 November's featured article
Half-born Christians?
A talk with theologian John Whitcomb
First published: December 2000
by Ken Ham
Dr John Whitcomb was co-author, with Dr Henry Morris, of the famous 1961 book The Genesis Flood, widely regarded (by friend and foe alike) as launching the creationist revolution of the late twentieth century.
KH: ‘Dr Whitcomb, in my travels, I’ve found that the majority of Christian colleges, seminaries, Christian leaders, pastors, etc., don’t take a stand for literal Genesis. They allow for millions of years and/or evolution, the ‘gap’ theory, progressive creation … Do you find that too?’
JW: ‘Yes, I’m sorry to say. Everywhere I go, right around the Christian world, there are many fine ministries, missionaries, church planters, etc., dedicated to the Gospel message that Jesus Christ is Lord and only by His precious blood can we be saved—through what He did on the Cross, and His Resurrection from the dead. But tragically, Jesus Christ, the Lord who is presented as the only Saviour, is robbed of much of His dignity and glory when it turns out they regard what He said about Genesis as really not true after all.’
What do you mean?
Many Christians, myself included, have been raised and discipled in uniformitarian, evolutionary Earth history. But the Lord Jesus says, ‘Have you not read that He who made them in the beginning made them male and female?’ (Matthew 19:4, cf.Mark 10:6) The human race was not made five billion years after Earth was created. Why would Jesus mislead us? Why did He say that we must believe Moses (John 5:45–46) if Moses presents, in the early chapters of Genesis, six literal days of creation, a global Flood, with death (and fossils!) resulting from the Curse only after Adam rebelled? I’ve been devastated to find out that many, many things that Jesus taught are simply not believed, and yet these same people are saying, ‘Here is the Saviour of the world.’
But many say, ‘As long as people are saved, and are born again, it doesn’t matter what they believe about Genesis.’
I believed that kind of thing myself until I realized that I’m not in charge of the Bible or of the God of the Bible. I am His disciple and His servant. And He has told me in the Great Commission inMatthew 28, among many other places, that I am to teach everything (v.20) whatsoever He has taught. And that begins with Genesis, as Jesus over and over quoted that book as literal history. Who am I to say to my Lord, ‘Well that’s not important,’ or, ‘I don’t believe all that you wrote about ultimate origins.’
I’m increasingly realizing how drastically far short the true church of Jesus Christ has fallen in not teaching people the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). Genesis is the foundation, apart from which we can’t really understand the magnitude of sin. Or the redemptive program of God, begun when God shed the blood of an animal to provide coats of skin for Adam and Eve, after He had given them His cryptic Gospel announcement in Genesis (3:15).
Where do we begin history—only at Genesis 12? Why not later on? Let’s be honest—if history doesn’t begin with Genesis 1, then our Lord, who repeatedly referred to the early chapters of Genesis as literal history, is simply wrong.
The Apostle Paul had a very different perspective from many today. He said, ‘We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom that we may present every man complete in Christ’ (Colossians 1:28).; In other words, we shouldn’t just be producing "half-born" Christians,* who compromise the opening chapters of the Bible. We want, under God, to produce people, through the Holy Spirit, who are fully mature and spiritually healthy and wholesome; who know Genesis to Revelation as the only context within which the Gospel can be clearly understood.
After all, the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15 is not that Christ died for our sins, and rose again the third day; the Gospel is that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Unless we know the background of Scripture as to who the Christ is, why He died, and how He rose, those are just empty ‘gospel words’ in this generation of materialistic atheism.
What do you think becomes of these ‘half-born Christians’ you mentioned?
They become very susceptible to all the spiritual diseases that Satan and our own sin nature make available to us wherever we live, move and breathe. We find distortions, denials, and rejections of every basic moral standard the Bible establishes for us as His creatures and His people. We therefore need the whole armour of God, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God—a two-edged sword, not half a sword, or a broken or rusted one, but one fully designed by the Holy Spirit to deal with the enemy (Eph. 6:12–18). Without it, we become dangerously vulnerable. The enemy is not some little force that can be easily crushed by our finite human resources. It’s Satan, the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4), and he will attack us at the weakest places in our armour. And if we’re not really solid on the whole Bible, we won’t be able to stand.
Now I don’t believe that a true, born-again Christian can lose his salvation, but he can lose his effectiveness, and at the judgment seat of Christ before which all Christians must appear, we are warned repeatedly that we could be ashamed before Him at His coming (1 John 2:28), and suffer great loss—not our soul, but our reward—at the time when Christ appears (1 Cor. 3:10–15).
What a joy, however, to be able to say to Him, ‘Lord, I didn’t understand everything in the Bible, but I believed what You said, obeyed what You told me to do, to take the whole Bible and to proclaim it faithfully by the Spirit of God who authored it, that people might be fully equipped to every good work.’
Looking at the big picture in, say, America or England, the church is losing its effectiveness, as the standards of people in it become more like the world’s. And yet millions are spent running big crusades, with some saying they’re seeing thousands ‘come to know Jesus’. What do you make of that?
I would ask, which Jesus have they accepted? The Jesus of the Bible, or the ‘Jesus’ of modern imagination, one who can be moulded and reshaped to fit our own philosophic presuppositions? The Jesus Christ of Holy Scripture is the second person of the triune Godhead, through whom the universe was created (John 1:1–3). He has infinite authority, and He is not about to be compromised for the sake of currently popular theories or influences. He is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. [For more information on the Triunity of God and the deity of Christ, see the Q&A sections on God and Jesus Christ]
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