From John Boyd of USAFA, who gave permission for his full name to be used. This letter accuses us of ‘hostility’ which is just code for exposing unbiblical errors of various compromisers. In this case, Mr Boyd is enamored by the Kabbalistic fantasies of the Judaic physicist Gerald Schroeder. His letter is printed first in its entirety. A response by Dr Jonathan Sarfati, of Creation Ministries International (Australia), immediately follows his letter (indented black text) with point-by-point responses interspersed as per normal email fashion. We hope this demonstrates to Mr Boyd and our readers the baneful effects on the Gospel of any denial of the plain meaning of Scripture.

To whom it may concern,

This is a complaint, and I wouldn’t give it if I weren’t completely convinced that you have something wrong here on your site.

I have sat back and read critiques on sites like this of Hugh Ross and Gerald Schroeder that are openly hostile, even when they are trying to show how the Bible is right.“All I can ask is what is more important to you people, the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the ideology that the earth is young?

Can I be a reputable scientist and still fit your description of a Christian?

Schroeder, I don’t know if he is saved or not, made the biggest stride toward biblical literalism coupled with scientific discovery I have ever read. I read his book The Science of God and I see Genesis as more credible than ever before. Instead you people read his book and shout heresy all over your site.

Again all I can ask is this, if you convinced every Christian that the earth was young, but also convinced every scientist that every Christian was an idiot, would you be happy.

Thanks for your time
John Boyd
USAFA

To whom it may concern.

This is a complaint, and I wouldn’t give it if I weren’t completely convinced that you have something wrong here on your site.

I have sat back and read critiques on sites like this of Hugh Ross and Gerald Schroeder that are openly hostile, even when they are trying to show how the Bible is right.

How is it openly hostile, except in the sense that it shows up error? Can you demonstrate a single error in what we wrote? The articles are in Q&A — Genesis: Progressive Creationism.

All I can ask is what is more important to you people, the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the ideology that the earth is young?

If you had read the first clause of our Statement of Faith, you wouldn’t have needed to ask this question:

I. Priorities
A. The scientific aspects of Creation are important, but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge.

Can I be a reputable scientist and still fit your description of a Christian?

Of course — there are plenty of reputable scientists who do already, as can easily be seen in our Creationist Scientist Biographies page. Or perhaps you meant to ask ‘Can I be a long-ager or even a thorough-going evolutionist in my science and also be a Christian?’ We have answered such questions on our website — see:

• Is it Possible to be a Christian and an Evolutionist? A leading creationist answers an often-asked question

• The big picture: Being wrong about the six days of creation does not automatically mean someone is not a Christian. But if you think that makes it unimportant, stand back and look at the big picture

• Do I have to believe in a literal creation to be a Christian?

Schroeder, I don’t know if he is saved or not, made the biggest stride toward biblical literalism coupled with scientific discovery I have ever read.

I fail to see how he can be saved, because the creationist physicist Dr Russell Humphreys (whose book Starlight and Time is much more biblical and scientific), asked Dr Schroeder:

‘Is Jesus the Messiah, and is He your personal savior?’

Schroeder replied:

‘I teach with Christians, Moslems and Jews. Genesis is the heritage of Christians Moslems and Jews. Therefore, rather than risking alienating any part of that group of searching human beings, I keep my beliefs to myself.’

Jesus clearly stated: ‘But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 10:33), and ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (John 14:6), and the Apostle Peter said: ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:12). So how could Schroeder be saved? His love affair with the 13^th century anti-Christian Kabbalist Nahmanides and his outlandish eisegesis is also cause for concern.

I read his book The Science of God and I see Genesis as more credible than ever before. Instead you people read his book and shout heresy all over your site.

Readers can judge for themselves whether our two-part article “Gerald Schroeder and his new variation on the ’Day-Age’ theory” (see Part 1 and Part 2) is “shouting heresy” or calmly pointing out the gross misuse of Hebrew.

Again all I can ask is this, if you convinced every Christian that the earth was young, but also convinced every scientist that every Christian was an idiot, would you be happy?

To do that, we would have to convince all the Christian young-earth creationist scientists that every Christian is an idiot, which is a little hard to imagine ;) If you mean, would we be happy if we convinced all Christians to believe that the Earth is young, even at the cost of all secular scientists thinking that all Christians were idiots because they actually believed their own book, the Bible? Yes, we’d be euphoric. It’s far more important to take God at His word than to worry about what unbelievers will think — Jesus said ‘Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man’ (Luke 6:22). He also warned four verses on: ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.’ However, it would be better still if the unbelieving scientists came under conviction and repented of their unbelief! In this regard, we know from experience that consistently standing up for God’s word has a greater impact on the world, including scientists, than compromise. This is true of many of the staff scientists of Creation Ministries International, as well as for the author of the this testimony.

Perhaps you would like to answer Some questions for theistic evolutionists (and progressive creationists)

Thanks for your time

You’re welcome. We pray that you will seriously consider the implications for the Gospel of the sorts of views espoused by Schroeder and the like and then work with us to defend the Bible ‘from the very first verse’.

John Boyd
USAFA

(Dr) Jonathan Sarfati
Research scientist, author and editorial consultant
CMI (Australia)

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