The first time I met Dr. John C. Whitcomb,1 he made me feel like I was greeting an old friend.
You see, Dr. Whitcomb loved people. He had a heart for—a genuine interest in—everyone that he met, including every student in his classroom.
The classroom where we connected on that warm September day was commonly used for seminary classes and chapel at Faith Baptist Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa. The course was called “Biblical Fundamentalism.”
But it was the teacher, not the subject, that first caught my attention in the spring of 1994 when my wife Lynnette and I began to consider the possibility of heading off to seminary the following fall.
I had heard about Dr. Whitcomb and was intrigued by his teaching—although the only things that were readily available to me in those days were his books. He had been highly regarded by my former pastor and some previous professors, and I knew he—having already enjoyed the status of a Founding Father of the modern biblical creation movement for more than 30 years before I met him—represented all that I aspired to become. God used his commitment to teach a modular course at Faith that fall to draw me providentially to that seminary.
When the time finally arrived for his one-week course to begin, I quickly sensed that I was studying under a master. As Dr. Whitcomb thumbed through his Bible to reference various verses, it often felt as though I was seeing in 3-D that which I had previously known only as a flat picture.
