Ken Ham's Blog, page 412

An Exciting Two-day Experience

Most guests who come to our Creation Museum are surprised at how big the place is. And when they realize there are also many things to do outside the museum on the beautiful grounds (such as visiting our petting zoo), plus the special programs conducted throughout the day (workshops for children, lectures, stargazing in the evening, and so on), they often decide to come back a second day.

Feedback from our visitors prompted us recently to create an excellent bargain for all of our guests. Each ticket to the museum is now good for two consecutive days so that as much of the museum experience can be taken in. Also, the next day at the museum can feature different lecturers and workshops than day one.

We often read blog posts where people tell us that they are glad they spent a second day at the museum. I came across one blog item from an Illinois family: it not only offered a summary of their visit to the museum but also contained some exceptional photography—see www.capturingroots.com/blog. As you scroll through the professionally done photos this family took, notice that they decided to spend two days with their young children. Yes, the museum holds the attention of young people. It is a very friendly place for families.

I also wanted to thank our friends at Mid-Continent University for organizing a bus trip to the Creation Museum—a group is here today and Saturday. I spoke at this Baptist college in western Kentucky earlier this year, and because of the interest that was stirred by the meetings, people from all around western Kentucky are on this museum tour and made the five-hour drive. For your interest, here is a radio spot that was produced to promote the MCU visit.

http://media.answersingenesis.org/Blog/mid-continent-creation-museum.mp3

And with more than 100 Creation Museum billboards appearing on many of the nation’s interstates and major highways, we are expecting very good crowds at the museum this summer.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Are They Really Trying to Remove Evolution?

You really can’t trust how much of the media and secularists report on the creation vs. evolution issue in public schools. Recently, the media had numerous reports about a bill in Tennessee and claimed that the bill was introducing creation in the science curriculum—some reports even called it the “Tennessee Creation Bill.” But the truth was that it was an academic freedom bill for teachers. Much of the media and secularists reported falsely on this bill. AiG writer Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell wrote a detailed response to what happened in Tennessee. Well, the secularists are at it again. In the Journal Nature, a situation in South Korea was reported this way:

A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

Other secularists (and media reports) took this up claiming South Korea was being pressured to remove all references to evolution from high school textbooks.

Because I know how the media and secularists often misrepresent such situations in their attempts to denigrate creationists and rail on Christians, I decided to have our staff look into these reports, and so we checked them out with people in South Korea. AiG speaker, writer, and researcher Dr. Georgia Purdom gives us the details in her blog:

My friend “Luke” wrote, “These scientists (including myself) collected scientific evidences disproving supposed evolution facts and submitted petitions to the Korean Ministry of Education. The governmental officers accommodated petitions and many public school textbook publishers are going to delete or modify current contents of archeopteryx and horse evolution.” The scientists submitting the petition were part of a group called the Society for Textbook Revision (STR) that is associated with the Korea Association for Creation Research (KACR).

According to an article from a Seoul newspaper that Luke translated for me,

On May 16 2012, The Korean Ministry of Education announced that three out of seven governmentally approved textbook publishers accepted a petition, entitled “Gradual changes of horse evolution is an imaginary description and does not have scientific basis.” One publisher (Chunjae Education) is going to replace whale evolution in the place of horse evolution in textbook description. The other two publishers (Kyohak Publishing and Sangsang Academy) are going to delete horse evolution examples in textbook.

Although whale evolution is also an imaginary description, it is encouraging that two of the publishers are going to remove the horse evolution series completely.

So what happened is that two outdated evolutionary ideas are being removed—that’s all! But for many secularists, you’d think the sky had fallen in Korea!

I urge you to read the rest of what Georgia explains in her blog post.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Compare the Billboards: Creationists vs. Atheists

The new Creation Museum billboard campaign has hit the news—and the secularists are worried!

As of writing this blog post, an Associated Press article about our new dinosaur billboards has appeared on many news sites, including ABC News and the Washington Post. The AP article and many blogs indicate that secularists are concerned about them. Isn’t it amazing that they are so worried about one Creation Museum. Think of all the hundreds of secular museums and thousands of secular schools, colleges, and universities where evolution and millions of years are taught as fact—and the secularists are really worried AiG’s Creation Museum! That shows how insecure they really are. Secularists just can’t stand it when information they have censored from the public is being disseminated by us. And they don’t want people thinking for themselves; they want them to swallow their anti-God religion!

But did you know the secularists have their own billboard campaign going on? And you should see these billboards—talk about attacking and mocking Christianity and grossly misrepresenting what the Bible teaches! And they complain about our spectacular billboards that just publicize the Creation Museum website.

Consider this statement from the ABC News article that is making the rounds of news sites:

Science educators that have long criticized the museum and said the Creation Museum’s campaign is meant to attract young people interested in dinosaurs to a place that delivers a religious message and a version of history that conflicts with scientific findings.

“It’s a hook, it’s a bait to get people to say, ‘Hey let’s go to that museum’ — and then the other message is brought out,” said Steven Newton, a program director at the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif.

Well, that’s no surprise! The NCSE, which is headed up by atheist Eugenie Scott, doesn’t want us advertising a museum that teaches people about the God of creation and the history of the universe in Genesis. And since when have we ever hidden the fact that we teach biblical creation at the Creation Museum? The quote about science educators seems to imply we have a hidden motive! I would think the word Creation in Creation Museum suggests we are not on about evolution!

The atheists are also chattering about the billboards on blogs, twitter posts, chat rooms, etc. Here is just some of the chatter:

They look better than most of our billboards.

Yeah, that’s the problem. Heck, I’d like to just see billboards that exciting to children for the Cincinnati Zoo or Museum Center, let alone a decent atheist billboard.

And this one:

I hate the Creation Museum billboards because they’re so [expletive] good. Look at that billboard and imagine you’re a little kid just getting excited about the concept of dinosaurs. I live near enough to pass their billboards often and I dread the day my kids says: “Can we go there and see the dinosaurs?”

Fortunately I already have my answer: “No, but we can go to the zoo and see the Komodo Dragon, or we can go to the Museum Center and see the mammoth skeleton, or we can even go to King’s Island and see their dinosaurs, which are a lot bigger and better and have rides nearby.”

But really, I can see a lot of kids and their parents taken in by this billboard with no idea of the kind of horror show indoctrination center they’ll be walking into.

Well, acknowledging the superb billboards is a good thing. Secularists are very concerned that children will be influenced by them and want to come to the Creation Museum. They want children to be only indoctrinated in their atheistic evolutionary religion.

Here are some of the 20 different billboards:

The spokesperson for the atheist-headed NCSE was quoted in the article referenced above:

Newton said science centers should be employing powerful marketing strategies like the Creation Museum’s campaign.

“I think it’s a real shame that there aren’t science museums that are competing in the same way, with the same sort of advertising with the same sort of budgets,” he said.

You mean our government-funded (using our tax money) Smithsonian would not have a marketing budget as big as the marketing budget of the Creation Museum? And what about all the other secular museums (no doubt most are funded by our tax dollars) such as the Chicago Field Museum and New York Natural History Museum—and the many, many others!

But what the media is largely not telling you is that the atheists have their own billboard campaign. Have you seen their boards? You need to. And then compare them to the Creation Museum billboards. The atheist billboards mock Christians and the Bible as well as misrepresenting the Bible etc. I urge you to look at this website to see the atheist billboards being used in various places across the nation in 2012.

Here are three of them:

1. This one mocks Noah’s Flood (with a ridiculous statement and false assumptions about the height of the mountains before the Flood and about where the water came from).

2. This one totally misrepresents the Bible’s teaching about masters and slaves (servants).

3. This one shows it is the atheists who want to indoctrinate children.

I urge you to look at the rest and get a real feel for how atheists conduct their campaigns of mocking and hatred against God and His Word. Go to http://atheistbillboards.com/2012/.

Actually, the fact that the secularists are so upset about our national ad campaign for the museum tells us these billboards are effective. And just like everything else we do at the Creation Museum, they are done professionally—first class! In fact, our billboards have won awards in the past. See this previous blog post.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

An Eight Year Old Read What?

When I first heard about eight-year-old Johann from AiG’s director of research, Dr. Andrew Snelling, I asked Andrew to contact his parents with a view to telling Johann’s story on my blog.  You see, Andrew told me about this young boy who read his massive two-volume work on geology titled Earth’s Catastrophic Past. (These two volumes are the most comprehensive, up-to-date work on creation geology available.)  At first I found this hard to believe, but this really is the case!

I believe this blog post will greatly encourage you, and it’s just another example of how God is raising up a generation of young people who love His Word and want to be equipped to defend the Christian faith against the false ideas of evolution and millions of years.  I think Johann is going to be a formidable opponent to those who mock God’s Word and reject the Genesis account of history!

First of all, here is Johann’s part of the story (he resides in Queens, New York City):

My interest of creation science started two years ago when I was six. I first read the [AiG] Pocket Guide to Charles Darwin and I learned about the fact that evolution is not the same as natural selection. There are many facts and evidences show that evolution is not true.

Later, I learned from the “7 C’s” in the exhibits of the Creation Museum, and books written by Mr. Ken Ham knowing that the result of the catastrophe was due to Noah’s Flood. I studied more by reading Dr. John Morris’s book on Geology. Since then, I have been more interested in studying fossils, minerals, rocks and crystals.

In the beginning of this year, my parents received the flyer from Answers in Genesis about the Answers Conference in Old Bridge, New Jersey. We went there on January 29. During the break time, I saw a huge book with two volumes at the bookstore and I started to flip through the pages. The book was called Earth’s Catastrophic Past written by Dr. Andrew Snelling. I like geology and earth science very much so I decided to purchase it. I have finished reading the whole first volume and the part I liked the most was the account of the Noah’s Flood. I learned the precise duration of the Flood was 371 days, and the precise measure of the ark, and the precise number of the animals …

God is wonderful! And when we see the beauty around us, how can it be that it all came by random chance? It is God’s creativity and He made everything. I am thankful that I can learn about these creation facts! I look forward to reading the rest of the book.

Here is a photograph of Johann reading this massive work—note the other books in his library behind him:

And here is a photograph of Johann and his sister Miriam—both reading creation books:

Now here is the story from Johann’s father sent to Dr. Andrew Snelling:

Johann was long fascinated by the resources of you and other AiG scientists. Indeed his entire home library contains mostly AiG publications on creation science. As you know, my wife and I are both musicians. God blessed Johann and Miriam [with] the gift in music (they both made their debut at Carnegie Hall as a result of winning a national competition in violin). They also play piano, but Johann was even more interested in science since he was very little.

My wife and I have been praying for the opportunity that he can learn more about not only the area of creation science, but also how to be a Christian scientist in the secular world. As he was talking to us every day about his new science discoveries, I felt the urge even more. That is why I brought him 4 times to the Creation Museum in the past years and in the end of January when I knew  Ken Ham was doing the Answers Conference at Old Bridge, New Jersey, I brought my family there–and that was how Johann insisted [I] buy your [Dr. Snelling’s] books.

I really appreciate your testimony not only as a distinguished scientist but also as a Christian who has the courage to defend the authority of God’s Word and yet was willing to spare time to care about the little home-school children. I am very grateful for you bringing Johann and Miriam for the fossil dig [this was part of a recent conference at the Creation Museum] and I am sure they will not forget this special experience in the rest of their lives.

Here is a photo of Johann with Dr. Andrew Snelling on the Creation Museum sponsored fossil dig:

If Johann can read Dr. Snelling’s geology books to learn how to defend the Christian faith and the true account of history in Genesis, then so can each of us! Here is a link on how you can obtain these books from the AiG website.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Should We Really Expect Anything Else?

Recently, a correspondent for the Guardian newspaper in the UK visited the Creation Museum. We gave him the privileges and respect we normally give to media representatives, and we also allowed him to interview one of AiG’s PhD scientists, Dr. Andrew Snelling. His piece was published on the Guardian newspaper website. As of the writing of this blog post, it has not appeared in the print edition of the Guardian.

As we have come to expect from the largely anti-God media in the United Kingdom, the reporter misrepresented the Creation Museum in his mocking piece. I have always maintained that many of these reporters, especially from the UK, have basically written their article before they come—they just visit to add what they believe is some authenticity to their intended slam against Christianity. He is an admitted atheist, which we knew before he visited.

I have reprinted the article below and made comments throughout.

‘We don’t have to be afraid of the real evidence’—Creation Museum

A trip to the Creation Museum seems like harmless fun until you see the eager schoolchildren streaming through its doors

The secularists really hate to see children being influenced by biblical creationists. There are many blogs and twitter posts by atheists who are really upset anytime they hear about children being taught the truth of God’s Word in Genesis. It is interesting that this journalist, in the title, wrote about “schoolchildren streaming through its doors.” To many people, this would seem to imply great groups of kids from public schools streaming into the Creation Museum—we wish that were so. On the contrary, we receive virtually no visits by public school groups (but they all visit the secular museums). There are some youth groups from churches that come to the Creation Museum, and Christian schools will bring their students from time to time—but lots of families with their children do visit.

I’ve talked to a number of theoretical physicists during my tour of America, and often the subject of parallel universes has come up. This week I actually got to visit one, when I spent a disorientating afternoon in Petersburg, Kentucky, at the Creation Museum.

The Creation Museum bills itself as a natural history museum, but it’s one from a world in which we are certain that God created the Earth and everything in it, roughly 6,000 years ago, and all in six days. Anything that looks older—fossilised dinosaur bones, multiple strata of sedimentary rock, signs of ancient water erosion and the moving of the continents—were all caused by one catastrophic event, the flood that Noah and his family so adroitly survived by building a massive floating menagerie.

Well, God certainly created the original world and its life about six thousand years ago according to the Bible’s history. It is important to understand that everything in the world today was not as it was originally. Before sin, there was no death! Sin and the Curse have changed the world. The Flood of Noah’s day also changed the world. In addition, the Tower of Babel changed the history of the human race in many ways. We certainly believe that most (not all) of the sedimentary layers containing fossils were laid down by the Flood of Noah’s day about 4,300 years ago. However, there has also been post-Flood catastrophism, associated with the Ice Age and also other local catastrophic events.

This is nothing you wouldn’t see or hear in your average fundamentalist church, but what makes the Creation Museum different, and controversial, is that it promotes the idea that not only is everything stated in Genesis chapters 1–11 true, but it can be proved … with science.

Nowhere at the Creation Museum do we say that we can “prove” the Genesis account by science. We certainly illustrate how observational science confirms the Bible’s account of history. And we also help people understand the difference between observational science (which we rely on to build our technology, for example, and which we all agree on), and historical science (beliefs concerning the past). One cannot “prove” historical science because it has to do with the past when we were not there. This correspondent has certainly misrepresented what is taught at the Creation Museum.

And the museum has teams of qualified palaeontologists, geologists, biologists and historians working on this. Oh, and baraminologists too. You haven’t heard of them? Neither had I.

I wish we did have “teams” of qualified scientists! We have a few PhD scientists working full time at Answers in Genesis, and we do work with other PhD scientists who have secular jobs and help us in our research, but we have only a fraction of scientists working on research compared to the secular world. However, even with this small group of scientists, they have accomplished a tremendous amount—particularly when one realizes how worried the secularists are about this one Creation Museum compared to the thousands of secular museums that push evolution and millions of years as fact.

For anyone not familiar with the early parts of the Bible, these be the facts: God created everything in six 24-hour days; Adam and Eve were the first humans; all the bad stuff in the world, from murder to animals eating other animals, is a result of Eve’s choice of afternoon snack; Noah built an ark to house two of every kind of land-dwelling animal (including dinosaurs) and his extended family, while God wiped everything clean with a worldwide flood; then God linguistically confused Noah’s descendants and dispersed them around the world with the Tower of Babel incident.

Well, the journalist used a mocking tone, as any reader can tell. But again, he either deliberately misrepresented or did not understand or did not take the time to understand the account in Genesis correctly. For instance, the “bad stuff in the world” did not result from “Eve’s choice of afternoon snack” (note his mocking, sarcastic tone). The Bible makes it clear that Adam took the fruit from the forbidden tree, then sin entered the world and death by sin (Romans 5:12). The Bible tells us that Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned. Adam was the head of the human race, and it was Adam who was instructed not to eat the fruit (as a test of obedience).

The Creation Museum was founded by the organisation Answers in Genesis, led by the Australian fundamentalist Ken Ham.

The word “fundamentalist” today is used in a derogatory way by anti-Christians. Yes, I believe in the fundamentals of the Christian faith, but we all know the journalist used this term to imply something negative. I deliberately don’t use the term “fundamentalist” when talking about myself or others associated with AiG because it has become a loaded term (although decades ago that was not the case).

It first opened in May 2007, and on the day I was visiting it was celebrating its 5th anniversary. In those five years over a million people have been through its doors, many, if my visit was anything to go by, on school trips. The site is huge, housing both the museum and the headquarters of Answers in Genesis, and provides employment for over 300 people. The museum is entirely privately funded.

Despite the erroneous claim to be a natural history museum, the displays of fossils, including casts of many famous examples such as anarchaeopteryx and Lucy the Australopithecine soon give way to expensively mounted dioramas telling the biblical story of creation. There’s also a section where a world that has abandoned God is depicted—picture a Disneyfied crack den where vulnerable teenagers watch porn and consider abortions.

It is interesting to see how he portrayed the exhibit we call the “Culture in Crisis” room. We show a church with a wrecking ball called “millions of years” hitting the foundation of the church. Inside the church, a family is listening to a pastor preach that Christians can believe in millions of years and evolution and add them to the Bible. The point we make is that the pastor is undermining the authority of the Word of God and that this really does affect how the next generation views Scripture. Then we depict teenagers of this family inside their home. A girl is on the phone wanting to line up an abortion, and the guys are looking at a computer to find pornography and are also using drugs. It is all very tastefully done. In the context of the exhibit, museum guests understand the point—that when young people no longer believe the authority of God’s Word, they will begin to become just like world, where everyone does what is right in their own eyes.

Any actual attempts to present “science” inevitably have a creationist slant. A display on evolution suggests that “Although often viewed as an icon of evolution, Darwin’s finches serve as a perfect model of variation within a created kind Genesis 1:21 we learn that God created ‘every winged bird according to its kind’.” Those baraminologists interpret “kind” to mean “species”.

Actually, in most instances, based on the research creation biologists have done, we would say that “kind” is more at the “family” level of classification. In the “Starting Points” room, near the beginning of the Creation Museum walk through, we explain that there are two starting points (God’s Word and man’s word) that people use to develop their worldview, and that is then used to interpret the evidence of the present in relation to the past. Certainly, we admit right at the start of the museum that we unashamedly build our thinking on God’s Word. Then we also show how observational science confirms over and over again that this is the correct starting point.

While at the museum I spent some time talking to geologist Andrew Snelling. Another Australian, Snelling has a PhD in geology from theUniversity of Sydney and worked in various capacities for the Australian mining industry before getting into “creation science” full time, first for the Texas-based Institute for Creation Research, and then since 2007 for Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum.

I mention to Andrew that I’m surprised to see animatronic models and fossils of dinosaurs around the museum. “They were real, we have their bones … in fact the Bible even potentially describes creatures that were dinosaurs. We don’t have to be afraid of the real evidence,” he says. “We’re looking at the fossil record—instead of being the order of creatures living and dying and evolving over millions of years—as the burial order during the flood. In other words, dinosaurs were alive during the pre-flood Earth. So were trilobites, so were people.”

When I ask him how his background in geology is being used here, he tells me of his fieldwork at the Grand Canyon. “In my research I’ve been involved in sampling rocks, sending them to laboratories, where analysis is done on radio isotopes,” he says. “What we always emphasise is this: we all have the same rocks, the same fossils, the same evidence … We all have the same geological maps … As we emphasise in the museum it’s your starting point.”

This is a point that’s made over and over, to the extent that it begins to sound reasonable. Their mantra is, “Hey, we’re all doing science here, there’s just a disagreement about the age.”

His first sentence makes me wonder if even for a moment the man started to realize the difference between observational science and historical science. He quoted Andrew discussing the two different starting points, but then his sentence about our supposed “mantra” went against what he stated above. It’s not just a matter of “age”—it’s a matter of starting points!

Creation science has a big problem with orthodox radiometric dating and carbon dating. They also use the example of the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption and subsequent pyroclastic flow to show how both the formation of the Grand Canyon and the tectonic shift of the continents could have happened in seconds during the flood, rather than over millions of years.

We believe that the formation of layers of sedimentary rock and the formation of the Grand Canyon happened quickly (not slowly over millions of years), but it certainly didn’t happen in “seconds!”

As I head for the exit I have mixed feelings about the place. Sure, I think, it’s wacky, but each to their own delusion, and at least the government isn’t funding this. Then another party of wide-eyed, eager-to-learn schoolchildren is ushered past.

He really doesn’t like the fact we are influencing children because he wants secularists to indoctrinate young people in their anti-God philosophy.

To me, this article clearly illustrates that the writer came to visit the Creation Museum wanting to mock us, and so, as he went through the exhibits, he just grabbed a few bits and pieces to try to justify his mocking article.

You can read his article online.

Should we really expect anything else from a secular journalist? After all, “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Corinthians 4:4). But at least he came, and he did hear the Word of God—it is God’s Word that convicts. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17). Let’s pray for him.

To read another commentary on the Guardian piece, see Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell’s News to Note feature that was posted over the weekend.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Buddy Davis—Movie Star?

To many children (and their parents), the AiG dinosaur sculptor, singer, and speaker, Buddy Davis, is also a movie star. Many people know that Buddy and his wife Kay were involved in the original vision for the Creation Museum because they had a burden to see the dinosaurs Buddy had sculpted to be used to teach people the truth about God’s Word.

Over the years, Buddy’s ministry has really blossomed at AiG. He now runs regular workshops, concerts, and other programs at the Creation Museum, and he speaks in churches across the country (and other parts of the world). Buddy has produced numerous CDs with his original songs for all ages and also a number of DVDs, including some great video programs for kids.

Recently, Buddy produced the DVD I Dig Dinosaurs. It’s already becoming popular.

This past Thursday, Ben Wilt (who heads up AiG’s AV division) gave our staff a preview of the soon-to-be-released DVD Swamp Man. This will be such a fun video for the whole family, with lots of great teaching. Buddy and the video team went to Florida, and they had great fun in the swamps looking for alligators and other creatures. You are going to want to get this DVD as soon as it is released, so keep watch for Buddy’s new DVD called Swamp Man to be released August 1. The AiG staff loved the preview they had of parts of this incredible production. One of our animators (Mike Prather) actually animated an entire song Buddy sang for the video—it is so well done and so entertaining. I never cease to be amazed at the talented people God has brought to AiG.

Here is a photo of Ben Wilt as he showed AiG staff some “takes” from the new Buddy DVD:

This is a sneak preview of what the cover of the new DVD will look like:

Please pray for Buddy and Kay and their wonderful ministry at AiG that many more children and adults will be reached with the truth of God’s Word and the gospel.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Millions of Years—an Attack on the Cross

After watching what turned into a two-hour debate between Hugh Ross and me on TBN television last week, AiG board chairman, Pastor Don Landis, gave an address to the AiG staff yesterday morning entitled “Contending for the Faith” (Jude 3). Jude 3 states “Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

His powerful address focussed on challenging the staff to understand that compromising with millions of years is really an attack on the work of Christ—it is an attack on the Cross.

I really urge you to listen to this very powerful and moving 40 minute presentation.  You can do that by clicking below

http://media.answersingenesis.org/Blog/2012-06-08-don-landis.mp3

After listening to this message by Pastor Landis, and even if you have already watched the TBN program, you are  encouraged to watch the 2 hour debate again at: http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/lib/Networks/sublib/TBN/ec/RjNW53NDodbPdWZMesby0hMNzxHCg2Kk

Many viewers have found that this debate has turned into a great teaching tool to help Christians understand how to defend the Christian faith, and to get them to realize that the age of the earth issue is not a side issue, but one that really is an authority issue about the Bible—a battle between the authority of the Word of God and the beliefs of fallible, sinful humans.  I have heard of professors using this debate to teach students the real foundational issue over a lack of accepting biblical authority that is so destructive to the church and culture.

I would now encourage you to watch the TBN debate and use the powerful message from Pastor Don to help others understand that those who compromise God’s Word with millions of years are (wittingly or unwittingly) really engaged in an attack on the Cross.  What a serious issue.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

AiG Board Sees “Red”

This week, the AiG board of directors met at the AiG offices. They do this every few months as part of their duties of overseeing the ministry and plan for the future. The AiG board and some of our staff enjoyed a Cincinnati Reds baseball game on Wednesday evening, courtesy of a local firm we do business with. The Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, five to four.

We praise the Lord for the godly board that He has entrusted the role of governance over the AiG ministry.

In this photo, former National League MVP Joey Votto of the Reds is seen singling to left field.

To close out the game, Aroldis Chapman, with some impressive 98–100 mph fastballs, shut down the Pirates with ease. Chapman moves and throws so fast, he is a blur in the photo! Very impressive.

As an Aussie, I grew up a fan of cricket! In the USA I have come to appreciate baseball. Yes, I have also been to watch the Cincinnati Bengals play football—but I must admit, I prefer baseball!

Charter Member Wall Updated

Recently the Creation Museum’s design team moved the special charter membership wall (with the names of those who obtained lifetime and five-year charter memberships to help fund the Creation Museum as it was being built) to a new location. It’s associated with the relatively new museum exhibit that details the history of the Creation Museum and the various outreaches of the AiG ministry. A sign above the names of the charter members displays the following verse:

For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Hebrews 6:10)

Here is a photo of this special wall of names.

If you are one of these Creation Museum charter members, make sure you check out this new area when you visit.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

From Portland to Petersburg and Back—Five Times!

When we opened the Creation Museum (just over five years ago now—can you believe it?), I was absolutely amazed that some of our biggest museum donors lived in the west coast, over 2,000 miles from the museum. Some of our largest donations came from California and Washington state. Many of these major donors would tell us that, while the museum wasn’t down the road from them, they saw the importance of it as an evangelistic center for people all over the world. So even though they wouldn’t be able to visit frequently, many west-coasters were still behind the project in a very generous way.

Five years later, I am surprised at how many people have traveled all the way from the west coast to tour the museum. With the case of Laura Zurbrugg from the vicinity of Portland, Oregon, she has visited the museum five times! Her first visit was just before the museum opened, as she took a behind-the-scenes tour. On her latest visit a few weeks ago, she brought her children Collin and Lindsey (see photo of me with them).

I had one of our staff members check how far Laura lives from the museum in Petersburg, and it turned out to be more than 2,350 miles! As

you can tell, after 23,500 miles of travel back and forth, Laura is a big fan of the Creation Museum, and she looks forward to her return

visits to see what’s new—like our Johnson Observatory with high-power telescopes. Also, next time she can see our new “Lucy” exhibit.

Yes, I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of people living on the west coast who travel all the way here. The number of museum guests from California in particular has been amazing. That helps explain why, as a part of a national advertising campaign for the museum, we are putting up museum billboards many states, including in the West—along freeways in California. Many more people in the West will visit as a result, and we pray that thousands of people will go on the web to find out more about the museum and the AiG ministry after viewing the billboards—and also be exposed to the creation/gospel message. All total, about 100 boards are going up across America right now.

Contact us through this web form to sponsor a Creation Museum billboard in your area, perhaps near your church or along a major highway or interstate. We’ll put you in contact with our marketing agents at Joseph David Advertising.

Here are just five of the 20 styles of museum boards we now have. Most of them deal with dinosaurs, which is a fascinating topic for young people (and we have many dinosaur-related exhibits in the museum).

If you have not been to the museum and have seen one of these billboards, maybe it will prompt you to finally visit—wherever you may live in America. Go to www.CreationMuseum.org for more information.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

; also, next time she can see our new “Lucy” exhibit

Remembering Chuck Colson

I was so pleased to come across some of the web pages of the ministry called the Chuck Colson Center, founded by the same man who started the Prison Fellowship ministry and who was a key Watergate figure before he came to the Lord. Mr. Colson, as you may recall, passed away in April.

It was encouraging to note that several of our AiG resources are now available for purchase on his center’s website.

Mr. Colson, who was famous for working in the Nixon Whitehouse in the early 1970s, was saved just before going to prison for crimes related to the Watergate break-in. For the last 35–40 years of his life, he used his considerable intellect to share his new-found faith and proclaim the biblical worldview. Even though Mr. Colson and AiG would disagree on some matters, two of my closest confidants indicated that they found Mr. Colson to be a very gracious and warm man—nothing like the “hatchet man” reputation he had in the White House. About ten years ago, there was a disagreement between our ministries involving one of his writers, and when Mr. Colson was in the Cincinnati area a few months later, he personally shared with one of our ministry leaders how sorry he was for the misunderstanding. He was very sincere in his comments. It certainly was sad to learn a few weeks ago that at the age of 80, Mr. Colson passed away.

I recall a few years ago when the head of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State (and AiG opponent), Rev. Barry Lynn, was involved in a debate at a convention of the National Religious Broadcasters. Lynn almost took glee in the fact that the work of Prison Fellowship, which has had a wonderful track record of seeing prisoners converted and having their lives turned around (thus reducing recidivism, saving tax-payers’ money, and producing better citizens for society), had been thwarted in some aspects of its prison outreach. I remember Barry Lynn referring to a particular prison and how his group was able to stop the prison ministry from reaching the prisoners with the gospel. I can’t imagine being in Lynn’s shoes when he will stand before God one day and give an account of his anti-God actions.

Mr. Colson was all about seeing lives transformed for Christ. But because of the so-called separation of church and state, much of Prison Fellowship’s work in prisons was being undermined. A “Reverend” (Barry Lynn) was apparently happy that some of PF’s efforts—after seeing so many lives changed—were being stopped!

Because of the work of Chuck Colson and others at Prison Fellowship, we determined several years ago that AiG would provide its own outreach to jails and prisons, and we started supplying chaplains with a wide range of AiG books and DVDs (at no charge, of course) that could help prisoners understand the gospel, and then disciple them when they became Christians. Chaplains have been telling us, for example, that inmates just love the new Begin book.

By the way, I wrote about one of Mr. Colson’s excellent BreakPoint commentaries in 2005.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken