Creation Sermon Critique of Pastor Dave Gustavsen of The Chapel, Lincoln Park, New Jersey

This is Apologetics Live, to answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Good evening there. How's everyone doing? This is Dr. Anthony Silvestro, not Andrew Rappaport. I think we need to get a theme song that has my name in it and Pastor Justin's name in case we do these special shows live like we're doing tonight.

So the reason why we're doing this special show is because of a friend of the ministry, Brian Simmons, he goes to a large church, and the church is the chapel in Lincoln Park, New Jersey. And he was concerned, this has been his church for several years, as far as I know, it might be longer than that.

And his pastor, Dave Gustafson, has done some what seem to be concerning sermons lately. And they all have to, they really revolve around science and mask usage. And so he did a special sermon regarding science.

And that's what we wanna focus on today. There's actually a lot of issues with this sermon. And what we're hoping to do is to really, is to be able to bring this stuff out in the open as to some of the issues we see with pastors incorrectly teaching from the Bible.

Now, here's the thing, is, I don't know Pastor Dave. Brian has reached out to him. He has tried to put us in contact with one another by text message. I was happy to talk to his pastor, because look, there's a lot of pastors just don't know any better, right?

There's a lot of pastors don't understand creation. And so I said, well, Brian, before we jump into anything, why don't we try to spend a few, why don't you spend some time trying to reach out to him, seeing if your pastor is willing to either speak to me live in private, or if he wants to come on the show, he can come on the show instead.

And that is still, that option is still available for you, Pastor Dave. I know that some people from your church are gonna be listening and watching tonight. So I am happy for you to come on. We're not hostile in this show.

We are here just to ask questions. And look, this is about apologetics. This is about learning and understanding the Bible better. And we understand you're a pastor. I don't wish to be a pastor. You have a really, really difficult job.

I get it. If you're doing the job right, as I know my pastor does and others, you're spending 25, 30, 35 hours a week per sermon that you're putting together as you exposit through the scriptures, as you exposit through books of the Bible as time goes on.

There's a lot to it, not to mention all the other things you have to do in your church. Yet, yet we are still responsible for what we teach. And this is where the dangers come into play. Justin Peters and I had a conversation about this several years ago.

He actually said he believes that a lot of the nonsense in the church today has to do with the fact that the roles have been upheaved within the church. Men not taking the responsibility they're supposed to have as leaders and women then deciding, hey, well, free spot for me.

I'm going to take that power. I'm going to take that notoriety. And so Pastor, I'm sorry, Evangelist Justin Peters, when women have taken control within the church beyond what the Bible allows them to do, he says that's where a lot of problems occurred.

And I said, you know, Justin, I think you're right in a lot of ways, but I actually think it goes back further than that. I think it goes back to when they started to question the creation account in the Bible.

I think when the creation account started to get questioned, that opened Pandora's box through the rest of the Bible. And look, there's no doubt guys like John MacArthur, I think he gets it right. He says, tell me what somebody believes about the beginning of Genesis, and I'll tell you what they believe about the rest of the Bible.

Absolutely true. And Pastor Andrew Rappaport and I often joke back and forth as we are teaching a lot of conferences together. You know, I often make the quip that give me any doctrine in the Bible, give me anything, and I can show you how that it's rooted in Genesis.

If we get Genesis right, we should be able to get everything else right, at least the potential of getting us right. If we get Genesis wrong, forget about it. We're going to have trouble with everything else.

And so that's where we stand right now. And having said that, I'm going to bring my guest in, and this is Brian Simmons. So good evening, Brian, how are you doing tonight? Brian, I don't know, you must not be able to hear me.

Oh, there you are, okay. I'm doing well, can you hear me well? Yeah, just try to pull that microphone up by your face a little bit closer if you can. So Brian, I've just kind of given the introduction as you have heard in backstage.

This is your pastor. How long have you been going to this church? So Brian, how long have you been going to this church?

I actually started going there in November of 2014, I believe it was. So a while. And it was actually a sermon by Pastor Mike Bethune. Sorry, I'm hearing feedback in the way, I apologize.

Yeah, well, that's okay. So yeah, so you can do that right now as I'll continue. So what we've done is Brian so kindly went through the sermon that he was really concerned about. Now, I guess there's a lot of sermons he's been concerned about in recent times, but this one was really concerning.

So he asked if a couple of us at Striving for Eternity would listen to it. And I listened to it. If you say it's about creation, I'll probably listen. Big secret there. So I listened to it, I was concerned.

There's some things I think he says right. I think your pastor was genuine in delivering the sermon. He just flat out wrong in a number of areas. And so what you did, Brian, is you went through the sermon and you made a bunch of clips.

We have 17 clips that are between 35 seconds and about two minutes. We're actually gonna play those clips in full. And as we play each clip, I've already listened to these. I have notes down and we're gonna talk through them.

And most importantly, this is gonna be for the listeners to hear, both from our Striving for Eternity audience, as well as from anybody from your church that I know you said is gonna tune in to listen, because this is really, really important to get this right.

So having said all that, Brian, you said you've been going there since about 2014. Have you seen a steady decline in the sermons or? Yeah, somewhere along the way, there's a huge climb.

The last five or six, it was the last five or six sermons. There was a series. And sorry, I apologize for the delay. I'm literally, I can hear it. It's like six, eight seconds, so forgive me for that.

I'll continue. So the last six weeks or so really started touching upon some issues as I think they were intended to, important issues that are coming up in a lot of churches throughout the world, which are reasons why people are leaving the church.

But rather than it just being a topical issue, I quickly started seeing it becoming a very biblical issue. And I wanted to bring it to people who I trust to hear that second and third set of ears, because there's a lot of, I love the congregation at the chapel.

Everyone that knows me knows that. I've attended Bible study for five or six years. The men, some of my greatest friends that I've been able to develop in the body of Christ were at the chapel. But I also remembered that the church is a people, never a place.

In that process, I recognized that we really, there was something going on that if I didn't try to at least address it within the Bible studies, which I kept trying to do, but I kept getting shut down, you know, the people would listen, but I never saw anything change in certain areas, very important areas.

And obviously for me, creation was a very important one because that was where I got truly deceived in college. And as a freshman, I had, you know, I went to school, I thought fully believing in God and knowing even Jesus.

And I got devastated by a freshman roommate who told me all about this millions of years and billions of years in the creation, in his story. And I guess about six, seven weeks every single night that he brought this up to me, I came home one weekend and just completely broke down and told my father that my dad, my dad brought me up to believe in Jesus and was very faithful man who went to as a deacon for 55 years in his local church in Patterson called Westminster Presbyterian.

So in that process, I came home and I tell him, dad, I don't believe what you told me. The earth is millions of years old and I felt stupid. A kid made fun of me and he wouldn't stop and I had no answer to him.

Really, I said this to my dad and my dad was heartbroken. And that led to about a 17 year, so walk back towards God in disaster from that moment to there, even though success was in between the worldly success.

If I had been taught the apologetics and my father had been taught the apologetics to be able to defend the faith against an evolutionist, I would have had a really, I may have had one of those beautiful stories that like Nabil Quresh, the Muslim man, David Wood and your roommates, but I didn't have the training and I didn't have an answer to defend my faith and it was a fall down.

And I think a lot of, I'm seeing this happen in a lot of subjects is just, it needs to be well taught. So we have a defense and we're prepared in season and out of season. And that's why I brought it to your attention.

Yeah, no, that's great.

You know, and obviously this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart being creation, but there's a bigger reason. And I've shared this in the past in not too much detail, but my wife and I used to go to a church that was a very large church, a loving pastor.

And within, I got saved there actually. And within a couple of years, I was listening to John MacArthur and Votie Bauckham and others. And I'm like, you know, I'm listening to these guys. It's, what they're telling me is when I'm reading my own Bible, but it's not matching up with what I'm hearing from the pulpit.

And that started me down an interesting track as well. I started studying creation through God's providence by going to the creation museum unexpectedly and learning creation, bringing it back to the church and actually started teaching on creation.

And it creates a whole kind of ruckus within our, what I found out to be an emerging church. So right down the line of Rick Warren's type stuff is what our church was going down. And I remember before we left the church, two years of me trying to convince my wife that her church of, you know, the last 12 years is there's problems there.

And I'm waiting for her to be ready to leave the church. I'm still teaching in the meantime, but coming under a lot of flack from several pastors who didn't want me to teach dogmatically about creation.

One thing I mentioned to several of the pastors who said they believed in the young earth creation, but didn't want to press the issue. This church is huge. It was like 18 pastors there. I said, you know, what happens is, is this is going to be a gateway to a lot of other bad stuff coming to the church.

And sure enough, we've been gone out of this church for over seven years now. And in contemplative prayer was brought in. Eastern, some types of Eastern mystic practices like contemplative prayer and others were brought into the church.

We saw a downgrade in the type of preaching style that was, that the pastor was doing. More jokes or storytelling, less Bible. You know, these, the same trail that, that a lot of people saw in their own churches as they went emergent is what we saw.

And guess where it started from, in my opinion anyway, was this issue of creation. Now, granted that issue was there much earlier, right? It got exposed in part due to me teaching classes, Sunday school classes, and it causing a little bit of a ruckus.

And then the pastor decided that the third and final time I taught this 12 week course, decided he was going to teach through Genesis on Sunday mornings as I was teaching, as I was teaching through Genesis on Sunday mornings in Sunday school.

And the pastor and I didn't match up and people knew that. And I had tons of people coming up to me saying, I don't understand why is pastor so-and-so saying this stuff when the Bible says this and you're teaching this, can't you go talk to him?

And all I can say is I've spent the last two years trying. It's all I could say, right? And so my heart is out to you on this because this is exactly what I'm seeing with your pastor now is when this gateway is let open, it's going to be the floodgate for all kinds of other stuff to creep into the church.

So having said all that, Brian, we are going to start with going through these clips that you so graciously took your time to put together. And here is going to be clip number one. Valentine's, I don't know what got into me this.

You know what, let me, it's gotta be shared instead.

Well, good morning, chapel family. Good morning. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. I don't usually do this, but I dressed for the occasion. Did you notice even my mask is Valentine's? I don't know what got into me this morning.

In my 25 years at the chapel, I don't think I can remember a series that has created this much discussion and emotion and debate, and I think that's a good thing. These are people that we love and that we care about, many of whom are walking away from church.

And if we really care about them, we'll take the time to listen to their concerns and their thoughts. So this series has been an attempt to do that, a very imperfect attempt, but that's better than no attempt at all.

We are offering a question and response session. Question and answer sounds a little too smug, like we've got all the answers, but we can promise you at least responses. You can submit questions in advance by just emailing questions at thechapel .org.

I've asked a group of other chapel leaders to join me, and we're gonna interact more and talk about these important matters.

Okay, so Brian, that is the first video, and there's a couple of things I wanna address. First and foremost, this is his intro, right? And he leads off in this sermon saying that people are walking away from church.

Now, one thing I wanna make sure our audience understands, and I think most of our audience understands this, is that people don't walk away in terms of losing their salvation, right? We read in the Bible that when you are saved, you're adopted into sonship of the Father, made co-heirs with Christ.

No one's gonna snatch you out of our Father's hand. We are sealed, right? Ephesians 1, that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, or we're sealed by that Spirit, who's the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

We see throughout scriptures that we are sealed when we are truly saved. When we see somebody who's in the church, who's going to church, going through the motions, going to Sunday school class, going to Bible studies, and then this person walks away from the church, they didn't lose their salvation.

In fact, 1 John 2 addresses this, starting in verse 18. Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour.

They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might be complained that they are all not of us. So as we see here, John in 1 John 2 addresses this issue that people who leave the church leave because of the fact that they weren't saved to begin with.

That's an issue first and foremost. Here's the second one, and actually, I'm gonna put this up here from Chris Hudson. Love you, Chris. Hope to preach with you again someday. Yeah, you moved out to Oklahoma from the Dakotas.

But he writes this here. In that first clip, in regards to the pastor saying responses rather than answers, it seems like something a seeker-sensitive person would say. Well, that would exactly be my issue.

And so, Chris, I actually have that down as point number two for this video. My second and last point for this first segment is he wanted to make a distinction between questions and answers, which sounds too smug to him.

Instead, we want questions and responses. Well, let me be really, really clear with everybody here. The Bible has answers. The Bible doesn't have responses. The Bible has answers for us. We, as apologists, when we go out and answer questions on the streets, where we're going witnessing for Christ, we are giving people answers.

We are not just giving them responses, right? Answers implies that we are giving them something that is correct, not that we're just giving them my opinion. Subtle, but a major problem. And I think everyone here listening is going to see how this unfolds through the rest of these videos here.

So having said that, we are now going to jump into the second video here and start to get into this a little bit more.

A pastor named Dan Kimball recently spoke at a youth event, and he talked at this event about receiving a letter from one of his former youth group kids who had now become an atheist. And in the letter, this former student of his said, when I realized that my youth pastor and my parents really didn't know what they were talking about, being armchair theologians and scientists, I started to doubt and could no longer trust what religion has taught me.

He speaks for a lot of other young adults and some older ones as well. So this is an important issue. So we need to talk about it today.

Okay, so first and foremost, do youth group kids become atheists because youth pastors and parents couldn't answer their questions? No, that does not happen. What happens is, is that we're all born into the family of Adam.

We are all born with a sin nature. We are all born doing sins. We are all committing sins. We are all born under the wrath of God in terms of that we are storing up wrath or God is storing up wrath on our behalf because of our sins against him.

That is what's going on in every single person alive today is that we are in our sins, God is storing up wrath. Now, so kids don't become atheists. Kids are already atheists and they may be brought up to believe in God.

They might be brought up going to church, but ultimately, they never had that heart transformation, the heart of stone being removed and replaced the heart of flesh. And so what we're seeing here so far in this video is that the pastor's laying out a case or attempting to lay out a case regarding the idea of people leaving the church, video clip number one, and clip number two is that there are atheists who are literally created by the church because of youth pastors and parents being ignorant of science.

I think that's what we're getting out of this so far. So, okay, let's push on ahead here and let's go on to number three. And this is where things are going to start to get a little bit more interesting.

Let's begin with today's scripture reading, Psalm 19, beginning in verse one. I invite you to hear the word of the Lord. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words. No sound is heard from them, yet their voice goes out into all the earth. Their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other.

Nothing is deprived of its warmth. The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. This is the word of the Lord. So today I wanna talk about three things. I wanna talk about the gift of science, I wanna talk about the rejection of science, and I wanna talk about the limits of science.

Okay, the gift, the rejection, and the limits of science.

Okay, so Brian, as we're sifting through these videos now, now we're starting, he's starting to get into some of his talk about science. He lays out three issues that he sees in regards to science that he's going to lay out in his sermon, because we're still in the introduction here.

There's some things that should really, really concern some people right now. When we read Psalms, and we're gonna talk about this a little bit more later, you know, Psalms is poetry. There's gonna be poetic language here.

So is this, are the, so day-to-day pours out speech, verse two, are the days actually pouring out speech speaking to us? No, this is poetic, this is figurative type language. Heavens declare the glory of God.

Same thing, are the heavens declaring this, speaking to us audibly? No, that's not what's going on here. And so what do we see? And this is gonna get really important here, because the pastor is going to elevate science in a way that is dangerous and really downright blasphemous.

And one thing I wanna lay out about science as well, for those of you who have read my book on the origin of kinds, we walk through this understanding of science. For those of you who've seen my stuff on social justice movement and where it started from, there is similar, there's a similar background to that too.

That background goes back to the enlightenment age, enlightenment period of the 1700s, 18th century, where what has always been thought of to be the age of God, right? Where people had God first as their source of everything was starting to get questioned for several hundred years.

And then the enlightenment period, you had this new birth of all these philosophers. And now we have the age termed the age of enlightenment. And this period of time was now no longer the age of God, it was now the age of reason.

It was gonna be to use science and observations of the natural world to try to not compliment God, but to explain away God. Make no mistake about it, that was the issue of it, to explain away God. And so we get to guys like Karl Marx, who I have his book, one of many books that people have written about him, is Karl Marx a Satanist or was Karl Marx a Satanist?

Yes, he was. He was raised in a pseudo-Christian home. But Karl Marx, if you go back to his writings, he was all about writing God off. He was about doing everything he can to remove God from everything in life.

That was his main goal. It wasn't a side idea, side issue, it was his main goal was to do that. We also have to understand something else then. Darwin, he wrote his book on the origin of species within just a few years of the time that Karl Marx came out.

All these guys were popping up in the mid -1800s, having all kinds of writings based off of the philosophical writings of the 1700s Enlightenment age. So what did Charles Darwin do? He did the same thing.

He was raised in a pseudo-Christian home and wanted to do the best job he could to explain away God using nature, using naturalistic processes. Make no mistake about it, folks listening, brothers and sisters listening and others, when you understand the origins of most science, that origin is not of God, it is against God.

It is not neutral to God, it is against God. That's the issue of science today. So we have to be really, really careful as we talk about science. So Psalm 19 is not about the heavens declaring God's glory.

Let me tell you what Psalm 19 is about, at least these first six verses. It's that when people look up at the sky, they know God exists. When people look up to the heavens, the night sky, the stars, everything else, they know God exists.

When people see that sun traversing what looks to be traversing across the sky, it's really the Earth's rotation. Of course, this is poetic language here, right? When we see that sun, this is God, in a sense, declaring himself, right?

This is the fact that we all know God exists. This is exactly what we read in Romans 1, which we'll get into a little bit later. Romans 1, verses 18 to 20. Everybody knows the true God that exists by his creation in the things that have been made, so much so that they're without excuse.

And just in case you're not sure if that applies to everyone, the very next verse says, for although they knew God, right? So Paul writing here, of course, writing God's words as carried along by the Holy Spirit to Paul, he's acknowledging the fact everybody knows God exists.

The ones who don't profess him suppress the truth about him and their sin. And then God goes on, I'm sorry, Paul, God through Paul, and the rest of Romans 1 goes on to say, for although they knew God, they didn't honor him as God, and then it goes on and on and on, and I think most of us know the rest of the story of what happens in Romans 1.

When people turn away from God, where do they turn? They start worshiping the creature. They start worshiping the creation. When they don't worship the one true God they're supposed to worship, they end up worshiping anything else.

So we have to understand science in the correct light when it comes to secular science that's out there. There's good science, but that's not what we're gonna be talking about today. As we're gonna be seeing here in a little bit.

So also in this psalm, so that was the first six verses. The last couple of verses that he read here, verses seven and eight, says the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. So this is talking about what God's word is for us. And as we understand from Romans two, we know morality is written on our hearts.

We know God has made himself known through creation to every single person. And that God's word helps give explanation for all of that. I mean, this is part of what we're seeing here. Granted, I'm giving a very, very high overview on this.

But so the pastor looks at Psalm 19 and this is gonna be his launching point for the sermon. He said there's three things that we can see today. He says that we see the gift of science or we have the gift of science.

He says, number two, there's a rejection of science. And number three, there's limits of science. Now, we have to define terms here. What is science? This is a big problem. And we're going to see again how that plays itself out through the rest of these videos.

The word science and of course, Chris is on top of this as he normally is. If I had to take a guess, will a pastor use the equivocation fallacy when using science and evolution? Yes, yes, he will. Just like so many of them do.

For those of you who don't know what equivocation is, it's where you take a word and you change the meaning on it. And so the example that I will often use is when I talk about scientists talking about evolution.

So scientists will say, well, some scientists will say, well, evolution happened. What they're meaning is macroevolution has happened. Kinds turning into other kinds. Dogs turning into cats. Let's give a real example.

You go to the zoo and they think that the modern day birds and chickens are from Tyrannosaurus rex 65 million years ago. So what they're doing is they're taking their beliefs about macroevolution and then they're looking at speciation, which is a type of microevolution.

And they're saying, look, here's evidence for evolution. What did they do? They just equivocated on the term. They changed the definition. They're saying, here's evidence for macroevolution, but I'm going to give you microevolution evidence instead.

It's a huge, huge trick that scientists and a lot of professing Christians want to do. And as we see this here, I'm going to put this up real quick. Is that, here we go. Science is whatever government wants it to be.

Unfortunately, that is the exact moral of this entire sermon today is that. So now we go on to video number four.

So first the gift of science. For many centuries, Christian theologians have talked about God communicating truth to us through two books. The first is the book of scripture and the second is the book of nature.

Probably the biblical passage that brings those two together most clearly is the passage we just read from the 19th Psalm. So in the first six verses, it says basically this. When we see a brilliant night sky or when we see a spectacular sunrise or when we see, like a lot of us saw last week, ice covered branches against a backdrop of a pink and tangerine sky as the sun is setting.

When we see things like that, it does something to us. It speaks to us. It tells us there must be a creator and that creator must be awesome.

Okay, good. So Brian, I don't know if the lag is gone yet. You'll have to let me know when you kind of figure that out because I'd love to have you on speaking a little bit more. And I can tell by your facial expression right now, you're still way behind.

So here's video number four. He says the gift of science. Is science a gift? Absolutely. When we understand science correctly and use it correctly, it absolutely is a gift from God. Now here's where things get a little bit hairy is he made a distinction, the pastor made a distinction between the first six verses of this Psalm and Psalm 19 and the next two verses of Psalm 19.

I don't know if you guys caught that. He said, God communicated through two books to us. He communicated through the book of scripture and he communicates through the book of nature. That's a problem.

So he talks about the fact that on one hand, we have scripture that we have as a source of truth. On the other hand, we have nature that is a source of truth. Now here's a problem and in audience, I mean, feel free to make comments on this, but can we possibly have nature as a source of truth or instead does nature, do we peer into nature that reveals truths to us?

Do we look at nature that ultimately should point us back to the truth of God? Okay, well, he says that in Romans one, but that's not exactly what this pastor says. And so as we continue on to the next one here, I think it's going to, on the next video, I think it's going to make this a little bit more apparent.

So this will be video number five.

Nature speaks to us without using words. This is what the philosopher Alvin Plantinga calls the sensus divinitatus, which means sense of the divine. Just by looking at nature, we learn truth, maybe not specific details about God, but important truth.

And then it kind of shifts in verse seven and it starts talking about the written word of God. It's kind of, it almost seems surprising that it would shift from nature to the word of God, but it talks about the statutes and the precepts and the commands of God.

So by reading scripture, we understand truth about God, we understand truth about the world. And so you have God's world and God's word. You have nature and scripture. Those are the two books that God has given us to reveal truth about reality.

Since they're both from God, there's obviously no conflict between nature and scripture, right? I mean, they're both truth.

Ouch. So all of a sudden nature is truth. Does that sound scriptural at all? That nature is truth. And by the way, I think I said it flip-flopped earlier. So I want to make sure I'm corrected on this, is that the first six verses, he was talking about the book of science and a book of nature.

And the second, the next two verses was the book of scripture. But so in any case, he clarifies a little bit more here what he's talking about. He says, nature speaks to us. Just by looking at nature, we learn truth.

Wow, this is pretty, pretty dangerous. And Chris, thanks for being on the ball. I know you're a creation guy as well. Since the pastor made the comments about book of nature and scripture being truth, it comes across as a denial of sola scriptura.