Gospel at Stake in Creation-Evolution Debate, Argues Ministry Leader

Friday, Jun. 5, 2009 Posted: 9:51:14PM HKT

Participants at the morning session of the premiere of The Voyage That Shook The World, Creation Ministries International's professional documentary response to the Darwin Year celebrations browsing CMI's book booths outside the New Sanctuary of St Andrew's Cathedral last Saturday. (Photo: The Christian Post (Singapore))

More importantly, the issue of Creation strikes at the heart of the Christian faith, the Gospel and even the nature of God, he asserted.

“[T]he Gospel is… about the issue of sin and death,” he said. “If you accept the millions of years as a literal interpretation of the fossil record then you are saying that there was death and cancer and all of those bad things were in the world before Adam and Eve, therefore before sin… You’ve got to say that God must like those things because He said they are all very good at the end of the Creation period. God said He looked at everything He made and He said it’s all very good, which must include cancer and bloodshed and violence and so on…”

Holding that the world had experienced death, pain and suffering for millions of years makes it hard to justify the Christian doctrine that God’s nature is love before nonbelievers and sceptics, whereas, by taking Genesis as history, believers can give the answer that “it wasn’t always like that”, and that, in fact, all the animals originally ate plants.

The Young Earth creationist standpoint is also in line with the restoration mentioned in the Book of Revelation, where it says that the curse of the Fall will be removed and all things will be restored to a sinless, deathless condition as in the beginning. If the removal of the curse removes death, pain and suffering, Dr Wieland argues, then it’s clear that the curse brought in the death, pain and suffering.

Moreover, it is the only way in which Christians don’t have to compromise their faith but “can have a whole harmonious, integrated worldview where everything makes sense.”

About Creation Ministries International

Dr Carl Wieland is one of the three co-founders of the ministry that came only recently to be known as Creation Ministries International (2006). A former atheist during his varsity days because of the ‘scientific’ theory of evolution – what he referred to as a “total, rational stumbling block” – he found “creation evidences” so compelling that it was “impossible” not to accept Christ.

“What’s sin and death if evolution is true? I mean, it’s a natural part of life,” he said. “It’s like lights turning on, you know, when I read a book many years ago, how the evidence of the natural world: geology and biology, is interpreted through worldview glasses, if you like, and what you think of as facts are really interpretations on both sides of the fence.”

Converted shortly after graduation, Dr Wieland began speaking on the subject of Creationism and began the Creation magazine in his home initially as a part-time project. The turning point of his ministry came in 1986 when he met with a serious car accident. While convalescing, the two people who started what is now CMI came to him and asked for his help. He started work there and never got the chance to go back to medicine.

“It’s very fulfilling when you see people’s whole world and life view change and they get excited that they can really trust the Bible,” he explained.

Later on, the two co-founders left the ministry. Dr Wieland founded the first Creation Science Association in Australia and merged the Creation magazine with the original Answers in Genesis set-up. He is the only “constant factor” in the ministry since its beginnings in the early 1970s, the MD added.

CMI’s beginnings were actually inspired by the writings of the founder of the American ministry of the Institute for Creation Research, the 59-year-old said.

Besides the ministry’s flagship Creation magazine, a quarterly with subscribers in more than 170 countries, CMI publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of Creation three times a year. CMI also produces books and literature defending Young Earth creationism. CMI is an organisation of autonomous Christian apologetics ministries located in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K. and the U.S.

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Edmond Chua
The Christian Post (Singapore) Reporter