Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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society. In The Universe: Plan or Accident? (1949), Clark expresses his preference <strong>for</strong><br />
old-earth creationism in a scientifically knowledgeable manner.<br />
Herbert W. Armstrong is the only major creationist who began his anti-evolution<br />
activities in the 1920s and remained active up to the present decade (he was campaigning<br />
against evolution until his death in 1986). Through his Worldwide Church of God<br />
(founded in 1931), his journal The Plain Truth (founded in 1934), and his Ambassador<br />
College in Pasadena (founded in 1947), Armstrong has been attacking evolution <strong>for</strong> over<br />
fifty years. His son Garner Ted Armstrong, who became the voice of the Worldwide<br />
Church of God on radio and TV, also proselytized widely <strong>for</strong> creationism.<br />
A book very influential among creationists appeared in 1951: The Flood: In the<br />
Light of the Bible, Geology, and Archeology, by Alfred M. Rehwinkel. It has undergone<br />
seventeen printings up to 1978. Rehwinkel was a theology professor at Concordia<br />
Theological Seminary in St. Louis, a Missouri Synod Lutheran institution. 13 The Flood<br />
firmly endorses strict young-earth creationism and Flood Geology. Rehwinkel, who<br />
apparently had some university training in geology, was strongly influenced by Price.<br />
The book contains many scientific references and arguments, though each chapter ending<br />
is heavily and explicitly biblical.<br />
The Flood, says Rehwinkel, is the greatest single event in earth history since the<br />
Creation.<br />
Nothing comparable with it has happened since nor will happen until the final destruction of this universe<br />
in the fire of Judgment Day. The Flood marks the end of a world of transcendent beauty, created by God as<br />
a perfect abode <strong>for</strong> man, and the beginning of a new world, a mere shadowy replica of its original. In all<br />
recorded history there is no other event except the Fall which has had such a revolutionary effect upon the<br />
topography and conditions of this earth... No geologist, biologist, or student of history can af<strong>for</strong>d to ignore<br />
this great catastrophe. [1951:xv]<br />
To deny the worldwide Flood “means to question the infallibility of the Bible and that of<br />
Christ Himself.<br />
Rehwinkel helped develop the creation-science model of the antediluvian earth.<br />
He did not invent this idea, but he tried to make it scientifically respectable; modern<br />
creation-scientists, led by Morris, have further added to it. Be<strong>for</strong>e the Flood, says<br />
Rehwinkel, the entire earth was uni<strong>for</strong>mly mild, pleasant, and luxuriant, with shallow<br />
oceans only a fraction of their present size. The human population was large, widely<br />
distributed, and highly advanced. But the primary lesson of the Flood is moral and<br />
religious, not scientific. Rehwinkel presents the Flood as the “Prototype of the Final<br />
Judgment,” and concludes with the warning that the world today is as evil as in the days<br />
preceding the Flood catastrophe and that this Final Judgment is indeed imminent. The<br />
cause of the Flood was “not geological or cosmic, but ethical and moral.”<br />
13 Rehwinkel was also a fervent anti-communist who considered Roosevelt and Churchill “contemptible<br />
warmongers, deceivers and fools.” .Herman Otten, who knew Rehwinkel at Concordia, praises him (“‘Rip’<br />
Rehwinkel—One of the First Revisionists”) in his address to the 1989 Institute <strong>for</strong> Historical Review<br />
Conference (Otten 1989:7). Otten, author of Baal or God and editor of the fundamentalist Christian News<br />
(<strong>for</strong>merly Lutheran News), has come out strongly in favor of “historical revisionism.” He denies that the<br />
Nazis systematically executed millions of Jews, calling the Holocaust one of the great “hoaxes” of our<br />
time, along with evolutionism.