Christian Testimony of J.D. Mitchell

SHORT TESTIMONY:

I grew up in the church as a young child and I was always a faithful church attender, except for a period of about six years around the time that I attended college. If asked, I would have told people that I was a Christian, but in reality I was a secularist and a theistic evolutionist. Therefore, I could not logically accept Christ or the truth of the Bible. I was lost!

Then, at the age of 40 I was introduced to Biblical Creation Apologetics and was at that point born again, able to accept God’s Word as true from the first verse, and accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was saved!

For the last 40 years I have been deeply and passionately involved in Biblical Creation Apologetics. In 2004 I founded my formal creation ministry, Creation Engineering Concepts. That is my short testimony. 

FULL TESTIMONY:

I grew up in the Church, but was not then especially influenced by the gospel or Christian doctrine. As I look back, I attribute this to several things:

  1. My parents were church attenders but not saved Christians and lived their lives devoted to a “works” philosophy. I worked much of my life alongside my dad who was not a Morman but who had been greatly influenced by Mormons. (I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. ) My father to his dying day was a “good, self-made man.” The spiritual leader of the family was my mom, but she did not grasp the gospel message either.
  2. From an early age I had an analytical mind. I found that the church I attended was not well attuned to youth with that sort of a mindset. Pastors tended to deflect origins questions and youth with social or musical talents were better accepted than those with analytical or scientific minds. We did have good basketball teams though and basketball was one of my better talents.
  3. My public schooling tended to encourage me with secular thought especially after the beginning of the Space Race in the late 1950s. I read heavily of secular astronomy, philosophy, cosmology and paleontology in high school; and did well in all school subjects, especially math and science. I was an expert of sorts on the U.S. Space Program and early on I thought I undoubtedly would become a bio-astro-physicist.

So, I went to university to be trained as a physicist. Every course in which I enrolled was foundationally based upon naturalistic thought; a way of thinking I had no trouble accepting. In my sophomore year I found physics to be too esoteric for me and I could see a better future for me in engineering. I transferred to engineering where there was much less emphasis on philosophy and more of a practical focus for the applications of knowledge. However, at this time I saw no real need for me to attend church and totally abandoned any connection with any church. I was glad there were people who were concerned with the good, but I had other things to keep be busy.

After five years at university, I found immedidate success in the world of business and engineering and was married to my wonderful wife at the age of 24. A few years later we had two children. We were in agreement that we should get back to regular church attendance. (I wanted my children to be nurtured amongst “good” people.) I assumed there was a God, but did not see any evidence that he was personal or cared much for the universe he had created some billions of years previously. 

For the next dozen or so years we continued our attendance in liberal mainline churches (United Methodist and Presbyterian USA) where the emphasis was on “Churchianity” and there was little if any emphasis on eternal salvation. I was fine with this; and these churches had no problem with my naturalistic philosophy. The Bible to me was no more valuable than a number of the other great books I had in my extensive library. I had no concept of the Bible actually being God’s inerrant, authoritative, inspired Word because I was sure it was foundationally in error. While I read the Bible, I had no doubt that evolution and billions of years were scientific facts. I did not know if God set the evolutionary process into place early on, or if he was involved on a regular basis. I tried to accept the other spiritual aspects of the Christian faith, but always struggled because of the problem of Genesis 1-11. If the Bible was in error in the beginning at what point should one start accepting it? Because of the influence of the culture and the Church, it would be accurate to say that I was a secularist and a theistic evolutionist and theologically lost.

In 1984 I was Clerk of Session of the Presbyterian church where we had membership. I attended a Bible study on Genesis where I waxed eloquently that Genesis chapters 1-11 were to be taken as allegory. I got no argument from anyone, including the pastors, during the class.

But then, after the class, as I headed to the car to go home with my family, I was intercepted by a man who had been in the Genesis class. The man’s name was Jim Blunck and I am forever indebted to his God-directed intervention. He asked me to listen to an audio tape on creation science. I told him that I would do so (if only to humor him) and I did. I may have heard of creation science previously but had no idea what it was. This audio tape was my introduction to creation science, and its messages had profound and eternal effects on me. The naturalistic scales quickly fell from my eyes and I was able to see that my secular faith had been built on lies. Almost immediately I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior and was born again! My Bible studies took on a entirely different set of presuppositions. To God be the glory!

There are many in Christian leadership who maintain that people do not come to Christ through creation science. But, they are terribly wrong. I do not know how I could have ever accepted Christ without the ability to see that His creation and His Word are compatible. Since my conversion I have met scores of others who have similar stories to mine.

At the time of my conversion I was forty years old. That means my maturing in Christ was perhaps more gradual than most other new believers. I had a lot of unlearning to do and I jumped into this process with both feet. I got ahold of everything I could from the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, and other creation science ministries. From 1984 to 2004 I read and studied the Bible with the attitude that I must accept the entire Bible on faith, not just those things that matched up to my previous worldly education or my self-developed concepts of truth.

But I found that I was not able to feel fulfilled in my developing Christian life. I still made a living as an engineer, a field I enjoyed. There seemed to be a lack of the expectant joy that a follower of Jesus should have. The Church as a whole did not seem to appreciate my unorganized attempts at setting them straight on my newly discovered creation science and apologetics truths. The world seemed to love to continue to accept evolution and millions of years as facts and this just caused me to fume. What could I do? What should I do?

Finally, early in 2004, two influences came together to drive me out of my funk:

  1. My wife and I studied Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life and that experience convinced me that God has a purpose for my life and I needed to commit myself to a Christian ministry.
  2. By this time we had moved to a church that had a Bible-preaching evangelical pastor. He was very supportive of my desires and efforts to develop a ministry.

It was critical that these two influences came together as they did, because without that happening I doubt that I would have gone ahead. I thank God for this. It seemed that Satan had everything else under his control and there was no encouragement to be found anywhere else.

So, in 2004 I began a two-year course in Biblical Creation Apologetics and founded my personal ministry, Creation Engineering Concepts. In late 2005 I received my Master of Biblical Studies in Biblical Creation Apologetics degree and also founded the Institute for Creation Science in the Portland, Oregon area.

Today, I continue to research, speak and write regarding creation science and biblical apologetics subjects. I lead Bible studies in my church. A major part of my effort is my website, www.creationengineeeringconcepts.org. My main mission is to encourage believers and pre-believers that they can indeed believe the Bible from the very first verse. My ministry-guiding verses are John 14:6, 1 Peter 3:15, Jude 3 and Matthew 28:19. In all I do I try to show that God’s Special and General Revelations are perfectly coincident as well as harmonious.

I have found that those thousands of us in this type of ministry are not able to make a lot of progress either in the Church or the world, but without our efforts for Christ the Creator, there would be no Christian influence in the culture as a whole. I think, with God’s help, we are at least helping to keep the worldview war at a stalemate for the time being. Come, Lord Jesus!

In Christ,

J.D. Mitchell

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