July’s highlight was traveling to Turku, Finland (about two hours west of Helsinki) to give a three-part-presentation on “Six-Day Creation: The Biblical and Scientific Arguments” at the Corpus Christi conference for young adults. This annual conference is a unique event, offering Confessional Lutherans in their 20s and 30s mainly from Northern Europe (but increasingly also from the LCMS) an opportunity to learn, worship, and fellowship with one another. Originally, Lula was originally supposed to join me and report on the conference for LCMS Eurasia. Unfortunately, she was called away to Wittenberg for three weeks to fill in for the managing director of the Old Latin School who was on vacation. Back to the conference: I divided my presentation into three parts: teaching first on the three false alternatives to the Bible’s six 24-hour days of creation (namely, naturalistic evolution, theistic evolution, and intelligent design). In the next session, I explained how to defend 6-day creation to your Christian friends. The last session was on how to explain this key biblical teaching to non-Christians, offering several scientific models for a Young Earth. I particularly appreciated the opportunity to teach on this last point, since I too was once an evolutionist, believing that there is no scientific alternative to the earth being billions of years old and every creature having come about through evolution. I was touched that many young people came up to me afterwards, never even having heard that there is an alternative to the theory of naturalistic evolution. Indeed, in many Lutheran churches—even in the LCMS—there is not much catechesis on this topic. While believing that our triune God created everything in six 24-hour days is certainly not a salvation issue, if someone thought that God’s own words in Genesis 1 and 2 are not true, that could easily instill a seed of doubt into one’s faith in the Word of God. For this reason, I am grateful to the Executive Board of Corpus Christi for inviting me to present on this salient subject.
Thank you so much for your continued love and support, which makes all this possible. It is a privilege for Lula and me to serve on your behalf, out here on the front lines.
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God bless you all!
Pastor Christian and Lula Tiews
The Tiews in Germany 