Are You Aware of the Extent of the Battle Within the Church?

Let me tell you about an “aha moment.”

I wish you could be there when people share their exciting testimonies with me—about how God has used Answers in Genesis to change their lives. I wish you could be with me as I read every thrilling email and letter, and listen in on every phone call we receive, with great, God-honoring testimonies.

From time to time in my monthly letter to you, I include a special testimony to encourage you to know how the Lord is using your investment to change lives and proclaim the gospel to even more people.

A scientist recently wrote to me; I think you’ll find it very uplifting:

I was first introduced to AiG about 5 or 6 years ago when a friend invited me to attend a local AiG conference hosted by a nearby church. We sat through a day’s worth of lectures and bought a whole stack of books and magazines to devour later. I spent the last few years intrigued by the information but never really experienced the “aha” moment.

That moment came when I had the opportunity to visit your Creation Museum for the first time with my husband this past fall. Even though I was familiar with AiG, I was not prepared for the personal experience that the museum would offer me. I was absolutely blown away by the exhibits!

We spent two full days there, reading all the [signs] we could . . . and even staying after hours to listen to guest speakers. The biggest thing I remember, though, is not any one particular exhibit or lecture, but rather the life-changing paradigm shift of worldviews that I experienced.

This scientist continued:

My academic background is biology. I graduated from Penn State with a biology/genetics & development degree . . . so I’m quite well-versed in molecular and cellular processes, as well as natural selection and evolution. I have always had a difficult time knowing what to believe about the origins of the earth and natural earth processes, given that the majority of my science teachers and professors were atheists, and, of course, were promoting their own agenda as well as the “universally accepted” science curricula.

However, when I attended the Creation Museum, somehow everything changed in my mind. . . . I’ll be honest and say that there are many topics that I still don’t grasp and some that I’d like to explore further. What changed in my mind was the realization [of what I] needed to know—knowing that God’s Word is absolute truth. Period.

It’s hard for me to admit that I am just now really starting to believe that, because I would like to say that I always have believed God. But the truth is that I didn’t fully believe God before. Now, I know that I can and I do, thanks to your ministry!

This spring or summer, I plan to visit the museum again with some [friends] who are members of my small group from church. . . . If it strengthened my faith in God and changed my worldview, it can certainly do the same for them!

Thanks again for all you do, for dreaming up a place like the Creation Museum and making it the spectacular place that it is. God is truly working through you and your staff to be able to bless this generation in ways never before possible.

I get so excited when I read such thrilling testimonies. And this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of such accounts I have received over the years. I heard so many testimonies at a recent seminar in New Jersey. God is mightily using AiG’s outreaches!

Falling Away in Christian Academia

At about the same time I was reading this letter from the scientist—of a life negatively influenced by the world but whom the Lord is changing through the AiG ministry—I was burdened at the publication of a new book by a Christian academic. Yes, the battle for hearts and minds is even going on within the church, not just the world.

The author, Dr. Peter Enns, is a professor at what is described as a Christian university (Eastern University in Philadelphia). He has just released a book intended to influence the church not to believe there was a literal Adam and Eve and that there wasn’t a literal Fall into sin. You shouldn’t be surprised, then, to learn the book’s title: The Evolution of Adam.

Beyond this heresy of not believing in a literal Fall, Dr. Enns in essence also accuses Jesus Christ of lying and being a sinner! Here’s how:

On January 31, AiG researchers posted an article on this site about a statement Dr. Enns wrote in The Evolution of Adam. We reported that Dr. Enns rejects Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. And in dealing with Bible passages where Jesus directly attributes the authorship of these books to Moses, Dr. Enns states:

“Rather, Jesus here reflects the tradition that he himself inherited as a first-century Jew and that his hearers assumed to be the case” (p. 153).

Our researchers wrote in their review: “The idea advanced by Dr. Enns here is known as the accommodation theory and was first advanced in the eighteenth century by Johann Semler, the father of German rationalism. The accommodation theory is very popular among liberal theologians and basically asserts that Jesus accommodated (accepted and taught) the various ideas of His day, even if they were wrong.”

Our writers added that according to the accommodationists, “[s]ince Jesus was allegedly primarily concerned with spiritual matters, He didn’t bother to correct some of their false historical or scientific beliefs because they might have sidetracked Him from His real message.”

Our AiG authors then state:

“So what’s the big deal if Jesus accommodated the errors of His day? Well, if Jesus taught error, then He would have lied to His listeners, in which case He would have been a sinner. If He unwittingly taught error, then He would have misled His followers, and would have been a false teacher.”

Our researchers further observed: “Either option leaves us with a Jesus who is sinful and less than God. If Jesus had sinned, then He could not have been the spotless Lamb who appeased God’s wrath by His sacrificial death on the Cross, because He would have needed to die for His own sins. If Jesus did not die for our sins, then we are still in our sins and are headed for an eternity in the lake of fire.”

Two Battlefronts

A book like The Evolution of Adam and its heresies serve to remind Bible-believing Christians that there are two battlefronts that are being played out every day:

1. AiG is doing our best to counter the pagan religion of evolution and millions of years that so permeates the education system and culture as a whole—and which has had devastating effects on the hearts and minds of millions of young people in our churches. But praise the Lord, just as with the testimony I shared at the beginning of this letter, the Lord is using AiG to get Christians “on fire” for Him.
2. Sadly, we have to engage in a battle within the church as an increasing number of Christian academics are now publishing a plethora of materials to convince people that they should deny a literal Adam, a literal Fall, a literal Genesis, etc.!

As I said to someone recently, “Who needs enemies from outside the church—when we have enough compromisers within the church to cope with?”

Well, the battle over the Bible’s authority is intensifying in the culture, including within the church. Please know that your partnership is enabling AiG to be more effective in bringing reformation to the church—and in sharing the gospel with the lost.

Thank you for your prayers and gifts that enable our many outreaches to continue the fight for the Bible’s authority as we “earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 3)—engaging an increasingly secularized culture and church.