Creationism Options
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 Evangelical historian Mark Noll has penned a succinct definition of creationism. Noll says “The word creationism by rights should define all who discern a divine mind at work in, with, or under the phenomena of the natural world.” This definition spreads a very broad umbrella. In the past few decades events…
Read MorePivot Points
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 Resurgence of the view of earth as a very young planet and a global flood sculpting all of earth’s features in recent times was a pivotal occurrence triggered by a complex ebb and flow of events. In our day, almost fifty years after the publication of The Genesis Flood, belief in…
Read MoreThe Perfect Storm
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 A massive flood is a devastating meteorological event of great impact. Ingrained in the psyches of many religious people is the sense that floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters are manifestations of God’s judgment. Granted, it is possible that such catastrophes could be manifestations of divine wrath, particularly…
Read MoreFlood Preparedness
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 As I write this post, our local newspaper has warned the community that spring floods on the Mississippi may be imminent. There was a large buildup of snow over the winter with no significant January thaw. The approach of warm weather, together with the possibility of spring rains, may set us…
Read MoreRimmer to Ramm
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 In the days following World War II my parents and their friends frequently attended Saturday evening meetings sponsored by evangelistic outreach organizations. It was the late 1940s and gasoline was no longer rationed. Even as a pre-teen I would attend with them, especially if the featured attraction was a Moody Science…
Read MoreGeorge McCready Price
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 The influential thinking of George McCready Price (1870-1963) is worthy of our careful study. Consciously or not, contemporary evangelical Christians who subscribe to belief in a young earth and a recent global Noahic flood to explain major geologic features of our earth are embracing virtually every one of Price’s views. Price…
Read MoreE. G. White and G. M. Price
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 Perhaps no figure in the current creationism debate in our churches is more important than George McCready Price (1870-1963). Because his credentials were undistinguished he is not a household name, but his proposals currently loom large, even dominant, among those who endorse young earth creationism. After the “Golden Age of Geology,”…
Read More400 Years of Discovery
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 Prior to tracing development of 20th and 21st century beliefs about creation time scales among church goers, we may benefit by a more extensive retrospect. Was the timescale of earth’s history always a topic of discussion among believers? Did they approach consensus? Generally, during the first sixteen centuries of the Christian…
Read MoreScofield and Gap Creationism
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 One of my treasured possessions is a King James Version Scofield Reference Bible presented to my father in 1966 by board members from the church he pastored. The Scofield annotated study Bible was a staple of people in fundamentalist churches early in the 20th century, and was first published in 1909.…
Read MoreDistress After Darwin
By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 In the decades after Darwin, we may ask what were the issues of greatest concern in the church. The theory of evolution began to hold sway not only among scientists, but also in the academic world and among Bible believers. Surprisingly, some conservative theologians held an ambivalent stance toward Darwin’s revolutionary…
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