NUMBER 88
MY TESTIMONY OR WITNESS
Frequently in Christian activity, we are asked to give our testimony or witness. With this in mind, I decided to sit down and try to write my testimony so I would be prepared for the event should it arise. I would suggest that you attempt to do this. It is rewarding, but not an easy task.
I was born in Mobile on September 2, 1924. Both of my parents were children of clergy. My mother's father Dr. Louis Tucker was an Episcopalian minister and rector of Christ Church in downtown Mobile at the time of my mother's marriage in 1921. His father, Joseph Tucker had been a Confederate officer and later, after the Civil War, became an Episcopalian minister. He had also served as rector at Christ Church in Mobile shortly after the Civil War. Our family has been in Mobile a very long time.
My father's father Dr. John W. Phillips was a Baptist minister, and served many churches in New York State before he retired and moved to Mobile in 1911, when he was in his sixties. He attended the First Baptist Church in downtown Mobile as a visitor and began teaching a Bible class. He was so well received that the congregation called him to be their pastor because they were at that moment without a pastor. So, he went back into the pulpit when he was in his sixties, and preached there into his eighties, and ended his ministry with the First Baptist Church in Mobile. He was very famous and president of the Alabama Baptist Convention in the 1930's. His father Luke Phillips was an English carpenter and cabinetmaker. Great grandfather Luke had emigrated from England with his family shortly after the Civil War when my grandfather was a teenager. I remember my great grandfather Luke very clearly as he lived to be 96 and was mentally clear to the end. Luke was very proud of two things, as a young man he had ridden the first train into London, and he had been baptized by Charles Hadden Spurgeon.
I am telling all of this for two reasons. The first reason is to let you know that I know we all came from Adam, and this pedigree stuff is almost worthless and has nothing to do with salvation. We are all related. Hello, cousin. Genealogy is a study of only your most recent generations. The other reason is to let you know I had the advantage of being raised in a Christian home, steeped in morality and constant instruction as to what was right and wrong.
This instruction was the standard Christian legalistic instruction of compulsory Sunday school and church services. If the church door was open, we were there. For perfect attendance and Bible memory verses I received long lines of gold stars by my name on church bulletin boards. I was convinced I was a pretty good boy, and far better than most. I thought that was important.
My sister Katharine and I spent several childhood summers in the 1930's with our Tucker grandparents in the beautiful northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where my grandfather Tucker at that time had a church. It had been the first parish of Bishop Wilmer when he entered the ministry before the Civil War. We had more compulsory Christian training beginning with morning prayer at 6AM daily, kneeling by our chairs in the dining room of the pre-civil war two story brick rectory. I can still recite much of the old Episcopalian prayer book, as the prayer time lasted at least fifteen minutes. My grandmother Tucker made me become a catechism expert. I recall that much of the time I would actually be looking out of the window at the Blue Ridge mountains, and studying the distant Ashby's Gap and Snicker's Gap and wishing I could transport myself to them and away from that dreary dining room scene.
I had the correct answer for every standard religious question. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. How are my sins forgiven? I would answer by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Was I convinced I was a Christian and saved? Yes, I had voluntarily walked down the aisle in the Baptist Church and been baptized by my grandfather Phillips and served as an acolyte in the Episcopal Church under the direction of my grandfather Tucker. I had also been christened and confirmed in the Episcopal Church. Was I sincere? Yes, I was, or at least I thought so and tried to be.
If I had been asked if something was missing in my Christian life, I am not sure what my answer would have been. I think it would have been no. Today, my answer to the question would have to be yes, something was missing. My faith would have had to be described as a very weak faith, although I thought it was perfectly solid. Faith I now know means a total dependence upon God. I tried to believe all that religious "stuff ". I really wanted to believe but how could I when the National Geographic Magazine, the newspaper, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and my science textbooks, all said it was a fact that the universe was billions of years old, and that all living things had evolved over millions of years. If this concept were fact, then the first creation part of Genesis is fictional irrelevant nonsense.
Biblical Christianity rests on a base of information that must be true. The gospel rests on this same foundation. If the account is not all true beginning with the first verse of Genesis, then how can we with our fallen finite minds decide what the omniscient God wrote that is true and what is not true? God tells us all scripture is given by his inspiration, not just parts of it. If he got it wrong in geology, and got it wrong in astronomy, and got it wrong in biology, and got it wrong in history then why should he have gotten it right in morality and salvation. Why should we pay any attention to anything he says elsewhere in scripture?
Wouldn't an omniscient God give us a Bible we could read easily and understand clearly that meant exactly what it says in simple words? He could and would do that because he has all knowledge and all power and loves us and is not the author of confusion.
My faith was legalistic and emotional and centered on pleasing my parents and pastors and Sunday school teachers and being convinced by the system that a moral person will have a happier life. I was an ignorant Pharisee, simply a religious person, a product of church legalistic teaching and unaware of the diagnosis. I was in a mental state of hoping the gospel was true, even if it was not logical. For my grandmother Tucker, I could display the most perfect pious attitude on a moment of notice.
Could I really defend the gospel against skeptics? No, not very well. This part of my Christian education had been entirely omitted in Sunday school and church. Did any pastor ever tell me the evolutionary theory was scientific hogwash, and that the universe was not billions of years old? No, none ever did. Instead the sermon messages, to me, became one of "you better believe this religious fairy tale and hope it is true. If you will do this, you will be a happier person". What a sorry counterfeit message! Most pastors are still preaching this same boring insipid message today. When the church returns to preaching Genesis chapters 1 through 11 as true history, accurate as written, then the Holy Spirit will bring revival, because God's word will be honored. Christian compromising of Genesis has been the greatest error of our age.
I was introduced to Creation Science literature in about 1991, and began to read it avidly. One answer after another was given to puzzling questions in my mind. I soon discovered that science applied to the Bible resulted in astounding revelations that pastors generally do not know because they have so little scientific training. The Bible did not have to be accepted on blind faith; the Bible really could be true, and exactly as written. Continuous exploration and reading convinced me not only that the Bible could be true, but that it scientifically had to be true, and true exactly as written.
I cannot express in words what this did for me and for my faith. When it was explained to me that the church had not held to the simple truth of what Genesis teaches, but instead had abandoned the defense of the creation story in Genesis, I was appalled. Darwin's theory confused the church and the church chose to try to ignore the Genesis account of origins and instead present the Gospel without taking a stand on the literal truth of God's creation in six literal days. The Holy Spirit cannot honor this compromising of Genesis. This became obvious to me. Since Darwin's influence nearly 150 years ago, the church stopped preaching a literal logical rational Bible defending gospel, and instead changed to an emotional gospel that ignores the defense of the literal truth of Genesis. This is another gospel.
Going to bed one night after hours of reading in a book titled CREATION AND THE MODERN CHRISTION, which is about 50% scripture and written by a scientist Dr. Henry Morris, I could not sleep. I was finally aware of what a blind dunce I had been, and the awesome realization of God's omniscience and omnipotence and ability to create "ex-nihilo" (from nothing) flowed and poured into me. I saw how insignificant I really am and was compelled to climb out of bed and kneel on the brick floor. I began to weep and sob, in repentance, uncontrollably and remained there on my knees for four hours, creating a great puddle of tears. Imagine me, an old tough W.W. 2 Marine private, who had survived the entire Guadalcanal and New Britain campaigns ever doing such a thing. My wife Mary was awakened and alarmed and tried to console me and was so worried she started to call 911. Then she had the same experience in the car while we were driving to town about two weeks later, and I had to stop and console her.
I came to realize most Christians have been persuaded to accept Christ as their Personal Savior, but not as their Creator ex-nihilo. Their faith is centered in their acceptance (something they have done) instead of in accepting what Christ their Creator has done. Also, if I accept Christ only as Savior and not also as Creator ex-nihilo, this allows me to remain in control and direction of my life. This is where I had been. Such a person is deceived in the heart, and the salvation message has no effect on his life. He has become simply a legalistic religious person (a Pharisee) without any possibility of manifesting the life of Jesus or producing any spiritual fruit. Understand if we evolved, we are our own boss. If we were created, we belong to our Creator. This part of accepting Him as Creator is the same thing that is referred to in the scripture as accepting Him as Lord. The word Lord should imply Creator to a person's thinking, but in my opinion does not in most cases. The church has not taught us to understand this. The primary element of His Lordship is His ability to create "ex-nihilo" (from nothing but Himself).
Now, I cannot shut up. I am exasperated that the plain simple truth of the written message of the Bible is so crystal clear to me, yet I seem to be unable to get most of my fellow human beings to hear what I say or understand what I write. As each day goes by, I become more Calvinistic, understanding that God does choose who He will save just as he says in the Bible, thus all glory will be His. He has to open our eyes to the truth to see the scripture means exactly what it simply says. Through unmerited favor (grace) He opened my eyes and let me see Genesis is scientifically accurate and evolution is scientifically impossible.
The other side of the coin though says whoever will come to Him, He will in no wise cast out. Thus the rebellious that cannot see that the Bible has to be true, exasperate me no end, and I wish and continue to urge them to come to Him through accepting the simple language of the words of scripture.
It has finally dawned on me in my own way that I have become another insignificant preacher, and I love it, because I have never been more at peace. Now I can say I know that my Redeemer liveth. I would love for you to have this same experience.
Sidney C. Phillips M.D. 1999
