Dinosaurs, the Ice Age, and more - are these answered in Genesis?

Biblically Speaking

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Hello, hello everybody. Thank you so much for listening to Biblically Speaking. I'm your host,

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Cassie Belino, and I'm very excited today to have a new guest, Ken Ham. If you haven't heard of Ken Ham, you should, because he's the founder

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CEO of Answers in Genesis, and he has created the Creation Museum out of Cincinnati, Ohio.

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That's actually where I'm from, so this is extremely exciting for me. And also the internationally known

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ARC Encounter. But beyond that, you're also hosting a daily radio program called Answers.

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You are a published blogger, an author of over 30 books, and you're also a father.

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So thank you so much for your time today, Ken. I'm really excited to chat with you today about early creation and young earth theory and early

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Christianity. Well, thanks, Cassie, and it's great to be able to talk to you about those topics. Yes, this is one of those topics where I feel like you almost divide

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Christians, because you have a lot of people that want to believe that dinosaurs are millions and billions years away, but also that the earth was created a couple thousand years ago.

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How did you get into this topic as a whole? What's kind of your background to get here? Well, first of all, let me say, you know, division can be good and division can be bad.

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You know, we need to divide in regard to man's word infiltrating

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God's word, but we need to have unity over God's word. And, you know, even the Apostle Paul talks about that.

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But, you know, we can get onto that a little later on. You know, I was brought up in a Christian home in Australia.

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Hope you can still hear my Aussie accent. I don't want to sound American or anything like that. So, and Americans love the

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Aussie accent anyway. So I've had someone tell me, it doesn't matter what you say, we just like to hear you saying it.

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So see, I can get away with anything. But I was brought up in a Christian home with a father and mother who taught us

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God's word, had a heart for evangelism, for reaching people with the gospel. And at the

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Creation Museum and the Ark, when people come here, they find that the gospel is presented in many ways in different places, because that's our heart.

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Our heart is evangelistic. We're all about biblical authority. My parents, though, when they taught us

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God's word, they also taught us to defend the Christian faith. In other words, they didn't use the word, but I would use the word apologetics.

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You know, apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, in 1 Peter 3 .15, always be prepared to give an apologetic, an apologia, a logical reason, defense of the faith.

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And so, you know, when I was a teenager, of course, liberal theology, questioning the miracles in the

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Bible, the virgin birth, and so on, was sort of rampant in a lot of Bible colleges, seminaries, and churches.

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And so my father made sure he taught us the answers, so we wouldn't, you know, doubt

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God's word, and that doubt lead to unbelief. And so I was brought up by parents who would never knowingly compromise

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God's word, who also taught me that the book of Genesis is foundational to the rest of the Bible in all doctrine, which it is.

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Genesis 1 to 11 is the foundation for everything. There's nothing it's not the foundation for. And so, you know, through high school, of course, evolution was taught in the textbooks.

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And in those days, we didn't have the answers in regard to science, had biblical answers. But, you know, we didn't understand the dating methods and things like that.

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And then I went through university, same sort of issue. And then I managed to get some books from different parts of the world that gave me answers biblically and scientifically.

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And then I become a high school teacher. And in 1975, that probably was before you were born, in 1975,

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I was conducting my first teaching class in a science class in a public school in country town, two and a half hours west of the city of Brisbane in eastern

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Australia. And the students saw that my name was on the list to head up the

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Christian group in the school. And they said, Sir, how can you be a Christian? We know that you can't be true.

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And I said, Why is that? I said, the Bible can't be true, because of what we've taught in our textbooks about evolution and millions of years.

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And then someone said to me, one of the students said, and Noah couldn't fit the animals on the ark anyway. And right there,

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I realized those students needed answers to questions. And they saw the teaching of evolution millions years as a stumbling block to even listening to the gospel to God's Word.

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And that was the embryonic beginnings of that. And, you know, I as a science teacher took my students to museums, but they're all from an evolutionist atheistic perspective.

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And even back then in the 70s, I said, Lord, why can't we have a Christian museum that teaches the truth?

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And so in 1980, actually, I and another friend of mine ran the first ever creation apologetics conference in Australia in 1977.

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And I displayed the books I had and people wanted to know how to get those books, because they've got answers.

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And so my wife and I started a bookstore in our home. That's how the ministry started in 1977.

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And then I began sort of a teaching ministry associated with that being invited to speak in churches.

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And then in 1980, I and one of the board members that helped to start the ministry stood on a piece of property and asked the

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Lord if he would allow us to build a creation museum. And the Lord answered that prayer in the state of Kentucky, the greatest

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Cincinnati area, northern Kentucky in 2007. And then we opened the

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Ark Encounter in 2016. And they are the two leading Christian themed attractions in the world.

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The Ark Encounter is the biggest attraction, themed attraction in the state of Kentucky.

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And we have thousands of people coming every day, millions have come. And then we have the

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Answers in Genesis ministry that runs the attractions. We publish all sorts of books and curricula and Sunday school, home school curricula,

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Christian school curricula, all sorts of books for all ages. We have massive channels on YouTube channels, with, you know, millions,

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I think we've up to 30 plus million live watches at the moment.

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You know, we have all sorts of all sorts of outreaches that we do speaking, domestic outreach, international translation ministry.

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I mean, right now, we're translating into, I think it's about 20 different languages. And so it goes on.

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So there are beginnings in Australia as a high school teacher, brought up in a home with a father who was a teacher.

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And the ministry today impacts 10s of millions of people every year. Oh my gosh,

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Ken, what an amazing story. You make it sound so easy. What were some of the obstacles or issues that you had to face in establishing such a renowned museum?

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You know, that's an interesting question. The way you put that, make it sound so easy. It's like reading the

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Bible, you know, you read about the Israelites. Oh, yeah. And they went in and conquered Jericho. Yeah. And then they went and conquered

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Ai. And then they fought the giants. And you just, you can read that. And, you know, in the evening, just, you know, in a few minutes reading the

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Bible, and you think, I wonder what it was like that. All that must have happened during those battles in the time and all the stresses and struggles.

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And, you know, to me, really, this ministry, the history of this ministry is like the

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Israelites conquering the promised land. And remember, it says in the Bible, little by little. And so we've had our mountains to climb.

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We've had our valleys that we've gone down into. We've had opposition from atheists.

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We've had court cases. We've had to do all sorts of battles over the years. So yeah,

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I think, you know, one of the biggest battles, obviously, is being able to have the finance you need to do all these.

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Because, you know, between the Ark and the Creation Museum, we've probably raised over the years over a quarter of a billion dollars to build those.

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They are massive facilities. And, you know, we've all done it by stepping out of faith. We never have the money, even every day, to do what we do.

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And God raises up people and supplies that. And so we've had all sorts of challenges over the years.

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Atheists have tried to stop us, tried to close us down, tried to stop us building the Creation Museum.

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We had court cases over that. We've had court cases over the Ark encounter. I mean, it's sort of never -ending.

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And in some ways, I'm sort of, you know, you look at that and people say, wow, you get so much opposition.

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And we even get opposition from within the church too, for those that don't agree with our message. And we have skeptics and others and people who have said, what are you feeding all that money on that for when you should be feeding the poor?

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And then you look at all the money they're wasting on the political battles right now, and that's billions of dollars.

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Are they saying the same things to them? Of course not. They only say that to us because we're a Christian organization.

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So, you know, I'm one for saying we have to step out in faith. We have to trust the

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Lord. It's got to be a responsible faith. It's responsibility and sovereignty hand in hand. And we've done that over the years, and the

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Lord has blessed. And I must admit, every day I sort of look at the facilities, and we have 1 ,500 staff, 750 full -time and 750 part -time and seasonal.

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And the facilities that we have, we have our own Christian school too, called Answers Academy, and our own

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TV studios and audio. And you look at this ministry, and I just shake my head sometimes and say, wow, how did that happen?

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Well, it's a God thing. That's what we say. It's a God thing. Absolutely. So I understand that there probably is a lot of pushback, especially when it comes to museums.

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How do you deflect some of that doubt, some of the fingers being pointed at you that what you're preaching may not be scientifically accurate?

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Well, that's where, you know, one of the things we do, and actually we do something interesting here at the Creation Museum that secular museums don't do.

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We actually, now while you hear this, this is radical for education. We teach people how to think, not just what to think, but how to think.

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For instance, as you come into the first part of the Creation Museum, I mean, we have a planetarium with a laser projection show, which is absolutely stunning, and a 4D theater.

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But then we have this section where we walk you through and teach you how to think. And so we actually teach people how evolutionists think, how secularists think, and how

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Christians are to think. And we help them understand that there's two foundations or two religions.

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In an ultimate sense, there's only two religions. It's God's word, man's word. You know, a battle between God's word and man's word started in Genesis 3, when

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God said to Adam, obey me, don't eat the fruit of this one tree. In other words, obey

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God's word. The devil came and said, did God really say, you can be as God, you decide truth for yourself.

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In other words, obey man's word, don't obey God's word. And so we teach people, you know, our world, every one of us has a worldview.

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It's a way of thinking. You know, when you look at the world today, and you say, why is there death and suffering here?

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Why are there fossils all over the world? And, you know, where did humans come from? And why are animals here or plants here?

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Well, when you start from God's word in Genesis, it gives us a history that there was a perfect world, and then death came as a result of sin.

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There was an event called the flood of Noah's day. And that's why you have fossils and then the Tower of Babel. That's why you have different people groups, not races.

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We all go back to one man and one woman, one race. But if you start from those who reject God's word, they start with what you call naturalism.

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In other words, everything came about by natural processes. Somehow the universe came into being by supposedly a big bang.

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They didn't see it happen, but that's what they believe. And that somehow then the stars came, and then the sun, and then the earth is a hot molten blob, and it cools down for millions of years to get water, and then there's life.

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And so there's been this evolutionary progression, and death has always been here. The Bible says death is an enemy, and it's an intrusion because of sin.

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And so when they then build their worldview on that, and they look at the world, and they say, yeah, death has always been here, been here for millions of years.

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Yeah, fossils that were laid down over millions of years. Yeah, life evolved by chance, random processes.

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See, your starting point determines a worldview by which you interpret the evidence. And so what we do here is something that secular museums don't do.

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We tell them what evolutionists say. We, for instance, have a model of Lucy, one of the supposed relatives of man, and we show the evidence, and we show you how, when it's correctly interpreted,

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Lucy was an ape. She was not human. But we go on and teach people, here's why evolutionists say what they do.

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Here's what we say. I mean, in secular museums, if they do mention Christianity, the Bible, they do it in a mocking way.

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Whereas we're saying, look, this is why people think this way. This is how Christians could think, should think.

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And then we say, our foundation is the Bible. We admit that. Now, let me go through and tell you where the Bible came from.

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Let's walk through the history in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and show you how it makes sense of the world and how the evidence, correctly interpreted, confirms it.

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You can't ultimately absolutely prove, but confirms. I was about to say, it sounds like you're using scientific evidence to prove the

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Bible versus just relying on the scientific evidence to prove the more evolutionary secular beliefs. Well, we would not say prove because we are fallible human beings who don't know everything.

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The Bible tells us God knows everything and Christ hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He's infinite knowledge and wisdom.

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So in that sense, we as humans can't ultimately prove God. God is the one that proves that to us.

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Without faith, it's impossible to please him who comes to him. You must believe in him. He is a revealer of those who do that.

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And God ultimately reveals that to each one of us. But if the Bible is God's word, it'll make sense of the evidence.

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And we would say correctly interpreting the evidence confirms the history in the

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Bible. And ultimately, you can't prove that. Now, see, this is where the secularists say, oh, we can prove the earth is billions of years old.

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No, you can't. We can prove evolution. No, you can't. You can't scientifically prove those things in regard to the past.

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You can interpret the evidence in a particular way and claim that it supports your view.

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And I would say that your interpretation is incorrect, but you can't go out there and say we can prove this.

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In the present, we can say, you know, I can prove that I am talking to Cassian right now because we're here in the present and we can observe it and others can observe it.

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And see, observational science involves using your five senses in the present to, you know, when you're in a laboratory, laboratory, you mix chemicals together and you can develop technology because of our observational science.

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But when it comes to the past beliefs about the past, when you weren't there, we didn't see the Grand Canyon being laid down.

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We didn't see life forming. So there's beliefs. And as Christians, we have a

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God who said, hey, here's what happened. And he gives us details. The evolutionists, the secularists have to say, we weren't there, but we believe this happened.

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And so they come up with their beliefs. We've got to understand that when it comes to talking about the past, you're talking about beliefs.

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Okay. I've been hearing a lot about that when it comes to like proving and just the nomenclature of it has to be very specific because you're right.

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We can't prove God. But I think when you are an early Christian, which is why I started this podcast was

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I just have basic questions about Genesis. It's the most important book of the

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Bible because it sets up the rest of it, but understanding it from a very logical 2024 modern mentality.

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I was raised as a Christian as well, that I should take the Bible literally.

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Now I've had a lot of conversations with people and a lot of scholars have different outlooks. So I'm not trying to say who's right, but there's some that say

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Genesis is a biblical narrative. That is a more representative story that was told in a way that made sense for the ancient

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Israelites. So the way the stories are told, like Noah's flood was told in a narrative form that was very common at the time that stories like that were told.

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Now, getting into kind of the meat of, you know, how should we interpret Genesis?

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Because I want some answers in Genesis. You can ask me whatever questions you want and that's fine.

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But let me just say this first of all, right? When somebody says, oh, you're one of those people that takes the

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Bible literally. I say now, wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you mean by literally? You have to define literally because there is poetry in the

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Bible, right? That doesn't mean it doesn't teach literal truth, but it is poetic, right?

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The Psalms are poetic. There's apocalyptic literature in the Bible, like Revelation. Jesus taught using parables, which means he took earthly things to teach heavenly things.

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And so it goes on. And so what I say to people is when they say, do you take the Bible literally?

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I say, you know, the best way to explain it is I take the Bible naturally. And what do you mean by naturally?

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According to the type of literature, the language, if it's historical narrative, I take it as historical narrative.

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If it's poetry, I take it as poetic. If it's apocalyptic literature,

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I take it as apocalyptic literature. And understanding language, we also know that we, every day, we use words in symbolic ways or allegorical ways.

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For instance, we'll say it's raining cats and dogs. We know what that means. It's not literal cats and dogs. The Bible says

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Jesus is the door. Well, he's not literally a door, like a door to your room, but he is the door to heaven.

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We know what the door means. You're using a literal door. And by the way, for something to have a symbolic meaning, it's got to have a literal meaning first, and then you can apply it in an allegorical way.

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And so, you know, it's the same in Genesis. For anything to have a symbolic meaning, it has to have a literal meaning first.

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We've got to remember that. And so, you know, when you were saying that, what you were taught about how to take, you know,

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Genesis written against, you know, like the Near Eastern myths of the day or something or to explain things.

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See, here's where I would say I have a whole different view of the Bible, right?

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Because 2 Timothy 3 says all scripture is inspired by God.

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Now, I would say it's God's revelation to us. And so God moved people by his spirit actually says that over 3000 times in the

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Bible says it's the word of God. So God moved people by his spirit to write his words. See, I think many of us can easily be influenced by a secular view of history and evolutionary view of history, that man started primitive, he learned to grant, he invented language, he then learned to write and so on.

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Genesis 5 .1 says this is the book of the generations of Adam. Now, could it be that Adam actually wrote a book?

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I mean, there's something radical for us. Could Adam have written a book? Why not? If God made Adam and God spoke to Adam, he already had a language to start with.

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Who says he couldn't write? Who says that then Seth didn't write and down to, you know,

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Shem, and they took those writings with them on the ark and eventually handed down to Moses. See, I have a whole view, different view of scripture and that scripture is not written because of man.

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Scripture comes from God to man. And it's God's revelation for all people for all time.

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It says it's going to stand forever, says it's going to stand forever because it is God's word. And so when it comes then to how should we take

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Genesis, I would say, first of all, it is very much certainly historical narrative.

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You have in Genesis, you have the barbed consecutives and God said and God saw and so on, which is all characteristic of historical narrative.

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But the other aspect of it is this, if you go to the New Testament, when you look at Matthew 19, when

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Jesus, who's the God man, was asked about marriage, he said, haven't you read, read what?

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Haven't you read, he who made them at the beginning made them male and female. That's a quote from Genesis 1 .26

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and Genesis 1 .27. Well, it's actually a quote from Genesis 1 .27 attesting to the historicity of Genesis 1 .27,

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that God made them male and female. There's only two options, by the way, and he reiterates that in Mark 10 .6,

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that he made them male and female. And then he says, and for this cause shall a man of his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and there'll be one flesh.

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That's the quoting Genesis 2 .24. And Genesis 2 .24 is the creation of marriage.

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And as I say to people who created marriage, because that's where marriage comes from. God did, not

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Joe Biden or the Supreme Court justices, right? God created marriage, and there's only one marriage he created, a man and a woman.

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So there's Jesus attesting to the historicity of Genesis. You could do the same, 1

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Corinthians 15 .45, the apostle Paul says Adam was the first man. And, you know,

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Romans 5 .12, by one man sinned the world and death by sin. Acts 17 .26,

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God made from one man, all nations put as well on the face of the earth. It's all testing to the historicity of one man to start with.

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His name was Adam. So you can go and you can look at Peter, you can look at, you know, the apostle

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Paul, you can look at Jesus' own words. In the New Testament, there are so many references back to Genesis 1 to 11 as history.

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So they took it as history. So I'm going to take it as history. Okay, so maybe

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I need to reshape my brain as far as how I read Genesis 1. When it comes to, you know, what they believe as far as evolutionary theory, it took years.

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Is there a way that it can be both and and not either or as far as in Genesis 1 and 2 with the creation of the earth and then

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Adam and Eve? Is it possible that yes, God did create all those things, but for you, are you, when

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I say literally, is it that it was seven days or do you think those seven days are more symbolic of a longer period of time and that would kind of play into the more evolutionary theory?

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What do you believe and what evidence do you use to support that belief? Well, you've asked a number of questions there, so let's see if I can remember them all.

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My age, I'm not sure I can remember them all. But so first of all, when it comes to the days of creation, okay,

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I mean, think about how we look at scripture. If we read the account in the Bible, a fish swallowed

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Jonah and he was in the fish for three days and spat the fish out. We read it and say, oh, that's what happened.

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Yeah, right. Yep. Do we say, hmm, I don't think a fish could do that, so I don't think it means that.

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I'm not sure he was in the fish three days, maybe it was 3 ,000 years. I mean, we don't know what, do we know what a day means?

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I mean, in other words, you know, how do we know Jesus rose from the dead?

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Because the Bible says. How do we know Jesus healed people who were blind, who raised people from the dead, who healed the lame?

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How do we know that? Because of what the Bible says. How do we know the Israelites crossed the Red Sea as a miracle?

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Because of what the Bible says. And yet we come to Genesis and we say God created in six days and he created

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Adam from dust on day six and woman from his side. And we say, oh, what does that mean?

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And why do we say that? And I'm going to challenge us. The only reason we say that is not because of what the

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Bible says, but because we have been impacted by ideas outside the

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Bible, evolution, millions of years. They're not from the Bible. You can't point to the Bible anywhere and show me millions of years.

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You can't point to the Bible and show me man coming from an ape -like creature.

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It's not there. So where do we get those ideas from? We got them outside of scripture and we're taking them to scripture.

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Here's a danger. If we're taking ideas outside of scripture and reinterpreting scripture, aren't we putting man over God's word instead of God's over man's word?

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And aren't we unlocking a door to say it doesn't mean what it says. And so could we do the same then with marriage?

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Oh, we can take LGBT and reinterpret God's word. You see the danger? I absolutely am.

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And see, when you read Genesis as is, we let the language speak to us.

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So if it says tree, we know it means tree. Fruit, we know it means fruit.

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Now day, the word day is a Hebrew word yom and it has a number of different meanings.

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Just like most words have two or more meanings dependent upon context. Like I could say you were sitting in a chair with your back in the back of the chair.

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I have a sore back and we might come back one day to do another interview. I mean there's the word back with different interpretations, right?

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But context determines it. We can say during the day, you mean the daylight portion of a day,

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I worked and then I took three days to drive to California, three 24 -hour days, right?

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And one day, meaning time, sometime I might come back. And the

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Hebrew word day has the same range of meanings. And so the question is taking the literature and the language as it's written, when according to the

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Hebrew dictionaries, like Brown Driver Briggs is a great lexicon and Kohler Baumgartner, there's others out there.

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According to them, when does the word yom mean an ordinary day? Whenever it's connected to the word evening, whenever it's connected to the word morning, whenever it's connected to a number, whenever it's connected to the word night, or whenever you have the phrase evening and morning.

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And you'll look at the six days of creation. And for the first one, it says, and there was evening and morning.

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And it says, and it actually doesn't say that the actual word means one day, not first day.

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In other words, it's defining the word day. This is one day. And then for the others, it's evening, morning, second day, evening, morning, third day.

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If the word day just had a number with it, that's all it had connected to it, it means an ordinary day.

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Because Cassian, if you look in Genesis two, Genesis two, four, it says in the day that the Lord created.

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Well, what does the word day mean? People say it doesn't mean an ordinary day. No, it doesn't.

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Because it's not qualified by evening or morning or number or night. It means time in the time that God created, just like you would say, one day,

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I'm going to go somewhere. And you know, what's interesting, I'll say one more thing here. Do you realize, the word day is used through the whole of the

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Old Testament. It's like, you know, 360 something times, it's used many, many times through the

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Old Testament. And we know what it means everywhere it's used, except Genesis one.

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Why do we, we don't have a problem with Joshua marching around Jericho in a day, we don't say, was that 1000 years?

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Was that a million years? We don't, we don't have those sorts of problems. But we do with Genesis one.

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And the reason is not because of the literature, the language, it's obvious. It's because we're impacted by outside influences.

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Wow, that just blew my mind, Ken, thank you so much for associating. That's why we have these conversations is because this type of information is exactly what needs to be the guardrails of how we approach the

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Bible. And I absolutely struggled with the word yom. And I was for that previous argument of, it could be 1000s of years, we don't know how long that day is.

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But I think that specification of association with evening and morning, a number, that is extremely helpful.

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And Cassie, if I can just say one other thing, because some people will say to you, I'm sure you've heard this, but doesn't the Bible say a day is like 1000 years?

29:12

I'm sure it does. Second Peter three, it says a day is like 1000 years, then it says 1000 years like a day.

29:18

And people often use that to say, see, the word day couldn't be an ordinary day. Well, number one, it's a phrase from the

29:24

New Testament, you can't use a phrase from the New Testament to determine the meaning of a Hebrew word. That depends on the

29:29

Hebrew language. Number two, it's in the context of the second coming, it says to God, a day is like 1000 years.

29:36

In other words, God's outside of time. It has nothing to do with defining the word day. And then it says a day is like 1000 years or 1000 years like a day, which just cancels it right out anyway.

29:47

It's saying to God, there's no time. And we think it's a long time since Jesus said he was coming back, it's been 2000 years.

29:56

But to God, that's not a long time. It's not his will that any should perish. So, you know, there's people bring up all sorts of arguments to try to come against the meaning of the word day in Genesis, but you've got to go back to the language, the literature, the context.

30:10

Absolutely. Now, I think that really clears up things for Genesis one, and even with Genesis two,

30:16

I have similar types of questions on how do we approach the literal story that's being told for Noah and the flood and people that argue that it is more of a local flood or that it is more of a biblical myth that is, you know, representing a different type of story.

30:31

Do you think that, you know, in Genesis, we can approach Cain and Abel, you know, is Cain and Abel representative of two different types of societies, or is it literally two people that, you know, are the forefathers of two generations?

30:43

And the same with Taur and Babel. I feel like those are my core stories within Genesis that I struggle with as far as should we take it as the word says, or is there meanings that we need to be aware of and what it's trying to tell us?

30:58

And, you know, before I answer that too, you talked about, you know, Adam and Eve and evolution and so on.

31:07

You know, for people who try to add evolution to the Bible, remember the Bible says man was made from dust, not from an ape -like creature, from dust.

31:15

And then I've had some theologians say, well, the dust represents the ape -like creature, God breathed into man.

31:21

The Bible says, because of sin we return to dust when we die, we don't return to an ape -like creature.

31:28

And not only that, if dust to Adam is ape -like creature to man, what is rib to Eve?

31:35

Because Eve was made from Adam's rib. And then when you jump over to the New Testament in 1

31:40

Corinthians 11, the apostle Paul says, woman came from man.

31:46

Twice he says that in that chapter. Woman didn't come from an ape woman, she came from man.

31:52

And then you become one because you are one flesh. It all fits. It's the whole doctrine of marriage.

31:58

It's all based on that. And so it's very important. You know, when it comes to, okay, the flood,

32:05

Noah, and Cain, and Abel and so on. Well, remember in the

32:11

New Testament, God calls about Cain and talks about the fact that Cain had a heart problem. So he refers to Cain as a person, that he had a heart problem.

32:19

And in Genesis 4, it even talks about Cain. Sin desires you, it wants to overtake you, your sin nature wants to overtake you.

32:29

Don't let it overtake you. It wants to master you. You need a master over it. And he didn't, and he killed his brother

32:34

Abel. And even the New Testament talks about Abel's blood crying out from the ground. And so, you know, we've got to look at the

32:43

New Testament again that refers to these as real people. Consider Hebrews 11. One of the people listed in Hebrews 11 as a person of great faith was a man called

32:52

Noah. So it's referred to as a real man, because you've got all these other people referred to in Hebrews 11, and you've got

32:58

Noah. You also have in the New Testament, as in the days of Noah, so shall the coming of the son of man be, and talks about, you know, even the flood.

33:07

And it references, in the book of Peter, it references eight people who were saved. And you go back to Genesis, and there were eight people on the ark,

33:15

Noah, his wife, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and their wives. And then think about the language of Genesis.

33:21

It says, the highest hills under the whole of heaven were covered. Now, does that sound like a local flood to you?

33:29

No, it sounds like a global flood. And at the end of the flood, God said,

33:35

I now make a covenant between man and the animals, between God and the animals, sorry, and God and man, that there will never be such an event again.

33:46

And a sign of that covenant will be the rainbow. When you see a rainbow, it's a sign that I now say that that is a sign,

33:56

I will never, I will never bring such a flood again on this earth. By the way, we've had lots of floods since, lots of floods, but no global flood.

34:05

He's referencing a global flood. It was something different. It was something unique. So obviously, it was a global flood.

34:12

And if you want to look at the evidence for a global flood, look over the earth, and you see billions of fossils in layers thousands of feet thick.

34:20

And the fossil record, to even make one fossil is a catastrophic event, because animals normally die, decay, you know, and so on.

34:30

You've got to cover something quickly to preserve it. And we have billions of fossils.

34:36

It's all consistent with the flood of Noah's day. Very interesting stuff.

34:42

I was about to say some of the proof of the flood, because you know, some past conversations

34:47

I've had, and this is why all these views are great, is that the narrative of the flood mirrors very similarly the

34:54

Babylonian flood that was told in the past. But I don't want to get too sidetracked.

35:00

But that's a good one to talk about, if you want me to talk about that. You know, at the

35:05

Ark Encounter, I mean, we built a life -size Noah's Ark, and it's one half times the length of a football field, half the width of a football field.

35:14

It's the biggest freestanding timber frame structure in the world, right here in Kentucky, and three decks of exhibits.

35:20

And on the third deck, we have an exhibit about flood legends. And we talk about the Babylonian legends.

35:26

There are flood legends, not just with the Babylonians. There are hundreds of flood legends all around the world. I grew up in Australia.

35:32

The Australian Aboriginal people, it's published in even museum books, have legends about the flood. And these legends all have similar elements.

35:39

There's a boat, it was a judgment, people were saved, and you know, some of them even say there was a rainbow at the end, etc.

35:49

Now, think logically about this, because when I went to university, I was taught that, oh, the

35:54

Jews have stories like the Babylonians. Obviously, they borrowed their stories from the

35:59

Babylonians. Now, just wait a minute. If you look at the Babylonian stories, for instance, the ark can be a cube seven stories high, that does not sound like a boat that would survive very well.

36:10

And there's even stories about gods cutting each other in half and water spewing out. The Bible says it was an ark that was, it had, it gives us the dimensions in cubits.

36:21

It was like a six to one ratio. It's a real boat. It's a real ship. It would survive in a big flood like that.

36:31

And water came from underneath the earth. Water came from above the windows of heaven open. It all fits with what we know about water, about the earth.

36:40

The Bible sounds like the original. And here's a different way of looking at it.

36:45

Just like at the beginning, when we started talking about those who see the

36:51

Bible is written against the myths of the day. And I said, no, it's the other way around.

36:57

The myths of the day are perversions of what the Bible states, because it's God's word.

37:02

He's revealed it to us over time, using different people. And so there was a real flood.

37:10

And then you get the event of the Tower of Babel. If you read Genesis 10, the Table of Nations, there were 70 different family groups that moved away from each other.

37:18

They would have taken that account with them over time, changed it. But God preserved an account that's in his word.

37:25

So all these others have similarities to the Bible, elements that are similar, but they came from the original.

37:33

The Bible didn't come from them. It's a total opposite way of looking at it, if you take the

37:39

Bible as a revelation of God's history. And it makes sense anyway, because the biblical account sounds realistic and logical.

37:48

No, that's a good point. That is a reframe of the mindset and kind of how you, I want to imagine the

37:53

Creation Museum is teaching people how to think that at the end of the day, if this is the spoken word of God, then this is the original and anything else, this is what happened.

38:03

And I think that I was approaching more of it, that it is biblical narrative, it's more representative.

38:08

The Tower of Babel is just kind of evolutionary, the migration of different ethnic groups. You're right, that was my mindset and how

38:14

I perceived it. But again, I'm stuck in this modern world of how I want proof and I want either literal or philosophical, which box does it fit in?

38:23

And that draws me to this, I want to say final question, because I know we're wrapping up soon, but dinosaurs, where does this fit in into the

38:31

Bible? It doesn't talk about dinosaurs or does it using different terminology? And we have the fossilization of it.

38:38

And if I were a betting woman, it sounds like they were wiped out in the flood. I mean, how do I make all of this fit in based off the scientific discoveries, but the

38:48

Bible being the sole truth, the original truth, the God -inspired truth? Okay, so Cassian, let me challenge you here.

38:57

And by the way, I'm enjoying this discussion. I love you asking me these questions because I love to give the answers and I love to challenge you.

39:04

And I've been, you know, next year, it'll be 50 years of teaching, actually.

39:11

So yeah, I'm really old. Yeah. So anyway, see, you said the word fit a few times there, right?

39:22

How do you fit this with the Bible? How do you fit dinosaurs with the Bible? Now, I may shock you when I say this, but hear me out.

39:29

When people say to me, how do you fit dinosaurs with the Bible? I say, you don't. You don't fit anything with the

39:37

Bible. See, by saying, how do you fit it with the Bible? It's like saying, look at this world and all the death and suffering and disease.

39:45

How do you fit that with the Bible? How do you fit that with the loving God? You don't. God has given us a revelation.

39:53

It's the only way we can understand who we are, where we came from, what our problem is, what the solution is.

39:58

And the only way we can understand the history that's led to where we are today, if we believe that revelation, we start from God's word and build our thinking on God's word.

40:09

There was a time when there was no death. God made Adam and Eve. Everything was very good. I mean, it's exceedingly good.

40:15

Adam, if you eat that fruit, if you rebel against me, you will die. Adam rebelled. It's the origin of sin.

40:22

You will die. Death is a penalty for sin. And the New Testament says death is an enemy. Hasn't always been here.

40:28

It's an enemy. And one day it'll be thrown into the lake of fire. And so, when you look at the fossil record, it's a record of death, but it's also got diseases like cancer and abscesses and lots of diseases in the bones.

40:43

If that all existed millions of years before man, after God made man, he said, everything's very good.

40:49

You now got God calling cancer very good. You see, if you start from the Bible's history, everything was perfect.

40:55

It was very good. There was no death, disease or suffering. Man sinned. That changed everything. That's why Romans 8 .22

41:00

says, this is a fallen world. So, when you look at the death and suffering today, we say, when you start from God's word, we understand we're living in a world that suffered from the effects of sin, the judgment of death, the flood of Noah's day, the

41:16

Tower of Babel. So, we're looking at this world, but we've been told the history to understand it.

41:23

You don't fit death and suffering with the Bible. The Bible gives you the foundation to understand why there's death and suffering in this world.

41:31

And remember, Jesus raised the dead. He healed people. Why would he do that if that was very good, if death was good, if disease was good?

41:42

No, no, that's all because of sin. And so, the same with dinosaurs.

41:48

Okay, so think about this. How do we know these creatures called dinosaurs existed? Well, in the 1800s, there were fossils found in England, and fossils of land animals.

41:59

And scientists, certain scientists looked at them and realized there's some distinguishing features different to some other land animals that we're familiar with.

42:07

And so, Sir Richard Owen, who was a famous British anatomist, from two Greek words, dinosaurus, he invented the word dinosaur.

42:15

And he said, we'll call them dinosaurs because the word dinosaurus, dinosaur, meant terrible lizard.

42:21

And he thought, you know, the first dinosaurs they found were called megalosaurus, iguanodon, and he thought these were terrible lizards.

42:30

Well, later on, we found more and more of these certain skeletons, fossils.

42:36

By the way, there's lots of different animals that have become extinct, not just what we call dinosaurs.

42:41

But dinosaurs now range from size of chickens, through to, you know, your big

42:48

T -Rex or sauropods. But the average size of a dinosaur, there's two different groups of dinosaurs, the average size, the size of a bison is one group, the size of a sheep is the other group.

42:57

So they weren't all large, great big creatures. And probably the larger ones were more the fully grown adult ones of certain kinds.

43:06

But there's 80 different kinds of dinosaurs that they discovered. Now, a kind, just understand, you know, one of the questions is how can

43:15

Noah fit all the animals on the ark? The Bible doesn't use species, the words uses kind. And you know, our classification system, kingdom, farm, class, order, family, genus, species, we would say kind in most instances at the family level of classification.

43:29

So all dogs, there's over 34 species of dogs, some say about 40 species, but they're all interrelated, they can all interbreed to one degree or another.

43:37

And when they can interbreed, they're all one kind. So all dogs are one kind. So you only needed two dogs on the ark.

43:44

And because of all the genetic information in their DNA that God put there, over time, you can get different species of dogs.

43:51

Just like from the humans at the Tower of Babel, God gives different languages as they move away from each other because of the genetic diversity of DNA, you can get groups having certain characteristics on the outside, darker skin, lighter skin, different eye shape, whatever.

44:07

But we all go back to Noah, back to Adam. Now I say that, understand there are 80 different dinosaur kinds, and there could be species within a kind, but 80 different kinds.

44:17

So here's the way you would look at it as a Christian, right? Because the evolutionists, because of their interpretation of the fossil record, that it's supposedly millions of years old and all the rest of it.

44:26

These are millions of years, they died out 65 million years ago, they lived 65 to 200 million years ago, and so they go on.

44:36

But they don't dig them up with labels or photographs. They don't dig them up with a story telling you about them.

44:44

They have to have a belief about the past to interpret them, right? Now, and in today's modern world, we found many dinosaur bones that also, when you dissolve out the mineralization, they still have red blood cells in them, they still have soft tissue.

44:59

We would say that means they couldn't be millions of years old. So you start from the Bible and say, well, why isn't the word dinosaur in the

45:06

Bible? That's the same reason the word email is not in the Bible. It's a modern word, right? So the word dinosaur was invented in 1841.

45:15

Now God made land animals when? He made the land animal kinds after their kind.

45:21

The implication is each kind produces its own kind. They can't evolve into different kinds.

45:27

They can produce different species, but not different kinds. And so he made all the land animal kinds on day six.

45:34

Genesis chapter one verse 29 tells us Adam and Eve were vegetarian to start with, and so were the animals.

45:40

We as humans weren't told we could eat meat until after the flood in Genesis 9 .3. But see, sin changed all that.

45:48

And so by the time of the flood, because of the wickedness of man, God said two of every kind of land -dwelling, air -breathing animal went on the ark.

45:57

So if you can think about it, there's probably over a thousand, we would say over a thousand, about a thousand kinds of land animals.

46:05

Lots of different species within a kind, but a thousand actual kinds. Eighty of those would be what we call dinosaurs.

46:12

So did dinosaurs go on the ark? All the land animal kinds were represented on the ark, including what we today call dinosaurs.

46:22

And then they came off the ark. Those that didn't go on the ark drowned. Some of them turned into fossils.

46:28

So most of your fossils come from the flood. After the flood, as they come off the ark and start to increase in numbers and move out over the earth, now the world is a different place.

46:39

So the flood caused, well you hear this, the flood caused climate change. And then it generated a nice age that calls climate change.

46:50

We've had lots of climate changes since the flood. I mean, if you don't believe the flood of Noah's day, you will not understand climate changes.

46:57

And if you believe in millions of years, you think this has gone on for millions of years and changes happen slowly.

47:03

No, they happen very quickly. And, you know, Genesis 8, 22, after the flood,

47:08

God promised that while the earth remains, seed time and harvest day and night, summer and winter will not cease.

47:14

In other words, man's not going to destroy the earth. The doomsday clock is absurd. It's ridiculous. It's not true. And so because of climate change, and because over time people kill animals, they get diseases, they kill each other, all sorts of factors, many animals, not just dinosaurs, became extinct.

47:31

And so there's a whole different way of explaining dinosaurs starting from the Bible. My gosh, my mind is blown.

47:39

So thank you for talking so fast so we could get all of that information, Ken. I want to spend the next couple of minutes allowing you to really plug so listeners can get connected with you, with the

47:50

ARC experience, with the Creation Museum, any books that you have coming out, any speaking engagements. How do they, how do they learn more beyond this conversation?

47:57

Well, our main website is answersingenesis .org. And by the way, the reason for the name is because all the answers ultimately are in Genesis, because Genesis 1 -11 is the foundation for everything.

48:10

And I mean that. And a book that deals with that, that I've written is called Divided Nation, Cultures in Chaos and a

48:15

Conflicted Church. And another book you might be interested in as well, too,

48:21

Kassian, is my, I did a commentary on Genesis 1 -11. It's a scientific and devotional commentary.

48:26

It's easy to read. It's for the whole family. It's called Creation de Babel. And we have a bookstore at answersingenesis .org.

48:34

And we have thousands of books available. We have curricula for homeschool, Christian school, Sunday school curricula.

48:40

Our VBS program is one of the biggest ones ever used in the world. And it's,

48:46

I believe it's the most powerful. And if people want to find out about the ARC Encounter, I mean, these days you just Google things, you know,

48:53

ARC Encounter, Creation Museum, but arcencounter .com, creationmuseum .org.

49:00

And you'll be amazed when you go and look at those websites, because these attractions are the quality of Disney.

49:06

In fact, I think they're better quality than Disney. They're wonderful non -woke attractions.

49:13

So non -woke themed attractions, Christian themed attractions for the whole family.

49:18

And people come from all over the world to come to them. We got thousands of people here. Today, as we're doing this interview, there are thousands of people at the

49:26

Creation Museum, thousands at the ARC Encounter. And they come from all over America, all over the world. Millions have come.

49:33

And it's really to help families, to give them answers, like the questions you were asking. The exhibits, we have lots of exhibits at the

49:40

Creation Museum, the ARC. We also have zoos at both places. We have the biggest conservatory in Kentucky, and the only conservatory in the world, four big glass houses exhibiting the plants of the

49:51

Bible. We have a planetarium, a 4D theater at the

49:56

Creation Museum. We have the most powerful, biggest pro -life exhibit in the world, and a dinosaur exhibit, an insectarium.

50:06

And down at the ARC, we have a carousel for the kids, for the family. We have a virtual reality ride.

50:11

We have big playgrounds at both places. And we do live animal programs during the day.

50:16

And we have auditoriums at both places, where we do all sorts of conferences and speaking. And during the day, we have science labs, where kids learn about science from biblical worldview perspective.

50:27

So you've got to come and visit. I need to go back home. Yes. That is amazing.

50:33

It sounds like you could spend weeks there. There's so much to do. Well, a lot of people, yeah, we do have a three -day ticket.

50:38

And a lot of people will get that, and they spend three days between both places. It's called a bouncer ticket, because I'm from Australia, and we have kangaroos that bounce around.

50:47

So we call it the bouncer ticket. Some people even spend a week here. We have the biggest Christian music festival in the world here, starting on the 30th of August.

50:56

It goes for 40 days. We have concerts for 40 days. And we have 150 different artists.

51:04

And many of these are top artists. And it's the biggest Christian music festival in the world. Wow. So this is happening next month.

51:11

Yes, it happens starting the 30th of July through to the beginning of September.

51:19

And we have all sorts of genres of music. So you've got gospel music, contemporary, we have bluegrass, we have country.

51:26

Oh, my gosh. It is absolutely amazing. We have an amazing, amazing lineup. Is this at the museum, or where is this located?

51:33

It's at the Ark Encounter, but also select concerts at the Creation Museum, but every day at the

51:40

Ark Encounter. And so it starts at four o 'clock, where we have a concert with leading groups.

51:46

And then we have 30 minutes of Bible teaching, and presentation of the gospel, and then another series of concerts.

51:52

We do that every day. Last year, we had 2047 people commit their lives to the

51:57

Lord through these. They're very evangelistic. And we have, I don't know whether you've heard of Karen Peck has won more

52:05

Dub Awards than anybody else. And, of course, she comes more than once, actually, and Jason Crabb, and we have

52:13

Crowder and, you know, a lot of these groups. It is amazing. And it's included with their admission ticket.

52:20

And so what a lot of people do is they get an annual pass. And that allows them to come to all of them as much as they want, you know, because...

52:26

How much is an annual pass? You know, I'm not sure. I forget. You'd have to go and look it up. But then they can come and they stay in the area at a

52:34

B &B or something, a hotel, and then they come to whatever they want, because then you have unlimited visits for a year. And we have the most spectacular

52:40

Christmas programs you'll ever see. Massive lights, Christmas lights, stunning at both the

52:46

Arc and the Museum, laser show on the side of the Arc. We have dramas, we have concerts, a live nativity, and so it goes on.

52:55

Oh my gosh. Wow. That is quite the experience. I'll link everything in the show notes so people can get connected, buy tickets.

53:02

I'll be promoting everything that's going on on social media because that's an exciting music festival that's coming up next week.

53:09

So again, thank you so much for your time today, Ken. I can't even thank you enough for all the truth and all the answers and sharing your life's work with us.

53:17

So I really hope you have a great rest of your day. I love doing that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay.