Adventists Affirm

Walter Veith 
Chairman, Department of Zoology 
University of the Western Cape, South Africa

"Your mother will go to hell," my religion teacher repeated over and over. "She will be tormented forever and ever." Right then I decided, If there is a God, I hate Him. How can a God of love punish a faithful mother like mine? By age 10, I was a confirmed atheist. For me, God did not exist.

My strict Roman Catholic father planned to enter the priesthood until he fell in love with a lovely young German Lutheran—my mother. Before Vatican II, Catholics had looked on Lutherans as lost and excluded from heaven, but my parents never once argued about religion. My father promised to raise his children Catholic and mother accepted this.

When I was almost 8, tragedy struck. Doctors diagnosed my mother with cancer and gave her two to four months to live. With strong faith and determination she lasted more than four years. During these most miserable years of my life, I watched my mother suffer through numerous operations and painful radiation. Like most young boys I felt very attached to my mother. Why does God let her suffer like this? I questioned.

I attended a German Lutheran School in South Africa. Since my father pledged to raise me Catholic, the school arranged for me and other children with Roman Catholic parents to receive religious instruction from a nun who came to our school daily. The Sister assigned to my class proved overzealous for her religion. For a boy watching his mother die, it proved a disaster.

"It’s so sad your mother is a Protestant who will never see the kingdom of heaven," she would tell me. "Your mother will suffer in hell forever." My dying mother has enough suffering, I thought. How can a God of love make her suffer more?

I attended church every Sunday with my father and did all the things good Roman Catholics do. But having a nun continually harp about my mother going to hell made me increasingly resentful. One day I became so angry, I took my catechism, tore it up, and threw it at her. In unkind language, I told her exactly what she could do with her God.

Expelled. Immediately I was expelled from her class. Soon I got in trouble with another teacher and was thrown out of his class, too. I became defiant, speaking disrespectfully, skipping classes, even throwing pine cones at my teachers! An impossible child, I never told my parents that I acted like a little monster at school. And they never found out.

When my beloved mother died shortly after I turned 12, my father remarried. My stepmother found me totally impossible. Problems increased at home and at school. Finally, the school asked me to leave. My parents decided it best to send me away from home to a trade school. That’s when I woke up. No way, I thought. This is not for me. I lived in several places before persuading relatives to send me to another school where I started doing well.

After completing high school I attended the University of Cape Town where I majored in zoology. This school, founded as a religious university, still had a school of theology, but its science faculty were incredibly secular. They championed evolution.

Evolution Solution. Every class had an evolutionary basis. I learned the whole evolution theory very quickly. This is the answer to my problem, I rejoiced. My mother’s not burning in hell. There is no hell. There is no heaven. There is no God! My professors included brilliant men whose work on the evolution of human skulls had been sent to museums around the world.

On weekends and holidays, I went to the home of my college roommate. Here I met his very attractive sister. I convinced her that she would make a much better roommate than her brother, and we married.

I was an atheist, but my wife had been raised in an entirely different environment. Her father, a news reporter, had extensively investigated occult occurrences in Africa. At first he believed the supernatural to be a big joke. Then at one séance an unseen arm grabbed him. As he delved more and more into the occult, strange things began happening in his home. He had a cane that used to go walking by itself. Dishes flew through the house and smashed into the wall. A small child went to bed and its shoes came stepping through the house. He wrote books on African witchcraft and the New Age. Later, his influence would haunt us.

Teaching. After we married, I earned my doctorate in zoology studies and got hired as a lecturer. Then I received an appointment as senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University. My whole life revolved around evolution. I taught evolution. I based my research on evolution. As a philologist, I studied evolutionary literature. God did not exist. If anyone dared mention Him, something inside me would burn like fire.

During one lecture on evolution to 300 freshmen, a young girl stood up. "Excuse me," she said. "What you are saying, Dr. Veith, is a lie. God created the heaven and the earth in six days. He is the Creator of the Universe."

I exploded, tearing into this young woman like you can’t imagine. She finally sat down and cried. Job well done, I thought. Students left impressed with my eloquence in proving how ridiculous it is to believe in creation.

Back in my office, I sat at my desk elated, but not for long. A small voice in the back of my mind began to torment me. "You’re mean! How could you attack and humiliate a girl like this?" My conscience wouldn’t let me go. I felt really bad.

By now, my wife was pregnant with our third child, and my father-in-law moved into an apartment next to our home. His influence and relationship with the occult seemed to bring problems. My wife spent her entire pregnancy in and out of the hospital. We believed she would die. Finally, she gave birth to a baby boy.

Dream. One night after bringing our child home, I dreamt I was being strangled. I woke up at 2 a.m., perspiring profusely, my heart pounding like someone was beating a drum inside my chest. Immediately in the next room, our baby screamed as if he were being murdered. My wife and I ran to his bed and picked him up.

"Why is this baby shaking so violently?" I asked. My wife exclaimed, "He’s got a very high fever! I think he’s going to die!" We rushed our little one to the hospital where they put him in a cooling unit and started IVs. His life was "touch and go" for many agonizing hours. When the fever finally broke, we took him home.

It was uncanny. Less than four weeks passed and precisely at 2 a.m., I again awoke and shouted to my wife, "I just dreamed I was being strangled!" Instantly in the next room our baby screamed. His temperature soared and then he went unconscious. We feared he would die before we got medical help. Back at the hospital doctors and nurses worked feverishly to keep him alive.

Possessed. This happened at least eight times—so frequently, in fact, that the hospital kept the cooling unit ready for our arrival. Doctors could not explain to us what was wrong. On one occasion, the doctor said, "This is incredible. Your boy is less than one year old and it took four adults to hold him down. He must be possessed."

Even a hardened atheist begins to think when the same thing happens for weeks and months on end. These two events must be connected. Sitting next to my son in the hospital, I reviewed the whole situation. There appears to be no medical help. Doctors have no remedy. Where can I find a solution to our baby’s problem? Is this related to my terrible dreams or influenced by my father-in-law’s delving into the occult?

I thought of the Roman Catholic Church and its power over demons. I’m going back to my old church and ask for help, I determined.

At the church the next day, I found a not-so-sober priest with a bottle of brandy. I walked up and said, "I’m a Roman Catholic, but I don’t attend church any more."

He looked at me, "So what’s your problem?"

"I’m a scientist and an atheist." Stammering, I continued, "I really don’t know what to say. We’ve been having very strange happenings in our home."

"Hold on!" he stopped me. "I don’t want anything to do with this. It’s not my field. Give me your name and number and someone will get back to you."

I soon got a call from another priest who sounded very sophisticated. "Come and meet me at the monastery," he invited.

Impressive. I hurried to meet him. What an impressive man, I thought. I accepted his invitation to sit down. His kind eyes looked right at me. "You have a problem in your home." My mouth dropped open. "Satan is trying to kill your son and you are being terrorized."

"How do you know this?" I demanded. "I’ve never told anyone."

"Never mind how I know," he said. "The problem is so severe, it will take the highest levels of action to get rid of it. We will have to say a mass in your home."

He continued, "It’s illegal to say mass in a private home without permission from the Bishop, but don’t worry. I already have permission."

He showed me a letter. It was signed by the Bishop authorizing him to say mass in my house. How can this be? I puzzled. I haven’t told him anything. He knows my problem and everything is already arranged.

"Fair enough," I said. "You may come to my home and do whatever you need to do." I continued, "You need to know I’m an atheist and haven’t been to church for years."

"You won’t be an atheist anymore. What about your wife?"

"She’s not even Catholic," I replied. "She’s Dutch Reformed."

"That’s no problem," he assured me.

Exorcism. When he arrived at our home, my wife was just as impressed as I. The priest asked us to take him through the house. He stopped in our baby’s room. "This is the worst room in your house," he said, "but we have to exorcize your entire home. Please bring me some water."

To the water he added "holy salt" and made the sign of the cross in the water with the salt. With his bowl of "holy water" he went throughout the house, making the sign of the cross above each window and door.

This priest told me he had a ring, a relic from a saint potent in exorcizing. He started saying the mass and every pet in our house came running and sat down. Wow! This is really weird, I thought. What’s going on?

After the mass, he gave me amulets from Lourdes and told me to put one over each of our children’s beds. Before leaving, he took off his ordination cross, handed it to me and said, "Put this on your baby’s bed. I hate it when the devil destroys little children."

My wife and I were anxious for night to come so we could see what would happen. Normally our child cried terribly when we put him to bed. He’d go into a fetal position and start hitting the sides of his crib. Now he rolled over on his back, started making happy "goo-goo" sounds and fell asleep. For the first time in his life he slept through the night. Then the next night, the next week, the next month. And I had no more nightmares.

How does a hard-nosed atheistic scientist react to this? What am I going to do? The church has solved a major problem in our home. Will I keep saying, "There is no God?" Do I have a responsibility to this God? My wife and I wrestled with this for months.

Finally I said, "Look dear, I have no choice. I’m going back to church." But even while going to church, I asked myself, Do I really believe in God? I’m not sure.

Carpenter. One day I decided to remodel our kitchen. I asked a German carpenter to come and do the work. When he came, I noticed his car’s bumper sticker which read: "My boss is a Carpenter." After we agreed for him to do the work, he said, "By the way, I walk with the Lord."

I looked him in the eye. "You walk with the Lord—I just want a kitchen. Is that O.K.?" He said, "O.K., but I can give you this," and he handed me a pamphlet. I took it and stuck it in a drawer.

In the meantime, I attended church every Sunday. I asked the priest about evolution and creation. He said, "Everyone knows we exist through evolution." Wonderful, I thought. I can continue with evolution and believe in God, too. I began to feel very comfortable.

Questions. As I read the catechism, I became puzzled. Why does God want the same ritual over and over? The weekly celebration of the Eucharist began to trouble me. Why do they say the same prayers and celebrate the same ritual over and over? The doctrine of transubstantiation boggled my mind. Does the priest really have power to change the bread and wine into the true body of Christ?

Once, I walked into the Catholic church and sat alone in a pew near the back. A little red light blinked on a box, meaning the host or wafer was inside. It hit me. They have God locked up in that box. At my church, the host or wafer was kept in a box.

This made me irritated and even angry. But God must be here! I struggled. Look at the changes in my home. We have peace. My wife’s even willing to convert to Catholicism. I’d called the priest to come to our house so she could join his church, but he always seemed to be busy.

I tried to pray. "Where are you, God? I don’t know You." Sitting there in a pew with no one around, I finally said, "O.K., God, if You truly exist, You must show me." Feeling better, I got up and hurried home. Rummaging through a drawer, I pulled out the pamphlet left by the German carpenter a year before. I laughed when I thought about his "walking with the Lord."

Commandments. The pamphlet had three columns displaying the biblical version, the Lutheran version, and the Catholic version of the Ten Commandments. It explained how the Roman Church changed God’s law, giving Bible texts to show how it was changed. This is garbage, I thought. It’s pure rubbish.

We had lots of catechisms around. I grabbed one and discovered the commandments exactly as the Catholic version in the pamphlet. I called my wife. "Please bring me a Bible!"

"I don’t think we have one," she said. I remembered a box of books in our garage, given to us by an old lady. Little old ladies usually have a Bible, I thought. Sure enough, I found a Bible.

I turned to Exodus 20. The Ten Commandments were different from those in the catechism. This really puzzled me. I phoned the carpenter. "Remember you installed a kitchen for me last year?"

"Yes," he said. "I don’t know why, but I’ve been trying to call you all day."

"Please come over," I invited.

My Bible and catechism were open to the commandments when he came. I met him with a question. "Why are they so different?"

Bible Study. He took me to the prophecies of Daniel 7. We studied until almost 3 a.m. He came back the next day and the next. In three days we went all the way through Daniel and Revelation. He showed me all the historic facts about kings, kingdoms, and the rise of the papacy. Interesting, I thought, but I don’t believe a word of it. Mulling it over, I decided to resolve this by finding it out for myself.

At the university’s theology and history departments, I checked out all the material I could find. It didn’t take long to discover that what the carpenter had shown me from the Bible about Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome, followed by ten European kingdoms, was really true. The big shocker came when I realized that historically, the little horn of Daniel 7 could be none other than the Roman Catholic Church.

Wanting to be sure, I even researched the view that the little horn represents Antiochus IV Epiphanes. But it didn’t fit the Scripture criteria. In order to be fair, I called my priest. "I have an issue I want to talk over with you," I said. "Please come to my home."

He sat with my wife and me while we looked at the prophetic chapters in Daniel. "It’s clear," I explained. "The Bible predicted a power would rise and attempt to change God’s commandments."

My priest looked at us and said, "I can’t talk with you on this issue because I’m not into Scripture." Stunned by his response, I thought, You’re a priest and not into Scripture? He continued, "The church has specialists who study prophecy, but it doesn’t make any sense to me." Then he simply got up, excused himself, and left.

I invited ministers from other churches to my home. Every time we got to the little horn, they said, "It’s Antiochus Epiphanes." I’d stand up and say, "Gentleman, it can’t be, because the little horn arose after Rome. It can’t be in Greek times." Soon, they’d all get up and go, leaving me more convinced than ever. The little horn power has to be the Church of Rome.

Dilemma. This left me with a tremendous dilemma. Should I keep attending church on Sunday when Bible prophecy portrays the Roman Church as working against Christ? Even worse, the carpenter started talking about the Sabbath. He went through all the Sabbath texts.

"This is ridiculous," I said. "How can you keep a commandment that says the Lord created the heavens, the earth, and the sea in only six days? It’s a fact of science. Everything came into existence through evolution over millions of years."

My carpenter friend smiled, "No, not evolution. God created everything." The face of the freshman girl popped into my mind. I turned toward the carpenter. "Friend, what you are saying about a six-day creation is absolute rubbish."

"Wait," he said. "I’ll prove to you that creation is true."

"O.K., you try," I responded.

He tried. The next day he came with a big pile of books on creation and handed them to me. Every time I finished a lecture at the university, I’d go back to my office and go through his books. When I returned them he asked, "What do you think?"

"Garbage," I said. He didn’t argue. He just brought me another pile of books. After looking at these, I returned them. "They’re so unscientific," I stated. "I cannot accept the confusing material published in your books. You belong to the Flat Earth Society."

Every time he said, "God is the Creator," I’d kill him with science. I had all the terminology. I was an evolutionist. I’d been trained to wipe out anyone who dared to suggest that God had anything to do with our existence.

The poor carpenter, frustrated with me, finally said, "I don’t have a problem with creation. You have the problem. You solve it."

Personal Quest. This put the ball in my court. I studied the Bible like you can’t imagine. I wore out a copy in just two months and had to throw it away. My wife said, "This Sabbath idea is stupid. It makes no sense."

One day the secretary of my department handed me a thick pile of documents. A quick look in a spare moment revealed it was written against the Sabbath and Seventh-day Adventists. This amazed me because no one knew we struggled over the Sabbath issue. My colleagues were all atheists. I’d never admit to thinking about religion.

Still wrestling with evolution, I gave the material to my wife. "You go through this," I said. "Maybe there’s a way out for us." While I grappled with creation, she struggled with the Sabbath.

Completing the material, my wife said, "This document has convinced me the Sabbath is right. I’ve gone through every statement and put it next to the Bible. Every time it turns out to be the word of man against what God’s Word clearly teaches." A document against the Sabbath proved to her that the Sabbath is the day for Christians to keep.

"This is a major problem for me," I told her. "I’m not keeping a day holy for a six-day creation when everyone knows it took at least six billion years."

Struggling over the Sabbath and creation, I finally prayed, "O.K., God. If You exist and there is something wrong with the evolution theory I believe and teach, You must show me."

Answer to Prayer. Our university housed the largest evolution-based library in the southern hemisphere. I went there and signed out a book. A colleague stopped me on the way out. "Wait," he said. "Why are you taking this? There’s a brand new edition." We went back in the library, and I checked out the newer version.

I began reading the books together, page by page. The old edition said there is a major problem with cetaceans or whales because they appeared suddenly in the fossil record fully formed. The new edition used a lot of scientific terminology and said cetaceans have an ancient origin evolving from one to another.

I went through evolutionary model after model. The old edition always admitted to unresolved difficulties while the new version never admitted to a problem. There’s something fishy here, I thought. It seemed like a miracle happened every time I went to the library. One book would say one thing and another the exact opposite.

Day and night I kept thinking about this. Teaching genetics at the time, I started making a list of problems to be solved if evolution were true. My list grew so fast it stunned me. I discovered enormous problems.

Problems Again. As we continued to study, our baby, now a toddler, began having problems again. One night at 2 a.m. I had the same old dream about being strangled. I woke up with a jerk. In the next room the child screamed. He ran a high fever, but we were able to get things under control. This is too strange, I thought.

My carpenter friend listened patiently as I told him some of what was going on. "Don’t worry," he said. "We’ll pray for you." The problem stopped. The carpenter had asked people to set their alarms, get up at 2 a.m., and pray for a family they didn’t know. Word got around that we were having peace again and one lady decided not to get up and pray. That night I had my dream and the child screamed.

Thinking back on this, I realize that God didn’t need the prayer of that one individual, but there was a lesson that would become very important to me. God wants unity and He wants His people to stand together. The next night the lady set her alarm. God answered the prayer of people we’d never seen. No more nightmares for me, and our boy began acting like a little angel.

Decision. We reached the point where I said, "I can’t sit on the fence forever. I’ve checked the meaning of Hebrew and Greek words with university professors. I’ve verified historic facts. I’ve discovered evolution to be an unproven theory. I’ve examined Bible prophecies. I’ve studied what other churches said. There’s no way out." I told my family, "We’re going to keep the Sabbath and start attending the Seventh-day Adventist church."

My wife burst into tears the first time she saw Adventists. "They look so different. They eat strange food. I want my old lifestyle back." I thought, What a weird church. I’d been going to mass wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Yuck, I thought. Adventist men wear suits and ties.

The Holy Spirit reached deep into my mind. "Here you are worshiping on Sabbath and still teaching evolution." I knew in my heart that I had to make a change. I prepared a lecture on genetics showing evolution to be impossible.

Two weeks later I was asked to lead a postgraduate discussion on evolution. My mind filled with fear. Do I go into this lecture pretending to be what I am not or do I stand up for what I now believe? I’ll lose face with all my colleagues. My new friends at the Adventist church seemed less weird and promised to pray for me.

Showdown. At this affair I faced all the graduate students and the entire staff. I began the lecture and went through the whole gene system highlighting every problem I’d discovered at that stage of my research. At the end I stated emphatically, "Therefore evolution is not possible!"

You could have heard a pin drop. Then all hell broke loose. One colleague turned blood red and started screaming at me. When things quieted down, a young woman, an honor student, stood up. Turning toward her professors, she said, "When I came to this university, I believed in God and had a relationship with Him. I had a good life. Now I believe nothing. You’ve robbed me of my faith and my life is falling apart. Dr. Veith’s lecture this afternoon shows you’ve been misleading me."

Can you imagine what happened? They held a special meeting and voted that the basis for all teaching must be evolution. This was the end for me. My life was worthless in terms of scientific credibility. I turned in my resignation.

The head of the department confronted me. "You can’t just resign. You’re a popular teacher and most of the postgraduate students are under your supervision."

The rector of the university called me in and we talked for a long time. "What if you decided not to rock the boat any more? We could promote you to a professorship." Ideas bounced in my head. What a temptation. I’d be one of the youngest professors.

I looked at him and said, "Sir, the price is too high. I must leave my teaching."

"It’s your decision," he said. "By the way, who do you think has the truth?"

I answered, "The Bible has the truth."

"No, I want to know who you think has the truth."

I hedged. "It’s those people who meet at Helderberg College."

"That’s not what I’m asking you. What denomination has the truth?"

He’d asked me three times. In the back of my mind I could hear a cock crowing. "Sir, the Seventh-day Adventist church teaches the truth."

I’m a dead man, I thought, expecting a tirade from the rector. He simply said, "Thank you very much. Congratulations on your choice. I hope things go well for you."

Blessings. Having resigned, I put my house up for sale. The first man who walked in bought it. He paid the price. No haggling, nothing. We took the money and bought a dairy farm. My wife and I planned to make it a place to witness.

We planted wheat and it grew so high, farmers from the entire district came to look. They said, "A university man like you must know something we don’t."

"No," I said. "We’re doing exactly what you do." In the back of my mind I imagined, It’s because we’re walking with the Lord. I figured, Now that we are Christians, everything will go just great. Little did I realize the lessons God would soon teach me.

Besides money from the sale of the house, I’d inherited some from my father. We invested it all and I even took out loans to make sure we had the best farm around.

Disasters. Then a huge flock of birds flew in. They ignored all the farms around with short wheat and made my tall wheat their home. They ate and ate and ate until my wheat was nothing but stubble. A big source of expected income had just vanished.

Economic sanctions followed and the economy of South Africa was destroyed. Interest rates of 3 and 4% shot up as high as 28%. Loans that had been a cinch to pay became a nightmare. I cried out, "God, how can you do this to me? The birds ate my wheat. I have no way to support myself. My scientific credibility is gone. I can’t go back to my old job. I’m finished."

It got worse. We lost both of our cars in major accidents. All I had now was the farm and more debt than the farm was worth. My wife became terribly depressed. We kept asking ourselves, Have we done the right thing? Is this how God deals with those who love Him? We sat down as a family and talked things over.

An Offer. We were struggling when the priest called—the same one who had impressed us so much. "Why are you calling?" I asked.

"You know your father died. He’s having terrific problems in purgatory."

"How do you know?" I asked. I’d studied the state of the dead and believed what the Bible teaches about sleeping in the grave until the resurrection.

He said, "Nuns who stay in a monastery and never see the outside world told me. Your father is in trouble because of you. You’d better get back to church and have masses said so his problem will go away."

I considered the priest to be a sincere man but very deceived, so I responded, "Thank you very much for the information." I put the phone down, thinking, Sorry, devil, you’re too late.

I believe that when the priest said mass in our home and our child got better, it was a ruse. The devil told the demons to step back and allow our child to relax and we would be snared. It happened. We went back to the Catholic Church. When we started studying the Bible, our boy had problems again. After we made our decision truly to follow Jesus, our troubled child became the sweetest, most spiritual little boy you can imagine.

God had led us to His truth, yet I couldn’t understand, "Why are we without money and on the verge of losing the farm?" Ostracized by my university friends, I was the laughing stock of the academic world with no chance of going back to my old job. Without money and with no food on the table, our family knelt down together claiming every promise in the Bible.

Promises. "Lord," I prayed, "You have promised to care for our needs. You promised that the children of the righteous will not be begging bread." We’d actually written down all the promises. I continued praying, "Lord, we believe these promises are for us. Please don’t leave us with no money and no food. May Your will be done."

Our lives were in God’s hands and we slept well. I answered the phone the next morning. A professor from another university spoke with urgency. "We have a teacher who is taking an emergency leave for one year. Will you come and take his classes?"

"What about my belief in creation? I won’t be teaching evolution."

"Who cares?" he said. "Just stick to science. We’re in a jam and need a replacement. Will you come?"

"That would be great. When do I start?"

"It’ll take about three months to go through all the committees."

"Thank you," I said and put the phone down.

Nice try, God, I thought. In three months I’ll be dead. My family will starve to death.

Twenty minutes later I answered the phone again. The same professor was on the line. He said, "I went to the rector’s office to request your service and start the ball rolling. He said, ‘I don’t have time for committees. Let me sign the authorization right now. You can have this man come tomorrow.’"

"So when do I start?"

It was Thursday. He said, "Monday."

Solutions. Wow! I thought. A thousand problems to solve in one weekend. It’s impossible! I turned to my wife. "I’ve got a job at the University of the Western Cape," I exclaimed. "It’s only for a year, but something will work out after that."

"Great," she said, "Who’s going to take care of the farm? The cows?"

"That worries me too, but God has given us one solution. He can work out a solution for that, too." We knelt down to pray. "Lord, you know we are bankrupt. We don’t have money to hire someone to take care of the farm. Please help us find a way out of our problem."

We had hardly finished praying when there was a loud knock at the door. We opened the door and met a young couple from Zimbabwe. I invited them in and we listened intently. "We’re Seventh-day Adventists and lost our job on a farm for not working on Sabbath. We are looking for a place to live."

"Would you like to live here and work on this farm?"

"Sure," he said. "But I can’t pay you anything."

"It’s O.K., we just need a place to live."

"I’d like to have you take care of the dairy. You can sell the milk and whatever you earn is yours." They agreed and I figured I could pay interest on my loans out of my salary.

In 24 hours God had solved our problem. We had a family to care for the farm and I had a job at a university. We still had no food, no money to buy gas to move, and no place to live. In the next few days God worked miracle after miracle to supply every need. We found a place to live where we didn’t have to pay rent until the end of the month. We enrolled our children in church school at Helderberg College.

A few weeks after I went back to teaching, an Adventist businessman who heard my story called. "We want to send you overseas so you can go on a Bible science tour led by Dr. Ariel Roth of the Geoscience Research Institute at Loma Linda," he said. "You’ll get to visit many sites and see evidence to confirm your belief in the biblical account of the flood and creation."

"It’s impossible," I said. "I’ve just started a new job and I can’t go and ask for six weeks off. No way!" But soon riots broke out at the university. My country was in chaos, with riots everywhere. The rector of the university ordered the school closed.

I went to my department head. "What shall I do now?"

He looked at me. "Go to the moon for all I care. Go away and don’t come back for six weeks." The timing was perfect. I went on the Geoscience tour and began developing my own series of lectures on creation.

Back at the university, not one but several senior professors died, creating a number of vacancies. I’d worked hard to start a big postgraduate school and my name came up to fill an important position. The search committee narrowed it down to me and a professor from Cambridge University.

I learned later that someone said, "You can’t appoint Veith. He’s too controversial. He has strange ideas." But following the student riots, it had become fashionable to be against the establishment. Another professor asked, "You mean he goes against what they teach at Stellenbosch? That’s a plus!" I got the job.

God’s Doing. This is how God placed me in my position. I’m a professor and head of the Zoology department in a secular university. I teach creationism. In human terms, it’s impossible to imagine, but God placed me here and He can keep me here as long as He desires. When the door closes, He will find something better for me to do.

The Creator of the universe has showed me how to live. He died on the cross to save me from my sin. He’s coming back to take me home with Him. The Holy Spirit has led my family step by step into God’s truth. He wants to lead you, too. Take your stand for Christ. Do what is right. Have faith in Him, and He will fulfill every one of His promises.

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You may visit Dr. Walter Veith’s website: www.amazingdiscoveries.org