July 24, 2015 ISI Radio Show with John Otis on “Theistic Evolution: A Sinful Compromise”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 24th day of July 2015.

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And before I introduce my guest, who is a dear friend of mine, Reverend John Otis, and before I get into the topic we are discussing today, primarily his book,

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Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise, I wanted to do some damage control for my interview yesterday with conservative

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Roman Catholic apologist Robert St. Genes, where the theme was a conservative

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Catholic reflects upon Rome's most liberal pope. I did get some negative feedback from fellow conservative evangelical

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Christians and reformed folk that, just a few so far, maybe

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I'll be getting more later, I don't know. The people who perhaps misunderstood why

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I was doing the program, they said that they objected to letting

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Mr. St. Genes speak too freely, especially during one point where he was discussing the

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Marian apparitions at Fatima, and they were discouraged that I did not interrupt him more, correct him, or refute or oppose the statements that he made like that more often.

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I did not just let Mr. St. Genes speak freely without any objection, I can assure you that.

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But first and foremost, let me say that this program, Iron Sharpens Iron, is a talk show.

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It is not a worship service, it is not a sermon, and the categories, the topics, the guests that I have on this program, although for the most part, the vast majority are people that I agree with on the main focus of their theological beliefs,

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I do very frequently have differences of opinion with guests.

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In fact, I believe that probably every single guest I've ever had on or ever will have on,

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I'll have some disagreement with. Today, my guest is a good friend of mine, Dr. or Reverend John Otis, and he and I disagree on the subjects and modes of baptism.

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He is a theonomist, I am not a theonomist. I am a Baptist, he is a

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Presbyterian, we disagree on church government. And I could say that about many other guests, even those that are conservative evangelicals, and even those that are thoroughly

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Calvinistic like I am. On occasion, I do have somebody who is not even a Christian, or someone who

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I believe has serious error in the theological thinking, and that was a situation that I had yesterday with Mr.

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St. Genes. I believe that it was a very unusual occurrence to have an outspoken critic of Pope Francis from a

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Roman Catholic perspective over his liberalism and his clearly anti -Christian or un -Christian statements and beliefs that he has made public.

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And I just thought this was a unique opportunity to have someone on the program who had the courage to publicly do and say things in criticism of the

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Pope of Rome, even though he is a Catholic, that many other conservative

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Roman Catholic apologists do not do because of whatever reasons they may have.

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I know that some of it has to do with the loss of employment, that's clear. In fact, Mr. St.

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Genes publicly stated yesterday that he was fired from EWTN, the very well -known

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Roman Catholic television network EWTN, internal word television network, it's fully named.

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He was fired from them a number of years ago for being critical of Pope John Paul II.

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So I thought this was a unique platform. And the other thing that I was fully aware of during the program was that many of the beliefs and doctrines and practices of the

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Church of Rome are so fantastical to me that I don't view them as threatening or something that I should be fearful of exposing by letting people speak for themselves and letting their own words, if you will, bring question into their theological background.

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And the brief discussion on Fatima, which was not the topic of the program, to me, it didn't even really need much interruption.

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But I made it clear throughout the program from beginning to end and at the return of every station break that I was not an ecumenist, that I believe that the

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Church of Rome has another gospel than I embrace. And in fact,

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I repeated that the Council of Trent has declared as dogma that I and every other evangelical are to be accursed or anathematized because of our unique beliefs regarding the gospel and the scriptures and so on.

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So this is a radio program.

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I often conduct it as if I'm having a scholarly discussion with pastors, theologians, apologists, and authors around a coffee table in a living room.

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And if I have a Roman Catholic or a Muslim or a

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Jewish person in my home, I am going to sometimes have casual conversation that involves humor, that may involve lightheartedness.

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And some of the concerns were that the humor and lightheartedness and the laughter that they heard from me on occasion during yesterday's interview was making the seriousness of the doctrinal errors and differences that we have with Mr.

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St. Genes in the Church of Rome, that I was lessening the significance, making it less severe, and making it too lighthearted, and that this was inappropriate of me.

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Now, that could be true. I know that I am personally offended when

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I hear a pastor using his pulpit as a comedy show. I am very disturbed by the growing softness of evangelicalism that has been taking place for many decades with regard to the

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Church of Rome and the modern ecumenism that is rampant, and even statements by conservative

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Reformed Christians that have gotten me upset in regard to the softness with which they treat

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Rome and even the favorable way that papal encyclicals have been quoted and written about.

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So I understand and I appreciate the caution that people have in regard to how they communicate with Roman Catholics and others who do not hold to a biblical gospel, but this is a talk show, as I said, and I guess the issue is, which may be a debatable one, if I'm going to have a conversation in my living room around a coffee table about theology with someone who opposes the gospel, and there is some lightheartedness involved in an event like that, should that be made public consumption?

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And I guess there may be valid arguments that it should not be, that I should not ever have a lighthearted discussion or a friendly discussion with somebody who opposes the gospel.

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I'm not certain that is correct, and I know that there's going to be definitely differences of opinion on that, and I am truly sorry if anybody was misled by anything that I said or did not say, especially yesterday, and that was clearly not my intention.

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And I hope that as I do intend to have future broadcasts that examine and scrutinize that interview,

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I hope you will clearly see that my intention was never to blur the lines of differences between Rome and biblical

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Christianity, nor to lessen the severity of their doctrinal heresies.

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And I could say much more, but I do not want to rob my guest of the time, and I'm sure that I will continue to learn,

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God willing, God be merciful and gracious to me. I will keep learning from mistakes and failures on this program, but thus far

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I really have not been convinced that the program yesterday was in error, other than the obvious fact that it wasn't flawless.

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No program I do is ever flawless or perfect, but I don't believe that the clear intention or content that was conveyed was dangerous or of no value.

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And with that said, let me move on with my guest today. I'd like to introduce a friend of mine that I've known for quite a number of years, and I've interviewed on several occasions on the old

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Iron Sharpens Iron, John Otis. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister, and he is the founder and director of Triumphant Publications, and he is the author of the book we are discussing today,

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Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise, and it comes with the powerful endorsement of G .I.

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Williamson, who is no stranger to Reformed Christians, especially

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Presbyterian Christians, who has stated in writing that this book, Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise, is the best thing that he has ever read thus far on this topic, the best statement against Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise, in writing, according to G .I.

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Williamson. And with that kind of an endorsement, I think it is well worth our attention, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, John Otis.

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It's great to be with you, Chris, as always. I appreciate that, and I know that you and I both are aware of the fine line that we have to walk upon when making any kind of public statements and conducting anything in the media where you don't want to appear to be too soft or too hard, too friendly, or on the other hand, too severe or righteously indignant.

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And let's start with the reason that you wrote this book, Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise.

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Well, Chris, do you think I've ever written any book that was controversial? Virtually every book that I've done probably has been controversial against those to whom

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I'm writing. Chris, the reason I wrote this book, Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise, is because basically

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I'm dealing with those within my own denomination.

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Well, not my own denomination, because my own denomination, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the

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United States, would believe everything I'm saying in the book. But in Reformed circles, there are some, in other

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Presbyterian denominations, there are some, in my opinion, some distressing signs of compromising on the

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Genesis record, capitulating with the ungodly view of evolutionary thought,

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Darwinism. And so, basically, I wrote the book calling out some men who are, some of them are quite well -known in Presbyterian circles, but whose writings and actions,

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I think, have done a great disservice to the cause of the Gospel.

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And that's why I wrote the book. Well, why don't we start from there with the obvious, a definition of Theistic Evolution?

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Well, Theistic Evolution, theistic meaning God, what some have come to believe is that, at least among Christian believers, some of them are postulating the idea that God has used the process of evolution to bring about life forms as we know it.

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And they have reinterpreted the book of Genesis, taking away a lot of its literalness, believing that it's more poetry, and therefore the notion that God created from nothing everything that exists in the space of six days, ordinary days, they just cannot imagine that being true only because of the impact of Darwinism.

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So, Theistic Evolution is a position that some Christians are taking, that God has used the process of evolution to bring about life forms as we know it on planet

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Earth. And how long has Theistic Evolution been in existence? I, before coming to Christ, was a

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Roman Catholic. I was raised in Roman Catholicism, hence one of the reasons, one of my main concerns is

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Roman Catholicism, which is actually why I conducted yesterday's interview. When I went to Catholic school for eight years, evolution was taught as a fact in our science class.

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So, I know that Theistic Evolution has been around at least since the 60s, but I know that in reality, from doing reading after becoming a

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Christian, that it has actually had its genesis probably in the 19th century or possibly prior.

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When would that be? Well, fundamentally, we would say the onset of Theistic Evolution, I think, gained momentum after Charles Darwin wrote his book,

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Origin of Species, in 1859. And ever since then, from the 19th, the latter part of the 19th century into the 20th and 21st century, among certain philosophers and among liberal churches, it began to gain ground.

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And the only reason is because, as you said, we were taught in school.

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I grew up not in a Christian home, distinctly a Christian home, went to a public school.

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Actually, before my conversion to Christ, when I was a freshman in college, I was an agnostic and I was an evolutionist.

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But one of the things that the Lord illumined me to, since I was committed to the

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Scriptures, is that you cannot wed those two views, the Scripture with evolutionary thought.

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So really, from the mid -19th century on, Theistic Evolution has gained ground.

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Now, I understand that even some men of history that you and I would uphold as heroes of the faith in some level, like B .B.

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Warfield, the Princeton giant of the 19th century,

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I've heard that he had at least some soft attitude toward it. I've also heard on the other extreme that he was an ardent defender of it.

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Do you know the truth behind B .B. Warfield's view of Theistic Evolution? Well, I haven't read a thorough account from B .B.

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Warfield. I will say this, that this book grew out of a lecture series that I gave in Arizona about three years ago on this topic because within the

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Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA, there was some concern, a growing view of people wanting to distance themselves from a

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New Earth view to adopt an Old Age view, also in terms of what the

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Scripture would say in this regard. Now, B .B. Warfield, when I gave that lecture, the pastor of the church there, he was quite adamant that Warfield was not the big supporter of Theistic Evolution as some have touted.

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Some of the things I've read on Warfield, I do think that he vacillated on some points, but this pastor wrote a lengthy article defending the fact that he did not believe

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Warfield was a Theistic Evolutionist as we would believe today. I know that Fred Zaspel, who wrote a biography of B .B.

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Warfield, said during an interview I conducted years ago on Iron, Sharp, and Zion, the old

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Iron, Sharp, and Zion, that the statements or accusations of his support of Theistic Evolution were grossly exaggerated at the very least.

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Well, that was the contention of this pastor as well, and I did a little bit of research on Warfield's view, and there are some elements to it to which

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I believe why some people may think that Warfield may have capitulated at some point.

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And we need to understand as well, Warfield, at that time, evolutionary thought was gaining great momentum, and there wasn't a whole lot out there, a lot of organizations, there wasn't

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Answers in Genesis, which in large part I think does a very good job of dismantling evolutionary thought.

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You didn't have those organizations. You didn't have a lot of books out. Well, let's start with an overview of the scriptural account of creation.

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Obviously, since this is only a two -hour program, and we're not even going to be dedicating a full two hours to this subject, as I do want to later address with you my interview next week with Hannah Overton, a friend of yours who was recently released from prison, where all charges against her were dropped, false charges that wrongly convicted her of originally a life sentence in prison for the accidental death of her foster child.

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And I hope that those of you listening stay tuned for that portion of the program, which will be a precursor to my interview with Hannah herself on Monday.

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But if you could give us a brief overview of what you would consider to be a faithful and scriptural view of creation.

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Well, we go, Chris, to Genesis chapter 1, and we see there in an account where it says

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God, in his creation of this world, with each creative activity, it ends, for example, verse 7, it says,

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God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and was so.

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And God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening, and there was morning, a second day.

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And then through all the six days of God's creative activity, the very important phrase that defines it and gives it literalness and gives it historicalness and not poetic is that qualification where it says, and it was evening, and it was morning, a second, third, a first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day.

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And so Hebrews talks about living three, oh God created out of nothing, everything that is.

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And if you do, and there's a lot of debate, you see, a lot of the debate arises over the meaning of that word day.

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And some want to go and say, well, day can mean a very long period of time.

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Now here's the thing, in 2 Peter 3, what they're usually referring to, and I'll quote 2

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Peter 3, where God is talking about near the end of the world as he brings everything to a culmination.

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He's talking about the end will not come until all of his redemptive purposes are accomplished.

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And it says there are some that have questioned whether Jesus is going to come back.

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There's 2 everything continues as it was in the beginning. And since Jesus hasn't come back yet for 2000 years, he's never coming back.

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And the Lord says there in 2 Peter 3, a day is with the

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Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. Now in that context, it is used figuratively.

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One of the most important things in this whole debate,

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Chris, it boils down to hermeneutics, one's understanding of the principles of Bible interpretation.

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It boils down to essentially theistic evolution denies the reformation principle of sola scriptura, only the scripture.

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And so when we're looking at the meaning of day in the

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Old Testament, words mean, I've always mentioned this to my congregations in the past to the point they knew exactly where I was headed.

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I said, words mean what they mean in their context. So you have to look at the context to see how a word is used.

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Sometimes words change in their meaning. The word world has 4 different meanings depending on its context.

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Now day, if you look at the Hebrew word yom, y -o -m, if you look at that, virtually every instance in the

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Old Testament is referring to an ordinary day. And the passage in Exodus 20 talking about the

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Sabbath day, that is a key verse in terms of allowing scripture to interpret scripture.

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Now in most of the reformed world, the confession, the Westminster confession of faith is one of the constitutional standards of many reformed bodies.

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And in that Westminster confession of faith, it talks about there in chapter 1 on scripture, that the best interpreter of scripture is scripture.

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And that is so important. It's not science, it's not any other entity, it is scripture itself.

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So if we were to turn, I'm turning to Exodus 20 right now, and the legislation of the

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Ten Commandments, and if you were to look at, let's see here,

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I think it's verse 11, says, for in six days the

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Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

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Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Now the significance of that passage there is that it's prefaced by in six days the

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Lord made heaven and earth. And that means that the Sabbath day is not some million years long.

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It's an ordinary day. And so when you allow scripture to interpret scripture, and you allow the context to govern the meaning, we're going to see that those days listed there in Genesis 1 are ordinary days.

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Let me mention this, Chris, as well. The Westminster confession of faith in its chapter on creation talks about how everything was made in the space of six days and all very good.

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When you look at the various commissioners that attended the

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Westminster Assembly that was over a period of six or seven years, and you look at their writings elsewhere, you're going to find they all believed in a six -day creation, ordinary day.

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Chris In fact, right there is where we're going to pick up where you left off when we return from the station break.

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If you have a question at all, any question at all regarding the topic on theistic evolution, whether you are an ardent supporter of it, whether you are vehemently opposed to it, or whether you just don't know what you believe about it, the email address is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please include your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if outside the

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USA. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with John Otis and his book,

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today is John M. Otis. And we are discussing his book,

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Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Reverend Otis, our email address here is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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And you were, right before the break, talking about the unanimity of all of the drafters of the

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Westminster Confession, all those who gathered at the Westminster Assembly for that great confession to be drafted, they were all in agreement about a literal six -day creation, correct?

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That is correct. And also, a contemporary of these men was

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Bishop James Usher. Now, Usher became famous for his chronology of the

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Bible, whereby by going through the chronologies of the Bible, as listed in the genealogies of Genesis 5, 11, and taking some other historical settings,

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Usher said the creation was in 4004 B .C. Now, the interesting thing here is the men who wrote the confession, they believed that.

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They had adopted James Usher's view, chronology of the

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Bible. Someone who lived at the same time was the renowned scientist,

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Sir Isaac Newton. In fact, years ago, A &E did a program of the top 100 persons of the last thousand years, and the number two person, in terms of their influence, was

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Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac Newton was an arctic creationist. He believed in six ordinary days, and he believed in the chronology of James Usher.

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So, it's the only reason that this became challenged, is because of the rise of Darwinism.

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That is the only reason. And let me say this, I guess I've got to specify why

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I consider theistic evolution a sinful compromise. Here it is in a nutshell, Chris.

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The Bible is the Word of God. And, as I mentioned earlier,

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Scripture is its best interpreter of Scripture. Sola Scriptura means that whatever the

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Scripture says, that is true, that God has spoken. Now, what has happened with the rise of Darwinism, science, or let's put it this way,

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I'm going to say Darwinism has hijacked a true understanding of real science.

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There's no conflict of real science with the Scripture.

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Now, of evolutionary thought, which I call pseudoscience, but there's no conflict of the

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Scripture with science. But what has happened is men, obviously non -Christians, but then a sufficient amount of even quote evangelicals, are saying, well, we just can't throw out all aspects of evolutionary thought.

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And what has happened is they have elevated science to be on par with Scripture.

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Now, you're talking about Roman Catholicism. One of its problems is that, yes, it believes the

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Bible to be the Word of God. However, it says that human tradition is also equally the

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Word of God, which we would say, no, no, there's where you make a great mistake.

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There is nothing on par with Scripture. So the sinful compromise is when you elevate a particular view of science, i .e.

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Darwinism, and you make that the interpreter of Scripture.

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In the latter part of my book, I've listed about five significant individuals. One, a professor at a

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Presbyterian seminary in St. Louis. Another gentleman by the name of Tim Keller, who's quite known across the

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United States, but he is a theistic evolutionist. And the problem is they think there is a certain truthfulness to Darwinism.

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And they say that the days of creation need to be reinterpreted in light of modern science.

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There's the compromise, Chris. We do have a listener in Sharpsburg, Georgia, who writes, would your guest feel comfortable naming some of the evangelicals, some in the evangelical community who believe in theistic evolution?

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Well, obviously, you just did that, but perhaps there are more. If they are making their beliefs public,

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I don't think there is anything wrong with naming names when people have identified that they believe in certain things in writing.

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Yes, okay, some of them. One person that's rising to national prominence is a pastor in New York City by the name of Tim Keller.

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Tim Keller is a theistic evolutionist.

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One of the professors at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, by the name of an

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Old Testament professor, by the name of Jack Collins, is a theistic evolutionist.

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Some are familiar with the name Bruce Waltke. He's a theistic evolutionist.

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He's written some books. He teaches at a seminary in Florida.

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Peter Enns was once a professor at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but he was fired several years ago over other views of his understanding of scripture.

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He's a theistic evolutionist. I'm trying to think of some other... Actually, I saw a video of Pat Robertson, you know, with the

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Christian Broadcasting Network. It was very disappointing to hear

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Pat Robertson say, look, we need to quit embarrassing ourselves by holding to this idea of six days creation, that there are ordinary days.

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That was very disappointing to hear him say that. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why the

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Church of Rome is rampant with theistic evolutionary beliefs for many decades.

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And even our Roman Catholic guest yesterday was lamenting that fact. But I wonder if it has something to do with damage control for what the popes in centuries past have done in regard to Galileo and Copernicus and others.

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Sometimes I get that impression that Rome is trying to in a very wrong and dangerous way, make up for the sins of their past, where they barbarically reacted to people who disagreed with their views on things.

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But the irony of this, isn't it true that in the halls of academia, of science and so on, isn't there a shift taking place amongst even secular scientists, where they are clinging far less tightly to the idea of Darwinianism and so on?

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Not that they're becoming Christian or creationist, but it seems odd to me that from what I've heard, and maybe

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I've been misinformed, but from what I've heard is even in secular science, the evolutionary theory is becoming less and less stringently taught, whereas in evangelicalism, it's on the rise.

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And it just seems to make no sense to me, if you could comment on it. Yes. In that regard, in terms of theistic evolution, you have some who have wanted to postulate that that's how we ought to understand the creation.

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And what was your last question? My mind just drifted there for a moment.

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That's all right. Well, have you heard that even amongst scientists, secular scientists, evolution or Darwinianism in particular, is held far less strictly and stringently than it used to be?

42:13

And therefore, I found it ironic that it's on the rise with an evangelicalism, even though it's becoming clearer and clearer that there is no scientific evidence at all that evolution is true.

42:25

That's basically where I'm at. Yes, that is true, Chris, in certain scientific circles.

42:32

For example, Jay Gould was a prominent evolutionist but became very critical of Darwin.

42:42

There are many that just cannot bring themselves to see that the mechanism that Darwin postulated was correct.

42:53

See, Darwin said that life came about, as we know it, through a process of transmutation, that means the changing of the species, in minuscule amounts.

43:10

That's why they have to have all this time. And Darwin said he could not account for any sudden appearances of species.

43:22

At some point, I may refer some people to some pages in my book,

43:28

Darwin himself, with Thomas Huxley, who was called Darwin's bulldog, he was the

43:36

PR man that pushed evolutionary thought. Both of them said the fossil record doesn't support our view.

43:43

Darwin himself said one day he hoped that it would. 150 years later, it hasn't.

43:49

So there was a gentleman by the name, I forget who wrote Darwin's Black Box, he's not a distinctly

43:56

Christian man, but he took on and showed the absurdity of Darwinian thought.

44:03

Goldschmidt is an evolutionist, but what Goldschmidt said, we cannot maintain

44:10

Darwin's view. And he says, things do appear suddenly in the fossil record.

44:20

So Goldschmidt advanced an idea called the hopeful monster theory.

44:25

Now, I'm serious when I say this. Here's what he said. According to evolution, in the process of evolution, you have fish, everything's evolving, and you have fish, and then fish evolved into amphibians, they crawled out on the land, you've seen those in the textbooks, and then reptiles evolved from amphibians, and mammals evolved from reptiles.

44:51

So what Goldschmidt says, you know, the fossil record indicates that things appear.

44:58

So he postulated a view, believe it or not, that he says one day, a reptile laid an egg, and lo and behold, a bird came out.

45:17

And so, as crazy as it is, that's what they had.

45:23

Now, you've heard the name Richard Dawkins? Oh, yes, of course. You know, he was featured in that film, which

45:29

I thought was good, called Expelled, that Ben Stein did. Yeah, that was a very good film. Oh yeah,

45:34

Ben Stein did a wonderful job dealing with Richard Dawkins. And you know, a really important point, and Dawkins is a renowned atheist, but he has trouble dealing with certain areas of evolutionary thought, and he postulated what was called the idea of alien seeding, that life came to Earth through these crystals from extraterrestrials.

46:07

You remember him saying that? No, but it's been a while since I saw the documentary. Yeah, that's what he said.

46:13

Now, one of the co -founders of the DNA molecule, Francis Crick, he said the same thing.

46:21

He believed, he called it pangenesis, that aliens seeded life on this planet.

46:30

Oh, you know something, now you are jarring my memory. Now I clearly remember that part of the documentary.

46:37

And so, it's so ludicrous. Darwin himself, let me find a quote here,

46:45

Chris, in my book, what Darwin said, hold a second,

46:52

I've got this, and here's what Darwin himself said. Here's some interesting quotes.

46:59

This is from Darwin's own biographies. He says,

47:06

Darwin wrote to his friend, T .H. Huxley, he says, quote, when we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed.

47:17

We cannot prove that a single species has changed, nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory, nor can we explain why some species have changed, and others not.

47:33

Now that's an interesting quote from Darwin, isn't it? Oh, yeah. In fact, one thing that we should, before you go on with any more quotes that you might have,

47:43

I think it's very crucial that our listeners know the original title for The Origin of the

47:49

Species. The original title, the full title, was The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the

48:03

Struggle for Life. Darwin was a racist. The vast majority of the early evolutionists were clear and avowed racists.

48:16

The Nazis, many of those, including Hitler and the upper echelons of the

48:23

Nazi Party, were evolutionists who believed that the non -Aryan was closer to the apes on the evolutionary chain.

48:32

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was an evolutionist and a racist who wanted non -whites eventually exterminated from the face of the earth by sterilizing non -whites involuntarily and also through the means of abortion, which

48:51

Planned Parenthood is tragically the performer of the vast majority of abortions in the

48:58

United States today. But I just thought I'd throw that in there because it's amazing to me when I hear conservatives discuss evolution on television and in other forums, they never bring that up.

49:11

And that's one thing you have to hammer a liberal with, like a liberal like Bill Maher, for instance, who thinks that all creationists are morons that have just crawled out of a cave or something.

49:23

These people have to be reminded that this theory of evolution comes out of the seeds of racism.

49:30

Am I correct? Yes, let me give you this. One of the things I feature in my book is a topic known as eugenics.

49:41

Eugenics is a means to control population. The grandson of Thomas Huxley, who was a contemporary of Darwin, a friend, as I mentioned earlier,

49:53

Sir Julian Huxley was an ardent evolutionist following his grandfather as one of the first to postulate the elimination of certain people on the basis of evolutionary thought.

50:10

And the Nazis, it is true, they were practicing that. And sadly,

50:18

Bill and Melinda Gates, yes, the founder of Microsoft, he's very heavily into eugenics, population control.

50:29

And we could go on, that's a topic in itself. But Darwin, and let me mention this, when

50:36

Darwin went on his five -year voyage on the

50:43

HMS Beagle, where he went into the South Pacific, and one of the islands they went to, the

50:50

Galapagos Islands, that's where he began to look at natural selection, a certain variation in species.

51:01

When Darwin left, he started out to be an

51:07

Anglican priest. His father wanted him to go into it, and he was going into the ministry.

51:16

Darwin, when he left on a five -year voyage, he was like 21 or 22 years of age, there was a view called

51:25

William Paley's view of nature. He was a creationist. Darwin believed that.

51:32

Now, he was converted along the way by another view of uniformitarianism, and I'm sorry, my mind's gone blank.

51:47

Well, while you're thinking, I'm going to repeat our email address. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for John Otis, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

51:59

chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you could, please provide your first name, city and state where you reside, and country where you reside if you live outside of the

52:11

United States. Have you come to the point where you remembered where your track was?

52:17

Thanks for doing that. Charles Lyell was influential.

52:22

In fact, Darwin says Charles Lyell's view of geology dramatically changed everything.

52:32

What Charles Lyell said, he believed that everything continues now. All the forces, mechanisms in geology now have been the same throughout, and that's why, supposedly, the evolutionists say, well, this rock is so many hundreds of millions of years old because of the deposits of the strata, and that's a view called uniformitarianism.

52:59

Charles Lyell postulated that. Now, what's interesting, when

53:05

Darwin was taught geology, he was taught by a man by the name of Sedgwick, and Sedgwick was essentially a creationist, and I think it's quite humorous

53:23

I got the quotes from Sedgwick in the book. When Darwin published his book in 1859, his former professor read the book and then wrote a personal letter to Darwin, and he says,

53:37

Charles, I know you're of good intent. He says, your book pains me to read it.

53:46

He says, your book at points has some areas, but he says, I was laughing so hard through most of it, my side hurt.

53:57

Now, this is his professor of geology. That sounds like at least half of the listeners to Iron Sharpens Iron.

54:05

And then he said, he says, but Charles, let me mention this, and he was a prophet of sorts when he said this.

54:13

He says, your view is going to bring so much misery to mankind because if we adopt your view, it's going to open up, this is my paraphrase, this is not

54:29

Sedgwick, basically a can of worms that they will not be able to control.

54:34

In other words, if man descended from animals and man is only an animal, then he has no dignity or worth.

54:42

Like B .F. Skinner in his book, who was an evolutionist, a behaviorist, he said man has no dignity, and the reason he has no dignity is because he's an animal.

54:53

He's just a highly evolved animal, and that's why he can be manipulated. Darwinism opened the door that gave man, since he has his descent from animals, there's no dignity, there's no worth.

55:11

He's not created in the image of God, as the scripture says, and therefore, as I've always maintained, actually the term survival of the fittest wasn't a term that Darwin used, but the philosopher

55:28

Herbert Spencer coined that phrase, survival of the fittest.

55:33

Spencer did as much as anyone in the 19th century to propel

55:40

Darwinism into an accepted realm, and so when man has no self -worth, he's not made in the image of God, and he's just an animal, well, what morals?

55:58

The law of the jungle is to be maintained. Whatever you have to do to survive, if that means killing you,

56:07

Chris, that's what I have to do. After all, there is no morals governing us, and that's why

56:14

Cedric said, he says, Charles, you have unleashed upon mankind a horrible philosophy.

56:25

And before we go to our next break, we do have a listener in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who's one of our faithful listeners out there.

56:35

Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama writes, what is John's view on those who reject evolution, theistic or otherwise, yet also reject a literal six -day creation for either scientific or biblical reasons?

56:51

And he gives as an example, Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe is a well -known proponent of this view.

56:57

So basically, old earth creationists, what is your view of them?

57:02

Are they heretics in your opinion, or what is your view of old earth creationists? I have a number of friends who share my theological views on reformed doctrine, but who also are, unlike myself, old earth creationists.

57:18

I happen to be like you, a young earth creationist. But what is your view? I thought you were going to a break.

57:25

No, I'm saying just before my break, I wanted to ask you that. No, I mean, I would not view them as heretics.

57:31

That's another term, what we mean by heretics. It's not a damnable heresy as such.

57:37

That's how the word heretic is used. Other places it means division. But anyway, I think old earth view,

57:46

I still believe, is a compromise. And the only reason it exists is because of a

57:55

Darwinian thought. People just cannot bring themselves to think that everything that is was created in the space of six ordinary days, 6 ,000 years ago.

58:10

And therefore, it's still a compromise. And it's not a faithful interpretation of Genesis.

58:20

And by the way, John, I'm wondering if I should sue you for your cover artwork on your book because it looks exactly like a drawing that I created in college when

58:36

I majored in art. We had to create a book cover design.

58:42

And I did a book cover design on evolution. And it was nearly this exact same picture that you have on your cover of Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise.

58:55

But I'm sure that you did not somehow sneak into my attic and steal it out of my old art portfolio or something.

59:03

It's an excellent... I got the idea from Michelangelo, though. Yes, so did I, obviously. But the ape hand

59:09

I'm referring to, where in the famous classic painting in the Sistine Chapel, you have

59:15

Adam's hand reaching up and barely touching God's finger.

59:21

They're not quite touching, but barely touching in the cover of Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise.

59:28

The hand of Adam is an ape -like hand. If you go back to the back of the cover, you'll see a mock -up, a hominid.

59:40

At some point, if we're going to go to a commercial, we need to talk about that. That's an important view of the

59:45

Theistic Evolutionists. Yes, and we have a whole hour ahead of us to talk about these things. And we'll only dedicate a brief portion of that hour in preparation of Hannah Overton's interview next week.

59:57

But we'll have the majority of time to speak about your book. And if you have any further questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:00:09

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please include your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

01:00:20

USA. So don't go away. We will be right back with John Otis and our discussion of Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise.

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01:03:51

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron. I apologize for the brief moment or more than brief moment of dead air earlier.

01:04:00

Sometimes it's not easy being an engineer and a talk host at the same time.

01:04:06

But we are continuing our two -hour interview today with John Otis.

01:04:12

He is the founder of Triumphant Publications and he's a retired

01:04:17

Presbyterian pastor. And tell us very briefly before we continue the discussion on the denomination where you are an ordained

01:04:27

Presbyterian minister, John. I'm an ordained Presbyterian minister with the

01:04:33

RPCUS, Reformed Presbyterian Church, United States. Currently what

01:04:39

I'm doing, I've been involved in church mission works, church planning endeavors.

01:04:46

Right now I'm writing courses for a mission organization called Reformation Christian Ministries where we do various Bible studies and then they translate them into various languages that go around the world.

01:05:01

That's what I'm doing right now. And why don't you give our listeners the website for Triumphant Publications before I forget when the time runs out.

01:05:10

It's triumphantpublications .com. Triumphantpublications .com, that's easy to anybody that I have a hard version of the book that I had printed, but I wanted to have people to have access to that book.

01:05:28

So if you go to my website, you can order a hardback version there and I think for $15 plus shipping.

01:05:38

But then I have made available for free reading a PDF of my book.

01:05:45

So you can go on to my website and you can just download the PDF and read the book in electronic format for free.

01:05:55

Let me mention something before we end our discussion on theistic evolution,

01:06:00

Chris. There are two areas, and don't let me forget about chronologies because that's very important here.

01:06:06

And by the way, we are discussing theistic evolution for the majority of the next hour or so. Okay, great.

01:06:13

We were previously discussing the front cover of my book that was very similar to what you did in college.

01:06:22

Now there's a reason. It's taken from Michelangelo's famous picture of the creation there on the

01:06:28

Sistine Chapel of the hand of God and the hand of Adam barely touching.

01:06:36

Now I've got there like a human hand. Obviously, God doesn't have a human hand like this.

01:06:43

But anyway, the reason that hand is hairy, and if you look on the back cover...

01:06:49

The hand of Adam is hairy. What we call a hominid, that means a precursor to a homo sapien.

01:06:59

The reason I had that is, this is where the compromise is occurring, Chris. In seminaries, this is what they're teaching.

01:07:07

They believe that life evolved just like Darwin said, and you had a community of these creatures.

01:07:18

They called them hominids. In other words, they would be the missing links.

01:07:27

You've probably seen some of them. Some of these are hoaxes, proved to be hoaxes.

01:07:35

But here's what is being taught in some seminaries, and in some quote evangelical seminaries, which is what is distressing in one reason why

01:07:45

I wrote the book, and challenged one of the professors at Covenant Seminary in St.

01:07:51

Louis, his position. He says what God did out of this colony of hominids,

01:08:00

God picked one out and zapped him. He zapped him with the image of God, so that then he further developed what we call homo sapiens.

01:08:16

That's what they're believing now. Now, incredibly, one reason that my book grew out several years ago, there was a website that I thought was very good, managed by a

01:08:32

PCA minister in North Dakota. They found out at the

01:08:41

General Assembly of this Presbyterian denomination, it's a week -long meeting.

01:08:48

During this week -long meeting, they provide seminars for people to go to. For the delegates, a lot of delegates bring their families with them, so anybody can attend these seminars.

01:09:02

And they were going to have a seminar where there was a professor, he teaches at Mississippi State University, named

01:09:09

Greg Davidson. And he was going to come in, he was granted permission to hold a seminar to purport why an old earth view is acceptable as a counter view to a new age, and a young earth.

01:09:32

Well, that created quite a stir. A lot of pastors were very upset that they were going to allow this man to come.

01:09:40

Well, when he came, what they don't know is that, and I read Greg Davidson's book, he wrote a book called

01:09:47

When Faith and Signs Collide. And he is a clear -cut theistic evolutionist.

01:09:54

Someone did their research, they asked him, is it true that you, sir, that you believe that God, as it were, and I'm going to throw in this word, zapped, somehow took a pre -human creature and then put on him the image of God, so that man evolved up to this point?

01:10:18

And his response was, I'm here to talk about old earth, if you want to know my views on evolution, you can go consult my book.

01:10:25

Well, if you consult his book, I want to read to show you how far these men go to deny scripture.

01:10:32

Yeah, definitely read it. All right, in Genesis, you may have heard, in Genesis 6, there's a passage that's been interesting how some have interpreted this passage.

01:10:46

It's where it says that the, now it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took lives for themselves, whoever they chose.

01:11:04

Then the Lord said, my spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh.

01:11:09

Nevertheless, his day shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward.

01:11:16

Now, the standard interpretation down through the years in the reformed community is, what is this sons of daughters?

01:11:24

You know, some believe that humans intermarried with angels. Well, that's kind of far -fetched.

01:11:30

But the traditional view for centuries is this, that the godly line of Seth intermarried with the ungodly line of Cain.

01:11:45

And you have the Nephilim. The Nephilim were giants in those days.

01:11:51

Now, Greg Davidson says, that just can't be a proper interpretation.

01:11:57

You know what Greg Davidson said was a proper interpretation? Let me tell you what he wrote in his book.

01:12:04

Here's what he says about who these Nephilim are. Now, this is a quote from his book.

01:12:10

He says, now consider the possibility that Neanderthals walked for a time with humans.

01:12:17

Though of human likeness, Neanderthals would have been considered strange flesh. Sexual union between humans and Neanderthals could have been physically possible, but intolerable in God's sight, in much the same way as the acts of Sodom and Gomorrah were intolerable.

01:12:33

In this context, Neanderthals may be the sons of God, and humans, the daughters of men, were sons of, can mean the offspring of, or creation of God.

01:12:45

Successful union between Neanderthals and humans could easily have given rise to offspring with unique physical characteristics that would be identified with a unique name, the

01:12:55

Nephilim. Now, believe it or not, this professor says that is the proper interpretation of Genesis 6.

01:13:06

Now, I was a pre -med student for years when I was in college.

01:13:11

I majored in zoology, so in college I studied evolutionary thought, and I was a

01:13:18

Christian when I was a freshman, but I know all about evolutionary thought.

01:13:25

The idea, you don't have, you can't have a sexual union outside of the kinds.

01:13:35

To think that humans could have any kind of sexual union with a subhuman is biologically impossible, and that's why you can't breed dogs with cats.

01:13:48

Yeah, you could, within the kinds, you could have coyotes, wolves, and things.

01:13:53

There's a dog kind. The cat kind, you have your domestic cats, you have your bobcats, your lions, your tigers, and all that, and you can interbreed a tiger with a lion and get a liger, but you cannot, there is a limit of the fixity of species that you can't go beyond, and the notion that the proper interpretation of Genesis 6 is the marriage of a subhuman species with a human is absurd, and, but that's the extent men will go to to compromise the scripture when they want to hold on to evolutionary thought and at the same time try to maintain fidelity of the scriptures.

01:14:45

You just can't do it. I just wanted to quickly read an email from a listener in Northern Ireland, and this gentleman has actually been a guest on our program,

01:14:59

Cecil Andrews of TakeHeed Ministries. He provides his own website article on Tim Keller's support for theistic evolution, takeheed .info,

01:15:14

and I was, he is wondering, does John Otis share my deep concerns, and he capitalizes, deep concerns about Tim Keller's support for theistic evolution?

01:15:28

Obviously, you've already addressed that. Some of our listeners are tuning in late, but do you have anything further to say or to add about that?

01:15:37

Yes, I do. One of my chapters in my book is on Tim Keller, and yes,

01:15:44

I have deep concerns. He is an ardent theistic evolutionist. One of the organizations that has done more to undermine a faithful understanding of scripture is an organization that touts itself as being evangelical, but it's nowhere close to it.

01:16:02

It's called BioLogos. Tim Keller's church has sponsored those seminars at his church for BioLogos.

01:16:13

BioLogos has done more to undermine the faith as many organizations that I can think of.

01:16:22

Wow. Tim Keller wholeheartedly endorses BioLogos.

01:16:28

He's been featured on their website. Tim Keller is a very dangerous man.

01:16:37

Yes. Wow. And this affiliation with this BioLogos and with theistic evolution, this is not hearsay.

01:16:45

You have clear, solid evidence, and he is very open about it, you were saying. Oh, absolutely.

01:16:52

In my book, I got direct quotes from the website with Tim Keller's name.

01:16:58

I've got his own quotes. It's well substantiated. It is not hearsay.

01:17:04

It's not gossip. He is an ardent theistic evolutionist. Let me mention something about the chronologies of the

01:17:11

Bible, because some people say, well, the earth cannot be just 6 ,000 years. Usher was some wacko archbishop or something, and he didn't know what he was doing.

01:17:25

Let me say this about James Usher. James Usher in his time was known as one of the world's foremost

01:17:35

Hebrew scholars. He was an incredible man.

01:17:41

All those that were contemporaries said there was no one quite like James Usher in his understanding of Hebrew language.

01:17:54

Oliver Cromwell, though Usher had sympathies with the crown against Cromwell in the

01:18:08

Civil War there in England, when Cromwell had Charles I beheaded for being a tyrant that he really was, despite the fact that Usher still had sympathies with the crown,

01:18:24

Cromwell had such great respect for James Usher. When he died, they buried him at Westminster Abbey, gave him a state funeral.

01:18:35

The quotes from men said there was no Hebrew scholar of the magnitude of James Usher, and so he was no silly guy who just came up with this.

01:18:47

Now, about the chronologies. Some people have said, well, you can't trust the chronologies in the

01:18:54

Bible, because there's got to be gaps. And we say, gaps? Why are there gaps?

01:18:59

There's no gaps. For example, I'm reading from Genesis 5 now.

01:19:09

Here's why there's no gaps. I'm going to read here Genesis 5, it says, verse 3, when

01:19:18

Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him

01:19:26

Seth. Then the days of Adam, after he became the father of Seth, were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters.

01:19:35

So all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. And Seth lived 105 years, became the father of Enosh.

01:19:44

Then Seth lived 807 years, after he became the father of Enosh, and had other sons and daughters.

01:19:50

So all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. The point here is, you take the representative heads, there is no time gap in the chronologies, because it lists how old the ancestor was, how old he was when the child was born, and then how much longer the father lived after the child was born.

01:20:22

All that Usher did was just put together a simple chronology based on that, and it's a faithful chronology.

01:20:33

Another Hebrew scholar of the 21st century, or 20th century, by the name of Floyd Nolan Jones, I quote him in my book, he came to the same date as James Usher did, independent of Usher's works.

01:20:48

Um, when you, if you use the Hebrew Masoretic text, then the dates line up, exactly like the

01:20:58

Bible says. So, there are no gaps in the chronology. Yeah, not every single person is mentioned, but you don't have to mention every person.

01:21:08

As long as you mention one person in that, in that child, that representative head of that family, then you have a faithful chronology.

01:21:20

Because it says there were other children that they had that they weren't mentioned, but it's irrelevant to the timeline.

01:21:28

And so, the timeline holds up, there are no gaps in it, the days are ordinary days, and the reason here is,

01:21:40

God is not impotent to create things in six ordinary days.

01:21:48

I mean, we're not going to say God, as he presents himself in the scripture, he says, is there anything that I cannot do?

01:21:54

The scripture says that God created everything with his spoken word.

01:22:00

God is God. And for God to create what is in 24 hours is no problem to God.

01:22:09

And we just need to let the scripture speak for itself and do not elevate a scientific view called

01:22:18

Darwinism and let it become the interpreter. Now, let me mention one other thing. Here's why it's a sinful compromise,

01:22:24

Chris. How does the Bible present man?

01:22:30

A faithful understanding of man is that he was created good, but then he fell, and sin came into the world, and therefore, he inherited a sinful nature.

01:22:43

And therefore, everybody who is descended from a parent has inherited a sinful nature from their parents.

01:22:51

We call it total depravity. The scripture says that unbelievers have been blinded by the

01:22:59

God of this world, 2 Corinthians 4, it says the

01:23:05

God of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelieving that they might not see the gospel.

01:23:14

Now, so unbelieving men are prejudiced against the truth.

01:23:23

According to Romans 1, they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. There in Romans 1, it says

01:23:29

God's invisible attributes are clearly seen in the creation, but men suppress that.

01:23:38

Why do they suppress it? Because they are in bondage, as the scripture says, to the

01:23:44

God of this world, Satan. They are in bondage to their old man, their sinful nature, and therefore, they cannot think straight.

01:23:53

That's why 2 Timothy 2 says that perhaps God will grant repentance to men, that they may come to their senses.

01:24:03

And so, what we're doing, I find it incredible that you would have

01:24:10

Christians accepting the presuppositions of unbelievers, accepting their conclusions, when they are blinded by their sin.

01:24:24

They are blinded by the devil, the scripture says. They cannot be trusted.

01:24:31

And therefore, their whole worldview is skewed. And therefore, to let an unbeliever's view interpret

01:24:41

Genesis is just inexcusable. We do have a listener who obviously also tuned in a little bit late, but I think

01:24:52

I should perhaps bring it up again anyway with his question. Mike in Fort Myers, Florida, another faithful listener to Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:25:01

Greetings, Rev. Otis. In light of you invoking the Westminster Confession of Faith regarding the nature of the creation day, what would you say to Dr.

01:25:10

Hugh Ross, who's a conservative Presbyterian as yourself, but who's quite adamant, given his study of scripture, linguistics, and science for many years, who subscribes to long creation days?

01:25:21

I believe Dr. Gleason Archer held to long creation days as well. And the reason I thought

01:25:27

I'd bring it up again, even though you already mentioned something about that earlier, so you could differentiate perhaps between old earth creationists that haven't reached the level of serious danger as Tim Keller has, and perhaps you could comment on that.

01:25:47

Well, the reason there's an old earth view as opposed to a young earth view is because of the impact of evolutionary thought.

01:25:55

They just simply cannot divorce themselves from the impact of evolutionary thought.

01:26:03

A faithful, as I mentioned earlier, words mean what they mean in their context.

01:26:10

When you have the meaning of the word day, when you have certain parameters like morning and evening, then it is defining for us the meaning of that day.

01:26:23

And as I went to Exodus 20, 11, where it talks about on the Sabbath day, it says

01:26:30

God created, and that's a powerful passage, where it says God created what is in six days and then he rested on the seventh day.

01:26:41

The seventh day is not a thousand or a million years long. The days are ordinary days because it says morning and evening, the first, second, third, fourth, sixth day.

01:26:56

So when you let the scripture interpret itself, the day means an ordinary day.

01:27:04

Now let me mention this as well. It's in the same type of thought. Theistic evolutionists say, well, the

01:27:12

Bible talks about God took the dust of the earth and he breathed into the dust, uh, created

01:27:20

Adam and breathed into him and he became a living soul. Now they said, well, this simply doesn't mean that he created them instantaneously.

01:27:32

Dust could mean the process of evolution. Oh really? Where does that say that in the text? Nowhere. And what is the meaning of dust?

01:27:40

Well, let's do a word study of dust. And you know what you find? It means dust.

01:27:48

I'm serious on that. When you do your word studies, you're going to see that they provide the meaning.

01:27:57

And as I said, uh, the meaning of day in virtually all of its usage, except for very few, like in second

01:28:05

Peter three, where it refers to, refers to something, uh, the law that God, uh, is not bound by time as we understand it.

01:28:14

And that's understandable there. But day means an ordinary day and dust means dust.

01:28:21

And therefore those old earth, uh, uh, supporters, uh, with all due respect, they are, uh,

01:28:30

I'm afraid they're compromising and not willing to accept, uh, the scripture at face value on the meanings of these words.

01:28:40

So, so in a nutshell, you're saying that although you vehemently disagree with old earth creationists, they don't necessitate or they don't necessarily believe in theistic evolution, but that may lead to it.

01:28:58

Is that basically in a nutshell? Yes, that's what I would, I was about to qualify that. They may not do it.

01:29:04

First of all, the position was created because of evolutionary thought. The only reason why we would want to think of a day being longer than an ordinary day is to somehow allow for the position of evolution to be in these texts.

01:29:22

I mean, that's the history of old earth, uh, uh, view. Also, once you go down that path, then it leads to the next path of, of theistic evolution.

01:29:35

I've seen it. Uh, it's what happened in the Presbyterian church in the

01:29:40

United States called the PCUS. Uh, over a period of a hundred years, they went from a faithful interpretation of scripture to being wholesale theistic evolutionists, uh, and, uh, an apostate church eventually within a hundred years.

01:29:56

We're going to our final break right now. So if you want to join us on the air with a question, please email it now or as quickly as possible so that we could read it on the air if it is applicable before we run out of time.

01:30:11

And the email address is chrisarnsonatgmail .com chrisarnsonatgmail .com.

01:30:17

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Reverend John Otis and his book, Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise.

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That's the Thriving story. Welcome back.

01:31:32

This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is John Otis. We are discussing his book, Theistic Evolution, A Sinful Compromise.

01:31:40

Ted from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has a follow -up question. What did it take until the 17th century for someone, i .e.

01:31:47

Usher, to figure out the chronologies and the age of the earth when that information had been available for thousands of years already?

01:31:56

Well, I'm not sure. I can't give an answer to that. There may have been others that may have said that.

01:32:05

I'm not sure, so I don't know. But James Usher was a renowned

01:32:11

Hebrew scholar, and he did his work. You'll be happy to know that our listener in Northern Ireland, Cecil, just ordered your book.

01:32:23

He just shot us an email. Chris, I wanted to say this. The problem here is that we have these evangelicals who believe by necessity to be credible in the academic world.

01:32:42

They just can't discard evolutionary thought. That's the powerhold that Darwinism has had for over almost two centuries now.

01:32:54

And I want to read this from my book. Darwin's quotes are quite illuminating.

01:33:04

Here's what he said about his own theory. Darwin says,

01:33:09

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradation, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?

01:33:21

Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well -defined?

01:33:28

I thought you could have said it better, Charles. I've always maintained that the fact that you have missing links, that you have gaps in the fossil record, demonstrates that.

01:33:44

If evolution is true according to Darwinism, and since he said the mechanism is gradual, he says it has to be gradual.

01:33:55

He says it cannot be what he called saltations, that being sudden appearances of creatures.

01:34:01

He says it has to be gradual. Well, if it's gradual, you should not be able to classify any animal or plant life because it would be some hodgepodge.

01:34:12

I've always maintained that. And when I ran across the quote from Darwin when I was doing the book,

01:34:18

I said, well, right here, Darwin himself has mentioned that one of the problems with his own theory is what

01:34:25

I've always maintained and what other creationists have maintained. You shouldn't be able to classify any life.

01:34:32

And Darwin also, about the fossil record, because evolution, if you will say, with a fossil record, conclusively shows, oh really?

01:34:40

Here's what Darwin says, quote, geology surely does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain.

01:34:50

And this perhaps is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.

01:34:58

Now that's Darwin's own words. Wow. And since I want to at least spend five minutes at the end of the program dedicated to a primer, if you will, or a precursor to my interview next

01:35:15

Monday with your friend Hannah Overton, I want you to make sure that what you have most intended to have etched in hearts and minds of our listeners about theistic evolution that we discuss some of that now.

01:35:30

And of course, this is a book that's over 300 pages long, packed with content and very vital information.

01:35:37

I definitely want to have you back at some point in the future to return to this book. But if you could right now at least focus on exactly what you want first and foremost our listeners to know before they leave today.

01:35:50

Okay. First and foremost, the reason theistic evolution is a compromise is because it has elevated Christians, have elevated non -Christian science theories to a level to be on par with scripture itself.

01:36:12

And they are saying, and I have their quotes in my book from all these professors, they are saying that science is the best interpreter of scripture.

01:36:24

And I say, right there is your problem. The problem is you don't really believe in sola scriptura.

01:36:33

And I want that to be ingrained in my listeners that if you hold to sola scriptura, then you cannot be a theistic evolutionist.

01:36:44

And I want to also mention this, that you can trust the chronology of the scriptures, that there is no gap in the chronology.

01:36:56

So the earth is young, as Usher and others said it is. And as, for example,

01:37:03

Answers in Genesis and its organization does a very good job of showing how, you know, when you look at certain evidences, you come to those evidences with presuppositions.

01:37:16

And I have a whole chapter in my book called The Clash of Worldviews. Evolution is a worldview and is a religious worldview.

01:37:27

And I got evolutionists who use the word. We know it is a religious worldview.

01:37:34

Yeah, they want to reverse everything that happened before the

01:37:39

Scopes Monkey trial. They want to stamp out creationism from all schools and from all public discussion and so on, because they defend evolution religiously, just as some who have a tyrannical approach to religion defend at all costs their views and precepts and so on.

01:38:05

Is that not right? Absolutely. There is a bias. That movie, the documentary

01:38:11

Expelled, brought that out. If you come up with the notion of intelligent design, you can be fired.

01:38:21

The academic world, they are determined to maintain their worldview at all costs, and they will not tolerate any other thing.

01:38:33

Even though the facts don't demonstrate it, it doesn't matter. They are committed to this.

01:38:38

I got quotes in my book from evolutionists who say, we are committed philosophically to the premise of evolution.

01:38:50

Therefore, we rule out any other view. And so it shows their bias.

01:38:56

I want people to understand evolution is not a fact.

01:39:02

They want to tell us it's a fact. It's not a fact. By the way, evolutionary thought, you can't prove it.

01:39:12

How do you prove something scientifically? You put the scientific method to work.

01:39:20

That way we're talking about operational science. The scientific method says you've got to observe something, you've got to test it, it's got to be verifiable, it's got to be repeatable, and it's got to be falsified.

01:39:33

Who was there at the dawn of creation? Nobody. Yeah, creationists who are scientists, when they are involved in the intelligent design argument, they are the ones, when they are debating evolutionists, it's the creationists that are using science far more than the evolutionists are, because the creationists are using what we see in regard to proof.

01:40:06

And the evolutionists have all these theories that they tout as being proven fact when they've never been proven in scientific experimentation and all that.

01:40:18

Yeah, and Darwin and Thomas Huxley both said that.

01:40:23

He says we can't prove anything. Darwin says, I hope that one day some can.

01:40:31

You know, actually, his view of how life evolved, he had this view called

01:40:39

Jim Mules, and he had a very elementary view of the human cell. He didn't have the electron microscope back in those days.

01:40:48

He thought it was very simple when, in reality, one human cell is so complex, it's mind -boggling.

01:40:56

Yeah, and just to further explain what I was speaking of, obviously there are things that even a

01:41:02

Christian and a creationist cannot prove scientifically regarding biblical claims, but the science can never refute and has never refuted biblical claims.

01:41:13

And an example of how the scientist who is a Christian and a creationist uses seen truth and seen evidence would be common things like only humans give birth to humans, only dogs give birth to dogs, only cats give birth to cats, and only birds give birth to birds, and only fish give birth to fish, and on and on and on.

01:41:41

And there is zero evidence that there has ever been a transition from one species to another.

01:41:47

A very simple thing like that is one of the things I was talking about. A creationist is using things that we can easily see and observe, even scientifically, to prove our point, correct?

01:42:00

That is absolutely right, Chris. You've got operational science, deals with the scientific method, you've got historical science, which deals with origins.

01:42:09

And when you deal with origins, your worldview becomes tantamount.

01:42:15

Your presuppositions come into play, and you just make various assumptions.

01:42:21

And I hope nobody mocks me for using the term giving birth for the animals that lay eggs.

01:42:26

You know what I'm talking about. The hopeful monster theory? No, what

01:42:32

I mean is that some people may argue with my terminology of giving birth in regard to laying of an egg.

01:42:40

But, you know, what I mean is only species have offspring of their own species.

01:42:47

They never become something else. That's what I mean. Yeah, when you use the word species, we've got to be careful.

01:42:54

It was Linnaeus, his taxonomy, he's the father of taxonomy, the classification system that's used in all of the scientific world.

01:43:05

By the way, Linnaeus was a six -day creationist. I've got to throw that out there. Oh, he was an arctic creationist.

01:43:13

And in this regard, when we talk about species, he talked about there was a genus and a species.

01:43:22

When we talk about species, we probably ought to talk about kinds, because the Bible says, for example,

01:43:29

I've got to read this, to show our fidelity to the scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 38,

01:43:39

I believe. This is a very important text, and if you let scripture interpret scripture, here you go.

01:43:48

Let me get there. I'm going to repeat our email address again. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:43:55

chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question, we're running out of time though, so do it quickly. Okay, 1

01:44:01

Corinthians 15, 39. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds and another of fish.

01:44:11

Right there in the word of God, that verse in itself refutes evolution.

01:44:18

Just believe the Bible, Chris. Amen. Amen. And once again, give your website address for Triumphant Publications.

01:44:27

I believe it's triumphantpublications .com, correct? That is correct. All one word, triumphantpublications .com.

01:44:34

And just to conclude this portion of your interview, before we go into a description of the

01:44:40

Hannah Overton case, in about three minutes, conclude what you have to say about your book on Theistic Evolution and Sinful Compromise.

01:44:50

In conclusion, Chris, the Bible is the word of God. Only the

01:44:55

Bible is the word of God. It is sufficient for all truth. We can trust the scriptures.

01:45:01

We can trust as it is given. The plain meaning of the text means that a day is a day.

01:45:07

Dust is dust. There is flesh of men, flesh of animals. Just simply trust the scriptures.

01:45:15

Don't elevate anything else. The Bible doesn't need to have anything independent of itself for its own interpretation, especially unbelieving men who have no capacity spiritually to give any accurate understanding of the scriptures.

01:45:34

Just trust the Bible, and you will be fine. Amen. And don't forget that this book comes with the accolade of G .I.

01:45:45

Williamson, a very prominent name within the theologically reformed circles, especially that he believes this book,

01:45:54

Theistic Evolution and Sinful Compromise, is the best thing that he has ever seen in print on this subject, on this specific subject.

01:46:03

So go to triumphofpublications .com. Now, this coming

01:46:08

Monday, I am going to be interviewing, God willing, Hannah Overton, who most of you have heard about if you've forgotten her name.

01:46:20

Hannah Overton was on 2020 and Dateline and some major television broadcasts because of a tragic story that occurred, that began a number of years ago, wherein one of her children, a foster child, died through accidental food poisoning.

01:46:42

She was arrested. Hannah, the mother, was arrested, charged and convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but thankfully, by the grace and mercy of God, she was released from prison, and I believe all charges have been dropped.

01:46:58

So how long ago did this occur, John, and why did you develop this friendship with her, and why were you so certain of her innocence?

01:47:09

Well, I had a mission work, a church planning work in Corpus Christi. I got to know of Hannah through some friends in our church when this case came to be.

01:47:24

When I examined some of the facts of the case, talked with the pastor, assistant pastor, looked at things, became convinced that there was something terribly wrong with this case, this conviction, and I decided to do what

01:47:49

I could to bring national attention to this case. This was seven years ago.

01:47:55

Before she was moved to the state prison, I went to see Hannah Overton personally, and while she was there in prison in Corpus Christi, I asked

01:48:07

Hannah, she and her husband were missionaries at one point.

01:48:16

She had an impeccable past. She never had a traffic ticket. She was the most humble, loving person everybody knew.

01:48:27

This was her character. So I was there. I said, tell me face -to -face before God is your witness, did you hurt that child?

01:48:36

She said, no, I love that child. They had five natural children, but they loved children so much they wanted to adopt this child,

01:48:42

Andrew. She said when Andrew died, they accused her of salt poisoning.

01:48:50

The state said she forced down this poisoned amount of salt, and that's what led to him.

01:48:59

He had this high level of sodium content. Hannah said,

01:49:06

I was given several plea bargains, and I hate plea bargains because if you're guilty, you're guilty.

01:49:18

If you're not guilty, you're not guilty. Don't force people to plead something. She said,

01:49:24

I thought about it. If she pled, she did something wrong, she could have been out in a year or two.

01:49:32

She told me, she says, pastor, how would it honor Jesus to admit to something

01:49:40

I did not do? She said, I'm going to trust my life into the hands of my

01:49:45

God. Chris, I don't think I've ever witnessed faith of that magnitude.

01:49:52

She began to talk about her faith in Jesus with a sparkle in her eyes. Talking with Hannah personally, looking at the facts of the case,

01:50:02

I said, this woman did not do this. It took seven years. Hannah will tell you everything about it.

01:50:09

Let me mention this. She was given life without parole. In the state of Texas, if there's a death of a child under six, then it's life without parole.

01:50:21

That is, if the state doesn't choose the death sentence. So she had a worse sentencing than Charles Manson, the serial killer.

01:50:30

He was denied parole, but he never had life without parole.

01:50:37

Hannah did. So she had no hope of ever seeing and touching her children the rest of her life.

01:50:44

She would die in that prison unless God intervened. She had a wonderful appeals lawyer.

01:50:53

Cynthia Orr was magnificent, believed in her innocence all along.

01:50:59

After five years, they found out that the state was hiding evidence in the original trial.

01:51:07

I will tell you about it. That would have proved she couldn't have done this.

01:51:14

It would have decimated the state's case. During that time, the rediscovery of this from Hannah's appeal lawyer, that's when it went before the appellate court of Texas, the

01:51:29

Supreme Court of Texas. They, last year, in a 7 -2 decision, said that Hannah deserved a new trial.

01:51:37

In light of all the evidence, she at least deserved a new trial. And then the district attorney of Corpus Christi was determined to carry out the case when all the facts, doctors, everyone says she's innocent, she's innocent.

01:51:57

2020, as you indicated, did all these programs, and those were great. This was a woman who was falsely accused.

01:52:04

The facts demonstrate that she was innocent. Finally, the district attorney realized he had no case against Hannah Overton, and finally did the right thing and dropped all charges here,

01:52:18

I think, in March. Hannah's story is one of, let me say this, here you're given a life without parole.

01:52:26

So what does Hannah do? She starts a ministry among her fellow inmates.

01:52:35

She had, at some point, maybe up to a hundred or more women coming to a Bible study.

01:52:41

She was respected by the inmates. She was respected by the guards. They all knew her.

01:52:47

She began a prison ministry, and for seven years, she taught these ladies the scriptures, led some to Christ, and all this.

01:53:00

Really, this show on Monday should be a dynamite show, Chris.

01:53:06

The story of Hannah Overton is really and truly one of the great inspirational stories of our time in terms of how to endure through trials of something that most of us would never imagine, and in the midst of that trial, maintain a strong faith in the

01:53:25

Lord Jesus. She is one of the great inspirational stories of our time, and I encourage everybody that's listening to this show, you've got to tune in Monday, because you will be blessed out of your mind by listening to Hannah's story.

01:53:42

Yeah, I have always been impressed with, just blown away, let alone impressed, by her demeanor and composure, and her peace amidst all of this nightmare that was surrounding her.

01:53:58

To imagine not only having a child that you love under your care die, but to be accused of murdering that child,

01:54:09

I can't even imagine the horror of that, knowing that thousands of people believe that, and the peace that this woman had, it seemed that the thing that was pressing most on her heart that gave her any kind of sorrow was just the absence of her children and husband around her on a daily basis.

01:54:38

And she really turned that prison sentence into the beginnings of a whole ministry in there, correct?

01:54:44

And people were attending Bible studies and so on that she was conducting? Yes, and now that she's out, she and her husband

01:54:53

Larry have started a ministry called Cindeo Ministries, back at the same prison she was at, and just recently an article appeared in the

01:55:02

Corpus Christi newspaper. On July 4th, when Hannah was released, she said,

01:55:09

I will come back to this and I will help minister to people. She turned over the Bible studies to the other lady, she was discipling, and she said,

01:55:18

I will be back. When she came back on this July 4th, one of the captains of the guard says,

01:55:27

I can't believe you're back. He says, most people would never ever want to see this place again, but you said you were going to come back.

01:55:35

He says, I said that I would, and now I'm here. Praise God. And so, yeah, they've got a wonderful ministry lined up, and the story of Hannah is a story, it parallels really and truly much like Joseph in the scriptures.

01:55:55

If you know that story, how someone was innocent, but God turned it around, and what some intended for evil,

01:56:06

God meant it for good there in Genesis 50, 20 there, what Joseph said to his brothers, yeah, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to bring about the present day.

01:56:15

I always sort of believed, just from Hannah, that one day God would vindicate her before the watching world.

01:56:22

I wanted it to be vindicated in the courts, which it finally was. Finally, the world saw that Hannah was innocent all along, and that her faith sustained her during this whole time.

01:56:39

There were thousands of people praying for Hannah. She wrote all these encouraging letters that, you know,

01:56:47

I would forward on to people, and she was a blessing to people.

01:56:52

People would write her, they'd encourage her, they'd say, well, I've come away being blessed by you.

01:56:59

I mean, Hannah would be the first to say she had her struggles, but I saw her grow in her faith during those seven years, reading her letters.

01:57:11

She is a remarkable woman. So I urge all of you to write down on your calendars that I will be interviewing,

01:57:22

God willing, Hannah Overton on Monday's edition of Iron Sharpens Iron. That is

01:57:28

Monday, the 27th of July, 4 to 6 p .m.

01:57:35

Please spread the word about it, email people about it, post it on Facebook, call up your congregants, your fellow members of your church, and so on, and pray about that interview, that others may hear the story, and perhaps even, by the grace and mercy of God, be led to salvation as a result of this.

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And it's been such a joy to get to know more about her through you,

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Brother John Otis. I even want to thank you right now publicly for having the compassion and brotherly love to make a very long drive a number of years ago to be at my graduation from Hebron Colony Ministry, where I was because of my addiction to alcohol.

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And the day that my time there was completed, and I was graduating from the program, it was so delightful and such a blessing and so humbling to see you and your wife,

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Christine, there that day. And I'll never be able to forget it or thank you enough for it.

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Well, we love you, Chris. It was an honor. It's great to see you back where you belong on the radio, and may the

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Lord immensely bless this show. I really appreciate it. You have been one of the major encouragers in my life regarding this radio program, and I just thank you for it, and it really motivated me to move on with it and continue with it.

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I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote questions from all over the United States and other parts of the world.

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Hope you have a blessed, safe, and joyful weekend, and always remember that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.