Ark and the Darkness - Movie Post Show (20-minute version)

Welcome to the Answer Center at the ARC Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky.

I'm Pat Roy and you made an excellent decision.

You stayed through the credits and now you're about to receive your reward because we're going to spend some time with the men that actually

helped to make the movie.

Let me introduce them very quickly.

To my right here is Dr. Andrew Snelling, Geology with Answers in Genesis.

We've got Dr. Randall Price, Archaeology, Liberty University.

We've got Dr. Terry Mortensen, History and Theology, Answers in Genesis.

We've got Dr. Tim Chafee, who is Theology with Answers in Genesis.

And then also Dr. Dan Biddle, who is President of Genesis Apologetics and also Executive Producer for ARC

in the Darkness.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

I have always said that the creation message and the evidence for the Flood is so powerful that it

can turn wimpy Christians into powerful Christians.

And Dr. Biddle, that's actually your story, right?

It is, Pat.

I think it was about 12 years ago I attended a talk by Dave Bisbee, our Vice President.

The talk was titled something like Dinosaurs Walked with Man.

And I just couldn't believe that someone in Christianity would actually think that.

I'm a behavioral scientist by training and I've testified in federal court cases for about 20 years on research

and statistics and evidence.

And it was about halfway through Dave's talk I thought, there is a lot of evidence that he's going over here.

So I had to take about a 90 -day hiatus.

I plunged in the topic of dinosaurs, geology, and Noah's Flood.

I became not just convinced that dinosaurs walked with man, but overwhelmingly convinced.

And it began a huge life change for me and eventually led to the formation of our ministry.

And I think I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that every one of us sitting here today have had a

complete life change as a result of this.

Yeah, well, I think each of us could testify that it gives us great confidence in Scripture, that it's true from the very

beginning to the very end.

So it's helpful in that way as we grow in our faith and our trust in God's Word.

Well, I came to Christ as a first -year university student.

And one of the first questions I had was, what about evolution?

What about the millions of years?

And I was introduced to some books that helped me to see that this is a massive

lie.

And then went to seminary, and none of my professors believed Genesis about the age of the earth.

And I learned early on that the Flood was really critical to the question of the age of the earth.

And so then the Lord led me to do a Ph .D. in England.

As I studied where this idea came from, and I realized it was the rejection of the Flood and the

rejection of the biblical chronology that was the foundation for then -Darwin's revolution.

This has deepened my convictions about the truth of God's Word and given me a passion

to share with other Christians, because most of them haven't thought about this issue, particularly of the Flood.

When I went to seminary years ago, Pat, in the same breath, the professor said, well, if you want to believe

in the Hebrew, earth has to be young in the six days or real days.

The Genesis genealogies lead back to a young earth that was created recently because you've got Adam as the first man taking

stewardship over the earth with Eve.

But then he said, but if you believe in science, earth has to be millions of years old, so you guys go figure it out.

That sent me through a long journey of what's called cognitive dissonance.

How can this exist and that exist at the same time?

So when I discovered that Genesis is a true history book, for me, it was like being born again, again.

My head was like chiropractically aligned with my heart because I understood that the world had its

narrative and the Bible's got its narrative, and the Bible was actually more true and valid than what the world had been

telling me.

So it was like a huge shift, and now my head was given permission to believe what my heart knew was true.

So it is true that the creation message and the evidence for the Flood is so powerful that it does

change lives.

You guys are testimonies to that, and I'm sure there's lots of testimonies out there as well, and it's just the

power of God to be able to change people's lives.

I would like to read for you 2 Peter 3, verse 3 -7.

Knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying,

Where is the promise of his coming?

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.

For this they willingly forget, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of

water and in the water by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

But the heavens and the earth, which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of

judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

Gentlemen, you're out there talking about this all the time.

Is it true?

Are there scoffers?

Absolutely, and we're told that these scoffers will be willingly ignorant.

In other words, they will deliberately reject the evidence that creation occurred, the Flood

occurred, and they'll argue, therefore, that you Christians talking about Jesus coming again, and they'll laugh at it.

The key phrase there is, they will assume that all things continue as they were from the

beginning of the creation.

And so today's processes are slow and gradual with the occasional earthquake and volcanic eruption.

And so they say that's the way it's always been.

You remember in John chapter 2, when Jesus turned water into wine, he sent the servants

with the wine to the master of the feast.

And the master of the feast looked at that wine, and on the assumption that grapes

always produce wine over a long period of time, he was using his human reasoning alone to say

that that took a long time and this was the best wine.

And so what these scoffers are doing are using their own human reasoning.

They're ignoring God's word, the eyewitness testimony that we have said the evidence is there.

And they use that to deliberately reject because without the millions of years of geological evolution,

there's no time for millions of years of biological evolution.

And so that changed the world.

People say, but can't the majority of scientists being wrong?

Absolutely.

What did Jesus say in his Sermon on the Mount?

Narrow is the way and the gate that leads to life.

Broad is the way that leads to destruction and few there be that find it.

The majority will choose to reject God's word.

Are we going to trust what God's word says?

The one who knows everything, who's never makes mistakes, never tell lies, and saw what happened and told us what

happened.

Are we going to believe the fallible finite scientists who weren't there?

Right.

So tonight you sat in the theater and you've heard all of the evidence presented on the movie.

And I would say they're kind of faced with the challenge right now, right?

Are you going to be a scoffer?

Are you going to be somebody that just trusts God's word?

And when you do all of the evidence fits into it, you were about to say something.

You would agree with that, right?

Is that one thing?

What happens is that these scoffers have totally dismissed the word of God as a source of authority.

And so they're leaning on themselves.

Also, they have to because their moral inclination is such that if they

came to the word of God, it would condemn them.

So if the flood didn't happen, like the two hours of evidence that we just watched or was an allegory or myth, now we have the

credibility of Moses at stake, David at stake in his writings, Peter in his writings, Paul, and

now Jesus.

So five major biblical authors now all their credibility is at stake.

If the flood was a little local flood or was an allegory or a myth, they all referred back to the flood as a

worldwide cataclysm.

So we're deciding whether we're going to believe the scientific majority or God, but also

it's increasingly difficult for the Christian because you have to decide whether you're going to believe God's word

or the theological majority.

And I'm not talking about the theological liberals.

I'm talking about professing evangelicals who say they believe the Bible is God's word, who say

they believe Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead for their salvation.

And yet when they get to Genesis 1 to 11, it's like all of their understanding of how to interpret

the Bible goes out the window.

Most Christians will say, well, man was made in the image of God.

We all descended from Adam and Eve, and there are only two genders, male and female, and God made marriage, a

man and a woman.

There's only one race.

But the Bible also clearly teaches that God created in six literal days.

He destroyed the world with a global catastrophic flood, and the whole universe is only a little more than 6 ,000 years old.

It is inconsistent to believe the first five things I talked about, the moral issues,

but to reject the history because those moral issues are grounded in

the history of Genesis.

So when Christians and Christian theologians start messing with those early chapters of

Genesis, they say, well, it doesn't actually literally mean this.

It opens the door to rejecting the Bible's teaching about marriage, morality,

sexuality, gender, the sanctity of life.

And so what is disturbing to me is to see so many Christian leaders who will be saying we

need to fight the moral issues, but they'll say, oh, well, the age of the earth creation, that doesn't matter.

It's foundational.

And the foundations of the Scriptures have been under massive assault for 200 years,

starting with the rejection of the flood and the biblical chronology, and it's just been intensifying

over the last few decades.

Right, exactly.

Matter of fact, as you say that, when we talk about things like the flood and the judgment, that's

actually setting the foundation for the gospel message, right?

Just as Noah and his family were saved from the physical consequences of the flood, drowning, this world is going to be judged

again, and this time by fire.

The Bible talks about, Peter talks about that.

And God has provided the means of eternal salvation through his son, Jesus Christ, who came to

earth as one of us, lived a sinless life, and then he went to the cross and died in our place, paying the penalty for our

sins.

And then three days later, God raised him from the dead, showing him the power over sin and death, power over that curse, and offers

eternal life to all who believe in him.

And so, in a sense, Jesus is our ark of salvation that we receive through faith alone in Christ alone.

God so loved you and I that the creator of the universe came to

die for each one of us.

That's how valuable we are in God's sight.

And as a creator, he had power over life so he could rise from the dead.

And God is justified because we fell short.

But in his grace and his love and his mercy, he has provided a way.

There was plenty of room on the ark for thousands more people, but they rejected the message.

So there was only one door that they could enter the ark.

They were warned and they didn't.

And there's only one door.

Jesus said, I am the door.

There's only one way to enter into the narrow way that leads to life that Jesus guarantees because he

rose from the dead.

That, to me, is just so overwhelming and humbling.

That God values me because he made me.

He values what he made.

It's nothing that I did.

It's all he's doing.

That's what the gospel is all about.

God's work in redeeming a fallen mankind, buying them back, providing a way of escape, justly

provided the way of escape for Noah and the animals on the ark.

The whole Bible is giving us this message of creation, fall, redemption, and

restoration.

And the problem with Christians and theologians who accept the millions of years, whether they realize it or not,

what they're really believing is that we had millions of years of death and disease and

suffering and extinction of animals.

And God made the world that way.

And if that's really true, if those millions of years are really true, if the flood never really happened, then

when Jesus comes again, he's not coming to fix a world that was ruined by his

righteous judgment of sinful people.

He's coming to fix a world that he did a lousy job of creating.

And so the gospel is related to that history in Genesis 1 to

11.

You know what?

We need to land this plane.

But before we do, I want to address two types of people that are sitting in the audience right now.

And you guys all in your personal ministries, I know you've met the same person.

They're the ones that have got all of the books and all the videos on their shelves.

They know all of the creation evidences.

But for some reason, they've never just had the opportunity to use that information to allow the Lord

to change somebody's life.

They've come to the theater tonight.

They're fully behind us.

They probably could even teach a lot of the same things we did.

But how do they allow the Lord to use this

information to see the Lord change lives?

Well, I think the key thing, Pat, is that we, with all our arguments, will never convince anyone.

It's only a work of God's Holy Spirit.

We don't have to think, well, I'm going to convince this person.

No, just tell them what we know.

Let the Holy Spirit take over.

Jesus, when he was approached by skeptics, he often asked a question of them.

So if a skeptic comes and says, ah, the Bible's wrong.

There never was a flood.

You say to them, wait a minute.

If the flood really occurred, what evidence would you expect to find?

And while they're umming and ahhing because they've never thought about that, you get out the Genesis chapters 6 through

7, 8, and you read it to them.

And you say, see, all the high hills under the whole of heaven.

Wouldn't you expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid to the bottom all over the earth?

That's exactly what we find.

They've got an answer to you, and they show that they don't know the answers.

Well, then you're there ready to provide the answers.

Well, you know, I love this because I think a lot of times people feel like they have to reach a certain level of having all of the information,

right?

I love what you're saying, Dr. Snelling, is sometimes it's just as simple as asking questions.

You can find out where they're at.

Are we really serious about this message, that there are people who will perish if they do not know?

And so as we look at this final judgment, what sort of people are we to be?

We ought to be those who come with a great passion, a great conviction, and speak to those who have not heard.

So we need to be bold.

I would start by pointing them to the issue of the problem of millions of years of death and

disease and suffering.

Because most people, when they say, well, you know, God created over millions of years, destroys the Bible's teaching about the

original very good creation, destroys the Bible's teaching about the impact of the fall on the whole

creation, and undermines why Jesus is coming again to restore the creation.

So most Christians, most theologians haven't thought that issue through.

And it's critical.

And so when Christians begin to grasp that, then they say, wow, this is really connected to the whole

Bible and why I'm trusting Jesus.

The goal is not just to persuade them that creation is true.

The goal is not just to show how many arguments you've learned and how right you are and how wrong they are.

The goal is to lead them to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul said in Romans 1, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation, to those who believe, to the Jew

first and then to the Greek or Gentile.

And I think we need to keep the gospel at the forefront of what we do.

But those arguments that skeptics use, those can be stumbling blocks that prevent people from seeing the cross.

So we want to deal with those, but never lose sight of the goal.

Gentlemen, that was all very powerful.

And it's super important that we do that.

We don't want to just collect information, but we want to use it to see lives be changed.

So I really encourage you to pray about that.

You know, I think there's also a second type of person that's in the audience right now.

And maybe you're someone that came tonight, and as you were watching the movie, all of a sudden you were

overwhelmed with the fact that there is evidence for what the Bible says.

And you realize that it's true.

And, Dr. Biddle, you had that experience in your life.

Can you kind of share with the audience what that journey is like?

What do they need to do to go from being a wimpy Christian to being a powerful Christian?

I don't know if I would have taken that journey if I didn't first approach Scripture with the humility of a child.

Because I had missed it for the first 30 years of my Christian walk.

I didn't see the truth of Genesis and Croatia.

I used to sit in circles around church and just hear people talking about youngers or men walking with dinosaurs and

really arrogantly think of these people like, well, they're just part of the Christians that are the cute homeschoolers or they're the

fundamentalists or whatever.

I can't believe they believe in this stuff.

But the tables got turned on me.

Because when I really approached this topic with humility and inquisitiveness and humbled myself under

God's Word like a child, then the Lord took me on a faith discovery journey where I discovered it's all

true and came to places like this and went to the Ark Encounter and walked through the halls of the Creation Museum and realized

the evidence is really on our side.

How did that actually change your life?

For me, it was about a three -month conversion process.

I had been a Christian since I was 11 years old but didn't really know what I believed about Genesis until I took the discovery

looking at the dinosaurs and geology.

And then after I came to that realization, it was like being born again, again.

It was a huge shift that I went through.

It changed the way I raised my family, how confident I was with respect to evangelizing and reaching out to people.

Because now I knew for certain God's Word is true both theologically and historically and

scientifically.

And Dr. Biddle, you're the executive producer of The Ark in the Darkness.

It's amazing that God took you from not believing in the literal accounts of historical

flood to now you're the executive producer of this movie.

It's really amazing the journey that God takes us on.

It's my sincere hope that everyone who sees this goes through that similar faith journey and understanding because it's

truly a metamorphosis that you can go through.

Listen, if you're sitting here tonight and you're saying, I've got to learn more about all of this.

These men have produced all kinds of materials and books and videos and just all kinds of resources.

Dr. Chafee, can you tell us about maybe some places that they can go to learn more?

Yeah, sure.

So Dr. Snelling and Dr. Mortensen and I, we all work for an organization called Answers in Genesis, which is a large

apologetic organization that's been around for about 30 years.

And we've got thousands and thousands of articles on our website, answersingenesis .org, where they can find out details about all of these things and so much

more.

If you've never been to the Ark Encounter, you've got to come to Williamstown, Kentucky and check it out.

And while you're here, you also have to go to the Creation Museum.

So for more details about either one of those places or both those places, go to arkencounter .com or creationmuseum .org.

And the Answers in Genesis website is answersingenesis .org.

Okay, and Dr. Price, tell us about your organization and how did they get in touch with you?

Well, the organization's called World of the Bible Ministries, worldofthebible .com.

There's information basically on the Bible and apologetics, but also a unique focus on

archaeology.

Okay, and also, Ark in the Darkness, you've got a website.

Where do they go and what will they find there?

The movie website is just knowasflood .com, without the apostrophe S, just knowasflood .com.

And they can find a whole bunch of FAQs there, short videos.

They can download a free book there as well that kind of summarizes the basics of the Flood.

Just knowasflood .com.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for your ministries and just how you have shared with us so much important information.

And for you, I really encourage you to get out there and share the information that you've heard tonight.

Thank you so much for being here.

God bless.