By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
It is always intriguing to learn how atheistic professors become young-Earth Christians.
I recently was introduced to John and Jenny Wise who wrote to me relating that they learned a great deal from my writing and speaking. I will let them tell their story.
John Wise grew up with a born-again, Bible-believing mother and an agnostic father, a veteran of Pearl Harbor. When he was around age seven, John accepted Jesus as his Savior.
Jenny was raised in a secular home by an atheistic father and a dutiful mother. Her parents instilled in her strong social values, but left her without a foundation, stranding her with the nagging question, namely “What is the origin of life?
John attended Bible college in the mid-to-late ‘80’s, on track to become a pastor. In Bible college seeds of doubt germinated in his mind.
His Christianity felt forced, more like performance art than a settled conviction. His love of science, which he studied passionately his entire life, now combined with a new love – philosophy. Together they posed insurmountable difficulties to his faith.
Sliding into agnosticism, he formulated an axiom: “Truth at all costs.” If God was real, He would be proven in an honest search for evidence.
As John was walking away from God, on one October morning of 1990, Jenny listened to an interview of Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke and Dotty, his wife, on a conservative talk radio station.
To the host’s frustration, rather than talking only about walking on the moon, the Dukes spoke glowingly of Christ’s transformation of their lives and marriage.
Light flooded Jenny’s soul. She turned off the radio, knelt and accepted the Lord Jesus as Savior, knowing instantly that everything had changed. Jenny’s husband, Steve, accepted Christ two weeks later.
She had discovered the foundation lacking in her parents’ morality! Jenny and Steve had seven children, homeschooling them from kindergarten through graduation.
John went on to earn his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. John then became an atheist professor of philosophy for the next 25 years. Although John’s and Jenny’s lives traced out a spiritual chiasm, their real-life paths never crossed.
In the 2020’s, both their spouses became sick. John’s wife was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and then Lewy body dementia; Jenny’s husband with hyper-aggressive prostate cancer. By the late 2020s, both had passed away. John and Jenny first met just before the deaths of their respective spouses.
Despite John’s prodigal son’s betrayal, the Lord never gave up on him. His return to Christ is detailed in the first ten episodes of their book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon).
“Jenny,” John says, “was my looking glass, the transcendent portal through which my prodigal wanderings came to an end.”
John and Jenny married in August 2019, vowing to serve their Lord together for the remainder of their lives. They began a podcast ministry that same year: The Christian Atheist, reaching out to the gospel’s most hardened demographic.
For Jenny, those early podcast years were confusing. She believed the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. John’s theistic evolution and progressive views of scripture felt to her like a betrayal, but she feared “making waves.” As the 2023 podcasting season was closing, Jenny approached a crossroad—remain silent or stand firm on the Bible?
“One day I watched a video of the Harvard trained Ph.D. paleontologist Kurt Wise (no relation) on why a man trained by the late infamous anti-creationist Stephen Gould, was a young-Earth creationist.
Over the next months, I read everything I could get my eyes on in the Young Earth Creation science world, arming myself with knowledge so I could take an informed stand.”
Researching and writing the podcast, line upon line, precept upon precept, God’s wisdom replaced man’s in John’s heart. The 2024 podcast season began with a focus on Scripture – a deep dive into the book of Malachi, sparking a revolution in John, leading him panoramically from Genesis to Revelation, all of which came alive as never before.
Eventually he realized that overwhelming evidence existed against the molecules to man evolution propelled by millions of mutations selected by Natural Selection. This causes deterioration of the gnome, cancer and disease. It does not propel man up the evolutionary ladder to the pinnacle of creation, mankind.
And … John’s theistic evolution likewise came crashing down as the couple studied advances in cellular biology. The Darwinian lie of long ages was uncovered as the betrayal of humanity, science, and Scripture that it was. This “emperor” had no clothes.
Enter Creation Science
Freed from John’s evolutionary biases, the Wises voraciously consumed YEC literature together: “Contrary to my own rigorous academic ethics, I had dismissed creation science without ever acquainting myself with it.
From J. Bergman to K. Wise and everyone in between, we are delighted to learn how big is the God we serve, and how foolish is the wisdom of man. This changes everything.” The Wises are currently volunteering with the International Association for Creation (IAC) and the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR).
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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries. All 60 of Bergman’s books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other bookstores.
John and Jenny Wise on a walk in the woods to study God’s creation.
