Spring Chapel 2018: Kurt Wise

in the scripture there's some amazing stories of some amazing folks think of Joe Joseph he ended up in an incredible position second ruler and arguably most powerful nation in the world at the time he encounters his brothers after what he's gone through they're afraid that he's going to exact revenge upon them and he makes an amazing statement this is what you intended for evil God intended for good Joseph looks back at a challenging life being sold into slavery being thrown into prison 20 years seemingly forgotten and rejected and recognizes God used that and used that in particular the only way to get him into that incredible position to save his people we look forward in time to Moses he's called to rescue his people from slavery in Egypt and at 40 years of age after being trained to be a king he fails and is kicked out of Egypt seems that he's lost his ability to do what God called him to do but in fact God put him in the Egypt for put him in Midian for 40 years to train him to be a shepherd trained 40 years to be a king and then 40 years to be a shepherd in the wilderness so that for 40 years he can lead the people of Israel as a king and a shepherd through the wilderness amazing we see the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt God said I'm not going to take you by the way at a Philistine straight into the land because you're not ready yet ready for war it would be 40 years before Israel was ready for war if you look at the passage you recognize that at the ear what comes to be called the ear the people of the people come upon a place with no water as this happened three times before and God says dig a ditch dig a hole and as the leaders are digging a hole the people of Israel sing the first time you know all those years in 40 years it's the first time that Israel didn't complain when they encountered problem they sang they sang and rejoice and right after that they take over Sihon the amorite they take over the gileadites they took over the land of the a baisha in the land of giants in the matter of a couple of months they conquer 1,200 square miles of land almost as much land as that'll take five years to conquer in the Promised Land because they finally got it but it took 40 years to learn time after time we see in Scripture that people are called to great offices but they're brought through a long period of train to get there but it's necessary for God to teach them something so that they can do what they are called to do God has given me an incredible privilege to minister in the field of creationism but I can look back after all these decades and recognize that God took me through a very special path to allow that to happen I couldn't be I couldn't have gotten to Harvard I couldn't have gotten my PhD under Stephen Jay Gould I couldn't have even gotten to the University of Chicago and survived with my faith it had not been what God took me through before that and so I wanted to share with you this day what God did in my life to prepare me for the task of college I watched many of my all of my friends that went off to college lose their faith and I was mystified by the fact that my faith was never challenged in college college university never once did I question my faith and I always what why my friends had fallen and I had not seemed to encounter that difficulty I've come to realize it was because of what God did before that he was preparing me for the University of Chicago and for Harvard and so I want to tell you about that story it starts back when I was relatively young God placed in my heart a desire to know what is true I was raised in a Christian home i from even in my mother's womb I was carried to church every Sunday faithfully but the faith of my parents was not my faith I knew all the right answers to the questions Jesus is always the right answer of the questions right I could I could memorize all the verses I could memorize everyone else and Bible Bible school and all that sort of thing but I didn't know the God that I went to church supposedly to worship and to commune with I was on a different track I was interested the preoccupation of my brain was what do I know for sure I I want to know what I know for sure I don't want any doubt I want surety I want so what is it that I can know for sure sure sure is true and so I began a trek that would take about a year I'm gonna shorten that period down of course but it took me a year to do this so I'm gonna give you vignettes through that year so you get an idea where my brain was going and it's weird Warren yeah at a time I was weird we lived in the woods I spent most of my time in tree houses so most of this story takes place in tree houses or at the tops of trees where I had a collection of leaves from the tops of trees I and on one occasion early in this Trek I was watching a squirrel jump from one branch to another and thought now do I know that that squirrel exists I can see the squirrel so that would seem to be evidence the squirrel exists but I can't see the score with my elbow or my shoulder I can only see the squirrel with my eyes so it might actually be that the squirrel doesn't exist and it's my eyes that are deceiving me into thinking that the squirrel exists when the work squirrel really doesn't exist so I didn't know that for sure but the squirrel existed or that tree's existed or that and continued one day I was in my tree house watching a squirrel jump from one branch to another and I realized I could hear the rustling of the winds correlated with the motion of the of the squirrel realized now wait a minute I can both see the squirrel and hear the squirrel and those two things are coordinated so it would seem that the squirrel really does exist unless what is causing me to hear the squirrel to my ears and what's causing me to see the squirrel my eyes are somehow controlled by something that is making me believe the squirrel exists when the squirrel really doesn't exist so I began to hypothesize that there existed within me something I called my imp an imp that controls what I see hear feel and that sort of thing to make me believe and this would be very impish of an imp is to make me believe something exists when it really doesn't so I began to now Rhian the existence of things and I was having a hard time finding anything that I could know existed for sure one day I was walking down the trail through the woods with my friend Lance Lance said look a deer I looked at the deer and thought wait a minute the deer might not exist because it's a fabric of the imagination of that imp the amp is making me think the deer exists but if the deer doesn't exist that how in the world does Lance know that the deer exists so it must be the deer does exist after all unless how do I know Lance exists because it would be a very impish thing for an imp to realize that I'm getting on to him about the existence of things that he is making me believe exist by creating a Lance that doesn't really exist to make me think that something else exists that doesn't really exist hmm so I continued my quest for something I could know exists for sure something that I knew for sure was true anything that I could think was true well in the end I found myself the Wednesday before the Sunday before Easter 49 years ago I went up into the treehouse to commit suicide why because I had come to realize there was only one thing I knew for sure existed and that was evil you see I couldn't know for sure that these other things exists but I was beginning to be convinced or I began to be convinced my my imp exists and I and that's about the only thing I knew for sure existed unless my amp didn't actually exist at all and it was your imp that created my imp that created these other things to make me think things exist when they really didn't so the only thing I could know for sure was my own existence unless I didn't exist at all and I was the creation of an imp that was making me believe that I existed by implicitly having me think about things that other things as if they existed taking on the assumption that I exist in the process maybe I didn't so I doubted my own existence well it's always possible that all of these things really did exist I mean I can't prove that they don't but if I reconstructed the world and put everything back in place said everything does exist there is one thing that does exist out there and that is evil if I went all the way back to rejecting all the existence of those things and left me only with an imp the amp is evil the only thing that is common in common with all those possible worlds is evil either evil is all that exists and just created me it doesn't really exist to make me think about things that don't exist so that I wouldn't think about the fact that I don't exist or all these things really do exist and they're still evil no everywhere and in between the evil is the only thing that's in common so all that I knew that existed was evil so I went up into my tree house to commit suicide because either I was evil incarnate p.m. and killing me would be good because it would be destroying evil or I didn't exist in which case committing suicide wouldn't be doing anything at all so either suicide is doing nothing or suicide is doing good and thus I went up into the treehouse to figure out the most efficient way to kill myself now I'm putting in a parenthetical note here some people it's common in our society I've heard it multiple times that a person is going to commit suicide we'll leave a note and tell somebody that's hooey okay I don't know no leave a note Who am I gonna leave a note to no one else exists okay I mean not everybody is gonna leave a note maybe many people will but I certainly didn't I wouldn't it wouldn't even come into my mind to do such a thing I was gonna commit suicide without telling anyone because no one else existed to tell close parenthetical note just FYI and so I contemplated I decided that day that one week later the next Wednesday I would go up into the treehouse and commit suicide I figured I could figure out the most efficient way to do so and so it was well in between the winds day and the Wednesday is a Sunday and so I like always went to church church doesn't exist my parents don't exist but you know you go along for the ride it's something whatever this imp is doing and I'm sitting in Sunday school and my Sunday school teacher at the end of the Sunday School lesson did what my Sunday school teacher often did at the end of the lesson he gave an invitation and okay he doesn't exist the lesson doesn't exist the Bible doesn't exist whatever but you know I'll go along with it so I said yeah sure I'll stay after and my Sunday school teacher did something really remarkable actually in the light in the end it turns out to be remarkable in fact when I spoke to him years later he doesn't remember doing this he insists he didn't do this because he never does this but what he did is he took the Bible that was open in front of him and he pushed it across the table pushing my Bible which was also open in front of me out from in front of me putting his Bible in its place and the Bible was open to the book of Romans it was a book open to the book of Romans chapter 3 verse 1 I by the way at this point is nine years I am nine years old okay so my deconstructionist philosophy it came to be crazily enough I went to college and learned that what I was doing at eight years old was they had a name for it deconstructionist philosophy at anyway that deconstructionist philosophy was done while I was in the age of nine and into the age of age of eight into the age of nine and Here I am a nine year old he my Sunday school teacher recites Romans 3:23 which is open in front of me is for all of sinned and come short of the glory of God and he proceeds to explain as best he can to a nine-year-old how every human being is a sinner before God they have disobeyed God they have willfully chosen to do what is wrong before God and and he's going on about that and I'm thinking okay yeah I I'm evil incarnate I understand that not a problem then he turns the page and recites Romans 6:23 for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ so he then proceeds to explain to a nine-year-old because you've sinned there are wages that you have to get for that it's like your dad goes off to work and he gets wages for the work well for your sin you got wages and the wages are sent well he's described the wages are death and while he's describing that I'm thinking got that covered I'm committing suicide next week and then he turns to Romans 5:8 and he recites that verse but God commendeth or showed his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us I have no idea what he began to try to explain to a 9 year old at that point because my brain went into I gears like whoa an epiphany this is cool wait a minute here is not just one thing I know I realized in an instant that I actually knew more than one thing because it I realized that when I decided that I that suicide was the most appropriate way to proceed an important part of that was the realization that evil must be destroyed but why do I believe that evil must be destroyed more I thought about it the more I realized that I was certain of that truth I didn't know why but I was certain of that truth but if evil was all that existed and there's nothing else but evil evil wouldn't wish its own description nor would it be appropriate to destroy evil if evil was all that existed so I realized in an instant that I knew two things evil existent and evil must be destroyed but if evil must be destroyed then it means that good exists the existence of good is the only thing that would require the destruction of evil if God didn't exist and evil was all there was there wouldn't be any need for the destruction of evil and it wouldn't be right for good for evil to be destroyed so I in an instant I went from knowing one thing to knowing three things the existence of evil the existence of good and that evil must be destroyed I was excited I looked back down at the verse but God commands are showed his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us and I realized whoa that's what good would do good would become evil so that evil could become good God in the form of Jesus Christ the good God came down to earth and took my evil your evil on himself the Bible says he became sin that we might become the righteousness of God good became evil your evil so that you evil could become good whoa that's when I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior that moment I didn't know much else than that I had now four pieces of information but it's from here that we can build well let me move forward in time because there's another important incident that prepared me was also part of that preparation for college for my person my position here now in school as I went to public school all the way through I was taught one thing about in the in the area of science in regards to the origin of things and that is evolution I'd never heard anything else in school I never heard anything about creationism I'm sure I must have heard it somewhere in church about creationism but all I heard in school from textbooks these things that are that are true is evolution that's so from from textbooks I'm learning evolution is the way things came to be now that turns out to be important for me why because again I was a weird kid got to understand something about the way I was wired I have basically almost zero hand-eye coordination I can't do things that boys are supposed to do to prove that they're boys and where I grew up the area I grew up in sports is what indicates that you're you're a guy I mean you can play basketball you can play baseball you can you can do those kinds of things I actually have a letter that I earned in athletics it was in sixth grade I was in basketball I was the shortest kid in the class I did not reach five feet until my junior year of high school so I I was short I couldn't dribble I couldn't pass I couldn't shoot and I couldn't run I don't think there's anything left that you're supposed to be able to do in in in basketball I was miserable okay they gave me the letter probably just out of the graciousness of their heart I usually stood in the middle of the of the court well everybody went back and forth past me I never idea yeah I just couldn't do it I couldn't do baseball I couldn't hit that ball I couldn't run I couldn't catch I couldn't again I don't think there's anything left to do nothing you could do so there was just nothing no nothing I could climb trees but there was no sport in climbing trees no competition and climbing trees I couldn't do any of those things there was nothing I couldn't even the woods we split wood and I split wood and all that sort of thing but even my cousins who are from the city and had never picked up a splitting maul before could actually split wood I know where I was supposed to put that crazy splitting maul I could I could I could put I put the mark on the wood for my cousin's they never picked up one of these things before I said all you got to do is hit this mark right here and put the X there and they could do it I could put the X there and never hit that mark I could do it a hundred times and that make a hundred marks in the wood and none of them would hit that crazy mark I had no hand-eye coordination it allow me to do any of those things so my dad commended my cousin's for being able to split wood but I was never commended by my father for splitting wood or anything else that mattered at least it seemed to me the only thing I could do was science I loved science I mean I loved studying things in the natural world I could identify trees I learned all the trees in the woods all the species I could identify them by bark I could identify them by wood I could identify them by leaves I could identify them by seeds I learned the birds I could identify them by a feather I could identify them by a sound I could identify I had collections of birds nests and birds eggs and birds I was taxidermist and I had collections of of leaves and branches and cross-sections of wood and anything in the natural world I had a telescope and looked at the Stars and a microscope it looked at microscopic things I mean I loved science I developed by the end of high school I had 36 hobbies and collections a few of them were normal things like stamps and coins but most of them were science things I love science that was my that was my whole that was the only thing that I felt I had any self-worth in and it was my it was my life and in grade school the end of eighth grade for reasons that mystify me to this day I don't understand why my school had this phenomenon I went to a school called Kings consolidated school that had K through 8 in one building we went down the hallway we started at a room at one end of the hallway in kindergarten went across the hall for first grade and then went down the hall to second and third and fourth and fifth all the way down to seventh and eighth grade actually had two rooms at the end of the hallway they switched in the mid day it was like it's an awesome thing for 4 for 9 years you are working your way down a hallway towards that that big unknown of graduation ok Kings consolidated school was in Kings Illinois Kings Illinois has a population of 250 people when there's traffic going through town and when school is in session it has just a few dozen houses but it's the biggest metropolis in seven miles in all directions and we lived our address was actually in not in Kings it was in Rochelle Rochelle was further away Rochelle was an enormous city there were 10,000 people in Rochelle ok but there were three other towns that were closer to us than Rochelle that we didn't have an address in there was chain there was Flag Center and there were Kings Shaina was the biggest it had probably a hundred people in it I was it was a monstrous place okay Rochelle was the big city scary place when he graduated from Kings consolidated school and eighth grade he went off to the the high school and Rochelle and the high school in Rochelle had 1,200 students in it 240 students in the graduating class scary okay I so all the time that I'm going through grade school I'm working down a hallway towards that day when I'm going to be transferred over this monster school scared the bejeebers out of me okay at the end eighth grade there was an event that our school had chosen to be sort of like the you made it kind of party and it was of all things a science fair I have no idea why they chose a science fair to be the big you know going away thing the big come up egg thing the the point of accomplishment it made no sense when I went on to college when I'm in another high school only two three people in in my high school went on to college it's not a college area it's nobody goes to college it's an agricultural area is a big school but less than one 1% of the graduating of high school students into my County went to college one percent so why do science as your I don't have any idea but it was good for me because as I'm going down that hallway I'm thinking yeah that's science fair that's what I'm going for this is gonna be big this is gonna be great beginning of the eighth-grade year obviously the science fairs at the end of the year beginning of the eighth-grade year i'm i've got to figure out what do i do i've been planning this for years I wanted something that I could do that could pull together as many of the different hobbies and collections as I had in one place and I decided on evolution it's about what I was taught it is the thing that supposedly made sense effect theodosius dobzhansky said nothing in biology makes sense aside from evolution this is something I can use all of my stuff in I could put my fossils in there I could put my plants in there I could put my animals in there I could I could put everything into an evolution project because supposedly evolution explains everything so I began to create my project I decided on a representation of the history of life by setting creating a set of stairs little little stair steps each stair step represented a geologic time period so that's when I memorize the geologic time scale the Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Devonian Mississippian Kim you know all that you remember along the way I'm sure and and for each one of these I had the length of the run in other words the length of the step was proportional to the length of time for that particular a particular geologic period and so I had this stair step thing on each step I had representations of how the what the earth looked like in terms of water versus ocean versus land I had fossils in there I had drawings of what was alive at that time and so it's a representation of the history of life years later I was introduced i've is a-- today a fellow classmate of mine from eighth grade and she introduced me to her eighth grade daughter this is one of those like oh man i'm old kind of event but when she made the introduction she said this is the guy I was telling you about oh dear what did you tell your daughter about me and and she said I remember I will always remember the 8th grade science fair is we had all 20 people in the class 20 19 people had half of the room and then I had the other half of the room that's how she described it I I'm sure that's not true that's certainly not the way I remember it but anyway I had a big project of course I worked on this all year long and and I and oh I need to tell you about Carl it's an important part of the story Carl was one of my friends there there was a group of three of us so there were the shortest kid in the cat and class kids in the class so for self-preservation purposes we stuck together and we we never looked at each other okay because we always kept our backs to each other so that we could see in 360 degrees so that we were always ready to run now we couldn't outrun anybody who was trying to kill us but if we were running already they usually didn't expend the energy necessary to catch us so we were usually okay so we get on the swing set one would face one way one would face another way and and therefore if anybody's coming we weed there's a there's the there's the warning sign and then we'd all bail out and run you know that so we stuck together for self preservation purposes and Karl turned out to be just a little bit short I was actually the tallest of the three in our in our group karl was a soft-spoken individual even shorter than I Karl for his eighth grade science fair project chose to do something that no one ever does for science fair project this was a unique he wanted to create a volcano okay so he developed a and and more particularly i know now that it wasn't just any old volcano this was a this was a stratiform volcano okay he didn't know that either at that time but anyway it's one of those you know peaked mount fugi kind of looking things and about two weeks before like that before the big event he had a dry no dry run would not be the proper way to describe that anyway he's testing his volcano poor Karl three days three days later when they had replaced the ceiling tiles they did replace the desk and they had cleaned up most of the mass in the in the in their in the room the teacher came walking up to Karl's desk Karl is sitting there meekly the teacher comes up and Karl looks up at the teacher and the teacher looks down at Karl and teacher says you will not do a volcano for your science project okay well that left Karl without a project so he it turns out that he joined me in my project so we could work together on the completion of the project well the day came for the big event and on the big event eighth grade didn't have any class that day that day was for set up for the event that was going to be in the evening and so but by that time my dad had come in with a truck and it unloaded the truck and and all of this stuff the night before we had gotten into to do that so we're at the beginning of the day we were basically finished setting up the project well most of I fell Oh classmates were beginning thinking about what they're going to do that particular night for the first time and beginning their project and Karl and I didn't have a thing to do so he sat there for a while and and I said Karl is something that's bothering me he says what's that I said well I can't reconcile what I have learned with the Bible he says well what do you mean so he took out a Bible and and while everyone else is slurring about doing their thing I just read out loud to Karl Genesis chapter one just went through the whole chapter there and I said I I can't make this fit what we've just done I know that this is millions of years that's that it there's a particular sequence that things occurred in and this is not millions of years this appears to be only six days and the order isn't the same this thing says that the earth comes before the Sun and that's not what evolution says this thing says that the plants come before the animals and that's not what evolution says it just lots of things just didn't work didn't fit and I said I I just can't make these two things reconcile and and and and after I'd read it and Karl says yeah I I see what you mean right and I was baffled for a bit and then an epiphany I realize wait a minute I think I know how to solve this I came up with an idea I think this is no one's ever come up with this idea before I could probably get famous by publishing this this is like wild that's crazy I said Carl what about this what if the days in Genesis 1 are millions of years long this would make sense of a lot of the problems in in this and Carlos yeah that's a great idea and and and truly of all the problems that I detected 95% of them were taken care of by that issue yeah and in science you know if you can get 95% of the data explained that's good enough right it's ok and it's close but there's still some things that bugged me because even if you make the day's long we still got an order a problem you just they're not and things aren't in a right order but it's I explained most of the problem so we're ok so I said hey will I I for my and my own brain I said let's accept that the days are millions of years long there's a few problems but that's ok I'm gonna put them into a room in my brain into a small room with a door that I'm gonna lock I'm gonna close lock and put about 15 bolts on so that it they don't bother me anymore no problem probably would have been no problem for 99.9% of the people in the world but not for me you probably forgot about it for a year but then in my beginning and by the end of my freshman year of high school it was starting to bug me by sophomore year of high school I couldn't take it anymore the obsessive-compulsive in me just yeah yeah yeah I've got to yeah yeah I kept going by that door locks on it yeah ok so I said I got to deal with it I can't let this go so don't tell anyone I snuck out of high school one day and went and bought a Bible snuck back into high school now it wasn't that I I know I didn't grow up in the Bible Belt myself but it wasn't that buying a Bible was a bad thing in the North that was not the problem the problem was what I was going to do with the Bible that was the problem I took the Bible which I had hidden and took it home hidden and that night I got into my sleeping bag I'd learned years before that if I put the sleeping bag on top of the bed and slept in the sleeping bag I didn't have to make my bed I got into my sleeping bag with the Bible a flashlight and a pair of scissors and I said to myself okay I need to find out as I go through the Bible I need to find out how much of the Bible I would have to throw out if in fact evolution was true there's the issue before me how much of the Bible would I have to get rid of if evolution was true so the simple-minded brain that I had said well why don't I just take a Bible and cut out all the verses that I would have to cut out if in fact evolution were true and that's my plan so my plan was to read through the Bible and when I came to verse that can't be true if evolution is true I'm gonna cut it out now I know you're hitting me you already forget us out if I cut out a verse on one side of this page it also cuts out a verse on the opposite side of the page so I decided that what I would do is is read through the Bible and cut out every other verse so on the average it should cut out the right number that seemed reasonable okay so cut out every other verse now the other thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm not just gonna cut in from the side and cut out snip out the verse I'm gonna cheat I'm going to the verse and I'm gonna cut out the verse from the inside leaving the little white stuff on the edges on the margins and between the verses now that's gonna cheat things that's gonna kind of bias things in a certain direction as you're about to see but I figured this is this is the way I'm gonna do it so I began reading every time I came to a verse I snipped every other verse out and worked my way through the Bible now the the answer where this was going is pretty clear pretty early on but two reasons I kept this up through the entire Bible one I'm an obsessive compulsive I couldn't just stop here and just assume the rest of its the same I I needed to go all the way number two too much was at stake at this point in time as I said putting pieces together my whole life everything I loved to do everything that gave me self-worth was science but science was teaching me evolution so what I've got is evolutionary science the science textbooks the science that I've been taught is teaching me that evolution is true and I love science so it must be that evolution is true on the other hand I've got the Bible that seems to say something different but if evolution is not true then I would have to give up science which is everything I love I didn't want to give up science so I'm gonna delay this decision as long as possible that's why I made my way all the way through the Bible it took me nearly a year night after night after night after night cutting cutting cutting all the way through the Bible the very last night I came to revelation 22:19 he who takes away from the words of this book his name shall be taken out of the book of life can't leave that one in there but I don't think there's anything I've ever done with more fear in all my life then stabbing that verse and cutting it out so there I was with my Holy Bible and I couldn't delay the question anymore I couldn't delay the issue anymore I promptly tore off the cover of the Bible leaving me only with the pages of Scripture laying on the bed and the question before me was can I reach in and grab grasp the Bible and pick it up is there enough paper left for the Bible to hold itself together as much as I tried I really tried I couldn't no matter where I pinched the Bible and began to lift I could feel it giving away even though I'd left all that white stuff that makes it that is biasing it towards holding it together with things that aren't actually the Bible even with all that in there there wasn't enough of the Bible left to hold itself together I had a choice it's either evolution is true and throw out the Bible obviously or the Bible is true and throw out science and everything I loved but that moment I remembered my Sunday school teacher taking his Bible pushing it in front of me pushing my bile out of I belong introducing me to Jesus Christ I never had to go back up into the tree house to commit suicide I never had to even think about going into the tree house commit suicide Jesus had become had saved me both spiritually and physically I was alive because he was alive and what he'd done for me I was there knowing Jesus and he'd become a friend over the years he doesn't just exist I'd come to know him and they'd come to know him through the Bible I realized I couldn't give this up and so that day I accepted his word as true and I throw away science and I cried for three days I cried this moment is very similar in my own life to an event in the life of Abraham when Abraham is told by God take your son your only begotten Son and killing sacrifice him for me a neighbor had to make that journey knowing he's gonna kill his son he leaves the servants behind he walks with his son and his son ass I see the fire and I see the wood where's the sacrifice Abraham knowing that it's a son it's a sacrifice he says God will provide takes him all the way to the altar builds an altar ties up a high stake and puts him on the altar and lifts up the sword to kill Isaac and then God says stop now I know that you love me more than him and apparently that's what happened in my life that moment when I gave up what before that I had loved more than God and accepted him and I loved him more than science that's when God said you can now get it back I piled in on Friday to in a bus with the rest of the youth group on a youth advance we didn't go on retreats we only went on advances and the bus took us I don't must have been that this was that this was talked about before them but it's like I was doing something in a trance I didn't know where we were going or what we were doing we pulled into a parking lot got out of the bus filed into a gymnasium sat in the bleachers person got up at the podium and said my name is whatever it was I am a scientist and a creationist I do not believe in evolution and I don't remember anything else that person said went cool you mean you can you can accept this you can accept the creation and still be a scientist God gave it back to me I believe because I had finally come to a point where I had put love of him above the love of those things I thought made me worthwhile that's not what makes me worthwhile that never was what made me work worthwhile what made me worthwhile was the fact that God loves me God loves me so much that he became my sin and so that I could become the righteousness of God that's what gives me value that is why I am valuable I'm valuable in his sight and it turns out that theodosius dobzhansky is simply wrong everything inside everything in biology does not make sense because of evolution actually everything in biology makes sense because of creation and you have to be blind to the data which of course the unbelievers are to see it otherwise and I was blind to that data at one point it was a point when I was blind to the love of God altogether I thought evil was all that existed I didn't I didn't just not believe there was a God any bleeders good the truth is profound and strong and obvious but I didn't know it I was blind to it until God opened my eyes to it are you open to that do you know the God I know when I accepted Christ came my friend I've been living with him for 49 years knowing him not talking about the years before that for 49 years he has been my friend he's never left me I've wandered from him but he's never left me his love was profound always will be profound he saw fit to show me the truth do you know him do you know that truth this is a great opportunity for you I beg you come to know my friend because he loves you he became your sin so that you could become his righteousness he is so good that his in his love he took your sin so that you don't have to pay for it so that you don't have to paid you to pay the wages of sin you can live with him forever perhaps you do know him but your value is not in him perhaps your value is in something you do perhaps that's what people have told you all your life like they told me but your value is in sports or your value is in maybe even getting good grades or your value is in this or that it's something you do in the Bible never refers to people by what they do refers to people by what they are they are souls for whom Christ died immeasurably valuable that is who you are maybe this day you need to give up what you're holding on to and accept the love of God love him more than those things that are in your life whatever it is I beg of you don't take the years it took me and Moses and the Israelites to learn the truth do it now do it now [Music] you

Channel: Truett McConnell

Views: 1,190

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Truett, McConnell, College, University, TMC Bears, TMC, TMU, Cleveland, Georgia, White County, Northeast Georgia

Id: rLqzTq2tRp4

Length: 52min 53sec (3173 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 21 2018