It’s great to have you here at the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. For those who haven’t heard me speak before, I do have a Southern accent, so hope you get used to that. I didn’t have one until I arrived in America, but it seemed to change for some reason.

So just as we get underway here, I’d just be interested to know, how many of you here are from the state of California? What about Washington? OK. Oregon? So you notice those types of states I’m calling out right now, OK. I have news for you: You do not need to return. You can stay in the Christian part of America, here in Kentucky, now with the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum here. And by the way, we are hiring; we are looking for seasonals. You’ve got some young people who want to come and work for the summer, we need them. And we have 120 other positions as well, full-time positions. So down the back on my left there we have our hiring booth, right there, and you can leave those liberal states.

OK, so just looking around the audience, I was just thinking, I’m not sure what I should say today, so I want to give you a test first to see if it’ll help guide me in the sort of things I need to speak to you about. So we’re going to have a little test, OK. Now you’re going to cooperate. Doesn’t matter if you get all the questions wrong. It doesn’t matter if you feel a little funny putting your hand up in the air. We’re all going to do it. We’re all going to participate. You ready? But they’re really easy questions, OK.

Where was the Garden of Eden located: Australia, America, in the area around the present Tigris-Euphrates, we can’t know, it’s not important? OK. Put your hand up if you said one. Oh, dear. Two? No one for that. Three? OK. Four? Well, you’re sort of on the edge there. Five? OK. And the correct answer is four.

Now I’m a little disappointed; I thought you people believed God’s Word in Genesis because you see, there was a global flood that would have destroyed the earth. The Garden of Eden couldn’t be in the area where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are today—besides which it’s not the same as the description given in Genesis anyway, the four rivers from one source. And underneath that area today there’s all these layers with dead things that were laid down by the Flood itself. And obviously, you know, I think when Noah landed in the new world, I think they would have used names from the old world probably that they were familiar with. Maybe that’s why we have a couple of the same names like the settlers did when they came from England to America. So obviously you need to come to the Ark Encounter.

OK. Well, let me give you an easier one. Did kangaroos once live in the Middle East, kangaroos? I know they’re here in Kentucky because we have them in the zoo back there. So they live in Australia. No, yes, none of the above? OK. Who says A? OK. Who says B? Who says C? OK. Who says D? D had the most. I noticed some of you aren’t putting your hand up as straight anymore; it’s sort of halfway down here. The correct answer is C.

Now come on, come on. I’m disappointed in you people again. I mean, Noah’s ark landed in that area that today we call the Middle East, and two of every kind of land animal, including the kangaroo kind, were onboard the ark, got off the ark. You got it now? OK, you want an easier one.

Can you marry your relative: yes, no, probably, only after counseling? OK. Who says yes? Who says no? Who says C, probably? Who says “only after counseling”? The correct answer is yes. I’m disappointed in you all again. Now some of you got it right, that’s true, but there were more that got it wrong than got it right.

Now wait a minute. How many people were there to start with: one or two? Two, three, four? How many people to start with? Well one, and then two, who were told to “be fruitful and multiply.” We’re all descendants of Adam and Eve, right? Put your hands up if you’re a descendant of Adam. OK, we’re getting that one right. So are we all related? When you get married, do you marry your relative? Oh dear, oh dear. Man, I’m going to have to start from the basics here in a moment.

So all right, let’s try this one. T-Rex was created to be an omnivore, carnivore, herbivore, all of the above? OK. Who says A? Who even knows what A means? I mean, there are some people from California here. OK. Who says B? OK. Who says C? D? Actually, the correct answer is C; most of you got that one right. Do you know what that means? You’re starting to think with a biblical worldview starting from the Bible, because in Genesis chapter 1, verse 30, God said all the animals were vegetarian.

OK, last one; this is an easy one. Which one of these is a prehistoric creature: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pterodactyl, Plesiosaur, none of the above? OK. Who says A? Who says B? Who says C? Who says D? D is the correct answer, because how can you have prehistoric anything when history began from when it was recorded in Genesis 1:1? So obviously, with some of those questions, it showed you do need to come to the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum.

The Creation Museum’s my favorite place because it actually has a more in-depth message of the Bible, and there was the first vision in regard to building these facilities. And you obviously need to subscribe to our streaming platform, Answers.tv. If you’ve got Netflix and Disney+, you can repent right there in those seats right now, and you can subscribe to our streaming platform, which has thousands of programs—God-honoring, family-friendly programs.

So what I’m doing today—I just want to really quickly mention this. But one of the new books that came out, Divided Nation: Cultures in Chaos and A Conflicted Church, the illustrations are used today, a lot of them are in here, and there’s a link at the front where you can actually download them free; and I have notes for each one, so you can go and teach these messages as well.

And then I have a commentary: Genesis 1- 11. It’s a different sort of commentary; it’s a family commentary, verse by verse, answering the most-asked questions I’ve ever been asked in Genesis, a devotional aspect. But it’s easy to read for the family; that’s the whole point.

And then Will They Stand is all about the family and what God’s Word says about the family, and how to raise godly offspring, and the roles for parents and so on. And the family has come under incredible attack in our culture, as you know. And so I’m going to deal with those topics in a particular way today as we talk about church issues. I spoke at the Master’s College recently and gave a message sort of similar to this, but I have some differences here for you.

So church issues. We’re seeing an exodus from the church—not every local church but the church generally, in our whole Western world in America. If you look in America, in the 1700s they estimate that 75 to 80 percent of people went to church. But now when you come up to 2010, this is Pew Research, you’ll see the generational loss from the church as they divide groups according to when they were born. And so you see, as we go down here from the greatest generation down through the silent, the baby boomers, and then down to the millennials, 18 percent; and Generation X is even less than that. And when you come up to the present, this is 2014 Pew Research, and you’ll see that millennials and millennials and Generation Z are down here. But when you get to 2021, look at them here: 8.72 percent. We’re certainly seeing a generational loss in the church. Actually, if this keeps going this way, we’re going to see an incredible change in our whole culture in the church and outside the church as well.

And then there’s the LGBTQ impact on the church. One of the recent statistics shows that 27 percent of those 18 to 37 Generation Z and millennials self-identifying as Christians self-identify as LGBT; but for non-Christians, it’s almost the same. So we’re seeing an incredible impact here. And people, we’re seeing this tornado of moral relativism that is ripping through the culture, and it’s capturing the hearts and minds of generations of our kids. And then we’re seeing that reflected in the cultural issues. George Varner, Christian researcher, said this answer: “Generation Z, born between 1999-2015, the first truly post-Christian generation”—who would have ever thought we’d be calling a generation “post-Christian”—“twice as likely to be atheist as any previous generation.” And we’re seeing all these moral issues permeating the culture. Moral relativism is permeating our culture in America and throughout the whole West. Who would have ever thought that these would be issues talked about almost on a daily basis now in the news.

And so we have to ask ourselves, “Why is this happening?” Well the reason this is happening is because there’s a spiritual battle that started six thousand years ago, and that battle has been raging the whole time; it’s just we’re seeing it more in its naked ferocity, I feel like right now, because the Judeo-Christian ethic that once permeated our Western world, permeated America, is sort of being ripped out of the culture and ripped out of the education system. And now we’re really seeing that spiritual battle in ways we haven’t seen it before.

When you go back to Genesis, God created everything very good. There was no death or disease or suffering in the world. But He gave the first man, Adam, a choice: You can eat of all the trees. Just one tree you are not to eat of because if you do, you’ll surely die. Adam, obey God’s Word, obey God’s Word. But then along came the devil in the form of a serpent, and he said to the woman, “Did God actually say, did God really say?” Notice that the first attack was on the authority of the Word of God, and it was to get Adam and Eve to doubt God’s Word, so that doubt would lead to unbelief. “And you will be like God”—in other words, “You decide truth for yourself; you decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Obey man’s word.”

And here’s what we need to understand. A battle began six thousand years ago in a garden between two religions. In an ultimate sense, there are only two religions. There are only two religions, and there’s no neutral position. The Bible says you’re either for Christ or against. You walk in light, or you’re walking in darkness. You gather, you scatter. You build your house on the rock, build your house in the sand. We see that battle all the way through Scripture portrayed in various ways. It’s a battle between God’s Word and man’s word. And on the basis of those two foundations, you build a way of thinking.

When you start from God’s Word, you build a Christian worldview: a way to look at the world, to understand it correctly, to have the right pair of glasses on. That’s why I gave you that little test to begin there, to get us thinking in terms of starting from God’s Word to build the right way of thinking to correctly understand the world. If you don’t start with God’s Word and you start with man’s word, you build a whole different worldview. And by the way, that’s one of the reasons why we have a Christian school that our oldest daughter actually founded under Answers in Genesis, and it’s called Twelve Stones Christian Academy, and it’s a truly biblical worldview discipleship school, and it’s sort of rare.

Did you know, with all Christian schools in America, the latest research I’ve seen from a group that we trust, the Nehemiah Institute, less than six percent have a true biblical worldview that they teach the kids. And a lot of Christian schools use secular textbooks. By the way, how can you Christianize a secular worldview, when the starting point is wrong? You’ve got to have the right foundation. And you know, when you start with the foundation of man’s word, then who decides right and what’s wrong? You do. So anything goes—except the absolutes of Christianity. That’s the clash you see in our culture right now, when they accuse you of hate speech and being intolerant, because we got that clash of worldviews up here. And that’s what we need to understand; it is a clash of worldviews.

You see, a lot of Christians haven’t been taught by the churches how to deal with these issues; and for a lot of people, I found they look at them and say, “Look at all the problems that we have in our culture.” I’ve had Christians, even some pastors, tell me, “We’re going to deal with the gay marriage problem, and the racism problem, and the gender problems,” and so on. I say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You’ve got to understand something: They’re all the same problem.” The problem is they have the wrong foundation of man’s word; they’re all different symptoms of the problem. And you know what that means? If they’re the same problem, then the solution must be the same.

So what’s the solution? Well, I’ve met many Christians who think, “Oh, the solution is to teach people about Christian marriage, and there’s one race, and the sanctity of life.” And don’t get me wrong when I say this, but that’s not the solution really, right, because all of those are the result of the right solution, in other words, starting from the right foundation of God’s Word.

So what is the solution? The solution has always been the same: It’s the truth of God’s Word and the saving gospel. That’s always been the solution. That’s why we’re so bold about God’s Word and the gospel through the Ark and the Creation Museum. When you start from God’s Word, and when you do start from God’s Word—here’s something else I want to add in and I want to talk about that today—you need to start from Genesis 1 to 11 because Genesis 1 to 11 is the foundation for the rest of the Bible, for all of our doctrine, for our worldviews. It’s basically the foundation for everything, if you like.

You know the sad thing? The majority of our church leaders—not all, but the majority of our church leaders—Christian college professors, seminary professors, and so on—have given up Genesis 1 to 11, or say it doesn’t matter, or have compromised it with evolution of millions of years. And when you do that, you have no foundation for your doctrine, for the gospel, for anything. When you start from Genesis 1 to 11, it’s the foundation for the rest of the Bible for our Christian worldview, for all doctrine, for the gospel, for basically everything.

Now at the Creation Museum—when you go through the Creation Museum, we have a lot of exhibits there and planetarium and 4D theater and so on; but the central part of the museum—and we call it the centerpiece—is this walk through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We call it “The 7 C’s of History”: creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross, consummation. Now those first four C’s—creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion—that’s the geological, biological, astronomical, anthropological history that’s the foundation for all your doctrine, for everything. Those first four C’s are the foundation for your Christian worldview, for your doctrine.

So if you want to deal with any issue at all, we need to be raising up generations to be thinking foundationally, thinking foundationally—this is missing, I think, from a lot of our church—so that people know why they believe what they do, what to believe, where it comes from. You see, for the secularists, it’s not a puzzle at all. They have rejected God. Everything happened by natural processes. There was a big bang billions of years ago, the idea of evolution of animals and man and so on. And so all those issues we talked about all come out of that, and they know that. I mean, it’s just—that’s natural for them.

But I find for a lot of Christians, when we’re talking about what we believe as Christians about marriage or the family or gender or so-called races or sanctity of life, for many of them it’s sort of like these are all issues up here somewhere, and the Bible is sort of over here somewhere. But here’s what we need to understand: When you take that history in Genesis 1 to 11 and you understand it correctly, then you have the foundation that enables you to understand all of these issues, and it brings them all together; it’s not a puzzle at all. You see, the Bible is not just a book you add to your thinking, this is a revelation from the One who knows everything there is to know about everything, which means He’s revealed to us the key information we need to have the right foundation for our worldview in every area.

Look, I’m going to ask you another question. In fact, I’m going to ask you a number of questions, but I’m going to give you the answer ahead of time this time, so you will all know the answer. And to make it easier, every time I ask you the question, the answer will be the same, all right? And here’s the answer. And I’m going to get you to do something here. Pretend you’re in school. I’m going to get you to say this together, all right? Here’s the answer, the answer is this: You start with Genesis 1 to 11. What’s the answer? “You start with Genesis 1 to 11.” OK.

So we’re going to deal with gender. To deal with gender—how do you deal with gender? “You start with Genesis 1 to 11.” There it is. By the way, churches who have rejected Genesis 1 to 11—that’s the majority of them, actually, and our Christian leaders and colleges and so on—then how do they deal with these topics? No wonder we have generations of kids who are impacted by the world—because they don’t have the right foundation.

Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image . . . male and female He created them.” You know, as you read that, you sort of look at that and say, “It seems like there’s only two options.” I mean, as you read Genesis 5:2, “Male and female He created them.” Read through the Old Testament. Over and over again you read phrases like “male or female.” In the New Testament when Jesus—who’s the Son of God—as the God-Man, when asked about marriage, He quoted the text of Genesis 1:27 as literally true: “Have you not read, He who created them from the beginning made them male and female.” By the way, I love reading that verse because my father used to love those verses that started, “Haven’t you read,” “It is written,” “Thus says the Lord,” because he was so adamant about the authority of Scripture; I think it impacted me. So “Haven’t you read, He made them male and female.” In Mark 10:6, He quotes that again: “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”

So here’s my point: If you get rid of all outside influences, even though the world is saying, “But what about this and this exception and that”—get rid of all outside influences; if you start just solely with Scripture, God’s Word, if He’s the one who knows everything, we start there, build our thinking on God’s Word, then there’s no other option. There’s only two genders: male and female.

Now we do have to be ready for what the world says. We should be equipping our children with answers to what the world is going to say so they won’t be led astray. You know that Genesis 3 attack, “Did God really say?” You see, we need to make sure we’re equipping them with answers so they won’t be led astray. That’s what my father did for us as he trained us. Liberal theology was rampant in the churches in Australia in those days, and he would study liberal theology to teach us the answers so we wouldn’t be led astray and doubt God’s Word.

Well you know, we teach apologetics here in the Ark and the Creation Museum through the exhibits. And a little bit of apologetics here: We know from scientific studies that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, and males have a pair of sex chromosomes, X and Y, and females have X and X. Oh, there we are: two genders. Science is confirming the Bible. Wow.

You know, I’ve actually had Christians say to me, “Ah, that means we can believe the Bible.” “What do you mean?” “Oh, finally we see science proves it.” No, no, no, no. This is God’s Word; this is true. You know what this is doing: confirming what we should already know; that’s what it’s doing. And by the way, if you have trouble defining what a woman is, this may help you.

But then we have people who come and say, “Yeah, but there are exceptions.” “What do you mean, ‘exceptions’?” “Well, some people can have two X’s and a Y, and some can have three X’s.” Yeah, there are those sorts of things; that’s true. They constitute, if—if you do some research, you’ll find between 0.2 and 0.05 percent, which means incredibly small. So there must be something else going on. Can we explain that by starting with Genesis 1 to 11? Yes. It’s a fallen world; it’s no longer a perfect world. God has placed upon us the judgment of death, everything now is running down, and there are mistakes from in our DNA copied from one generation to the next; but not just in the sex chromosomes, in other chromosomes as well. And none of that negates the created order—and that’s the point. But you need to explain to your kids we do live in a fallen world, so there’s going to be some differences and issues out there. But let’s explain why this is so.

Over and over again you’ll hear the atheists and—oh, well actually, if you think about what’s going on right now in regard to the abortion issue, and you get these pro-abortionists out there, and they’ll be saying things like—and you’ll read this sort of thing—“Well look, God killed all these people,” and so on. “And look at all the death in the world.” They have no concept of sin and the fact that God has judged because of sin, and He’s a righteous God. See, they don’t understand that foundation from Genesis.

OK, quickly. How do you deal with marriage? What’s the answer? “You start with Genesis 1 to 11.” Good, you remembered it; that’s really good. “You start from Genesis 1 to 11.” You have a great retention span, by the way. Wasn’t quite as loud as the original; some of you have dropped out.

So we start with Genesis 1 to 11: “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him.” No animal was made in God’s image, only humans. God made the first man from dust, not from an ape-man. I’ve had pastors tell me, “The dust represents the ape that God breathed into, to become a man,” to which I say, “And the Bible says, ‘From dust we come, and into dust we return when we die.’ What ape do we return to when we die?”

And then God said, “It’s not good that man should be alone, so I’ll make a helper for him.” So He brought the animal kinds to Adam to name, to show that there was none like him. He didn’t look at a female chimp and say, “She’s close enough; I’ll date her,” or something like that.

So God put Adam to sleep, and from his side He made the first woman. Woman came from the man, not from an ape-woman. You can’t add evolution to the Bible. Actually, if you jump over the New Testament, Paul twice in 1 Corinthians 11 says, “Woman came from man,” “Woman came from man.”

“And then the man said”—this is where Adam gets all romantic—he says, “This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; she’ll be called woman because she was taken out of man.” Wow, isn’t that romantic? See, guys, when Valentine’s Day comes along—if they haven’t canceled it by then—so when that comes along, take your wife, your girlfriend out to dinner; take her to a restaurant, sit down, look across the table, rip the mask off—make sure it’s the right one—and then you look into their eyes, and you say, “I want to be like the first man when he was perfect. You are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; you are a woman.” Well anyway, if she’s still there, you can have a nice dinner after that.

But you know, the next verse says, “Therefore”—“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they’ll be one flesh.” That’s the creation of marriage, right there. You know who created marriage? Not Joe Biden or the Supreme Court justices. God created marriage; and there’s only one marriage that He created: It’s a male and a female, it’s a man and a woman, which means there’s no such thing as gay marriage—which there’s not. When I wrote about gay marriage, I put the word “marriage” in quotes. They can call it “gay union” or whatever they want, but it is not marriage.

In the New Testament when Jesus, as the God-Man, is asked about marriage, remember, He said, “Have you not read, ‘He who made the beginning made them male and female’?” Genesis 1:27. And then the next is the text of Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they’ll be one flesh.”

How do you teach marriage if you don’t have Genesis 1 to 11? How has the church taught generations, again, or many of our Christian colleges, Bible colleges, that have all compromised when it comes to Genesis—and not every college has, but the majority have. How do they teach about marriage, or about gender? You see, you’ve got to have the right foundational history. And it’s not just marriage; ultimately, every single biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly, is founded in the first 11 chapters of the Bible; and yet, most of our Christian leaders have given up Genesis 1 to 11. I’ve even met conservative pastors who say, “It’s too controversial; it creates too much division in the church,” and they ignore it. And we wonder why we’re losing generations to the world, and why they’re being impacted by LGBT and so on, abortion, et cetera.

By the way, think about it. Genesis 1 to 11 is the origin of all the basic entities of life in the universe. Where’s the origin of death? Genesis 1 to 11. Sin? Genesis 1 to 11. Why did Jesus die on a cross? Genesis 1 to 11. Why is He called the last Adam? Genesis 1 to 11. Why do you have a seven-day week? Genesis 1 to 11.

We’re all wearing clothes, which is very good; but God gave clothes because of sin. Where? Genesis 1 to 11. Why does man have to work? Genesis 1 to 11. The government needs to learn that verse. Why does man have dominion over the creation? Genesis 1 to—that’s another verse the government needs to understand; then they wouldn’t be making wrong decisions in regard to climate change.

By the way, I do believe in climate change. There’s been climate change—well actually, last week was cooler than this week. But not only that, there’s been climate change ever since the Flood. And the Flood generated an ice age, and we’re still settling down from the effects of the ice age. And there have been massive changes in the past. The Sahara Desert was once very lush. I mean, things change all the time. But you know what? Here you have politicians like AOC saying things like, “If we keep going the way we are, we’re going to destroy the Earth in 10 to 12 years.” Wrong. You know how I know that’s wrong? Read Genesis 8:22. After the Flood, you know what God promised Noah? “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, day and night, winter and summer shall not cease”—because God’s going to destroy the earth, not man. That’s what we need to remember. Marriage? Genesis 1 to 11. Do you realize every single biblical doctrine ultimately, directly or indirectly, is founded in Genesis 1 to 11?

OK, how do you deal with abortion? “You start with Genesis 1 to 11.” You’re starting to get a little out of sync there. Genesis 1 to 11. You start with Genesis 1 to 11.

So “God made man in His own image”; what’s that got to do with abortion? It’s got everything, because you see, the emphasis today from the world is that man is just an animal. And the Bible makes it clear: Animals aren’t made in God’s image. What does God say about those made in His image? “Do not murder.”

How did God create the animals? “Let the earth bring forth the living creatures according to their kinds.” How did He create man? “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” And by the way, then the rest of the verse: “Let them have dominion over the creation,” not the creation dominion over us.

You know, when I was a teacher in high school in Australia back in the ’70s—well, that dates me a little bit—I was told to teach the six kingdoms of life, and two of those kingdoms were the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. But you know, one of the things that I’ve thought about over the years, you know, we need to make sure that we’re teaching a true biblical worldview to our children. And you see, the emphasis of the world today has increasingly become, particularly since the 1800s, that man is just an animal. And so to me it’s important for us, when we’re teaching our own children—we have five children: four that are married; we have one single daughter. Oh, by the way, a lot of people here—she’s a great cook; she works at Answers in Genesis. We’re sort of getting desperate, so I’m taking applications. I just like to advertise wherever I can. So but anyway.

And we have 18 grandchildren. But one of the things that I have thought through is, “Why shouldn’t we teach them a separate kingdom for man?” Because if you use the criterion “made in the image of God,” then there can only be man in that kingdom, and it makes man special. And man is special because we’re made the image of God. That might be a little radical for some teachers. But why? Because it’s a system man has invented.

So why shouldn’t we as Christians do something to really make the point? See, if you go across the river to the Cincinnati Zoo and you visit the ape exhibit, they tell you you’re visiting your family. The sign reads this: “We are not, after all, the only beings with personalities, rational thought, and emotions. There’s no sharp line dividing us from the chimps and the other apes”—I mean, look around the room; that’s obvious. “We humans are a part of”—look at this—“a part of and not separate from the animal kingdom.”

By the way, it’s one of the reasons we wanted to have a zoo here—and we have a petting zoo at the Creation Museum, and we’re going to be increasing it more and more as we’re able to—to teach from a biblical worldview perspective. Because when our kids go to these zoos, it’s all from a secular perspective, evolutionist perspective. And you notice how it says here, “There’s no sharp line dividing us in the chimps and other apes.” I don’t know, every zoo I’ve gone to has a very sharp line. Why not the seven kingdoms of life?

Now we know that life is built on that molecule of heredity, DNA; and in sexual reproduction you get one set of DNA from the male, one from the female, and then you get fertilization. This is a little bit of the animation from our “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made” exhibit. It’s at the Creation Museum; it’s the most powerful pro-life exhibit in the world; and we’re tripling it in size and opening the new exhibit in October, by the way. But the current exhibit is incredible.

But you know, when you have a fertilized egg, you know what’s interesting? As that cell builds our body, no new information is ever added, which means you’re 100 percent you, made in God’s image, right from fertilization, which means abortion is killing a human being right from fertilization.

Now just to help you understand what God says about this. In Psalm 139, “You knitted me together in my mother’s womb”—it was you. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You saw my unformed substance.” Even when your body wasn’t formed, your unformed substance being knit together, it was you, right from fertilization.

Now what’s the world say, because we need to get our kids ready for this: “My body, my rights.” You know, it’s interesting—they’re doing that right now, aren’t they. You’re seeing those chants, if you watch any of the news lately: “My body, my rights.” Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, recently tweeted, “The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is not negotiable. The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is their decision, it is their body.” Interesting how they apply it there, but they don’t in certain other areas.

But a fertilized egg is not part of a woman’s body. For a start, it’s not the same DNA; it’s a different combination. And you know what’s interesting, when you have a kidney transplant, your body recognizes foreign tissue and wants to reject it; you have to take anti-rejection drugs. A fertilized egg, your body wants to reject it because it recognizes it as foreign tissue. In fact if it’s a male, where’d the Y chromosome come from, right? It’s not part of a woman’s body. But God built an anti-rejection mechanism—it’s quite complex; it’s absolutely incredible—into the uterus so that it says, “Welcome,” so that you can develop there. Wow. You know, it’s so very important that we teach from the right foundation and prepare people with answers, our children with answers, to what the world’s going to say, so they can deal with those arguments and not be led astray.

I had a young lady, she was at the Creation Museum a few years ago, and she came out—I’d say she was late teens—she had tears in her eyes; and she looked at me, and she said, “I was brought up in the church all my life. Nobody ever told me about being made in God’s image and different than the animals, and what that means. And nobody ever explained to me about DNA and the unique combination right from fertilization.” And she looked at me with those tears and said, “What if someone like me has had an abortion?”

And in our exhibit at the Creation Museum—and one of the things we always say to people, “You always need to understand the love, grace, mercy, forgiveness of God, too.” And I said to that young lady, “You know what God’s Word says? ‘If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ He promises to remove our sins as far as the east is from the west, and He says He’ll remember them no more.” And I remember that big smile on her face like a big relief, and she said, “Thank you,” and off she went.

I encourage you to spend some time in our “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made” exhibit; it’s just absolutely phenomenal, powerful. And all the models you see of the development in the womb—in the new exhibit that will open in October, you’ll actually be able to see the organs working inside those models.

Do you realize all those issues we see today are really attacks on the family? Do you know the family’s the first and most fundamental of all human institutions that God ordained in Scripture? And the family is really the educational unit that God uses to transfer that spiritual legacy from one generation to the next, and to impact the world around for the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you destroy the family, then you destroy that unit that does that. The devil hates the family; and that’s one of the reasons I wrote that book Will They Stand.

You know, I’ve had many people who even in the church have criticized us for sending our kids to Christian school and homeschooling them. We’ve done both actually. And we have our own Christian school now, Twelves Stones Christian Academy that our eldest daughter had a real burden to found. And they say, “Your kids should be in the public school to witness to the other kids.” So I always ask them, “From a perspective of a biblical worldview, what would your foundation be for that?” And if I get one, it’s something like, “Well we’re to be salt out there.” I say, “OK. The Bible says, ‘We are the salt of the earth.’ But do you realize there’s a simple principle here: You can’t be salt till you have it; and if the salt’s contaminated, is good for nothing.”

When our kids are born, they don’t know about Adam and Eve, they don’t know about creation or the Bible, they don’t know about the fall of man, they don’t know about the Flood. They don’t know about the Tower of Babel or the call of Abraham. They don’t know about the Babe in a manger, and Jesus on the cross, and the Resurrection, and the new heavens and new earth to come. They don’t know any of that. Our job as parents is to pour that salt of biblical truth in there. And as my parents did with us, preparing us for the world we’re growing up in, so that we will be equipped with answers and won’t be led astray by the attacks on God’s Word. That’s what we should be doing to mature them so that they can go out there and be salt and light.

Well, what about death, suffering, and disease? You know, the atheists bring this up all the time: “How can there be a loving God with all the death and disease we see in the world? How can you have a loving God?” How do you answer that? “You start with Genesis 1 to 11.” OK, let me try that again. What’s the answer to that? “You start with Genesis 1 to 11.” Very good, you start with Genesis 1 to 11.

That second C, as you walk through the 7 C’s of History, “corruption”—you see, when God made everything, it was very good. “Adam, if you eat of that fruit, you will surely die.” Adam ate the fruit; sin came into the world. There’s the origin of sin and the origin of death. And in Genesis 3:15, what do we have? The promise of the Savior. And again, really in Genesis 3:21, what was God’s response? “He made garments of skins and clothed them.” Oh, there’s the origin of clothing; that’s why we wear clothes.

Why garments of skins? As you go through the Creation Museum, you come to the sacrifice scene. The first blood sacrifices are a covering for their sin, a picture what was to come in Jesus Christ the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. It was pointing to the One who would be the ultimate sacrifice, because without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Blood represents life. And so because death was a penalty for sin, there has to be the giving of life to pay the penalty for sin. But the blood of bulls and goats can’t take away our sins.

This is where, again, it’s important to understand that humans are different; we’re not just animals. A man brought sin and death into the world, we’re all descendants of that one man, so we’re all sinners. But because a man brought sin and death into the world, a man would need to pay the penalty for sin and death; but it can’t be any one of us because we’re all sinners. A sinner can’t pay that penalty, so God steps into history in the person of His Son to become the perfect man, the God-Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on a cross because death was the penalty for sin, raised from the dead, has ultimate power, conquers death, and offers that free gift of salvation to all.

Wow. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the message of the whole Bible. It’s all about the fact that we are fallen and we need a Savior. And that’s the message of the Ark and the message of the Creation Museum; that’s the message of Answers in Genesis. That’s always been our burden.

When my parents were in country areas of Queensland, Australia, my father was a teacher, and we’d go to areas that didn’t have Sunday schools and would start Sunday schools. They brought missionaries in because they wanted to see those children impacted by the message of God’s Word and the gospel. And that’s always had such an incredible impact on me. And to actually see and experience the sacrifice of my own parents in making sure that they did what they could to reach people with God’s Word and the gospel, wow.

Actually, the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, the ministry of Answers in Genesis is a legacy of parents who taught their children to stand boldly and unashamedly on the Word of God and to have a heart for reaching our family, which is everyone, with the truth of the gospel. That’s what it’s all about. When you go up to the Creation Museum, by the way, in the lobby outside of Legacy Hall there’s an exhibit there with my father’s Bible; and it has a little Noah’s ark he built me many, many years ago, not knowing we’d one day build an ark. And it’s really testifying to the fact that really this ministry that reaches, conservatively, 30-plus million people directly a year, and tens of millions more indirectly—because of parents who taught their children to stand on the Word of God.

Well one of the sad things we’ve got is that our Christian colleges, Bible colleges, seminaries—not all, but the majority—and churches are filled with leaders who say you can believe in millions of years. The idea of millions of years actually came out of naturalism, naturalism of the 1800s—atheism, if you like. When there were scientists who said, “We don’t believe Noah’s flood, we don’t believe the Bible, so all the layers of fossils were laid down millions of years before man.” But you know, when you look in the fossil record, there’s lots of examples of animals eating each other, bones in their stomachs. How could that be, when originally Adam and Eve and the animals were vegetarian to start with? We weren’t told we could eat meat until after the Flood when God said, “Just as I gave you the green plants, now I give you everything.” I mean, that’s the reason you can eat a hotdog right there, because it is everything. Do you realize the origin of a hotdog is in Genesis 1 to 11?

If you believe in millions of years as a Christian, you know what else is in the fossil record? Examples of cancer, arthritis, tumors in the bones. If all these existed millions of years before man, and then God said everything He made was very good, then God’s calling cancer “very good.” These two things can’t be true at the same time, which means what? Those fossils couldn’t have been laid down over millions of years before man if the Bible is true.

So how do you explain fossils? Have a guess. How do you explain fossils? Start with Genesis 1 to 11. Oh, if there was a global flood, you’d expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. And you know what you find? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. Hey, it’s so important to start from Genesis 1 to 11.

Now I’m not going to deal with this one today because that’s a whole hour’s lecture that I do, and I do here at the Ark regularly. How do you deal with racism, races? You start from Genesis 1 to 11. Big picture: that fourth C, “confusion,” Tower of Babel, man rebels against God—again, after the Flood.

See, the Ark makes it very clear: Eight people got off that great big ship, right? And then what does it say in Genesis 9? “The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark, Shem, Ham and Japheth, these three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.” In other words, we are all descendants of Noah’s three sons—going back to Noah, going back to Adam and Eve. And because of the Tower of Babel, as people moved away from each other, then depending on who married who, who died out, who survived in this location, how isolated they were, you end up with different people groups with some minor differences on the outside. They’re not major, they’re minor differences on the outside. Very easy to understand.

You know, it’s interesting. I have people today—even CRT, critical race theory, has permeated many of our churches. And I have people say to me, “What do you think of CRT?” Well number one, big picture—very simple, right, very simplistic. Number one, is the foundation of CRT man’s word or God’s Word? What is it? Man’s word. So it’s a secular worldview, so it’s wrong. So you so you can easily then point out consequences if you start from the wrong foundation.

What’s an emphasis of CRT? You judge people according to their outside. What does the Bible say? It’s your inside that matters. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” and so on.

Hey, do you realize what I’m saying? We’ve got this foundation—these four C’s, that history God’s given us—then the puzzle is not there anymore; the puzzle is solved. We understand what we believe, why we believe what we do. But I wanted to finish off with this bit—and I always say “finish off” because you think I’m getting towards the end. That’s what all speakers and preachers do to make you think you’re getting closer to the end. Now Phil Johnson’s really worried.

So we have an incredible battle not just in our culture, we have an incredible battle in the church; it’s a battle between God’s Word and man’s word in the church. You know, if you jump over to the New Testament, God, through the apostle Paul—you know why I like to say it that way many times? Because you know—not all the time. But you know why I like to say, “God, through the apostle Paul”? Because it’s God’s Word, and because today so many in the church try to make out it’s just man’s word.

But here we read—I’ll paraphrase it for you. “I want to warn you, the devil’s going to use the same method on you—which means on your kids, on your grandkids—as he did on Eve, to get you in the position of not believing the things of God.” Wow. If he’s going to use the same method on us as he did on Eve, we’d better know what that method was, so we can prepare our kids and our grandkids and our congregations and our youth groups and our Sunday Schools and our Christian school. We can prepare them for this method so they don’t let us stray. What was the method? “Did God actually say?”—to create doubt in regard to the Word of God. In other words, there’s going to be an attack on the Word of God. I call it “the Genesis 3 attack.” And the Genesis 3 attack manifests itself in different ways in different eras.

We need to ask ourselves, How does the Genesis 3 attack manifest itself today, so I can be preparing my kids for this Genesis 3 attack? I’ll give you a little hint. You know, when Peter and Paul were preaching about the Resurrection, did anyone ask him about carbon dating? When Martin Luther, in the 16th century, nailed those theses on the door of the church, did anyone ask him about dinosaurs? The word “dinosaur” wasn’t even invented until 1841—it’s an arbitrary term.

You know what I found, as I’ve traveled around the world for the past forty years—when people know you wrote about the Bible, Christianity, the gospel, they ask the same basic questions in this era. They go like this: “Don’t we live in a scientific age? Hasn’t science disproved the Bible? How do you know the Bible’s true? What evidence is there for God? Who made God? Do you believe in Adam and Eve? Where did Cain get his wife? How did all the races come about if there were only two people to start with? Where’s the evidence of the Flood? Don’t fossil layers prove millions of years in evolution? We know man evolved from ape-like creatures; how could the story of Adam and Eve be true? How can you believe in a loving God with all the death and suffering in the world? Didn’t dinosaurs live millions of years ago and evolve into birds? How could Noah fit all the animals on the ark? Hasn’t science proved evolution is true? Isn’t the Bible an outdated book of mythology?”

Put your hands up if you’ve heard those sorts of questions today. Oh, that’s a shock! No, it’s not. You just told me you understand the Genesis 3–type–attack questions we get today.

Here’s the next thing I want to say to you: How many of us—don’t put your hands up—but how many of us have really taught our children answers to these, knowing this is what they’re going to get? This is all part of the Genesis 3–attack questions; that’s why we produced our Answers books, which have the most-asked questions that are used today. They’re the Genesis 3–attack questions of today, to undermine the authority of the Word of God. We need to make sure we’re preparing generations to make a defense, or answer—and that comes from the Greek word apologia, from which we get our word “apologetics”—to teach them answers to the skeptical questions of our age, because the attack today, the Genesis 3 attack very much is aimed at the first eleven chapters of the Bible.

See, as I said to you, back in the 1800s there were scientists—atheists, deists—said things like, “These rock layers were laid down over millions of years.” But do you know what happened in history? There were church leaders like Thomas Chalmers, the founder of the Free Church of Scotland, who said, “We can take the millions of years, and we can add it into the Bible and put in a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2,” and invented the gap theory. Who’s heard of the gap theory? Yeah, look at all the hands. And then others said, “We’ll put in the days of creation,” and we have the day-age theory. And others come up with all sorts of other inventive ways of trying to fit millions of years into the Bible—notice, not taking what the Bible says; taking what man has said and trying to fit it in, which undermines biblical authority.

You know, I hate it when people label our ministry as the ministry—“Oh, Ken Ham. All they’re all about is a young earth; that’s a young-earth creation ministry.” Now don’t get me wrong. As Phil Johnson read earlier, I believe in a young earth—absolutely. But you see, that’s the consequence of believing in God’s Word and starting with God’s Word first, right? I’m not a young-earth creationist first; our whole ministry is a ministry on biblical authority, taking God at His Word; and because of that, we believe in a young earth. That’s a whole ‘nother topic.

And then along comes Darwin, who publicizes ideas of evolution and millions of years. And you know what many church leaders said? “We’ll say God used evolution.” Along comes a big bang; “We’ll say God used the big bang.” And before long, you have all these different positions in the church: gap theory, day-age, theistic evolution, day gap day, framework hypothesis, progressive creation. There’s a whole slew of them.

And you know, I go to churches sometimes, and they say, “Oh, our pastor believes in a gap theory. Oh, we have a pastor who believes in theistic evolution. Oh, one of our elders believes in the framework hypothesis.” And they say to me, “What’s your position?” I say, “Oh, the biblical one.”

Do you realize that every one of these has one element the same, every single one of them, one common element. You know what it is? All trying to fit millions of years into the Bible. Millions of years is the big issue. You see, millions of years came out of naturalism, and it’s really part of the pagan religion of the age, to try to explain life by natural processes without God. And we have these church leaders that have taken the pagan religion of our age and tried to change God’s Word to fit it in. It’s no different to what the prophets were saying the people and the shepherds were doing back in those times.

And I want to show you some video quotes real quickly of some church leaders today, just to make the point. And before I do that, I just want to help us understand the word science. You know, the word science means “knowledge.” And when I debated Bill Nye, I said, “We have to understand there’s observational science: Using your five senses in the present, you gain knowledge, and that enables you to build technology.” And we can all agree on observational science—atheist, Christian, whatever. But when you have knowledge or beliefs about the past when you weren’t there, that’s a different science; and that’s where we disagree.

Here’s the problem: You will find over and over and over and over and over again with pastors, many pastors, church leaders, Christian college professors, seminary professors—they will say, “Yes, but because of science, Genesis can’t mean that. Because of science.” And every time they say that, what they’re really meaning is, “Because of man’s beliefs about the past,” not observational science; it’s what we call historical science, which means they’re elevating man above God’s Word, which is exactly what Genesis 3 tells us. Our sin nature is going to be, “We would rather believe the word of men than the Word of God.” And that’s rampant in our churches.

Now as I show you these video clips real quickly, to bring all this sort of to a climax here, I am not attacking these people personally. They make these public statements. But we need to know, this is—if you want to know a pandemic that we need to be dealing with, it’s a pandemic in the church; and I want to give you examples of that pandemic.

William Lane Craig has a ministry called Reasonable Faith. He’s a visiting professor at Talbot School of Theology in Biola—a lot of the professors in Biola believe in millions of years and so on—and he’s professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University. Back in 2009, here’s what he said:

[Start of Video]

KEN: You’re going to say no, it’s six-and-a-half thousand years old. That is not a tenable position?

WILLIAM: I don’t think it’s plausible. The arguments that I give are right in line with mainstream science. I’m not bucking up against mainstream science.

[End of Video]

You see what he’s saying? Yeah, “I’m right in line with mainstream science.” What about the Bible? No, he puts man’s beliefs above God’s Word.

Now come up to the present, because I’ve always said once you unlock that door to add millions of years in, that door is going to go open wider and wider and wider. He was interviewed by Sean McDowell from Houston Baptist University. I had a debate with Sean McDowell once on TBN actually, where he was defending millions of years and so on. But listen to where William Lane Craig is today.

[Start of Video]

WILLIAM: I would be disingenuous, Sean, if I were to say I don’t want the young-earth creationist interpretation to come out true. To me, that is a nightmare. My greatest fear is that the young-earth creationist might be right in his hermeneutical claim that Genesis does teach those things that I described earlier. And I say that would be a nightmare because if that’s what the Bible teaches, it puts the Bible into massive, I think irredeemable conflict with modern science.

[Video Paused]

Oh! If you believe the Bible, it’s going to be in massive conflict with what these scientists are saying. You can’t have that.

[Video Resumed]

WILLIAM: I think it should prompt us not to be over-literalistic in the way we read these narratives. And once you begin to look at them in terms of mytho-history, it’s difficult to look at them in any other way. I mean, when you read a story about two people in an arboretum with these magical trees whose fruit, if you eat it, will grant you immortality or knowledge of good and evil; and then there’s this talking snake who comes along and tempts them into sin. And then you have this anthropomorphic God walking in the cool of the garden, calling out audibly to Adam in his hideout, you think, “Well, of course this is figurative.”

[Video Paused]

He was mocking the account of the Fall, and Adam and Eve.

[Video Resumed]

WILLIAM: Now assuming then, for the sake of argument, the truth of evolutionary biology concerning human origins, we can imagine sometime prior to 750 thousand years ago, a group of hominins, maybe a few thousand, and through a biological and spiritual renovation—perhaps divinely induced—a miracle that caused a genetic regulatory mutation in a pair of these hominins. They were lifted to fully human stata [sic].

[End of Video]

He’s accepted evolution, as you can see. You know, it’s much easier to believe God created man from dust.

And then you have Andy Stanley.

[Start of Video]

ANDY: If we really believe—whether you take it literally or figuratively, whatever—if we really believe that God is the Creator of the universe, that all time, space, and matter—all time, space, and matter were created by God, and we take seriously what science has told us, that it all began with a singularity—that’s what it’s referred to—right before—there’s not a such thing as before the big bang because before His time—

[Video Paused]

So he believes in the big bang, and so on.

[Video Resumed]

ANDY: And when religion and science conflict, at the end of the day, if you are an honest person, science must win.

[End of Video]

Some of you might have heard of an organization called BioLogos. Their whole purpose is to get the church to believe in evolution and millions of years. Someone who supports BioLogos in a big way is Tim Keller, Pastor Tim Keller. He rejects a global flood and rejects a young earth. In fact, here he says that.

[Start of Video]

TIM: If you are upset by what I just said, don’t be upset. I’m not trying to convince you that creation science isn’t true. I don’t believe the earth is young, and I don’t think the Bible teaches that. I don’t believe in a worldwide flood; I don’t think the Bible teaches that.

[End of Video]

And then you have Dr. John Collins, professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. It’s basically a denominational seminary of the PCA; he’s one of the ESV translators.

[Start of Video]

MALE: What’s your perspective on the Flood? Do you think it was global or local?

JOHN: Well, I think from the perspective of the words in Genesis 6 through 9, you can’t tell. I mean, at first reading it looks like it was global, doesn’t it, because—

[Video Paused]

“You can’t tell.” I mean, if you read it, it does look like it was global: “Water covered the highest hills.” OK.

[Video Resumed]

MALE: And do you think that the Flood was universal in terms of wiping out all of humanity or not?

JOHN: I—I would like to think so. There’s places where you get a little bit uncertain: “How long ago did it take place?” becomes a question; and I don’t think there’s any answer to that. But you do find hints in some ancient expositors of the possibility that others besides Noah and his family survived the Flood. Josephus—

[End of Video]

So because of Josephus—that’s not the Word of God—who has this tradition about others who survived the Flood, therefore he would reject what the Bible says: “And only eight people survived.”

And then you have Wheaton College, that produced a textbook that many seminaries are using—actually by our Christian colleges across the nation, and many of them have been impacted by William Lane Craig. And Wheaton College, they say, “A Bible-first approach devalues the meaningfulness of creation revelation.” We have a Bible-first approach here; I can tell you that. They say, “The Earth is 4.5 billion years old; that’s a fact. Although some Christians have argued the Fall utterly disrupted some kind of original perfection, there’s no evidence from the Bible or creation for this.” That’s because they believe in millions of years. So they can’t have a Fall, and then they reject the global flood. They can’t have a global flood, and then they say man is just an ape; he evolved from apes.

People, there’s been an incredible attack on Genesis 1 to 11; it’s happening in our churches right now. And I’ll end with these two diagrams. And Phil, I’m going to go two minutes over. But a day’s like a thousand years; I have a biblical justification for it.

So we have this battle between man’s word and God’s Word; secular worldview, Christian worldview; moral relativism, the absolutes of Christianity. The devil knows: “How do you get rid of that castle? You attack the foundation.” Genesis 1 to 11 is how it’s attacked today. You attack God’s Word, but today it’s Genesis 1 to 11 in particular. Much of the church, our church leaders have attacked that foundation. And then people say, “How do we deal with these problems?” But they’re the symptoms of that problem. So what we want to do here is to help you to raise up generations with the right foundation, beginning with Genesis 1 to 11, know what they believe and why, and equip with answers to defend the Christian faith, and understand the battle is down here.

The battle’s not up here; this is a consequence of the battle. The battle is down here. And if we don’t learn to battle down here, we’re never going to be successful in dealing with those issues up here. We need to be raising up generations founded on the Word of God, who know what they believe, why they believe what they do, equipped with answers to defend the Christian faith; and pray that they will survive this tornado of moral relativism that is ripping through the culture. And that’s my challenge to us today.