Evolution, an Attack on College-Aged Christians
At Forthright Ministries, we are dedicated to helping ministries succeed through marketing assistance and fundraising. Most of our blog is dedicated to this however, I have a passion for the youth in our country and have a lot of concerns regarding their future as Christians in America.
Many of our Christian colleges are being infected with compromise and are losing their core beliefs as they take on liberal professors and leadership who change the scriptural truths to meet their beliefs.
As our teens grow and are encouraged to attend college, many choose a Christian college in the hopes of maintaining their faith while gaining an education. While this is ideal, it is not always the best option for our young people and many end up going to a secular college and rely on Christian clubs at the schools to help them keep the faith while at a school that could hold anti-Christ teachings.
When I went to college, I served on the leadership board of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. We had a great program and I even attended regional leadership trainings. These trainings were great and everyone left energized.
I noticed the event lacked conviction and felt more like a motivational conference, but I had been to those before, so I though little of it.
Fast forward a few years to 2018. We recently took our church youth group to the Creation Museum and had the awesome opportunity to hear Ken Ham speak about the youth in our nation and why they are leaving the church.
One statistic said that, when asked, most college-aged students said that they lost their faith in God when a Sunday school teacher told them that they could believe in evolution and the Bible. This caused them to question everything in the Bible and even their faith.
A 2016 Pew research poll showed that many young quit believing in God when they were introduced to evolution in college. Again, this caused them to question the Bible as a historically accurate account of history.
Following our trip to the Creation Museum, I began looking in to an organization called BioLogos which as infiltrated many Christian organizations, churches, schools, colleges, home schools, and more.
The BioLogos mission statement states: “BioLogos invites the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.”
In other words, they want the church to adopt science as factual and make scripture blend in to science. This is incredibly difficult as much of the science that they are looking at is only theory, and does not agree with the scriptural account of creation at all.
As I researched this program, I found that a large number of Christian colleges had professors or staff that were associated with the organization. The most alarming to me was that Andrew Ginsberg Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship serves on the board for BioLogos
In other words, an organization (one of the largest) that is dedicated to Christianity on college campuses embraces the greatest enemy of the faith of college students. This is almost an equivalent as a leader of an A.A. meeting being a bar tender and serving the A.A. members drinks.
I recently reached out to Intervarsity to ask about this situation and received the following correspondence:
My name is Doug Shaw. I am an Intervarsity alumni at a school that is currently looking to relaunch an intervarsity program on their campus.
I was recently made aware that Andrew Ginsberg, the Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is on the board of directors for BioLogos.
The BioLogos Mission Statement is: BioLogos invites the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.
The organization is focused on telling Christians to ignore Genesis 1 as a factual statement and encourages them to accept science theory as a fact.
As a Christian, pastor, youth leader, and an alumni of Intervarsity, I find this incredibly offensive. This makes me question the credibility of the whole ministry.
The target market of Intervarsity is the very age group that is running from God. According to one survey, college-aged students stated that a Sunday School teacher telling them that the Genesis account of creation may be wrong, led them to their current disbelief in Biblical truth, and yet the Executive Vice President of Intervarsity sits on a board that declares this lie.
I will be contacting the school and encouraging them to approach their return to Intervarsity with caution and possibly pursue connection with other organizations.
I really hope that this compromise on Scripture can be reviewed and the correct changes can be made.
BioLogos Board:
One account of the dangers of Biologos
This was the response that I received from Intervarsity:
Hello Doug,
We appreciate hearing from alumni and your concerns about Bio Logos. If your experience with InterVarsity was like mine, then you know that the one thing InterVarsity does not do is compromise on Scripture. As a pastor you probably also understand that while the Bible speaks clearly on some issues, there are other issues where our knowledge is incomplete. Our basic Doctrinal Position has not changed: https://intervarsity.org/about-us/what-we-believe.
Gordon Govier
Internet Editor/Media Relations
608-443-3688
gordon.govier@intervarsity.org
So according the Mr. Govier, Intervarsity does not compromise on Scripture, however where knowledge is incomplete, it is ok to fill in the gaps. But there is one major problem with this thought process. THE BIBLE IS COMPLETE WHEN IT COMES TO THE CREATION ACCOUNT.
The Bible clearly states what happened at creation and there is no way to go around that fact, unless you begin to teach an unsound doctrine. Just for a reminder, let me put the scripture here from the NASB:
Gen 1:1-31: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
6 Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."
7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.
8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
9 Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.
10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so.
12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;
15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so.
16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.
19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
20 Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens."
21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
22 God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so.
25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so.
31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
You see, the account of creation is complete. There is no need to fill in the gaps until you begin to compromise your faith for humanism (the religion of evolution) and question scripture.
Below, I have attached a full list of churches, colleges and other groups who are counted as contributors or board members to the BioLogos organization. Please note that this is not a complete list, but is limited to those noted on the BioLogos website.
As Christians, we must defend our faith from false teachings. These teachings are dangerous as they corrupt our thinking and lead to us doubting the Gospel. If the Biblical account for Creation is not correct, then there is no need for a savior and Jesus died for nothing. We MUST accept Scripture as fact and be carful not to compromise our faith.
Please respectfully reach out to these organizations and let them know how you feel. I have contacted the college that I attended and asked them to rethink their association with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. We are losing too many of our young people to compromise, and I don’t want to see any more of them put in a situation where so-called Christians are leading them away from God.
Thank you and God Bless.
Bishop Claude Alexander Senior Pastor of The Park Church
Dennis Alexander Emeritus Director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion
Barbara Bradley Hagerty Author and Journalist
Carlos Campo President of Ashland University
Harvey Clemons Jr. Reverend of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church
Greg Cootsona Lecturer in Religious Studies and Humanities at California State University at Chico
Andy Crouch Partner, Praxis
Edward B. Davis Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College
Chris Dolson Senior Pastor at Blackhawk Church in Madison, Wisconsin
Elaine Howard Ecklund Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Rice University
Stephen Freeland Astrobiologist and the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at UMBC
Ross Hastings Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Regent College
David Lahti Associate Professor of Biology at Queens College
Trember Longman Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College
John Ortberg Senior Pastor at Menlo Church in Menlo Park, CA
Roseanne Sension Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan
John Walton Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College
Stan Rosenberg SCIO and Wycliffe Hall; Wycliffe Hall and Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford
Dennis Veneman Professor of Biology at Trinity Western University
Leslie Wickman Executive Director of the American Scientific Affiliation
Dwight Baker President, Baker Publishing Group
Andrew Ginsberg Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
Jeff Hardin Chair of the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin
Larry Langdon Partner at Mayer Brown LLP
Ard Louis Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University
Richard Mouw Professor of Faith and Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary
Praveen Sethupathy Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Cornell University
Mark Vogelzang President and CEO of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network
Jennifer Wiseman
#Creation #Warning #Biologos #Church #Christian #Youth #College #Highschool #Intervarsity #Fellowship #AnswersinGenesis #KenHam #CreationMuseum #Evolution
