Insects :: Incredible and Inspirational

My Testimony

By Karl C. Priest ca 2006 (revised 1-7-2012)

My first home was an apartment above a used clothing store run by the Union Mission in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. My parents had met at the Mission which employed my father for a few years. After a few years living in that apartment and the Mission's summer camp, we moved to the Orchard Manor housing project on Charleston's West Side. The "Manor" was known as the South Bronx of West Virginia. That notorious neighborhood was where I grew up and it was rough. (See for yourself by clicking on “Orchard Manor”) As a third-grader I witnessed street fighting with knives and chains. Although my parents were good people who attended church Sunday mornings, the neighborhood had a strong influence on me, and I started smoking and skipping elementary school. I had the good fortune of having a lot of kids around and I always had something to do (particularly playing baseball), but few of my friends had a normal two-parent family, and most of those who did had at least one parent with serious problems with alcohol. During that time, I experienced several incidents that could have led to my death or imprisonment, but the Lord preserved me through it all.

After high school I joined the Navy (USNR) and served on the USS Wright, which was a floating Command Post for the President and Joint Chiefs in the event of a nuclear war. After duty aboard the Wright I went to a Navy school at Brainbridge, Maryland. There I came in contact with a sailor who was totally committed to Christ. He invited me to a ministry held in the home of a local Christian family. One day, when I was alone in the barracks, I repented of my sins, received God’s forgiveness through Grace, and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. It was like the transformation (metamorphosis) of a butterfly. God changed my heart that night and I knew it without a doubt. The boy who would fight in a flash was changed! (After a few months I became a Conscientious Objector for a couple of years, but remained pro-military. With Christian maturity that position changed.) That night in the barracks I truly experienced “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”(Phil. 4:7 KJB)

As it happened, my salvation experience turned out to be a couple of months before I was to leave the Navy. The political climate had forced President Johnson to claim that the Vietnam War (for which I had volunteered) was winding down and he was releasing thousands of active duty personnel. My orders to the Philippines were canceled and I became a college student as a new Christian.

Each day, after morning classes, I made a 40-minute drive to work, at the Post Office, and listened to a preacher on the radio. He believed in the Gap Theory but spent a lot of time attacking evolution and this made me rethink the Theistic Evolution position I had held by default until then.

In my first year as a sixth-grade teacher I used school board purchased science supplement booklets published by the Institute of Creation Research and got on their mailing list. The ICR material soon convinced me of a literal creation in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.

The Fall of my third year I was involved in a countywide battle that came to be known as the Textbook War. During that controversy I observed that many of those so-called "liberals" who mocked fundamentalist Christians were actually arrogant, hypocritical, God-haters. In this, and future battles, I was blessed to serve with many loving, intelligent, and humble Christians.

Eventually I would serve four years as a school principal including one year in a Christian school which I helped to establish.

After a few years I entered a lukewarm phase (for which I am terribly ashamed and testify to the truth of Galatians 6:7 KJB) in my Christian life and during this time local evolutionists, without any resistance, removed any reference to Creation Science from county schools. I was still in that lukewarm (compromising) condition when my daughter began college with a class in biology taught by an aggressive evolutionist. She appealed for my help in dealing with the situation, so I wrote to the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). At the same time, Dr. Bert Thompson was teaching a local seminar on the creation-evolution debate. Dr. Thompson's lectures and literature gave me immediate material to share with my daughter. The ICR literature was forthcoming and their devotional, "Days of Praise" affected me profoundly. It was like placing a few drops of water on the tongue of a man dying of thirst. I began to read my Bible again and get back into a close relationship with God. At the same time God placed on my heart the need to start a local Creation group. I started promoting the group but, at first, no one responded. A local youth pastor (with a degree in biology) met with me a couple of times but did not have the burden to persevere in forming a creation ministry. I went to the public library meeting site alone for a few weeks and finally decided that I must have misread the Lord's direction. The week I decided to quit, a fellow who had seen the group's announcement on the library entrance called. I had not even known that the announcement was posted! That fellow became a great leader in the local group and a few others soon joined with us. The first five of us were five very unique individuals and each had great testimonies about how the Lord had led them to the group.

From my boyhood I have been fascinated by insects. The Lord gave me a ministry using my extensive insect collection to present the truth of Creation to local groups. I make a 60-minute presentation, using PowerPoint, that takes the audience through the fallacies of evolutionism as revealed by entomology and the wonders of God revealed in the amazing facts and details of insects. It ends with a visual display of butterflies accompanied by the song "We Shall Behold Him."

Then God used a problem at work to cause me to transfer to teaching the Junior High level after I had spent over 24 years on the elementary level. One of my students told me about a play she was rehearsing which turned out to be the local production of Inherit the Wind. Soon we became involved in writing to the local newspaper expressing disagreement with the evolutionist propaganda in that production. This incident served as a boot camp and launched our creation group in the public's eye. We were invited to present to the intelligentsia at the University of Charleston and West Virginia State College. The evolutionists were shocked that they could not stymie us.

One day, after that "battle" had subsided, I was picking up my mail at school when I noticed a discarded memo below the faculty mailboxes. It was directed to science teachers and was about the new science curriculum that was being adopted. The Lord quickened my heart.

I appeared at a board of education meeting asking that the County allow evolution to be taught critically and not as scientifically verified. I was told to seek redress from the state. The state sent me back to the county. During those several weeks, I polled county science teachers and found that they wanted guidance on what they could do regarding criticism of evolution in the science class. I went back to a BOE meeting with my survey results. This time a board member, Betty Jarvis, was quickened in her spirit to direct the board attorney to write a resolution permitting a critical approach to the teaching of evolution in County schools.

The local media, led by a nationally published atheistic editor, started running hostile editorials and soon we were in a major battle that came to be known as the Evolution Resolution*. This got national media coverage. Board meetings were crowded with citizens voicing their opinions. During this time, I was exposed to many devious and downright vicious tactics by evolutionists in their relentless protection of the dogma of evolutionism.

The resolution was voted down in December of that year. The events of the Evolution Resolution exposed the v shameful tactics of Darwinists. It provided our creation group with front-line experience and revealed that we could expose evolutionism without embarrassment.

Soon afterwards Ms. Jarvis placed me on the text selection committee, as a citizen, and I was able to persuade the science teacher committee members (fully supported by the County Science Supervisor) to recommend Of Pandas and People* as a supplementary book for teacher use. The Thomas More Society offered to represent the board of education pro bono against any legal action by those seeking to censor Pandas. Once again, the same foes led a malicious campaign to defeat this effort. Using the Freedom of Information Act, I found out that they had flooded the science teachers with propaganda from the atheist led National Center for Science Education. The purchase of Pandas lost on a close vote. A scientist BOE member sided with Ms. Jarvis while a professing Christian cast the tie breaker against her. Ms. Jarvis (a retired teacher) subsequently lost an election after being abandoned by the teacher union and ridiculed and lied about in the local media.

Next, I filed a grievance*, stating that I felt professionally threatened without a clear policy about what could be done to criticize evolution in the classroom. Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo, after an all night drive from Atlanta due to a missed flight, supported me at an all day hearing. An Administrative Law Judge denied the grievance. She did rule, however, that teachers have a right to express criticism of evolution in the classroom.

After that, I was able to convince a fellow Sunday School class member to file a citizen's complaint (as a parent) about the inaccurate material in state science textbooks (such as the peppered moth examples). After a battle of several months, once again with national media interest, this widow's complaint was dismissed (despite an admission that the books contained scientific errors) at the West Virginia State Board of Education level.

The next year our local Creation Group was contacted by two students who needed help with Creation Science projects and the Lord helped me form a Creation Club at school.

It wasn't long until West Virginia revised the state Science Standards and we entered another battle joining national leaders of the Intelligent Design movement. Despite overwhelming public support for our request to teach science objectively the West Virginia Board of Education rejected our request. Once again, the Freedom of Information Act provided information about the behind-the-scenes treachery of evolutionists who want to censor scientific truth. On a positve note, one State BOE member made an important statement when she said, "Teachers can teach evidences against evolution."

The serious of battles concluded with a “checkmate” move that other teachers can take advantage of if they have the courage. During the last five years of my full time teaching career (with the full knowledge and much to the dismay of the ACLU) I taught an annual lesson* exposing evolutionism as mathematically impossible . The grand-daughter of a prominent atheist said, after the lesson, "Evolution is silly."

After retiring I pursued other plans to free society from the chains of lies that are evolutionism. A major tactic has been the Life Science Prize (see Dr. Mastropaolo).

Evolutionists have called me a liar, buffoon, stooge, idiot, and nutcase.** Anonymous letters and phone calls were placed to my colleagues and administrators attempting to ruin me professionally. A prominent liberal tried to use her power and connections with the board of education to silence me. I was even threatened with arrest. The battles mentioned above required many sacrifices of finances and time. During these years I have had to deal with life and family situations that are a part of living. I thank God I was counted worthy to be used to declare the truth of His Creation. (John 15:18 KJB)

My goal is to uplift Jesus Christ as the Creator. While I am at it, it's fun to "bug" evolutionists wherever I can.

Sometimes it is standing up to prominent bullies such as the world renowned Dr. Richard Dawkins and other pests. Other times it is making a public expose' of the bald-faced lie of evolutionism. (Also, see Evolution is a Lie below.)

"You cannot destroy a wasp's nest without being attacked in return. Yet this is better than stagnation. In a slumbering church it is the adversary's chief business to rock the cradle, hush all the noise, and drive away even a fly which might light upon the sleeper's face; Satan's great dread is lest the church should be aroused from her dreamy slumbers." (Charles H. Spurgeon- taken from his Sermon Notes)

**In my capacity as Exodus Mandate-WV coordinator I have been called racist, primitive, ignorant, a homophobe, and a simple-minded simpleton. I understand John 15:18 (KJB) and claim Matthew 5:12 as well as Acts 5:41 (KJB) and rejoice.

In 2009 I received some documents that enlightened me on the history of the creation vs. evolutionism battle that began in Kanawha County in 1973. The report on that history is the “Prequel.”

"Evolution is more impossible than the Blue Fairy, the Witch of the North, Aladdin's genies, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, the Headless Horseman, and the mathematical definition of impossible all put together. Evolution is a religion taught in the public schools in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America." (Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo)

Anyone who believes in evolution is uninformed, dishonest, or gripped by a fervent religious agenda.

To atheists, evolutionism is crucial to their religion and their only hope of crushing the cause of Christ. “I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.” (Frank Zindler, in a debate with William Lane Craig, Atheism vs Christianity video, Zondervan, 1996). Atheists use a type of germ warfare. They will not retreat and public schools are the main means used to infect the minds of children with the spiritually and scientifically debilitating disease of Darwinism.

See Evolution is a Lie for ways to confront the Lie, but a more vital strategy follows.

Over the several years of battling evolutionism in the public schools I proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the public schools are controlled by Secular Humanists (i.e. atheists). Christians are wasting time and resources trying to make changes because the public schools cannot be redemed.

In this regard, I have become the state coordinator for Exodus Mandate-West Virginia. Briefly, this ministry seeks to counsel parents regarding their obligation to provide their children with a Christian education either in Christian or home schools. There are a lot of links that will help parents gain educational freedom for their children on that page.

Because of compromising Christians, evolutionism reigns supreme in government schools; but worse--babies are slaughtered daily and the Biblical definition of marriage is being obliterated in our country. (Please see related links at the bottom of my LINKS page.) Religion now rules in Kanawha County schools and it is not Christianity.

Unless Jesus returns soon, our only hope is to remove our children from the public schools and raise a generation of uncompromised citizens.