Can We Really Trust the Bible?
Ken Ham

Kenneth Alfred Ham (1951–present). Born on October 20, 1951, in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, to Mervyn and Ailsa Ham, Ken Ham is a Christian apologist, evangelist, and founder of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a ministry promoting young Earth creationism. Raised in a devout family—his father a school principal—he earned a bachelor’s degree in applied science (environmental biology) from Queensland Institute of Technology and a Diploma in Education from the University of Queensland. Influenced by The Genesis Flood (1961) by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, he taught science in Australian public schools from 1975, rejecting evolution for a literal Genesis. In 1979, he co-founded the Creation Science Foundation (now Creation Ministries International), moving to the U.S. in 1987 to join the Institute for Creation Research. Ham established AiG in 1994, opening the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, in 2007 and the Ark Encounter, a life-size Noah’s Ark replica, in 2016. His “Back to Genesis” lectures argue that biblical literalism counters cultural decay, authoring over 30 books, including The Lie: Evolution (1987) and Creation to Babel (2021). A radio host on Answers with Ken Ham and speaker at conferences, he debated Bill Nye in 2014, drawing global attention. Married to Marilyn (“Mally”) since 1972, he has five children and 17 grandchildren, living in Kentucky. Ham said, “The Bible is the Word of God, and its history in Genesis is the foundation for all doctrine.”
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Sermon Summary
In this video, the speaker introduces the audience to the resources available through Answers in Genesis, a ministry focused on teaching the word of God. They mention the availability of study guides, video sets, and Creation magazine, which are all valuable tools for teaching children and adults. The speaker also highlights the availability of materials in Spanish and mentions the importance of a strong foundation in the church. They briefly touch on the topic of evolution and its influence on racism and interracial marriage, as well as the importance of evangelism. The video concludes with a mention of resources on dinosaurs and the importance of the book of Genesis.
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I appreciate all the people coming to hear what we have to say, and of course, I know people like the way we say it, because we speak the way you're supposed to. And I always tell people, get used to it anyway, because you're going to speak it in heaven. You can't prove I'm wrong yet, but... You know, the very first verse of the Bible says, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And yet, people like the late Dr. Carl Sagan, and others like him that still live today, believe the cosmos is all it is, or ever was, or ever will be. So, what are we going to believe? In the beginning God created, or in the beginning, the cosmos? You know, one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Romans 1.20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so they are without excuse. You know what the Bible says? There's enough evidence in the world to convince everyone that God is creator. If you don't believe, you're without excuse. What would happen tonight if a skeptic from Arizona came up here, and there's probably a couple out there, and they said something like, You believe in God? You believe in creation? Well, I don't see any evidence of God. I don't see that God is creator. What would you say to them? You know, for a lot of people, they say, oh, we just accept it by faith. You know what the Bible says? It's not a blind faith. It's obvious that there's a God. In fact, if the Bible is right, then that should be logically defensible, shouldn't it? After all, 1 Peter 3.15 tells us to be always ready to give an answer to every man that asks of you of the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. And so how would we do that? You know, I was a teacher in the public schools in Australia, and I wanted to teach my students how to think. That's a little radical, because today they don't learn how to think. It's mainly what to think. But I wanted to teach them how to think, and I know some of you were there last night when I did this. I'll do a bit more detail tonight. But how would I teach them the evidence that it's obvious that God created? As you came in here tonight, I'm sure you looked around at this building and said, wow, it got here by an explosion in a brick factory. Of course not. You know that intelligent design went into building this building. Well, take Mount Rushmore. You know the president's heads. My favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. You know it's embarrassing when people ask me if I'm a living fossil or something like that. I have people stop me all over America saying, you know, you look like Abraham Lincoln. Of course I tell them at least I look like a good president. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. But how did the president's heads get there? Well, I've got a theory. I think what happened was this. I think millions of years of wind and water erosion acting on Mount Rushmore, and eventually we produced the president's heads. Now, we look at that, well, we put a little design into that too. But you know that's not true. You know that those heads are a result of a lot of intelligent input. In fact, why do scientists get so excited when they find stone tools with bones? Find the Indian arrowheads. Why do they say the Indian arrowheads? They recognize the effect of intelligence. And you see, design implying a designer has really been the main way we've taught in our churches to help our children understand it's obvious there's a God. A motor car didn't get there by chance. We know somebody built it. Your brain couldn't have got there by chance. Somebody had to make it and so on. But do you know the church needs to catch up? Because those arguments today have been answered by evolutionists in a way that many people think, oh, therefore you don't have to believe in God. And you know the sad thing? I find a lot of times the church doesn't catch up. The church lags behind. Because you know Richard Dawkins, those of you who saw the early bird movie this evening, from Oxford University, ardent evolutionist, says, we have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully designed to come into existence by chance. He says design doesn't mean that you've got to believe in God. He says after all, if evolution's true, you'd expect organisms to be adapted to their environment and there's going to be apparent design because I'll be fit for their environment. You don't have to believe in God. So how do you deal with that argument? I know when I was at school as a teacher and taught my students about design, they'd go to the next class and the teacher would say, look, you don't have to believe in God. With life, it's different. You see, life is built up on the basis of that molecule heredity DNA. All the information that builds you in our genes, in ourselves. In fact, if you were to type out all the information from one of your trillions of cells, all the information that builds you, it's been estimated to fill a thousand books, five hundred pages, close typed, written. A lot of information. And you see, that information is sort of like this. As an analogy, if you know the Morse code and you take beads in a rope, you can actually write words. You could write the entire Bible using a piece of rope and beads, if you know the Morse code. In a sort of a sense, a very crude analogy, we've got little beads or molecules lined up on this rope of DNA and that writes all the information that builds you. Now the teachers would say, look, you don't need to believe in God. As long as those molecules line up in the right order, basically, you can get life. Look, let's look at it, students. Take the letters of an alphabet, shake them up, put them in a hat and pass the hat around the class and three students in a row happen to pull out B-A-T. What's that word? Bat. Ah, we got a word by chance. Well, that's true. But that means we could get words by chance. Yeah. Well, as improbable as it seems, you could still get sentences by chance, couldn't you? Well, yes. And even though it seems improbable, it's still remotely possible you could get the encyclopedia. You see, even though it seems impossible, as long as you pull out the right order of letters. See, students, you don't need God. Now, that's how some people are taught today. But you know what they're not taught? There's something dreadfully wrong with that analogy. You know what it is? That word B-A-T, who is that a word to? A Frenchman, a Dutchman, an Englishman, an Irishman, a Chinese? It's only a word to somebody who already has what? The language. Do you know what this word is? That's the word days. How do I know that? That's German for days. It's the only German word I know. Because I had someone who knew German do this and I hope they did it right. But you see, you wouldn't have known that unless you knew the German language, right? And see, that's one of the things that we need to understand. You know, the order of letters is actually meaningless unless you know the language to make the order meaningful. Do you realize something? In our DNA, the order of molecules is actually meaningless. But we now know from studying our biochemistry that in the cell there's a code system, a language system, if you like, other chemicals that constitute the language system that read the DNA to make it meaningful. And in doing that, that enables the DNA to make the language system that reads the DNA that makes the language system that reads the DNA that makes the language system. In other words, it's all got to be there. In fact, it reminds me of, in Dr. Gary Parker's book, Creation, the Facts of Life, and Dr. Parker will be the second speaker this evening, he talks about the fact that you realize that when you look at a 747, you know a 747 is made of 6 million parts? Do you realize, he says, not one part flies? You know, I've often thought about that when I'm flying at 35,000 feet, you know, I'm in something of which not one part flies. But when it's all together, it's like a machine, it works. And you see, life is like that at different levels. Look, take a mosquito. I don't like mosquitoes. I don't like cats either, but I don't like mosquitoes. But here's what I like to do to mosquitoes. We call them mozzies in Australia. Now, I have a very important scientific question for you. Why did the mosquito die? So you squashed it. No, no, no, look, you've got the best primeval soup an evolutionist could ever ask for. All the DNA, the RNA, the proteins, all the enzymes that are necessary, it's all there, but it's not going to get up and fly. You know why not? Because I actually disorganized it. That's really what happened, right? It's sort of like, look, if you put a frog in a blender. Now, it's not a really good experiment to do, but if you do, see, the total frog is there. But it's not going to croak and, well, it's already croaked, but see, it's not going to get up and jump away. But yet, everything is there. See, but once you've disorganized it, it no longer works. You know, life is like that at different levels. It's like a machine. And, in fact, there's a man called Dr. Michael Behe, who's not a biblical creationist like myself, in fact, he's a theistic evolutionist, but he believes in God. He's a professor of biochemistry, wrote an interesting book, Darwin's Black Box. You know what he says? Look, let's face it. When you get down to the biochemistry of a cell, for instance, do you realize, for a particular organism, just to sense light and turn it into electrical impulses takes this chemical and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, page after page after page, all these chemicals, all the right place, all the right time, all the right concentration, all there at the right time or it won't work. It's called a biochemical machine. And, you know, in a sense, the workings of a cell, it's like thousands upon thousands of 747s that all communicate with each other, if you like. We don't even know how that works. In other words, he says, you've got to believe in God. You can't believe in chance random processes producing life, he says, because life starts with machines. It's like a 747. Unless it's all there, it doesn't work. And it's got thousands of these biochemical machines. But, see, then there's another problem. Where did the information come from in our cells in the first place? Where did the language system come from, the code system that reads the DNA? There's a German scientist called Dr. Werner Gitt. He wrote a book called In the Beginning Was Information. And in this particular book, he has challenged people around the world. He's lectured at universities across America and Germany, other parts of the world. Let me sum up what he says. He says this, there is no known law of nature, no known process, no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter. He says matter never by itself gives rise to information. And he's challenged university professors across the world. Give me an example, he says. He goes on, there is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this. Real science in the present never observes matter generating information. And then he says a code system is always the result of a mental process, like the Morse code. It didn't get there by chance. It had to come from a mental process. It requires an intelligent origin or inventor. It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. Have you ever seen a computer program pop into existence? The ones that are designed are bad enough. And then he goes on and says this, all experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, creativity is required. Do you know what Dr. Wernig is saying? Here's what we observe. Information only comes from information and ultimately it comes from an intelligence. So you see, when little Johnny would come to me as a high school teacher and say, all right sir, where did God come from? I would say, well wait a minute Johnny. You think you've got me by asking where did God come from? And I go through all of that. I went through this evening with him, but in more detail. And then say, now Johnny here's the point. Where did the information come from in ourselves? A greater amount of information. Where did that come from? A greater amount of gain. Where did that come from? A greater amount of gain. You know the only thing that makes sense? You start with infinite information. And you know where information comes from ultimately? Code systems and intelligence. The only thing that makes sense is an infinite intelligence. In the beginning God. The most scientific statement you could ever make. Logically defensible. I can't prove it to you, but you know what? It fits with what we observe in real science. But Billy, Johnny, I want to ask you a question. What do you believe? Matter eternally existed? Matter came from nowhere for no reason? Matter by itself generated information systems against what we observe in science? I'm sorry son, you've got a blind faith. I don't. I have a faith that fits with real science and explains the facts. And it's logically defensible. Yours is not. I think you'd better listen to verse 2. Isn't it exciting being a Christian? It really is. And by the way, that's the level we need to be teaching in our churches. You know one of the sad things today? Most of our churches teach the Bible to children and young people and so on as if it's a collection of stories about Jesus and missionaries and sort of a religious book not teaching that it's a history book that connects to the real world. And it's about time we woke up and started doing that. Now, something else I want to get across to us. You know, I often get on radio. I certainly have recently a lot of times. I was on secular public radio just recently and the interviewer was a little antagonistic and so she would say to me, Oh, so you've got the religious view of origins. I said, Excuse me? She said, Well, you believe in creation. That's a religious view, right? I said, You know what? Creationists believe in science. We believe in natural selection. We believe in mutations. In fact, everything an evolutionist observes in this world we agree with because it's what you see. It's what you observe. I said, You know what the difference is? Connecting it to the past when you weren't there, the beliefs about how you think all this got going in the first place and so on. Now, that's outside of observing things in the present. In fact, there are both scientific aspects to evolution and creation and both religious aspects to evolution and creation. But see, the thing that we have to come to grips with, if you believe in molecules to man evolution, evolutionists have to believe matter somehow generated information systems and then over millions of years as one kind of animal changes into another you've got to have a continual increase in information. Think about it. If reptiles are going to turn into birds, reptiles don't have feathers, birds do. Where's the information for feathers which are complex structures like hair follicles? Where's the information going to come from? It's not in the genes of a reptile. Where's it going to come from? See, evolutionists have to propose that over millions of years new information keeps being generated from matter and somehow added into the genes. Friends, it doesn't happen. It's impossible. But of course, and we'll do more on this tomorrow at one of the sessions, they say, ah, mutations. You've heard of mutations, haven't you? You've heard of poodles. You've heard of mutations. Right? We'll talk more about that tomorrow too. But Dr. Lee Spetna, who is a fellow at Johns Hopkins University and I haven't got time to do this tonight, we'll do this tomorrow, but he says all point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to, what's his word? Reduce the genetic information. Do you know in public schools our students are often given an example, ah, when bacteria become resistant to antibiotics that's evolution. When you understand it, it's the opposite of evolution. The opposite. Because they lose the ability to do something which can actually cause them to become resistant but it's the opposite of evolution. And you might say, now come on. Look, if it's so obvious that real science fits with what the Bible says and evolutionists can't really explain the generation of information and so on, do they ever admit it? The answer is yes. They do. Can you give me an example? Sure. National Geographic. National Geographic. Let me tell you about National Geographic. By the way, how many of you have heard of National Geographic? Uh-huh. How many of you have read, at any time in your life, some parts of National Geographic? Uh-huh. How many of you have ever read, at some time in your life, articles from Creation Magazine? Not as many hands. I hope you feel guilty. You will not be allowed tonight to leave this auditorium until you have subscribed to a truthful magazine. Okay? Now, I'll tell you about Creation Magazine a little later on. Now, the reason I say National Geographic, by the way, you know in November they had an article about a feathered dinosaur all full color, beautiful number of pages. This is it, the missing link in evolution. Who remembers seeing that, by the way? A number of you saw that? Did you know National Geographic have got to apologize to the world now? And I guess they'll do it in fine print on the back page like they normally do. But they've got to apologize to the world because the fossil they based this whole article on was a hoax. Somebody put the tail of a dinosaur on a bird fossil. And they presented it as just absolute proof of evolution to the world. Isn't that sad? Now, how many of you are going to get Creation Magazine now? And I better see a lot of more hands than that. But National Geographic, January 2000, talking about Paul Davies, he's a very prominent physicist. Even on earth the origin of life is stubbornly enduring mystery. How can a collection of chemicals form themselves into a living thing without interference from outside, asked Paul Davies, a physicist and writer. On the face of it, life is an exceedingly unlikely event. Then they say, there is no known principle of matter that says it has to organize itself into life. Do you notice that? That's exactly what I said, isn't it? I'm very happy to believe in my head that we live in a bio-friendly universe because in my heart I find that very congenial but we have not yet discovered the life principle. What does that mean? It means, in the beginning God. That's what that means. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. But you know something? Here's the interesting point. If I was to go across America preaching in the beginning God created in church after church after church, I would hope that they would all agree and say of course we believe God created. But let's be honest about this. If I said in the beginning God created in six literal days just thousands of years ago, would the majority in our churches agree with me? The answer is no. In fact, I found the majority of theologians do not believe in six literal days. Why not? I've often thought about this. I mean, it sounds pretty radical, doesn't it? I believe God created in six literal days just a few thousand years ago. You know, whenever I'm interviewed by the secular press, oh boy, they like to rub that in. So, Mr. Hamm, you actually believe God created in six literal days just thousands of years ago? Because that sounds so radical to billions of years, doesn't it? And unfortunately, most of the church, the majority of church leaders, will not believe in six literal days. I wonder why that is. You know, the Hebrew word for day. Do you realize the Hebrew word for day is used over 2,000 times in the Old Testament in the singular and plural form? You know the thing that's fascinating to me? The only place I find people questioning what it means is Genesis chapter 1. Have you noticed that? Do you hear people questioning what the word day means in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers? I mean, do you at church sit around discussing how long did Joshua take to march around Jericho? Was it a million years? Or was it a hundred thousand years? Or was it a day? Do you ever hear those sorts of discussions? You don't. Now, why is that? I'd like to suggest this to you. Back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, the idea of millions of years started to become popular. Before that time, people thought the earth was only thousands of years old, particularly people who believed the Bible. And what happened was the idea of millions of years was sort of handed to the theologians. Now, here's an interesting thing. The theologians then said, how do we fit this with the Bible instead of saying, wait a minute, does the Bible agree with this? You see, a lot of people unfortunately have been indoctrinated to believe that scientists know how old the earth is. Do you realize there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dating methods that age-date things on the earth and more than 90% of them get dates younger than evolutionists require? All dating methods are based on assumptions. They all are. You know what blows my mind? When I get into even talking schools and to teachers, I find most students and most teachers think that carbon dating has to do with millions of years. I mean, let's be honest. If you don't believe this, who's heard of carbon dating having to do with millions of years? See, carbon dating has never had anything to do with millions of years. It can't do. It's not the method that does. And then people think scientists have proved the earth's millions of years old and they don't even understand the methods. Now, the methods that do give millions of years are methods like potassium, argon, uranium, lead and so on. But if you use potassium, argon in Hawaii to date a lava flow that formed yesterday and therefore should be one day old, it will date to millions of years old because there's a lot of excess argon in the mantle that they now know comes up in the lava and that's why it doesn't work. And you see, all those dating methods have problems like that. Now, the interesting thing is if you start with the Bible and nothing else, just the Bible, you'd never get the idea of millions of years. Can you show me millions of years just starting with the Bible? No, you can't. Where does the idea of millions of years come from? Outside the Bible. And think about this. You know those passages of the Bible you all like to read before you go to sleep? I know I do. So and so begat so and so begat so and so begat so and so begat so and so. Do you know why they're there in the Bible? They're there for an important reason. To show you the Bible is a history book. And to show you so and so begat Joseph, begat Mary and Jesus Christ, to show that Jesus Christ became a man, a descendant of the first Adam. You can trace it all the way back. And so you see, if you wanted to add millions of years to the Bible, you can't put them in those genealogies, because if you try to do that, that would destroy them. And so, when you think about it, if you were trying to fit millions of years into the Bible, where are you going to do it? You can't do it between Adam and the present, so you've got to try and do it before Adam. And that's exactly what you find. People started to invent ideas like, ah, between Genesis 1.1 and 1.2, there's a gap of millions of years, and you put the millions of years in there. Who's heard of the gap theory, by the way? And that's where the fall of Lucifer comes in. Hey, you know what? At the end of the sixth day of creation, God said everything he made, everything which included principalities, powers, Lucifer, include everything, was very good. How could you have rebellion in the universe before that time? That doesn't make any sense. But you see, it was trying to fit millions of years into the Bible. Other people said the days of creation are long periods of time. Others said the universe was there for millions of years, and then God created in six days. But they all have one thing in common, trying to fit millions of years into the Bible. Now look, I had a pastor once who said to me, but look, the word day can mean something other than ordinary day. I said, that's true, but it can also mean day. You know what amazes me? I've had people say to me, but the word day has a number of different meanings in Hebrew. I said, that's true. You know the interesting thing? The main meaning it has, you might be surprised at this, but it's day. That's its main meaning. Now you see, any word can have two or more meanings depending upon context, right? I mean, take context. Back in my father's day, it took ten days to drive across the Australian outback during the day. That sort of reminds me of, you know, context is important. There was an Australian and a Texan talking and the Texan said to the Australian, you know it takes me three days to drive across my property in my car? The Australian said, yeah, I had a car like that once too, mate. So you see, context is important, but back in my father's day means what? Time. It took ten days, ordinary days, during the day, the daylight portion of a day. You see, any word has two or more meanings depending upon context. You know, when you think about the Bible, you know, people often say to me, ah, but that's your interpretation of Genesis. To be honest, I don't think I interpret it. You know, Jesus quoted Genesis' history, so did Paul, the other New Testament writers. When I was over in Belgium a number of months ago and I went to the monument to the Battle of Waterloo, I was with a friend and we were reading about Napoleon. Napoleon took this many horses, went over here, pitched these tents, took this many soldiers over here, and so we sat there and we said, what do soldiers mean? What does it mean by horses? What does it mean, Napoleon? My friend thought I was nuts. I said, I'm trying to understand what this writer really means. He said he means what he says. Napoleon took those horses and went over there. You know, it's like that with the Bible. People say to me, look, it says God took dust and made a man. What do you think that means? I think it means God took dust and made a man. But it says Adam took the fruit of the tree. What do you think that means? I think it means he ate some fruit from a tree. You know, it's incredible. See, I don't interpret Genesis. It's a history book. What do I do? I read it as history. How do you read a history book? You analyze every word. What do you think this really means? No, you read it as history, don't you? Just like Jesus did. Now, you see, how does God communicate to us? He communicates to us through language. Who invented language? God did. If the Bible is a revelation from God to us, from an infinite being, then we should let him speak to us through the language that he invented and not let us try to impose our ideas on what he's saying. Correct? So it should stand alone, shouldn't it? How is the Hebrew word for day used in the Old Testament? Outside of Genesis 1. Let's ignore Genesis 1. Here's how the Hebrew word is used. By the way, the word day can have different meanings. But here's when it means an ordinary day. Whenever the word day is used with a number over 400 times, it always means an ordinary day. Whenever evening and morning is used as a phrase without the word day, 38 times always means an ordinary day. Whenever the words evening or morning are used with the word day, 23 times each always means an ordinary day. Whenever night is used with the word day, 52 times always means an ordinary day. Now let's look at Genesis 1. Night, evening, morning, number, day, evening, morning, number, day, evening, morning, number, day, evening... You know, I think the Hebrew writer was saying, look, it's an ordinary day, and in case you didn't get it, it's an ordinary day, and in case you're a little thick, it's an ordinary day, and in case you're really intellectually challenged, it is an ordinary day. How else can you tell us it's an ordinary day? But see, I always wondered why God took so long. Couldn't God create in six seconds? It's like the lady who said to me once, oh, I'm not like you creationists, I don't limit God to six days, I allow Him millions of years. I said, lady, I don't limit God, I limit myself to letting God tell me what He did, I don't try to tell God what He did. You know, in Exodus 20, we're told God made everything in six days and rested for one. That is the only basis you have for a seven-day week in the universe. You know where you get our day from, and our month from, and our year from, astronomical observations, where do you get the seven-day week from? If God made everything in six million years and rested for a million years, that'd be some week. Then the trade unions could have a basis for striking forever, couldn't they? And by the way, there are lots of Hebrew words that can be used to explain long periods of time, why wouldn't a writer use those? But of course, then I get these people who call up and say, I do talk shows a lot, but the Bible says in 2 Peter 3, a day is like a thousand years. You know what I say? Yeah, and read the rest of the verse. A thousand years are like a day. That just cancels that one right out, doesn't it? You know, you can't use a phrase from the New Testament to determine the meaning of a Hebrew word in Genesis. You can't do that. A Hebrew word depends upon the Hebrew language. This has nothing to do with defining a Hebrew word. I'm amazed people quote that verse and try to use it that way. Because, see, this is talking about God's outside of time. That's not defining a Hebrew word. A day is like a thousand years. A thousand years is like a day to God. A Hebrew word depends upon the Hebrew language. And by the way, if they were a thousand years, six thousand years isn't going to help you. You want 16 billion. And people are so inconsistent. You notice, it's the same old thing again. They only do it with Genesis 1. Do you hear them doing it with the rest of Scripture? I mean, do they go to Jonah and say, oh, he must have been in the whale 3,000 years. I mean, you don't hear that, do you? Now look, by the way, I have to explain something to you. Tonight, and again tomorrow morning, sometimes I get into trouble for doing this, but I want you to understand my heart in this. I quote famous Christian leaders. Ah. But when I do that, I am not attacking them personally. In fact, some of these people I have a great respect for. And sometimes I use their material from Genesis 11 onwards. But, you know, doesn't the Scripture say that there were Bereans who searched the Scriptures to see if these things be so? I think we need to be Bereans. And you know, in Thessalonians, Paul said to test all things. If it doesn't fit with Scripture, you throw it out. And you see, we've all got feeder clay, myself included. But I want to quote to you some famous Christian leaders because I want you to see a pattern of a problem that exists in the Church. And this is not to attack them personally. Not at all. Here's a great Christian man of God. Dr. Dobson doesn't believe in six days. He makes no apology about that. He said it on radio and if you write to him, he'll tell you that. But here's one of his reasons. He says, the sun was not created until the fourth day, so is the first day really a day? I don't know. Now, wait a minute. See, this is where I believe there's a big problem in our Church. We look at the Bible and say, oh, the sun wasn't made until day four. How can you have day and night without the sun? They couldn't be ordinary days. Whoa, it's got nothing to do with the sun made on day four. It's to do with what does the language say? If we let God speak to us through the words of Scripture, if the word day means day for those three days like it does the next three days, it means day. And then we should say, well, how do we understand the sun on day four? People, we've got it the wrong way around. We're not letting God speak to us. And by the way, people say, well, how can you have day and night without the sun? You don't need the sun. You need light. Was there light on day one? Let there be light. Wow, what a revelation. And then people say, where'd it come from? I haven't got a clue. Why didn't God tell us? Look, if God told us everything, we'd have an infinite number of books. We'd never graduate. But He's given us enough information and besides which it's a matter of what does the language say? Friends, think about this. If the language convention doesn't work, in other words, if you can't accept the language convention, how do you decide what any word means? It's ridiculous. But you see, ultimately, like Dr. Dobson, for instance, he believes in the Big Bang. You believe in the Big Bang. You believe in billions of years. You believe in billions of years. You can't have six days. See, here's the pattern that I see in the Christian world. Have a look at these quotes. Here's a man who believes in billions of years. He's a Christian man and he says this, Christians are often inclined to take the young earth's position simply because it appears to be the plainest reading of the Bible. Okay? Now I want you to look at this quote. This is from a professor from Wheaton College who believes in millions of years and local flood and so on, but he says a straightforward understanding of the Genesis record is that God created in six days. If he doesn't believe that, why not? He says without regard to all of the hermeneutical considerations suggested by science. In other words, yeah, the word day seems to mean day, but it can't. What he calls science, by the way, is millions of years. That's what he really means. Or take Gleason Archer, a great Christian. Some of his stuff, by the way, are used. Great, great Christian scholar. But when it comes to Genesis, he doesn't believe in six days, but he says a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impression would seem to be six 24-hour days. Why not? Because of the billions of years. Or take Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, another great pastor, doesn't believe in six literal days though, but he says the exegetical basis of the creationists is strong. Their arguments from the Bible are strong. Well, that's good. But why doesn't he believe in six literal days? Because he thinks data points to an old earth and older universe. Do you see a pattern here? I mean, I'll show you more of these tomorrow. For instance, you might have heard of Norman Geisler, another theologian. He admits that there is a prima facie evidence to indicate that the days of Genesis 1 are indeed 24-hour periods. But you'll notice elsewhere in this book put out by Baker Bookhouse, he says if, of course, the days of Genesis are long periods of time, then there is no conflict between modern science and the age of the earth. But even if the days of Genesis are 24 hours, there are still ways to reconcile long periods of time with Genesis 1 to 2. He's doing his utmost to try to somehow fit millions of years to the Bible. Now, here's my question for you. I want you to think about this. If the word day in Genesis according to the Hebrew language by itself in the Hebrew language in Genesis 1 means day but can't mean day because of millions of years, you have just said the Bible is fallible. Because if God couldn't get it right in Genesis 1, how do you know he got it elsewhere? And you know when you think about it? If you have to use what people call science, which is not really science, the idea of millions of years, but if people believe you've got to use science to interpret the Bible to give meaning to those words, then none of us here tonight should believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ or the virgin birth. Science has never shown a virgin birth in humans. Science has never shown a bodily resurrection in humans. You know why I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ? Because of the words of Scripture. You know why I believe in the virgin birth? Because of the words of Scripture. Do you know why I believe in six days? Because of the words of Scripture. And that's what it comes down to. Now, I could show you many, many other examples here and we'll do that tomorrow in particular, but you know the sad thing? When you take God's perfect word and man's fallible opinion and people try to make them agree, which one usually gets modified? It's usually the Bible. That's what's wrong with our church today. We're using man's fallible theories to judge the infallible word of God. You know, Martin Luther, who started the Reformation, Martin Luther in his day had a problem. There were some church fathers that believed God took less than six days to make everything. In fact, some said he took one day. He had to convince them it was longer than that. And here's what he says. When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days, then let this period continue to have been six days and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. Then I really like this next statement of Martin Luther's. But if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are. Don't you like that? I really like that. And then you know what? This next statement of Martin Luther's, I want you to think about this. This statement applies to Adam in the garden, it applies to the time of Luther, it applies to the time of Spurgeon, the time of Moody, our time today. Isn't there a Bible verse that says something like there's nothing new under the sun? See, the problem has never changed. Here's the problem. For you to deal with Scripture in such a way that you bear in mind that God himself says what he's written but since God is speaking it is not fitting for you wantingly to turn his word in the direction you wish to go. You know what the main problem with the church is today? We don't let God speak to us through his word. We want to tell God what he means. And I believe that that is what is destroying the church and weakening the church across this nation. You know there's another really important reason why those days are ordinary days. If you take Genesis the way Jesus took Genesis, and how did Jesus take Genesis? In Matthew 19 when asked about divorce, concern, marriage, he said haven't you read? He which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said for this cause shall man leave his father and mother, cleave unto his wife, twain will be one flesh. You know where Jesus quoted from? Genesis. And by the way he didn't say what does man mean? What does woman mean? He just quoted as if he believed it, right? And you know what Jesus is saying here? Hey wait a minute do you understand marriage? The meaning of marriage is tied up with its origin. You become one, you are one flesh. Woman didn't come from an ape woman. Man didn't come from an ape woman. Woman came from the man. One flesh which is why physically and spiritually you have oneness. Not only that's to be a man and a woman and not a man and a man. Why? Pretty simple. God made a man and a woman. You know I'll guarantee that those churches who today condone homosexual behavior or ordain homosexual pastors do not believe in a literal Genesis. Since it's literal Genesis it's a man and a woman. By the way you take kids through an education system and tell them the Bible is not true. Do you realize something? You have no basis for marriage. One man for one woman. None at all. Because the only basis is in Scripture, in the history in Genesis. But not just marriage. Do you realize that every single Biblical doctrine of theology ultimately directly or indirectly is founded in the first 11 chapters of the Bible. Marriage, Genesis 1-11. Sin, Genesis 1-11. Death, Genesis 1-11. Clothing, Genesis 1-11. Why did Jesus die on a cross? Genesis 1-11. Why does man have dominion? Genesis 1-11. Why do we have a 7 day week? Genesis 1-11. Do you get the idea? Do you realize if you wanted to destroy Christianity one of the best ways is to destroy Genesis 1-11 as history then you have no foundation for the rest of the Bible or for any Christian doctrine whatsoever. And that's why the humanists are so, so defensive of keeping evolution in schools and in the media and so on because it's the foundation of their secular humanism. If evolution is even questioned you don't have a foundation. But if you take Genesis the way Jesus did, do you realize in Genesis 1, 29 and 30 God told Adam and Eve to eat fruits for food and the animals to eat plants for food. Do you realize originally according to the Bible Adam and Eve and the animals were vegetarian? In fact we weren't told we could eat meat until after the flood. For the first time God said now you can eat the animals. Do you know why this is a crucial point? Absolutely crucial. I believe if you take Genesis to Revelation consistently interpreting Scripture as Scripture you can come to know the conclusion that death, bloodshed, disease and suffering is a consequence of sin. I want you to think about something here. Many Christians today, do you notice something about those quotes I gave you? And by the way I have many, many more. So many leading theologians today oh yes we believe God created. Yeah, I mean if you just read Genesis it seems to say six days but it can't because we know about millions of years. Did you notice the pattern there? It's all the same pattern the millions of years. Friends anyone at all who believes in millions of years has no option but to accept millions of years of death, pain, killing disease, thorns, struggle, suffering extinction before man. Because the millions of years applies to the fossil record. You go and stand on the layers of the Grand Canyon there are the millions of years of fossils and they're full of dead things, disease and suffering and bloodshed. Do you know in dinosaur bones supposedly millions of years old there's evidence of diseases like cancer and abscesses and osteomyelitis and arthritis and so on. At the end of the sixth day God said everything I've made is very good worth a world full of cancer. No. And if you believe in millions of years the same diseases you see today and thorns you see today and killing and pain and all the suffering that you see in the world today. Guess what? It's been going on for millions of years and what did sin do? Then why bother even praying for healing? Why bother praying for relief from your suffering because after all God said it's very good so put up with it. Does that make sense? Friends as soon as you believe in millions of years you've got death and disease and bloodshed before sin. And thorns, there are thorns in the fossil record hundreds of millions of years old. Wait a minute I thought the Bible said thorns came after sin. That means the Bible's wrong. No. It means man's theories about millions of years wrong. See let me take our kids book A's for Adam. Let's run through this real quickly. God makes a tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam you can eat from any tree in the garden but you're not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you do you will surely die or it's a Hebrew phrase that means dying die. You'll start to die, you'll die, you'll continue to die and you'll die until you're dead. We know what happened. The devil in the form of a serpent Adam takes the fruit. What happened when Adam took that fruit? He rebelled against God. By the way when people tell you ah Genesis is just a myth, it's just symbolism, it's just an allegory. If you cannot trace yourselves back to one man in history, a literal man who literally rebelled, who are we? Why are we sinners? How could Jesus die for you? After all he's the last Adam to take the place of the first Adam. He became one of us. But if you're not a descendant of this first Adam who literally lived in history, who are you? How do you know Jesus paid for our sin? How do you know that? You see when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, it was Adam who sinned of course, Eve was deceived. But they recognized something was wrong they tried to make clothing for themselves. Did you know what God did? They made it out of fig leaves but God made coats of skins and clothed them, Genesis 3 21. The origin of clothing, you know why you wear clothes? Genesis 3. There's no other basis for clothing. It's just an opinion otherwise. And you know what? When I was in Australia recently, I realized on the beaches not a lot of people believe in Genesis 3. Coats of skins. Why did God kill an animal and give them coats of skins? Hebrews 9, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission. My favorite picture in the book A's for Adam is this one. Here's Adam and Eve clothed in lamb's wool clothing. Here's a slain lamb, the blood from the lamb. I know the Bible doesn't say it was a lamb. You know what? I think it was a lamb. You know why? Because here we have the first blood sacrifices, a covering for their sin, a picture of what was to come in Jesus Christ, the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Do you realize when God killed that animal and clothed Adam and Eve, it was a picture of Christ? And of course an animal can't take away our sin. Why not? We're not an animal. We're not connected to the animal kingdom. How did God make the animals? Let the earth bring forth the animals. How did he make man? Let us make man in our image. That's why we needed a man, a perfect man to take the place of the first man, Adam. The first man, Adam, was the head of the entire human race. We needed a new head so God sent his son to become one of us, called the last Adam, to take the place of the first Adam. As an Adam all die so in Christ all shall be made alive. See how it all fits together? And by the way, if you had the shedding of blood millions of years before Adam sinned, then what has the shedding of blood in the garden got to do with sin? Can you imagine Adam and Eve in the garden? Oh Adam, this is such a perfect world. Yes Eve, it's very good, just like God said, but you already got all the billions of dead things. Under the garden, death and suffering and disease, and then God sheds blood because of sin. That makes nonsense of the atonement. Nonsense. Do you know what Paul says in Romans 8? Paul says the whole of creation groans and groweth in pain. Why is it groaning? Because of sin. But if this has gone on for millions of years, it's not groaning. God said it's very good. And you know what a difference this makes? You know as a Christian, a lot of people say, how do you explain dinosaurs? Now Dr. Parker is going to deal with that. How do you explain dinosaurs? A lot of Christians try to fit dinosaurs with the Bible. You know what? You don't fit dinosaurs with the Bible. You know what you use? You use the Bible to explain dinosaurs. Because the Bible is a history book. And when I look at a dinosaur bone I say, hmm, it's dead. But I know that bone couldn't have died before sin. And I know the Bible talks about when God made the land animals and it talks about a global flood and so on. And you use the Bible as a history book to explain the evidence. Do you realize evolutionists do the same? They have a belief about the past and they take that belief to the evidence of the present. Do you realize creationists and evolutionists all have the same evidence? The evidence is no different. It's how you interpret the evidence that's different. Which depends upon your beliefs. But then you might say, well how do you explain billions of dead things all over the earth? Hey, if there was a global flood you know what you'd expect to find? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. You know what you find? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. By the way, who's heard of a man called Dr. Hugh Ross? I could, a lot of you, I could give you a lot of quotes of him. He's particularly been endorsed by Focus on the Family. He's a progressive creationist, believes in millions of years, local flood, races soulless people before Adam and Eve, the days of creation, long periods of time. God created over millions of years and he used death and suffering as a part of the creation process. Now, if you believe in millions of years, do you realize consistently you can't believe in a global flood? Because if the fossil record is there from millions of years then a global flood would rip it all up and redeposit it. So you see, Dr. Ross believes in a local flood. But beware of what happens when you try to compromise the word of God. Here's what he says. Here are some reasons why the flood cannot be global. Number one is the limited extent of sin. Genesis chapter 99. Where does the Bible say sin is limited? The whole of creation groaneth and travaileth in pain. Given that human beings had not yet civilized and inhabited Antarctica, there'd be no need for God to flood Antarctica because there'd be no sin there in Antarctica. There'd be no need for God to kill off all the penguins because those penguins had no contact with reprobate humanity. In that case, I don't think Noah took any penguins on board the ark. See what happens when you compromise the word of God. By the way, one of the things that Dr. Hugh Ross does, he gets out there to tell people, we want to tell the world we believe in the millions of years. We just want them to believe in God. What do you think the world does, the secular scientists, when they hear Christians saying, look, we just want you to believe in God. You can believe in the millions of years. Do you know what Dr. Carl Sagan said? If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way that he wants? Why is he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear. The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design. He's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition. You know what he's saying? Look at this world. See all the mutations. See all the mistakes. See all the death and suffering. Where's your God? I don't see a God I love. What God would create a place like this? I don't want that God and guess what? I don't want that God either. Do you realize, friends, when you believe in millions of years, you're blaming God for the mess of this world instead of blaming our sin. It's our sin that's responsible. You know where our God of love is? Even though he could have taken away all his power and we would just disappear, he loved us so much he didn't do that, but he's given us what we wanted, a taste of life without God. Do you like it? It's a mess, isn't it? But in his mercy he sent his Son to be one of us, to die on a cross, to be raised from the dead so we can trust in him, can spend eternity with him. What a God of love. You know, David Hull in Nature Magazine said this, "...whatever the God implied by evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, he's not the Protestant God of waste not, want not. He's not a loving God who cares about his productions. He's not even the awful God portrayed in the book of Job. The God of Galapagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He's certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray." And I suggest to you that this is the God that people like Dr. Ross are telling the world to believe in. You know, I remember being over in the British Museum. You know the British Museum where they have all these artifacts they've ripped off from around the world? And I remember being over there and people were looking at, you know, some of these statues from Greece and so on and saying, wonderful, marvellous, inspiring, beautiful. A little boy stood there and he said, what are you talking about? It all looks broken to me. And you know what hit me as I thought about that? That's the creation. You know one of the sad things we do today? You know, we tell people, look at the beautiful world God made. You go to the Grand Canyon, look at this beautiful place. What beautiful place? There are people dying, children dying, suffering and people with diseases. It's a horrible world in some ways. You know, it's like Dr. Norman Geisler in that recent Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. He says, what God created is good like Himself and goodness of God is beautiful. And so there he says, not only is God beautiful and has made a beautiful world, you know what? The world is not beautiful. See, if I took you to Australia and you touched the gimpy, gimpy tree, you'd have pain for years. If I took you down the beach and you stood on the blue ring octopus, you'd die in minutes. And then if you got stung by one of our sea stingers, you'd also die in minutes. And if you went to a fresh water creek, you're likely to be eaten by a crocodile. And just as you're eaten by that crocodile, you hear this church on the hill singing all things bright and beautiful. You know what? It was a beautiful world once, but it's not a beautiful world now. There's a remnant of beauty, but it's broken because of sin. You see, you know, you look at a baby and you say, wow, how beautiful. But remember the other part of this world. We forget sometimes. It's like our first little grandchild was born. He's a beautiful little boy. And you'd look at him and you'd never know that he has a major heart problem which is going to take some operations and I'm sure a lot of prayer. You see, it's like going to Greece. You see these buildings. There's a remnant of beauty there, but you know what? It's broken. And I want you to think about this as we bring it close to home here. I want you to think about issues like school violence. You imagine you're one of these Christian leaders and you believe in millions of years and you believe in all this death and suffering and so on for millions of years and you go along and speak to little Johnny in the public school and say, Johnny, yes? Johnny, you can't, you can't shoot your fellow man like that. Why not pastor? Well Johnny, you need to love as God loves. What do you mean? Well you see, Johnny, you need to love your fellow man because there's a God of love. You can't go around shooting them like that. Pastor? Yes. You believe in millions of years? Yes. You believe there's all this death and struggle and suffering and pain and killing for millions of years before man? Yes. And God said that was very good? Yes. Well I am loving like God loves because that's your God. You know, recently on Larry King Live, Al Gore, who's an ardent, ardent evolutionist by the way, just read his book, Earth in Balance, was asked, why do you think there's a school violence problem? You know what he said? You can hardly take your eyes away from it. I think that violence has that capacity because of our evolutionary heritage, because of the laws of nature, tooth and fang. You know what, Mr. Gore? You're partly right. There is a connection between evolution and school violence but it's not because it's our evolutionary heritage, it's because people like you are allowing it to be taught as our evolutionary heritage. That's what the problem is all about. You know something? People today, when they're talking about school violence, they're saying, well what are the causes? There must be violent music and guns and gangs and peer pressure and so on, violence in the movies. You know, when you think about what happened to Columbine, people think about those bombs that the students made. I want to suggest to you that the real bombs are the students themselves. Because when you take whole generations of children through an education system and you instill in them, there's no absolutes, life is an accident, millions of years of death and suffering, that's how we got here, there's no God, the Bible's not true, you throw out the Bible, prayer from the classroom, the Ten Commandments, you've created a bomb. And you see, people say, well what's the cause? I'd like to suggest to you the cause is really that we've laid this foundation in the students. And evolution is the justification for such a foundation. And you see, guns, violent music and so on, these are all symptoms of the wrong foundation, they're not the causes. Now they're all associated with it. And you know who put the foundation in place? Parents, schools, because sin is to blame ultimately, the culture. I'd like to suggest to you that if we want to stop the school violence problem, we need to defuse these bombs by instilling in children, there are absolutes, we're not evolved animals, we didn't get here as a result of millions of years of death and struggle. And of course, if you bring back prayer and the Ten Commandments, you're telling them there is a basis for right and wrong. You see, people, you know, it's even like tomorrow, one of the sessions I'm going to do, I'm going to talk on races tomorrow, the origin of races. We're going to talk on natural selection and to do that I'm going to talk about, is a poodle a dog? But you see, another problem we've got in schools is racism. You know what I'm going to show you tomorrow? Evolution inherently is a racist philosophy. We're training kids in an evolutionary philosophy and we expect them not to be racist? And I'm going to show you that there's only one race of people anyway. We all go back to one man and one woman. Adam and Eve. But see, here's the issue. If you believe and understand that there's Adam in your ancestry, God made you, then who owns you? God. Who sets the rules? God. But if you believe you're just an animal, who owns you? You do. Who sets the rules? You do. See, do you know why I believe in right and wrong? Because the Bible's true, there's an absolute authority. I was amazed one day when I was in San Diego, there was some violence in the schools and some of the principals all got together and they said we need to bring, we need to bring what they call values, we need to bring morals back into the school. And I just shook my head. Because I would ask them, excuse me, whose morals? Well, you know, right and wrong. Really? Who decides that? Well, you know, we know what's right and wrong. Do we? Who decides what's right and what's wrong? You know what they really mean? They really mean we want Christian morality back in our schools, but you can't have Christian morality without Christianity, and you can't have Christianity without the Bible, and you can't have the Bible without Genesis 1 to 11. You see, when you think about it, if you believe in good and bad, I'd ask you why? Why are some things good and some bad? Jesus said there's none good save God. If you don't have an absolute, who decides good and bad? When you bring whole children, whole generations through an education system, there's no God, there are no absolutes, man decides truth, who decides right and wrong? Ultimately as that permeates our thinking, more and more students are going to say, well, I'm just an animal, nobody owns me, I can do what I want, and they're going to act it out more and more, which is what we see happening in this nation. Why do we believe in marriage, one man for one woman? Because the Bible's true. If the Bible's not true, marriage is whatever you want to make it. You don't have to believe in it. Why do we wear clothes? Why is the rightful place for sex? Why do we have a world view? We've got a foundation. But if you put in the foundation that man determines truth, evolution is not just molecules to man. Evolution is a philosophy that man decides truth. Molecules to man is a so-called scientific justification to believe man decides truth. And the more people believe that we determine truth, write your own rules, do what you want with sex, abort babies, get rid of spare cats, get rid of spare kids, you know the sad thing? You can be the greatest Christian leader. You can do a great deal of good in the community. But if you in Genesis 1 say the word day doesn't mean day even though it means day because of outside influences, you've unlocked the door to say that man can be in judge on God's word. And if you can do that there, why can't you do it here? If God didn't get it right in geology and astronomy and biology back in Genesis, how do you know he got it right in salvation? Because all those go together. You can't divorce them. If you don't believe me when I tell you earthly things, Jesus said how can you believe me when I tell you heavenly things? If the Bible gets it wrong when it touches on biology and geology and astronomy, how do you know the Bible didn't get it wrong when it talks about salvation? And you see, do you know what we see happening in America today? We see the collapse of Christianity, the increase in the humanist philosophy. Do you know why there's been a change in foundation from God's word to man's opinions? Do you know who's helped it? The church. Because I'll guarantee when you try today and we talked earlier in the introductions about trying to get governments today to change their position in schools on evolution and so on. You know the sad thing? I found it over and over again. The opposition will bring up all these church leaders to say they believe in evolution and they parade them before the public. Pretty sad, isn't it? You see, here's the way I see it. Here's the problem. Two castles. Here's the foundation of evolution. Man determines truth. The castle of humanism, those issues, abortion, etc. Here's the foundation of creation. God's word is truth. Here's the castle of Christianity. The humanists have been very clever. How do you get Christianity? Oh, don't aim for the resurrection. Don't aim for those things that are very obvious. If you aim for the foundation, the structure's going to collapse. If you get rid of Genesis 1-11 as history, eventually the rest collapses anyway. That's what's happened. You know what Christians do? Shoot themselves in the foot, shoot into nowhere, take pot shots at the issues. You know what I mean by that? You know something? Friends, billions of dollars of Christians' money in America have been used to fight abortion. Has it worked? No. You know why? Abortion is not the problem in this nation. Homosexual behavior is not the problem. Pornography is not the problem in this nation. Racism is not the problem in this nation. All these are symptoms of the problem. You know what the problem is? We've changed foundation from God's Word to man's Word. That's the problem. And that's why, when years ago you would say, you sinner, repent of your sin on this foundation, understanding God's Word, you would say, I know what sin is, yeah. Homosexual behavior's wrong. Yeah, you're right. Marriage is a man and a woman. Yeah, you're right. Abortion's wrong. Yeah, you're right. But the nation has changed foundation, even in much of the church. And you say, abortion's wrong. No, it's not. Homosexual behavior's wrong. No, it's not. And besides which, things are different today. So, you see, now because the culture's changed, we reinterpret marriage and so it goes on. So, what's the solution? You know what the solution is? Preach the authority of the Word of God. But you know something? If you get out there today and you try to preach the authority of the Word of God, you know what people say to you? Oh, that's just a religious book. Science has shown that wrong. There never was a global flood. Where's all the water anyway for the flood? How did Nile get all the animals on the ark? And what about dinosaurs? They've proved millions of years. And we've got all these ape men. And where did Cain get his wife? And what about the races of people? And you know the sad thing? Most Christians don't have answers and they act as if the Bible's a religious book and it doesn't connect to the real world and so we don't connect it to the Grand Canyon. We don't connect it to the dinosaurs. We don't connect it to death and suffering. We just say, oh, trust in Jesus and we wonder why people stop at us. You know, that's part of our ministry is to give you answers. That's why we're called Answers in Genesis. To teach you how to defend your faith. Did I tell you about Creation Magazine? Just remember, if you've read National Geographic, just keep that in mind. In other words, here's what we're saying. We need to restore the foundation of the authority of the Word of God, knock out the wrong foundation, fight those weapons and those issues all at the same time. You see, you can't change a nation from the top down when it changed from the foundation up. And you know one of the problems too when you're fighting with an evolutionist today? You know what the problem is? Because the evidence is all the same, they've got on a different set of glasses to you and they're looking at the evidence through their evolutionary glasses and you're saying, but it's obvious that's not right. And they're saying, no, it's not. You've got to get down and talk about the foundation, the presuppositions they've got that are different. See, if a homosexual walked up to me right now and said, I'm a homosexual, what are you going to do? I'm not going to stand here and say, that's wrong and evil, you shouldn't do that. That's what a lot of Christians do. Do you know why I wouldn't do that? Because until that person understands the foundation I've got and understands their own foundation and why they think the way they do, they're not going to understand what I'm talking about. That's why today I think a lot of Christians come across as narrow-minded, bigoted, biased, intolerant people and that's what we're accused of, aren't we? You know why? Because we're trying to oppose Christian morality in a nation that no longer has the foundation for it. Without the foundation they're saying, what are you intolerant people trying to do? You see, the church hasn't woken up to the fact the foundation's changed. Because much of the church has changed foundation as well. That's a sad thing. Well, I could talk about this for millions of years but before we break, we're going to break and then we'll be back here about 8.30, 8.35 probably because I'm going to take about 5 minutes extra here or 4 minutes extra just to talk about a few things. So, don't move. Dr. Gary Parker is doing the second session. Tomorrow we're going to cover a lot more. This is just the introduction tonight. I didn't even get to do my talk tonight. That's just the introduction. Alright, tomorrow we're going to do a lot more. But one of the major parts of our ministry are the resources that we have. First of all, we have a website, answersingenesis.org. There's some flyers out there you can pick that up on. We have, at the moment, about 5,500 people per day access our website. Incredible website. And we praise the Lord for that. And some of you might be a little concerned about the internet. Oh, by the way, just like we bring in National Geographic and all its secular humanism and so on. You know something? For many of us, we let our kids just use the internet with all sorts of companies, secular companies. I would encourage you to think about not doing that. I'll tell you why. I believe we need to support Christian companies that filter out the pornography and the guff and the bad stuff. And I would encourage you to do that. We have some discs of this particular company out there with us at this seminar. And I would encourage you to seriously look at that and support a Christian organization. By the way, they even, and we don't do it for this reason, but the amount you pay per month, part of that comes back to Answers in Genesis as well. And that's a way of even supporting us. But that's not the reason we do it. We want people to use this incredible valuable resource but protect their children from the evil out there. So, there's a table out under the patio and you can ask for that information. We have a magazine. Have I told you about Creation Magazine? We have a magazine called Creation. Glossy, colorful, beautiful color section in the middle and we don't put dinosaur tails on birds or anything like that. This is a magazine that teaches you how to connect the Bible to the real world. I think every family needs to get Creation Magazine. I really do. And you know what? We are so convinced of that. On the subscription form which you've received or they're on the table, if you subscribe tonight we'll give you your first issue and then you know what else? We will give you a free CD of Buddy Davis. Because we so want you to get Creation Magazine and because we can't sell his tapes anyway so we have to give them away. Actually, Buddy has five CDs and five tapes and so there's a whole lot of his material. Our kids just love Buddy Davis. They play him all the time. I'm so sick of hearing Buddy Davis 24 hours a day. Now actually Buddy and I are great friends. We really love each other. We just have little digs at each other all the time. That's fun. You've got to have fun in this life. Let me tell you about, and by the way you know that we've given you back because we had some people specially support this. We still charged a registration fee. You know one of the reasons why? We want you to get the materials or to get Creation Magazine and you can give that registration ticket back. In fact, for most of you it will pay for your subscription for Creation Magazine and you get a free CD anyway. We want you to get this material. Some of the basic materials. My book, The Lie. This deals with a lot of what I did tonight. The importance of the book of Genesis. How foundational it is to the rest of the Bible. All our doctrines in Genesis. Basis for our morality. The influence of evolution on our culture. This is a brand new book. How many of you have got the old Answers book? Have bought that in the past? A number of you. Guess what? Throw it away. Got to get the new one. The old one had 12 questions answered. This has 20 and the old one was written years ago. This is a lot more updated information. You don't know what's wrong in the old one so now you've got to buy the new one. Actually, 20 of the most asked questions. Where did Cain get his wife? The origin of the races? Dinosaurs? Carbon dating? Where did the water from the flood come? How did Noah get the animals on the ark? How did animals get to Australia after the flood? Real important questions. Some of the most asked questions. By the way, this equips you to be able to defend your faith in today's world. Refuting evolution. This book was written by one of our scientists. He looked at the major arguments used for evolution in our schools and colleges and refutes them. What a tremendous witnessing tool. Do you know what's sad today? I'm going to show you tomorrow in one of my talks. Do you know that many of the arguments for evolution still in public school textbooks were discarded 40 years ago? It's incredible. Anyway, it's a great witnessing tool. We put those together in a special pack and again discounted them. You get three for the price of two basically and a free plastic bag. And then other books. It's a brand new book. This was released just last week. I'm going to do this tomorrow. One Blood talking about the fact we're all one race. The influence of evolution on racism and we're going to talk about interracial marriage. The Bible talks about it. See the Bible tells us there are actually two races of people. Saved and unsaved. And they shouldn't marry. We're going to talk about that tomorrow. Evangelism. I'll do this tomorrow too. Did you know there's a special method of evangelism when you want to reach a culture that doesn't have a foundation from God's word? And it's a powerful method. Churches need to adopt it. But we'll do that tomorrow. Book on dinosaurs. Dr. Parker's going to be speaking on that in a moment. The Bible explains dinosaurs. I have a couple of videos on the importance of Genesis. Another one on raising children in an ungodly world. We put all those together with those first three books as well in another pack. What have we got? We've got three packs. Hopefully to fit with people's different financial situations. And we discount this one as well. But actually the most popular pack we have, and I know we're a little limited on the numbers of these because we ran out of one of the things before we came to the seminar. But I put together what I believe is the best collection of materials for a basic family library pack. For home, for church, or wherever. If you said to me, pick out some of the best materials as a good set, they're right here. And $275 discounted down to $149. And it includes the online Bible program. The online Bible program is an incredibly powerful CD-ROM program to study the Bible. This is what I use all the time. It has all sorts of translations and maps and Hebrew, Greek dictionaries, and put your own notes in and Strong's numbers. And normally those sorts of programs, other programs like this, cost you a couple of hundred or even two, three hundred dollars in stores. We sell that for $60, but you get it in that pack. A phenomenal, phenomenal program. The Genesis record is in that pack. Dr. Morris goes verse by verse through the book of Genesis. If you can afford one book, I tell people, get the Genesis record. When I read that 20 years ago, that was so helpful to me. It unlocks the rest of Genesis. And of course some of our children's books, A is for Adam, I showed you some of the pictures tonight. At the back, parents and teacher notes you can use for any age level. We have books on the Ice Age and Buddy wrote a book on dragons in the Garden of Eden. And you get a free CD with that, with him singing again. And telling the story and so on. A video for children and young people. And a book dealing with all those dating methods, the age of the earth. They're all in that family library pack. In fact, if you subscribe to magazines, Creation Magazine, get the family library pack and you get this set of videos with myself and Gary. You're going to hear Dr. Parker in a moment. Brilliant communicator. Very easy to understand. We have a study guide to go with these 12 programs. If you get the video set, the family library pack and subscribe to Creation Magazine, you have got one of the best basic sets of tools you could ever have for teaching your children and for yourselves. There's many other materials out there too. They're all good. Tremendous materials. We'll tell you more about those in the weekend. Also, I'm sure there's a lot of people in this area who would be pleased to know that we have some materials now in Spanish. We're going to do one Creation Magazine a year in Spanish. You can buy this one right now. We have tracks out there in Spanish on dinosaurs. Out under the patio, there's a table of Spanish materials. Why not get them as a missionary outreach? Most of all, we pray that the reason that you're doing this is to proclaim the authority of Scripture. I want you to understand that Answers in Genesis is not all about creation and evolution. Answers in Genesis is really all about proclaiming the authority of the Word of God.
Can We Really Trust the Bible?
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Kenneth Alfred Ham (1951–present). Born on October 20, 1951, in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, to Mervyn and Ailsa Ham, Ken Ham is a Christian apologist, evangelist, and founder of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a ministry promoting young Earth creationism. Raised in a devout family—his father a school principal—he earned a bachelor’s degree in applied science (environmental biology) from Queensland Institute of Technology and a Diploma in Education from the University of Queensland. Influenced by The Genesis Flood (1961) by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, he taught science in Australian public schools from 1975, rejecting evolution for a literal Genesis. In 1979, he co-founded the Creation Science Foundation (now Creation Ministries International), moving to the U.S. in 1987 to join the Institute for Creation Research. Ham established AiG in 1994, opening the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, in 2007 and the Ark Encounter, a life-size Noah’s Ark replica, in 2016. His “Back to Genesis” lectures argue that biblical literalism counters cultural decay, authoring over 30 books, including The Lie: Evolution (1987) and Creation to Babel (2021). A radio host on Answers with Ken Ham and speaker at conferences, he debated Bill Nye in 2014, drawing global attention. Married to Marilyn (“Mally”) since 1972, he has five children and 17 grandchildren, living in Kentucky. Ham said, “The Bible is the Word of God, and its history in Genesis is the foundation for all doctrine.”