I am a former Marine and one-time evolutionary biologist and agnostic who was called by the grace of God to become a Christian and Reformed preaching minister. I am broadly interested in Biblical Exposition, Systematic Theology, Reformation and Post-Reformation Church History, Christian Apologetics, and Creation Science. I am a preaching minister in Plymouth, Michigan and have served churches in Oklahoma, New Jersey, and Michigan. I am also a staff chaplain at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia. I am the founder of Strengthened by Grace Ministries, and online teaching ministry dedicated to expositing God's word one verse at a time.
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| Matthew and Rachel (2021) |
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| Rachel with our children: Gabriel, Gideon, Trinity, and Abram in from the "Door of Salvation" at the Ark Encounter. |
Saul Bellow, in the foreword to Allan Bloom’s
The Closing of the American Mind, wrote: “
Tell me where you come from and I’ll tell you what you are.” OK, then. I am from a great variety of places and am many things—a husband, father, student, researcher, scholar, a former Marine, an Oklahoman—and above all else—simply Christian. The variety of my background experiences have tended to help me “become all things to all men."
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With a couple of my "friends" in Panama on Barro Colorado Island,
where I was working as an ant biologist in the summer of 2005. |
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| With an Azteca ant nest |
I have been blogging since 2004. My initial foray into the blogosphere was a science blog called "
Ontogeny." It was a blog mostly about ants, and that was really cool (note the photo on the left of me with an
Azteca "carton" nest in Panama). Talk about a niche market! I wrote mostly from within the culture of science in those days, sharing my experiences as an evolutionary biologist and myrmecologist. Those were heady days. That blog enjoyed a spirited following until I closed shop over there in early 2008. Why did I close shop? Because God had regenerated my heart. This blog
is the result. It surprises some people to hear that I am now a young-earth creationist, but I have become one based on the conviction that this is what the Bible teaches. Also, I believe the science behind this position is more faithful than that which I held to when I was an evolutionist.
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| My pastoral study where I do most of my writing and study |
