More than ever in our increasingly secularized culture, Christians need to be rescuing our children. Galatians 1:4, regarding Christ, says that He “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”
Now, when we consider this “rescue,” believers usually think of rescuing children from non-Christians like the atheists operating the new website I mentioned above—humanists who are actively trying to pull children away from the truth of God’s Word.
The Bible warns us about another group of people that our children need to be rescued from: “‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!’ says the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:1). I thought of this verse recently when someone brought a segment of the 700 Club TV program—hosted by Pat Robertson—to my attention.1 A lady had written the following to Pat Robertson, which he read on the air:
On TV’s 700 Club recently, Pat Robertson once again came out against a literal Genesis.
I have three teenage boys and now two of them are questioning the Bible. This scares me! They tell me if the Bible is truth, then I should be able to reasonably explain the existence of dinosaurs. This is just one of the many things they question. Even my husband is agreeing with them. How do I explain things to them that the Bible doesn’t cover? I am so afraid that they are walking away from God. My biggest fear is not to have my children and husband next to me in God’s Kingdom.
Pat Robertson gave an answer on the air that so burdened me that I just had to warn you again about compromising shepherds in the church and the kids who need to be rescued from them. His answer:
Look, I know people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop Ussher, God bless him, wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said that it all took 6,000 years. It just didn’t. And you go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas . . . They’re out there and so, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try to cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible . . . If you fight real science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling it the way it was.
Well, I pray this lady does not accept Pat Robertson’s destructive advice. This televangelist does not understand that the Bible includes references to huge land-dwelling creatures—what we would call dinosaurs—that lived at the same time as man; furthermore, he does not understand the difference between historical and observational science. Plus, he obviously does not understand carbon dating at all, which has nothing to do with millions of years.
Notice how he mocked those of us who take a stand on a young earth (he has done that before). Robertson was essentially telling this concerned woman to make sure her kids believe what the secularists say about earth history. Sadly, this kind of approach is a major reason children are walking away from Christ and from the church in unbelief, not because of the teachings of biblical creationists.
To be frank, and though he has done much good (especially in humanitarian relief work), Pat Robertson is one of those compromising shepherds we discuss in my book Already Gone. This co-authored book with renowned researcher Britt Beemer summarizes the detailed research into why two-thirds of young people walk away from the church.
One of the major reasons for the exodus we discovered in our research was that young people saw such biblical compromise (the kind seen with Pat Robertson) as hypocrisy. On the one hand this shepherd tells people to believe the Bible, but on the other he tells them they shouldn’t believe Genesis as written. Instead, he argues that our children should believe what the atheists and other anti-God secularists say about earth history.
As we embark on a new year of ministry which reaches around the world, AiG will be doing its best to bring groups together to help rescue kids (and adults) from this present evil age. But we also need to rescue children and teens from the destructive teaching of shepherds who compromise God’s Word and lead our children astray.