In the evenings when supper was over, Walt and Peggy would stay at the table talking. Walt would share with her the amazing things he was discovering in his search for the truth about creation. Peggy listened quietly, but didn’t share Walt’s enthusiasm about his new hobby, even though she could see how compelled he was by the scientific evidence.
She knew many fine Christians who believed in evolution. In fact, she and Walt had believed in theistic evolution all these years, assuming that God had used evolution to create the universe. Theistic evolution had been a comfortable compromise. It gave a sense of scientific respectability and, at the same time, it satisfied an inward conviction that there must be a Creator.
After one of their evening conversations, she asked “What difference does it really make?”
So Walt addressed the theological implications. “Why do we need a savior?” he asked.
Peggy replied, “To save us from our sin.”
Then Walt explained, “If evolution happened, death was already occurring before man evolved. But if death came before man, and was not a consequence of Adam’s sin, then sin is a fiction. And if sin is a fiction, then why do we need Christ to save us from our sin?”
Suddenly, it made sense to Peggy. It seemed so obvious, but she had never considered it before. Like many others who had passively accepted theistic evolution, she had not realized the theological implications. But now she saw how evolution completely undermined the need for a Savior. And she saw what an unsatisfactory compromise theistic evolution is. If the Genesis account is not a factual depiction of events, then the entire Bible was not completely true, and that means that it is not the ultimate authority. From then on, Peggy was an eager supporter of Walt’s creation study.
Brown had been teaching at the War College for several years and was offered a splendid job as the Director of the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory near Boston. He seriously considered this job because it would put him around experts in geology and geophysics, even if they were evolutionists. Brown was now very interested in geology because of his study of the global flood. His investigation of creation and the flood had started as scientific curiosity, but as he saw the implications, it grew into a passionate hobby.
Unexpectedly one day, Brown’s superior, a two-star general, called him into his office to sign papers that would send him to the laboratory. Brown had to think fast. He had reached full colonel rapidly.9 But he wanted more time to devote to his creation study, and he wanted to help get the creation message out. He politely turned down the offer to go to the Geophysics Laboratory and asked to get out of the military at the first opportunity. So in 1980, after twenty-one years in uniform, he retired from the Air Force as a full colonel.
Dr. Brown was astonished to see that much scientific evidence was poorly disseminated and that young people were taught such erroneous science about origins. He saw that critical thinking skills were not being fully developed in our classrooms. Students were being told what to think, not being taught how to think. Science lost its excitement in this stifling atmosphere. Dr. Brown had seen for himself that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly favored creation and a global flood. If thinking people were allowed to see all the evidence, they could reach their own logical conclusions.