some Christians,
but all assumed evolution without question.
However, what they taught me about fossils made
it hard to believe in evolution and easy to
accept the biblical record of a perfect creation,
ruined by man, destroyed by the Flood, restored to new life in Christ. ...
“At the end of my geophysics unit on
radiometric dating, the professor was going over
the long list of assumptions that are required to
convert any measurement of radioisotope amounts
into some estimate of age. Midway through the
list of unwarranted assumptions and inconsistent
results, the professor paused to joke that if a
Bible-believing Christian ever became aware of
these problems, he would make havoc out of the
radiometric dating system! Then he admonished us to ‘keep the faith.’
“Keep the faith. At bottom, that is all there
is to radioactive decay dating: a faith the facts
have failed. At bottom, that’s all there is to
evolution: a faith the facts have failed.
Evolution was only able to get a toe-hold on
science because of 19th-century ignorance of
molecular biology, cellular ultra structure,
ecology, and systematics. Discoveries in these
fields completely crushed evolution as a science,
but it persists only too well as a secular
religion protected from contrary evidence by the
anti-American censorship lawyers unitedâ€
(Persuaded by the Evidence, pp. 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258, 260, 261).
Lee Strobel
Lee Strobel has a law degree from Yale University
and worked as an investigative reporter for one
of America’s largest newspapers, the Chicago
Tribune. He was an atheist. After his wife became
a Christian in 1979, he was upset at her decision
and determined to prove that the Bible is not
true and that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God.
For two years he pursued this objective, using
all of his legal and journalistic skills, but in
the end he had proved to himself that the Bible
is the Word of God and Jesus rose from the dead.
He became a Christian in 1981 and has since
written many books defending the Christian faith.
“It wasn’t a phone call from an informant
that prompted me to reexamine the case for
Christ. It was my wife. Leslie stunned me in the
autumn of 1979 by announcing that she had become
a Christian. I rolled my eyes and braced for the
worst, feeling like the victim of a
bait-and-switch scam. I had married one
Leslie--the fun Leslie, the carefree Leslie, the
risk-taking Leslie--and now I feared she was
going to turn into some sort of sexually
repressed prude who would trade our upwardly
mobile lifestyle for all-night prayer vigils and
volunteer work in grimy soup kitchens.
“Instead I was pleasantly surprised--even
fascinated--by the fundamental changes in her
character, her integrity, and her personal
confidence. Eventually I wanted to get to the
bottom of what was prompting these subtle but
significant shifts in my wife's attitudes, so I
launched an all-out investigation into the facts
surrounding the case for Christianity.
“Setting aside my self-interest and prejudices
as best I could, I read books, interviewed
experts, asked questions, analyzed history,
explored archaeology, studied ancient literature,
and for the first time in my life picked apart the Bible verse by verse.
“I plunged into the case with more vigor than
with any story I had ever pursued. I applied the
training I had received at Yale Law School as
well as my experience as legal affairs editor of
the Chicago Tribune. And over time the evidence
of the world--of history, of science, of
philosophy, of psychology--began to point toward
the unthinkable. (Lee Strobel, The Case for
Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation
of the Evidence for Jesus, 1998, p. 14).
Strobel became convinced that the Bible is true
and that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He has
written many books defending the Christian faith,
including The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s
Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus
and The Case for the Resurrection.
(Sadly, we cannot recommend Strobel’s ministry.
He is New Evangelical at best, was long
associated with Bill Hybels and Willowcreek
Community Church, and has spoken for the self-esteem heretic Robert Schuller.)
Jobe Martin
Dr. Jobe Martin is a dentist. He graduated from
the University of Pittsburgh Dental School in
1966. While in the military, he served on Air
Force One, the presidential jet. He worked for
NASA in Houston, Texas, and held a teaching
position at Baylor College of Dentistry.
A Darwinian evolutionist until he put his faith
in Jesus Christ in 1976, he is the author of
“Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution and
“The Evolution of a Creationist.â€
The following is his testimony:
“In the fall of 1971 I went to Baylor
University in Dallas and gave my first lecture.
It was on the evolution of the tooth. I talked
about how these fish scales gradually migrated
into the mouth and became teeth. A couple of
students came to me after the class that day and
said, ‘Dr. Martin, have you ever investigated
the claims of creation science?’ I had never
even heard of it. So I said, ‘Sure, I'll look
into this with you.’ And I'm thinking, kind of
as a cocky young professor, ‘I'll blow these guys away.’
“Well, they asked me to study the assumptions
that the evolutionists make. In all of my eight
years of scientific education, I had never had a
single professor tell me about an assumption. So
we started looking at the assumptions. I began to
realize that evolutionists are making some claims
that are based on assumptions that aren’t
valid, when they tell us that rocks are so old and these kinds of things.
“Then they asked me to start studying some
animals and see if I thought they could have
evolved. The first thing that we studied together
was this little bug called the bombardier beetle.
This little insect, which is about a half inch
long, mixes chemicals that explode. I began to
think, O.K. how would that evolve? If evolution
is true it had to somehow evolve that. Let’s
assume it is evolving this defense mechanism, but
the first time that it finally produces the
explosion, what happens to the bug? Well, it is
destroyed by the explosion, and we know that
splattered bug pieces don’t evolve. So I
thought, how could this have happened? Well,
[because of the intricate way it is built] it
doesn’t blow itself up. It has another little
factory inside itself and it manufactures a
chemical that acts as a catalyst, so when it
squirts that chemical into these other chemicals
that are in a suspended state it produces the
explosion. And it has an asbestos-lined firing
chamber to protect itself. And it has two little
twin tail tubes, and it can aim these tubes out
the side, even out the front. Let’s say a
spider is coming up toward its side and it
doesn’t have time to turn around and shoot. It
can just take its little gun turret, aim it out
to the side, and shoot. If you are listening to
the explosion all you hear is a single pop, but
scientists have put that sound into slow motion,
and it is like about a thousand sequential little
explosions that are so fast that all we hear is
one pop. So you think, why would that be? It was
a curious thing for the scientists that are
studying this little bug. A lot of them are at
Cornell University and some other places. What
they discovered was that if it were just one big
explosion, the little bug would be jetted away by
the force! But as long as it is a sequential
explosion, the bug with his little legs can hang
on. How would evolution explain a sequential explosion?
“This little bug messes with all of the
theories of evolution. There is no way a slow,
gradual process is going to produce this bug.
There is no way, even, that the newer theories,
such as punctuated equilibrium, can explain this
bug. I began to realize that this little bug
needed to have all of its parts there at once or
you just don’t have the animal.
“And my stomach started to churn. My wife will
tell you that my stomach churned for five years.
It took a five-year struggle for me to begin to
flip the way I think, from thinking in an
evolutionary way to thinking that this creature
was created fully formed just like it is. That
went against everything I had ever learned. (Jobe
Martin, Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution 1, ExplorationFilms.com).
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