Nazarene Scholars Continue To Undermine Belief In God’s Word With Evolution’s Lie

“Theistic evolution is a concept being taught in many “evangelical” seminaries and colleges today. It is an idea that comes straight from the pit of hell. To believe that human evolution is true is to say that the Bible contains lies and myths, and that Adam and Eve were allegorical figures. If you teach and promote theistic evolution, you are calling God a liar. There is no middle ground here.”

This is my first article in almost two months, but I’m afraid things are just as bad as it was since my last post; the status quo in most of the evangelical denominations has not changed; and the Nazarene church is still in bad shape, notwithstanding any rosy reports from the General Superintendents or other leadership. Compromise seems to be the underlying principal for these religious leaders for quite some time now. Independent thought and true leadership is a thing of the past, as these General Superintendents continue to speak with one voice, or not speak at all, regardless of the truth.

In fact, the reluctance of the Generals to inform tithe-paying members about any details of the developing Nazarene Publishing House scandal, is a scandal and a moral and ethical failure in and of itself. I await further information before writing fully on this situation, but I can tell you that even those at NazNet (a Nazarene discussion site) who oppose us and disagree that there is a rebellion against God’s word within the church, are concerned and outraged at the continuing secrecy within the General Board regarding the financial debacle at the Publishing House. This link will take you to a discussion on NazNet that has broken all viewing records at that website, for any topic previously.

But let me alert you (again) to a further scandalous debacle that has been going on for a while now, and that is the promotion of theistic evolution in the church as an acceptable view of how we were created by God. The promotion of evolution by theology professors and other scholars, as well as by college and seminary presidents and district superintendents, goes to the heart of the problem in the Church of the Nazarene today. What is that problem? It is simply this: that men in the church are now standing on a foundation built on their wisdom and knowledge, rather than on the foundation of the teaching of God as written in His word. Selective belief in some scripture, while rejecting other parts, is the philosophy of these so-called “learned men and women”, even if they don’t state it overtly.

And now to show that it looks like the danger is worse than we thought. The group Nazarenes Exploring Evolution, lead by Tom Oord, professor of religion at Northwest Nazarene University, recently conducted an online survey. It involved the questioning of two demographics- a sampling of Nazarene laypeople, and a narrower sampling of Nazarene college scholars. Both results look pretty bad, and serves as a continued and even louder warning to parents who love their teenagers and want them to have a solid education that is grounded in truth. They will no longer be guaranteed to have that at any Nazarene university or college, including any of the seminaries.

Well known college presidents such as Dan Boone of Trevecca are fueling the advancement of the anti-biblical notion that man was created over millions of years of random evolutionary processes. Others pushing this godless idea which clearly contradicts the Biblical account include theological intellectuals like Al Truesdale, my former Greek New Testament professor; Scott Daniels, pastor of Pasadena First Church; retired professor Robert Branson; Kerry Fulcher and Mark Mann of Point Loma; Mark Winslow of Southern Nazarene; District Superintendent Stephen Borger; Carl Leth, Dean of Theology at Olivet Nazarene; Mark Maddix of Northwest Nazarene; Henry Spaulding, Mt. Vernon Nazarene President; theologian Rob Staples; and quite a few more “learned men and women”, who can be found at the Nazarenes Exploring Evolution site. **

** Update: The site has since been deleted, perhaps because of too much negative exposure.  However, searches on the wayback machine for “Nazarenes Exploring Evolution” will turn up many articles written by Dan Boone and others who support evolution. They span from 2013 to 2016. The following link will get you all the distinct web pages found when searching and will list each for you to check out: https://web.archive.org/web/*;type=text/exploringevolution.com/*
You have to be patient, sometimes searches are slow. You also need to understand how it works.  Resulting pages are usually documented in a calendar view, that shows you a specific date that an articles was entered.

Here is Thomas Oord’s project summation for Nazarenes Exploring Evolution; https://web.archive.org/web/20140517100539/http://exploringevolution.com/

These people are all responsible for helping indoctrinate countless students with theistic evolution, and their furtherance of this godless idea will lead to them being held accountable by God someday.  They need to repent, or they need to be removed from their positions of authority over our students.  Many of them have also been pushing the emergent church teachings. And do you wonder why so many young people are walking away from the church? Why wouldn’t they, when they are taught that they cannot trust God’s word?

In his article Poll Shows Nazarene Scholars Embracing Evolution, Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis summarizes the survey results:

Overwhelmingly, scholars at Nazarene institutions believe:

1) that the Bible does not require a belief in a young earth (nearly 95%)
2) that the Bible is compatible with evolutionary ideas (82%)
3) that science has established that the world is billions of years old (nearly 86%), 4) that human evolution is true (67%)
5) that the Nazarene church should consider theistic evolution as a valid alternative to biblical creation (87%).”

Those are very disturbing statistics, and the numbers for the first four questions, which were also posed to Nazarenes in general, were almost as ominous. To believe that human evolution is true is to say that the Bible contains lies and myths, and that Adam and Eve were allegorical figures. To believe that human evolution is true is to say that the Jesus was not truthful when he referred to Adam. To believe that human evolution is true is to say that sin and death did not come into the world through the disobedience of Adam, as written in Romans chapter 5.

So let’s be clear: if you teach and promote theistic evolution, you are calling God a liar. But it seems it will only get worse, and Bible-believing Christians will have to decide whether a secular college will be less dangerous to their children’s spiritual wellbeing than a “Christian” college or university. This whole bunch are some of the most dangerous people professing to be Christians today, and any parent sending their children to a Nazarene university or seminary today is literally gambling with their child’s spiritual health.

Dr. Ham, who has spoken out about and exposed these issues more than most Nazarenes have, went on to comment:

“This is clear evidence that a major denomination is teaching young people that they can’t trust the Bible when it comes to Genesis 1–11 and that fallible man can reinterpret God’s Word—thus man is the authority and not God.”

I agree. These men and women are a disgrace and not one of them should be in a position of authority that they are in, because they are misleading many.  The failure of the Nazarene General leadership in even attempting to right the ship makes them just as culpable, because they are allowing the erosion of Biblical standards by doing nothing- which seems to be all they are willing to do.

Addendum

What follows is the statistical report of both surveys, which are from the BioLogos website. (http://biologos.org/blog/nazarenes-on-evolution).   I found it very discouraging; you are free to make your own conclusions and decisions.

Poll of Nazarenes on Evolution

Question 1: Genesis and other biblical texts require Christians to believe the earth was created less than 15 thousand years ago.

Question 2: The Bible can properly be interpreted as compatible with the theory of biological evolution.

Question 3: Geology, astronomy, and physics have established that world is billions of years old.

Question 4: Humans likely became a species as God worked with the biological evolutionary process.

Among other things, this poll suggests that more Nazarenes today feel comfortable with evolution.

 

Nazarene Scholars on God Creating through Evolution

Question 1: Genesis and other biblical texts require Christians to believe the earth was created less than 15 thousand years ago.

Question 2: The Bible can properly be interpreted as compatible with the theory of biological evolution.

Question 3: Geology, astronomy, and physics have established that the world is billions of years old.

Question 4: Humans likely became a species as God worked with the evolutionary process.

Question 5: The Church of the Nazarene should allow the theory that God creates through evolution as one acceptable view of creation among others.

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Science versus Revelation

By John Henderson

I read of a “debate” recently at a Nazarene university where two participants were invited to present the creationist position as opposed to the evolutionary position.  That was for just one session among others where they were not included.  The report indicated that the creationists were not in friendly territory and their message showed no indications of being well-received.  I did note that one of the pro-evolution representatives is a Nazarene elder who has never, to my knowledge, given a clear testimony of ever having been born again but submits himself as an expert on Wesleyanism.

As tragic as it is that this went on in a Nazarene supported school with no repercussions from the denomination in any way, I want to use that as a backdrop to address the idea of science—the very thing evolutionists completely hang their argument on so far as their assumed evidence is concerned.  In spite of the fact there are those who attempt to meld theology with evolutionism, I am in full agreement with atheistic evolutionists that theology of any sort is in no way compatible with evolutionism. Both are mutually exclusive. The evolutionists readily scoff at the very idea and see it as a joke.  I agree, except I am not laughing.

In a way, I take it personally for two reasons.  The first has to do with my unmoving commitment to revelational truth as put forth in the inerrant Scriptures.  The other reason is related to my own training and experiences in academic research principles.  I will deal with only the latter here.

Fundamentally speaking, science is no more than a system of observation, discovery, and interpretation of what has been discovered and observed.  Interpretation is that which attempts to make sense of what has been discovered and observed and it is often a mixture of much subjectivity and enough objectivity to offer a sense of credibility.

A true scientist recognizes that he or she is always faced with at least four major obstacles in research:  missing information, point in time, uncontrollable influences (variables), and bias in interpretation.  In other words, no science is absolutely certain of anything at any point in time.  That is why it is always changing in the face of new data and ways of thinking.  It is even honest enough to come up with what is called a margin of error because it recognizes the potential weaknesses in its own research.

Because of these weaknesses, science is not a highly reliable tool in supporting interpretations. Even hard evidence, as in chemistry, is subject to being misinterpreted. Many times researchers have come away with egg on their faces because new data has destroyed their former assumptions about the previous data.  This fluid condition is a given albatross in legitimate research.  That is why it is an ongoing process and that is why things in life are being improved across time with “new” discoveries and developments.

Essentially beginning a scientific investigation is to start with what is called a null hypothesis.  The null hypothesis says that you have come up with an idea about something after looking and poking around a bit but that your initial assumptions about it are not true because they have not been proven true.  The research that follows attempts to prove the null hypothesis—that your initial assumptions cannot be proved.  If the results do not support the null hypothesis, you then make the opposite assumptions (interpretations) that the data is probably true, given a few qualifications:  point in time, conditions of the research, unknown and uncontrollable factors influencing results, etc. that lead to the assumption of a margin of error.

When all of this is applied to the various disciplines of research, it becomes even more problematic.  As you move from “pure” science (that in which every variable is controlled, but still imperfectly—you let in only those variables you want for that study into a “closed” environment),  into an open environment, such as some social research involving questionnaires and people-responses, the researcher’s control is drastically reduced.  One can never be certain in those environments that the interpretations are certain because the data are so mixed with uncontrolled variables it comes down to making interpretations about something very narrow and highly unreliable, especially when generalized outside of the research parameters.  One ends up with “results” that, at best, can be claimed to maybe be valid and reliable for that particular set of variables at that particular point in time in that particular environment.

Evolutionists of all stripes manage to dance around all of these obstacles to come forth with such “certainty” that would make an angel blush with shame.  When a “theologian” presumes to relegate the Scriptures to scrutiny by science, that “theologian” is treading in the quicksand of faulty logic and highly unreliable and unpredictable authority.  They are taking the Scriptures that exist on absolute certainty by virtue of divine revelation and arbitrarily making them amenable to science which isn’t even sure of itself at any point in time.  In other words, they are basically making it up as they go.

It is tremendously foolish to presume that biblical truth can be measured by science, so-called (that is a quote from the Scriptures).  Science depends solely on the outcome of creation, not the other way around.  We know creation in two ways:  the heavens declare the glory of God and the Bible provides an accurate account of the creation.  Granted, the creation is not a step-by-step description but is panoramic.  Someone has rightly said that the Bible does not contain all that God knows.

There is more to God than is revealed in the pages of the Bible.  Enough is said to inform us of what we need to know according to His will for us.  I cannot build a computer but I can use one.  I cannot build a car but I can drive one.  All of life is like that.  I know what I need to know without having to know everything there is to know about anything. Someone once asked a Christian if he was not bothered by the things in the Bible he did not understand.  He replied that that was not what concerned him.  What concerned him was what he did understand.

Dr. Gran’pa
(John Henderson)

 

Related Article:  http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/defending_design

 

Pastors That Promote Evolution Need To Be Challenged

These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which you have received of him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it has taught you, you shall abide in Him. And now, little children, abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at his coming. 1 John 2:26-28

The debate is over.  Ken Ham and Bill Nye the Science Guy.  For those who missed the debate about evolution, there will be a DVD of the entire debate available, and the debate is now online here (skip to the 13 min mark where it actually starts).  The online video has already had over 1.2 million views since last week.  I was perhaps most grateful to Ken Ham for the fact that several times in the debate, he was able to share the Gospel message, pointing to us what is most important. I was also thankful that folks like him and Dr. Purdom are faithfully defending God’s clear and unambiguous account in Genesis of how we were created.  My prayer is that God will use this event to move hearts and minds, bring people to the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, help remove doubt and confusion in the minds of wavering Christians, and that He will rebuke those professing Christian leaders who are promoting this ungodly teaching.

I know, perhaps not many minds were not changed right away, and some minds may never change on this issue.  Yet, the biblical Christian knows that the theory of evolution is a farce.  Even a non-believer who looks at the evidence knows it is a farce.  It is unproven, it is full of holes, and many parts of it have been discredited over time, after many scientists were so sure about it.  Yet, the sad irony is that not only does Bill Nye reject the truth of the biblical account of creation, so do many pastors!  And this is one of the great dangers in our church today- pastors who deny the truth of Scripture, and you need to be warned about this.

It is very possible today that you could be under the leadership of a pastor who denies the historical accuracy and truthfulness of Genesis 1-11.  In fact, I would advise you to ask him what he does believe, if he has not made that clear yet.  If you believe what God has said in Scripture, and if you reject the godless theory of evolution, what does it say to you if you find out that your pastor accepts evolution?  Before and after the debate, I read various comments about Ken Ham at several “Christian” websites on the internet.  There is a certain disdain for Ken Ham, who has defended the biblical position and has written many articles exposing the godless teaching of evolution within the Nazarene denomination.

There is also a certain disdain for Nazarene pastors, and Christian pastors in general, who believe in the biblical account.  There is an elitist spirit about these critics of Bible believing Christians.  I saw this elitist spirit at General Assembly this year, as a pastor from New England, along with his friend, abruptly walked away from a conversation with me about evolution.  I was challenging them from a biblical perspective, and in the end, they would have none of that kind of talk in the conversation.  They wanted compromise, and they wanted me to accept the evolution position as a viable position.

As we have posted before, if you believe in evolution, then you have to reject several things taught in Scripture.

To a theistic evolutionist, he/she must believe that:

-Adam and Eve were not real historical figures as described in Genesis;

-Jesus was not truthful when he talked about Adam and Eve in a historical context;

-You reject God’s account in Genesis that He created everything in six days;

-You reject the ​truthfulness of the​ genealogical account of the Lord in the book of Luke, which includes Adam;

-The account of the first 11 chapters of Genesis is only allegory;

-You accept that death came into the world many years before any Adam and Eve, contradicting Romans 5:12 and its explanation of how sin and death came into the world;

-You pick and choose what you want to believe, instead of accepting God’s historical account at face value;

-You choose to use your own intellect and human reasoning and philosophy to validate the Bible, instead of letting the Bible validate itself;

-You reject the inerrancy and reliability of Scripture as the sole and final written authority for our faith and practice, and instead accept that the Bible has errors and is written deceptively.

Those pastors who are promoting the godless theory of evolution must be confronted.   If not, they will continue deceiving countless Christians without opposition.  They will sow the seeds of doubt in their minds, and soon, the floodgates will open for some, who will start doubting other parts of Scripture.  These pastors are the “corrupt shepherds” that were so aptly described by Walter Martin.  Some of them are the open theists as well, who believe that God cannot know all of the future.  They have swallowed hook line and sinker the religion of man, but the fact that they have been fooled cannot excuse them, because now they are teaching others about their godless ideas.

If you believe in evolution, then perhaps it is of no concern to you that your pastor might also.  But if you reject this godless idea, then isn’t it only fair to know where your pastor stands on this?  Go ahead, ask him, and politely ask for a straight answer on this issue.  Is it because you know more than your pastor, that you can challenge him?  No.  He has his theology degrees, but you have something better.  You have the word of God, and that is all you need to confront him with.

Related articles:

http://townhall.com/columnists/stevedeace/2014/02/08/lingering-questions-for-bill-nye-the-science-guy-n1790133/page/2

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/prominent-nazarenes-reject-gods-word-and-promote-ungodly-evolution/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/what-they-believe/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/square-peg-nonsense-in-false-theology/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/responding-to-nazarenes-exploring-evolution/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/you-say-toe-may-toe-i-say-toe-mah-toe/

 

The Vacuousness of Arrogance

This coming Tuesday at 7 pm EST, you will have an opportunity to see a debate between Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and Ken Ham, president of Answers In Genesis.  The topic is evolution​, which is being promoted more and more by prominent leaders, pastors and theologians in the Church of the Nazarene, as well as other denominations.  Go to www.debatelive.org and register for the live streaming.  Invite some friends over, listen to this presentation of two diametrically opposing views, and decide for yourself.

The following article was written by my friend John Henderson and is related to that same topic.The Vacuousness of Arrogance

By John Henderson

“He knew not what to say, so he swore,” is supposed to have been stated by one of America’s founding fathers.  It goes to the point that human intelligence is painfully limited and incapable of going beyond its own limitations.  That is true of the genius and the moron, and most of us are somewhere in the middle of that.  Unfortunately, there is a tendency to puff up that lack with the hot air of pride.

I no longer debate irrationality (if I ever did) except to furnish information for those sincerely in search of truth.  When Mr. Obama recently closed his 2014 state of the union address by saying:  “The debate is over, climate change is real,” I felt no compulsion to respond with the specifics—actually lack of evidences—in that argument.  When atheistic evolutionists and phony creation evolutionists make their unfounded assertions because they reject the clear revelational truth of the Scriptures, I simply go back to the Bible and trust God that what He said is true.  It is not a blind trust, either.  I have seen God at work in the arenas of faith and have seen Him prove Himself over and over.

My reasoning is that I cannot debate a closed mind.  It is like digging a hole in a mud puddle.  Every shovelful removed is immediately filled with more mud.

Just the same, I think it important to address the system of logic that is used in most error, using evolutionism as an example.  Evolutionism claims that everything, especially “higher life” evolves from something before it—presumably something like a “lower order.”  Just how that order is decided is never explained.  If that reasoning is carried to its logical conclusion (and this is often presented as a creationist’s retort) there has to be a first cause.

If a first cause is identified (and evolutionists have yet to do that) they are still obligated by their own logic to explain how that first cause came to be.  After a while it becomes like trying to string popcorn while it is cooking and deciding which ones were to be first onto the string.

What evolutionists actually do is to haphazardly pick up at some assumed point and make assertions in both directions—all the while without observing or producing a shred of pure unadulterated evidence of change outside of adaptations that were pre-existing within a species.  All of their evidence is so thickly buttered with biased interpretations that it is like putting lipstick on a pig.

What I am saying is that they begin with an assumption and never give up on it regardless of the evidence or lack of evidence.  They willfully ignore the obvious for the fantasy.  The heavens declare God’s creative glory and they refuse to see it.  As someone has said, they cannot see the sun because the sun’s own brightness obscures it from natural view.

They cannot see it because the work of God is not understood by human intelligence.  We are limited to discovery only.  We are incapable of understanding and explaining origins.  It is not possible for our human intelligence to operate outside of our small boxes of discovering what already exists. We can only discover what already is. Forming or decrypting new things from nothing is not our privilege.  We only have what exists and that will explain God to us very well unless we decide we do not want to acknowledge God in our thoughts.  Then, we are no better off than trying to string together—in sequence—the exploded kernels in a pot of popcorn as it cooks.

There is one other area of intelligence that the natural mind cannot grasp.  It is in the spiritual realm.  It is possessed only by mankind (not animals) and can only be activated when the soul is in right relationship with Christ as Savior.  It is there that spiritual things are actually understood by the spiritual mind.  The carnal mind can never comprehend spiritual things because it is darkened by rebellion’s ignorance.  A blind man can stare his entire life at the mountains and valleys and never once see them.  He may declare they do not exist because he has never seen them.  It is not that they do not exist.  The man is blind and cannot see what is there before him.

Faith is the blind man’s taking the word of a friend that they exist.  There is a song we used to sing called “Beyond the Sunset.”  It is said to have been written by a blind man whose friend had described a sunset to him.  That man wrote about what can only be seen by those whose hearts are right with God.  The Christian can see way beyond the sunset into eternal realities and aside from the natural eye.

Truly, the pride of a man goes before his own fall.  He stumbles over the debris of his own failed logic especially when he must come face to face with the Creator—the real First Cause.  He pitifully stumbles through life thrashing indiscriminately about in the darkness as though he were all-wise, puffing hard to keep his own punctured ego inflated enough to give the appearance of substance until he exhausts all of his own unrenewable resources and finds himself as the nothing he always was, the nothing he made himself to be when he could have been all things in Christ.

After all of the smokescreen has dissipated, the evolutionists and anyone who believes and teaches error is left standing there still unable to offer anything as good as, let alone better than, the self-evident realities that God created all that exists and that all that exists was created by God.  His solutions fall far short of anything as reasonable and true as that: “The debate is over!  Creation by God is a fact!”  Truth is God’s alone!

“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.  For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;  And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:25-31).

If it is not possible for the natural mind to compete with the basest and most foolish things of nature (of which it is a part) so as to understand what they are teaching, I find it profoundly amazing that one could be so intoxicated with his own opinion and foolhardily overconfident as to assume he knows what God knows or even more so—or that anyone would believe his outrageous claims.  They become an affiliation of surreal dupes and clowns bent on self-destruction for the mere sake of self-destruction.

Dr. Gran’pa
(John Henderson)

Nazarenes Exploring Evolution: Spreading Evolution’s Lies, Rejecting God’s Word

“These men are dried-up springs, mere clouds driven by a storm. Gloomy darkness is reserved for them.”  2 Peter 2:17

Evolution is a farce.  It is unprovable.  It is at best a hypothesis, and not even rises to the level of a theory.  It is not based on the scientific method of provability.  And one of its most amazing assumptions, that some living things amazingly transitioned to a totally different living thing (such as fish to mammal), does not have one shred of evidence and has never been observed to have happened.

Yet, it seems Nazarenes Exploring Evolution are trying their best to turn the Nazarene denomination into one that first and foremost holds to the false and unfounded teachings of the religion of evolution, while grudgingly letting faithful Bible-believers hold on their “silly” notion that the Bible does mean what it says when God explains creation in the book of Genesis.

The latest indication of a corrupted mind comes from a recent article written by Mark Maddix, Professor of Practical Theology and Discipleship at Northwest Nazarene University.  In an article titled “Evolutionary Theory and Moral Development”, he gives further proof that the Nazarene universities are a breeding ground for false teaching, and are a “great” place to send your child if you wish to have his or her faith shattered by the time the graduate.  Northwest Nazarene is clearly near the top of the list of the worst, along with Point Loma and the Nazarene Theological Seminary, yet we cannot recommend a single Nazarene university today that is holding true to biblical principles, and that has not fallen for the emergent ideology and the “spiritual formation” programs which are corrupting our youth.

Dr. Maddix is also known for his promotion of contemplative spirituality (the true name of spiritual formation).  At General Assembly this year, he led a presentation which ended up promoting the usual forms of contemplative spirituality that has so infected practically all Christian universities today.  When I stood up to challenge him on his premise that Roman Catholics believe the same way we do, we could tell that he was not only steadfastly defending that position, but that he and his colleague were wrong on the side of history, claiming that the Bible came from the Roman Catholic Church.  These are the kinds of dangerous things being allowed by the General Superintendents and the board of directors at these schools.

In his article, Maddix says this:

 “Growing up in a Christian home, evolution was only referred with negative connotations. I was taught that evolution was an atheistic theory which undermined the authority of Scripture in general and specifically Genesis 1 and 2.”

So in his early years, he was taught the right thing.  Evolution is an atheistic theory, it has never been close to being proved and cannot be proved with any facts whatsoever.  So what made Dr. Maddix change his mind?  Was it compelling evidence from Holy Scripture?  Sadly, no.  His authority is not the Bible, as is evident now.

He goes on to say that when he went to a Christian university, that is where he changed his mind.  He was persuaded, not by God’s word, but by the words of a professor.  He believed the professor who said that “the author of Genesis, probably not Moses, (that created another anxiety) had no understanding of modern science and was writing to show God’s relationship with God’s creation.”   So then Maddix explains that “His explanation changed the course of my understanding of the creation-evolution debate and helped me understand Genesis 1 and 2 as theological not scientific.”

He then goes on to tell how he subsequently became confused by a young earth creationist’s explanation of our origins.  He then stayed confused until a biology professor “affirmed his belief in evolution by stating that Darwin’s theory was the best way to explain how God created the universe.”  He accepted the professor’s explanation that “”Believing in evolution does not reject Scripture, since Scripture was not written for such purposes.”  Dr. Maddix goes on the state that “My Christian liberal arts education provided me with a clearer understanding of a Wesleyan view of Scripture, particularly as it related to the creation accounts and a view of creation that could include evolution.”

Thus he bought into the lie, and thus that is where he is now.

You must read on through his entire article in order to appreciate the kind of thinking that is causing great harm to Christian students in our universities.   A other quote by Dr. Maddix:

“In my search for understanding how persons grow and develop morality, I first asked whether humans are born with the capacity to know what is right or wrong (nature), or is morality shaped primary by our environments (nurture).”

He is searching for answers, but he seems to not search in the right place.  His search for understanding can only fully be fully arrived at in the pages of the “great book” as John Wesley called it.  As he and others distort the history of John Wesley for their purposes, they forget that John Wesley believed entirely in the complete inspiration of Scripture, and that it has no error whatsoever.  And therein lies the problem.  They do NOT believe that the Bible is God’s word.  They pick and choose and decide for themselves what the Bible says, not what it really says.

Dr. Maddix concludes:

“Evolutionary ethics does not contradict a Biblical view of human persons Instead it provides a scientific explanation for how God created humans with the capacity to be moral, and through our environments, we grow and develop morally.”

How truly sad.  How pathetically sad.  Yet he will answer to God for the damage he is causing.  But Dr Maddix is not alone; he is but one example of the many members of Nazarenes Exploring Evolution who are causing great harm today.  One is a former professor of mine in Greek New Testament.  Another is Tom Oord, also from NNU, who also promotes such false teachings as process theology and open theism.  Another is Dr. Dan Boone, president of Trevecca Nazarene University, one of the most dangerous and influential men in the denomination today.  It is a long list of “learned men and women” who cannot seem to accept the plain taught facts of Scripture.

As I wrote in a previous article:

Believing in evolution means you must accept that, among other things:

-Adam and Eve were not real historical figures as described in Genesis;

-Jesus was not truthful when he talked about Adam and Eve in a historical context;

-You reject God’s account in Genesis that He created everything in six days;

-You reject the ​truthfulness of the​ genealogical account of the Lord in the book of Luke, which includes Adam;

-The account of the first 11 chapters of Genesis is only allegory;

-You accept that death came into the world many years before any Adam and Eve, contradicting Romans 5:12 and its explanation of how sin and death came into the world;

-You pick and choose what you want to believe, instead of accepting God’s historical account at face value;

-You choose to use your own intellect and human reasoning and philosophy to validate the Bible, instead of letting the Bible validate itself;

-You reject the inerrancy and reliability of Scripture as the sole and final written authority for our faith and practice, and instead accept that the Bible has errors and is written deceptively.

Quoting a friend who recently commented on Maddix’s article: “What was it someone said to Paul, “Great learning has driven you mad.”  This fellow, like many in our universities, has had Christianity educated out of them.  So sad.”

Well, we know that Paul certainly was not mad, as he was clearly preaching and teaching the truth.  He himself claimed that the words that came from him were “not man’s word, but God’s words.”  Dr. Maddix and his friends do not believe the Bible is God’s inerrant word, and until they accept God’s word for what it teaches, they will be lost like a ship in the storm.

Related Articles:

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/prominent-nazarenes-reject-gods-word-and-promote-ungodly-evolution/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/what-they-believe/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/square-peg-nonsense-in-false-theology/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/responding-to-nazarenes-exploring-evolution/

https://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/you-say-toe-may-toe-i-say-toe-mah-toe/