Episode 410: Will Your Children Stand? | Ken Ham Interview

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I mean, over and over again through Scripture, it's very obvious that parents are given their responsibility for the education of their children.

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Education starts in the home, regardless of anything else, it starts in the home. Welcome to Truth.

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Love. Parents, where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. I'm so happy you're joining me today. I had a delightful conversation with someone

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I deeply admire, and I want to share it with you. You can listen to this interview here, or you could watch it at truthloveparent .com

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or YouTube. Also check out our giveaway page because our guest was gracious enough to send two copies of his newest book for two lucky winners.

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Enjoy. Welcome to Truth. Love.

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I'm very excited to talk with someone that I deeply admire and whose ministry has had a huge impact on my life and the life of my family.

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Our special guest today is Ken Ham. Now if it's even possible that you've never heard that name, please allow me to tell you how

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I was first introduced to him. I was initially made aware of his ministry answers in Genesis through the videos they did and the books and the articles.

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Then came the Creation Museum, which my family has enjoyed and is looking forward to revisiting in the future. Then came his epic creationism versus evolutionism debate with Bill Nye, which my family watched along with his follow -up debate with Bill Nye at the transformative

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Ark Encounter attraction. In fact, we happened to watch both of those debates on our way to the

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Ark Encounter. And let me tell you, we absolutely loved the Ark and we cannot wait to get back, especially now that they've added so many new things because we went a couple of years ago.

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But Ken has also produced tons of videos and he's authored and co -authored 36 books, many of which

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I've read. In fact, I referenced Already Gone and a book that he co -authored with Britt Beemer on our ninth episode way back in 2016.

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But today we want to talk about his newest book, a parenting book, and I'm really excited to discuss it. But first,

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I want to give Ken a chance to share with you the heartbeat of every single one of his ministry endeavors, including his newest book.

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Ken, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks Aaron. It's great to be with you. I am so excited that you're here.

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Now your heartbeat, your mission in everything from AIG to Creation Museum and Ark Encounter comes down to this idea that the things in Genesis are extremely important.

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It's a thread that goes through everything that you do. Tell us a little bit about that passion. Well, you know, it's important for people to understand that Genesis 1 to 11, you know, that's really the geological, biological, astronomical, anthropological history that God's recorded for us in the

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Bible, is actually foundational to the rest of the Bible. It's foundational to all of our doctrine.

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It's foundational to our Christian worldview. And yet I find that most churches, most

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Christian leaders have either ignored Genesis 1 to 11 or say it doesn't matter, or say it's too controversial or divisive, or that you can believe in evolution and millions of years.

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You know, I started to realize this as I started to speak in churches, you know, back in the 70s, actually in Australia, and found out that most people thought

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Genesis didn't matter. And yet when you ask them, why do we believe what we do as a Christian? Why do we believe in marriage?

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Why do we believe there's such a thing as sin? Or why do we even believe the gospel?

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And I started to realize people really didn't have that foundational knowledge from Genesis. And actually, if you think about the issues that beset us today, what do we see in our culture?

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You know, the gender issues, the gay marriage issue, LGBTQ, pedophilia, racism, whatever. Unless you have

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Genesis 1 to 11, that history as the foundation for your worldview, you can't deal with those issues.

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Because that's where you have to start. And so that thread, yeah, runs through everything. The Creation Museum, the

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Ark Encounter, the various books that we have. We have a Sunday school curriculum that's a four year curriculum that starts in Genesis and goes all the way through to Revelation.

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And that's why here at the Creation Museum, we have the seven seas walk through the Bible, walking you through the history in Genesis 1 to 11 to show how foundational it is to the rest.

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So that's a thread that runs through everything, as you say. Yeah, and it's so desperately important because, as you've said, it runs through everything else that we do.

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You hit it the nail on the head. Without that firm foundation in Genesis and the truths that God unpacked for us there, we're lost to our own opinion and leading on our own understanding when it comes to so many of these things.

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Now, Ken is married and they have five children and 18 grandchildren. Is that correct? Eighteen? One on the way?

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No, our 18th one was just born recently. So, yep, 18. Fantastic. We have a single daughter we want to get married off so we can have some more, too.

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Well, of course, because 18 is just not enough, obviously. Please tell us about your family so we can get to know you a little bit better.

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Well, you know, we were born in Australia, I was born in Australia, my wife was born in Australia and we met at church.

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That's a good place to meet, isn't it? Yes, it is. Yeah. Church. And, you know, we were married, actually, 48 years ago this year, and we determined that when we had children, that we wanted to raise them up the way

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God's word told us. We were very, very concerned that we didn't want the world to capture our children. And so my wife and I, when our first son was born, we said,

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OK, what does God's word say? And of course, I was brought up in a Christian home with parents who taught me to stand on the authority of the word of God.

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And that's a great part of this whole ministry, really. I see

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Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, the Ark Encounter is really a legacy of parents who brought us up to stand on the word of God, who taught us to defend the

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Christian faith, who would never knowingly compromise the word of God, who had a heart for evangelism and would go out and get missionaries to come and evangelize children, evangelize people in our area.

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And I saw they had that heart and heart to support missionaries. And, you know, my mother drummed into us right from a young age.

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It's only what what is done for Jesus that counts and that lasts. And to remember that that's all that lasts in this world.

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And my parents were never interested in material things. They wanted to use whatever resources the Lord gave them to bring up their own children, to love the

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Lord and stand on his word and to impact others. It had a great impact on my life. And I have a very godly wife who, together, we also see that she was called to this ministry as much as me.

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And she sees it as her role to support me a million percent in the ministry of Answers in Genesis, the

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Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. And I think because of that commitment to the ministry and our children seeing that she's never, ever questioned me being in the ministry, going away at times to speak all over the world.

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She's always seen by the kids as supporting me a million percent. And so that's one of the reasons,

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I believe, that there's never been any question in our kids' lives in regard to, you know, who we are as Christians, as Christian parents and their stand on the

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Lord, too. And so it's thrilling to see that we have five children who love the Lord and four of them have married godly spouses.

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And now they're bringing their children up to love the Lord and to stand on his word.

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And this ministry has had a great impact on those grandchildren, too, because they're growing up with an Ark Encounter, a Creation Museum, and they're growing up with apologetics teaching.

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So they already know answers about dinosaurs and the ape man and all the other sorts of things.

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And so they've grown up to know that those answers are there and not to be able to question the word of God.

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And so it's wonderful to see them have a heart for the Lord. And as they get older, to see them passionately proclaiming

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God's word as well. So, you know, that gives you just a little bit of history there in regard to things.

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I became a teacher in 1975. And it's interesting. That's really when the

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Lord started to burden me in regard to a ministry for apologetics, because one of the first questions the students asked me was, sir, we know you're a

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Christian, but how can you be a Christian when we know the Bible is not true? And why is the Bible not true? I said, because of what we're taught about evolution.

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And then they asked me how Noah could fit all the animals on the Ark. And that started me, that real apologetics meant,

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I mean, I'd already researched some of these questions going through high school and university. And my father had helped me to have answers.

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And then when I saw how much this was a stumbling block to others listening to the Bible, I realized how important it was to get those answers to them.

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And that led to a ministry that started in Australia in 1977. 1979, I was school teaching to go full time.

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And 1987, my wife and I and four kids at the time came over to America as missionaries to this culture to help call the church back to the authority of God's word beginning in Genesis.

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And now we have five children, 18 grandchildren and also built Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, the two leading

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Christian themed attractions in the world. And the burden for the Creation Museum also goes back to those teaching days when my students saw evolution presented as fact at the museums

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I took them to and the Lord gave me a burden. Why not have a Creation Museum? And I prayed for a

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Creation Museum in 1980 in Australia. And God answered that prayer in 2007 in America, in the state of Kentucky.

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How's that? Wow, that's amazing. And whoever you are, that that kid in that school classroom in Australia in 1975, thank you for pushing him with those questions.

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We may not have had the Ark today. Who knows? Now, a lot of what he just said is is right here.

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He gives a fantastic step through about how formative his parents were in his own

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Christian faith and how God used his mom and dad. And he spoke of his wife. I am going to ask for forgiveness here.

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Is it Mally? Yes, her real name is actually Marilyn and it's spelled

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Mary Lynn, named after some of her family, her mother and one of her other relatives.

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And as a little child, her mother gave her the nickname Mally. And so it stuck. And so she's known as Mally.

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Most people don't even know her real name is Marilyn. Oh, there you go. TLP, it's been revealed here now.

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We all know. I was just I was certain that I was probably going to mispronounce it. Anyway, so his wife, Mally, he has a chapter or so, at least in here, talking about how important her relationship with him was and the influence that that had on the kids.

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A lot of great things in here. And I want to talk about this book. That's the whole purpose of all of this. But before I do that, I want to let you know that you actually have a chance to win a hardcover copy of Will They Stand?

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This book right here, another one I don't have with me. We are going to be sending out to the winners. So please stay tuned until the end of this interview to learn how you can enter to win one of these books.

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Now, I read a lot of parenting books as a book reviewer. They're sent to me all of the time. I read a lot of them, but I thought

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Will They Stand was probably one of the most unique. And I'm using that word on purpose. It was one of the most unique parenting books

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I've ever read. It's part biblical commentary, part autobiography, part apologetics curriculum with parenting application all throughout it.

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It's really a diverse and unique read. So please tell me about your experience writing

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Will They Stand? I mean, since no one else I've come in contact with has written a parenting book quite like this, you did something very different.

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What were you thinking as you sat down to write this? Well, you know, the family is the first and most fundamental of all human institutions

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God ordained in scripture and the family is the unit God uses to transmit the knowledge of himself from one generation to the next and to the world around.

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And I realize the family has come under incredible attack. And I've seen, too, as I've traveled widely, how so many families,

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I hear parents telling me their kids no longer go to church, their grandkids no longer go to church. And I also see many instances where fathers haven't taken on their

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God -given and God -commanded role to be the spiritual head of their house and a priest to their wife and family, as they should be.

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And thinking back to my own days and just my own days as a child and being brought up in a Christian home and just knowing the impact that my parents had on me,

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I had a father that, you know, when we were transferred around in the state of Queensland because he was a teacher and we would go to little country towns that might have had one church or two churches, and we'd find the pastor invariably was impacted by liberal theology.

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So my pastor was, my father was often researching what the liberal theologians were teaching and what they were teaching at these theological seminaries so that he would have answers to give to us so that we wouldn't be led astray and so that he could challenge the pastor concerning standing on God's word.

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And I saw a father who was so strong in the scriptures, he would never knowingly compromise the word of God.

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He would stand up boldly and stand for the word of God and stand against any compromise that he saw coming into the church or in any books that he saw.

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And that had a big impact on me to see my father do that and a mother that showed such love towards us and exhibited such godly, godly qualities in her life and the way she treated others and the way she treated us and always wanting us to learn the truth of God's word and praying with us every night.

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And I realized how much my parents had an impact on me and how much really the legacy of my parents is the

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Ministry of Answers and Genesis. That's impacting. Think about it. We're impacting directly 30 million people a year, we'd say conservatively, and tens of millions of people more indirectly.

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So how could you write a parenting book without talking about your own upbringing, your own parents, my parents, because this is really part of their legacy and really their children then, that spiritual legacy that they passed on.

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So I needed to start there. So it ended up being a book that's really a testimony about my own life and growing up and the impact of my parents on me and my father on me, and then how that led to a ministry called

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Answers and Genesis, a worldwide apologetics ministry, and then building the two leading Christian -themed attractions in the world.

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And then for us too, when we were married and then had our first child to realize, okay, if we truly understand what

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God's word is, it's not just a book you add to your thinking, it's the foundation for our whole worldview.

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What does God's word tell us about how to train children? Not what somebody else has necessarily said, but what has

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God's word said? And another impact for me too was getting into the apologetics ministry and realizing how important it is that we know how to defend the

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Christian faith. And so as I talk in the book about raising up godly offspring by putting that biblical salt in them, and that consists of apologetics, learning to defend the faith, and also learning that our

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Christian worldview, our whole way of thinking has to start from God's word. So we've got to be raising up children to think foundationally, putting in that biblical salt, making it uncontaminated, getting them ready for this world that we live in and understanding that the world that we live in is the broad way and the devil is out to capture our children.

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And I've seen so many parents that have seen their children depart from the church or their grandchildren depart from the church and to recognize, man, we need to be doing this

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God's way and also incorporating all the ministry that the Lord has enabled me a part of into doing that, to be able to then come up with a book on parenting that is very, very unique in many different ways.

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And for me, I just open up my heart as to who I am, and the same for my wife as well.

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And one of the chapters is actually written by our eldest daughter. She founded a Christian school associated with Answers in Genesis.

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I love that chapter. And just to see how she writes and her understanding of biblical worldview based on the

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Bible. And I say to people, there's a product of the training that I outline throughout the book right there.

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That's why I want her to write that chapter. And I didn't tell her what to write. I just asked her to write it and she wrote it.

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And then I sent it to the editors to just go through grammar wise and so on. And I hardly made any changes.

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And to me, I'm saying, yes, see, that's a product of the sort of training that I'm talking about through the book to be able to raise up godly offspring.

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Amen. Amen. Yeah, I love that chapter. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. She did a great job as an educator myself.

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So many of the things resonated with me. Now, again, I've obviously said I love all of the unique facets.

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It was biblical. It was personal. It was extremely applicable. And when I say biblical, I don't just mean like biblical ideas.

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There are so many scriptures all throughout the book. It's absolutely fantastic. But one thing

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I want to focus in on, and you mentioned it already, you talk a lot about legacy. You've already explained how even the

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Ark encounter in a way is the legacy left by your parents. And we've discussed legacy from time to time on Truth Loved Parents, but we haven't dealt with it to the same degree that Will They Stand does.

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So what is legacy? I know it's a relatively simple concept. So also in your estimation, is there a secret to then leaving a godly one?

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Well, you know, when a lot of people think about legacy, they think more about a material legacy and what material legacy we're passing on to our children.

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But when I talk about legacy, I'm talking about spiritual legacy, because one of the things, for instance,

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I say in the book, I challenge people, you know, what can you take to heaven with you?

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You know, and for instance, I show a picture, a picture of a house and some money like representing a bank account and a boat and a poodle and a cat.

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Well, the reason I use poodles and cats because I don't like them actually. And then a little child. And I said, which one of these is going to last forever?

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Well, the only one that's going to last forever is the child. And which one of these can you take to heaven with you?

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Well, the only one you can take to heaven with you is the child. So we need to recognize that when

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God entrusts children to us and he says children are an heritage of the Lord, they're a gift from the Lord to us, then our role as parents is to pass on to them a spiritual legacy so that we considering here beings who are going to live forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever in heaven or hell.

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So that is extremely, extremely convicting in regard to me as a parent and how

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I'm going to pass on the spiritual legacy to them so they will pass on that spiritual legacy to the next generation and to the next generation and to the next generation.

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In other words, if you look at Malachi 2, for instance, in Malachi 2, we have there the prophet who is asking the question, why did

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God make 2 1? You had men who are divorcing their wives, marrying pagans. And so he asked the question, why did

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God make 2 1? Which is a reference to Genesis. And it's a reference to Genesis 2 24, actually, because you become one because you're one flesh, because woman was made from man.

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And so in marriage, you become one. And so why did God make 2 1? And his answer was this, because he sought godly offspring, not just offspring, but godly offspring, godly seed.

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In other words, where to produce godly seed, pass on that spiritual legacy, who will marry godly seed and impact the world with the message of God's word, who will then produce godly seed, to marry godly seed, to impact the world, to produce godly seed, to marry godly seed, who will impact the world.

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That's what it should be generation after generation, after generation, after generation. That's what legacy is all about.

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You know, in the book, one of the things I do do is compare certain people's legacies.

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And for instance, I say, well, take Darwin. You could go to the town of Shrewsbury over in England where I visited and you'll see statues of Darwin and streets named after Darwin.

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You can visit Darwin's house as a school where there's a statue of Darwin. There's a shopping centre called the

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Darwin Shopping Centre. And people look at that and say, wow, Darwin has an incredible legacy.

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Look, there's lots of things in this town named after him and statues. And you can go to the British Museum of Natural History and see a big statue of Darwin and what a legacy he's left.

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But Darwin's legacy was one where he popularised an idea to try to explain life without God.

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And so he popularised the idea of evolutionary naturalism. And Darwin's ideas have been used by Margaret Sanger to found

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Planned Parenthood. They've been used by Hitler to justify what he did to the Jews and certain people that had, you know, disabilities or other sorts of people as well.

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And so we can see the evil fruits or the legacy of Darwin, which is a devastating legacy.

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Then when I look at my own father, I'm saying, what's the legacy of my own father?

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Now, he doesn't have statues like Darwin. He didn't write a book like The Origin of Species that, you know, cost you a million dollars to buy one of Darwin's Origin of Species books today because they're rare to find the original.

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He didn't leave, you know, anything like that. But he left a legacy in his children that has resulted in impacting tens of millions, hundreds of millions,

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I believe, of people all around the world with the truth of God's word and the gospel. Now, that's the legacy that I'm challenging parents.

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We need to leave. You know, you don't have to be a famous person to have a statue. You don't have to have an auditorium named after you or anything like that.

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You don't even have to write a book that becomes a billion copy seller or something like that.

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But you raise up godly children who will impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ and pass on that godly legacy to others.

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That's the greatest legacy you could ever leave. Amen. Amen. Well, you might find this interesting, but I am a

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Mayflower Pilgrim descendant. So right from William Brewster, who was one of pretty much the foremost elder,

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I suppose, of the Mayflower Pilgrims. And my life, I've talked often, is an example of that, how the truths that he passed on to his children, passed on to his children.

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I mean, he's pretty well known. You might still learn about him in a history book, maybe. Very few people know who

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I am, and the people in between have been lost to time. But by God's grace, I'm so thankful for the spiritual knowledge and the love for God that he passed down.

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So, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And it makes me think I need to start the second greatest

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Christian theme park, you know, where we take the Mayflower and take it back to its original roots. We can even, like, reconstruct the

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Mayflower, you know, life side. Just kidding. Now, what's really interesting. I was going to say, yeah,

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I've been in England and to the actual port where the Mayflower came in there before it launched on its voyage.

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Of course, you know, today, the sea is much, much further out and it's very, very different. But it's interesting when you talk about that and you go over to those places and actually say, wow, there's a sign that says it actually was here.

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That's fantastic. Yeah, that's especially very important because generally speaking, the Brewsters aren't very revered in England because, you know, they left.

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But as a biblical counselor, what's really interesting to me is that a lot of professing

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Christians haven't really heard anything like what you're talking about right now. They've heard all of the things about, you know, having insurance policies and, you know, leaving physical things for their children.

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But this idea of a spiritual legacy is unfortunately far too often not spoken about.

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Now, TLP's audience in particular is a very diverse group of people. Many have been biblically parenting their children for years, but many more are very new to the concepts we discuss, either because they haven't been doing biblical parenting or because their children are very young.

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So here's a question. What encouragement or challenge would you give to those who are listening today who are new to this idea of biblical parenting?

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Well, let me refer to one of the chapters in the book where I talk about Vegemite kids. Now, I'm so glad you brought that up because that grossed me out.

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I just want to say that. Well, Vegemite is a black paste. It's very salty. There's sort of a leftover sludge from the breweries in Australia, but they made it into a food and Australians just love it.

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And we were brought up on Vegemite. Now, if you give Vegemite to the average American, they will spit it out and say it's gross and they'll say it ruined their taste buds and all the rest of it.

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But why do most Australians love Vegemite? Why do I love Vegemite? In fact, I had Vegemite crackers last night.

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Actually, you take a cracker and you put butter on it and you put a thin layer of Vegemite and I just love that or on toast.

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But why do Australians love Vegemite? Well, as a young child, in fact, when we were very young, my mother would put a little bit of Vegemite into our mouth and it would teach us to acquire a taste for it.

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And so it gives a little bit of the taste and then you become sort of hooked on the taste and you start acquiring a taste.

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And that taste is with you when you're older because you acquired that taste when you were younger. I use the other example for Americans of pickles that over here.

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I'd never eaten these dill pickles, these pickles before. I can't stand them. They are gross. In fact, when they put pickles on a sandwich, you know, or even in the same bag as a sandwich, when you buy a sandwich, it totally destroys it.

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The smell. I agree with you on all of that. I think any vegetable you have to soak for millions of years before you can eat it is wrong with it anyway.

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But I tell Americans, the reason you don't know pickles are so bad and they taste so horrible is because you were brought up on them.

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And so you don't know how bad they taste. In other words, think of the biblical application. When Paul was talking to Timothy in the

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Bible, he talks about Timothy from a child. You have known the scriptures. And so I use

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Vegemite to challenge people. Look, if your children aren't taught to acquire a taste of the things of the

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Lord right from when they're born, don't think that when they get older, you can suddenly say, oh, their college age or high school age,

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I need to do something with them, because if they haven't acquired a taste when they're young, it's hard to get them to acquire a taste later on.

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So what I would really challenge parents concerning and encourage them to do is this. Look, right from a young age, start teaching your children to acquire a taste of the things of the

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Lord. Now, what does that mean? Just reading the Bible to them? Well, no, it means more than that. You see,

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I talk about putting salt into our children. You know, one of the fallacious arguments people have often used with me in regard to the education of children is, oh, our kids should be in the public schools to witness to the other kids because we're to be the salt of the earth.

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Now, where people send their children to be educated is up to them. But when people use that argument,

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I have to deal with it because it's a bad argument. It's a fallacious argument. Because when they say, our children are to be the salt of the earth,

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I say, now, OK, have a look in the Bible. Mark 9 .50 says, have salt in yourselves. You can't be salt till you have it.

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Your children can't be salt till they have it. When our first son was born, he didn't look at me and say, Dad, what do you use a soteriology and eschatology?

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And we have great theological discussions, right? The Bible tells us that God has made it evident to all that he's creator, that he's written right and wrong in our hearts.

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We have a conscience. Romans 2 tells us that. But our job as parents was to put that salt in.

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And then Matthew 5 warns us, if salt's contaminated, it's no good. So we have to put as uncontaminated as possible salt in to fill them up with that biblical salt so that they can be the salt of the earth.

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You can't throw them to the world. You don't send them to the Philistines to be trained. You have to train them up to go out to the

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Philistines to witness to them. And when you're putting in that salt of biblical truth, it's not just reading the

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Bible or what we call Bible stories. It means teaching them to be able to be ready for this world they're going to live in.

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You know, in 2 Corinthians 11, 3, God warns us through Paul that the devil is going to use the same method on us as he did on Eve to get us to a position of not believing

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God's word. Well, what was that method? Genesis 3. Did God really say to attack

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God's word, to undermine God's word, to get you to doubt the word of God? I call that the Genesis 3 attack.

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So we need to look at the world and say, what's being used today to cause generations to doubt the word of God?

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Well, evolution, millions of years, science, questions like, how do we know there's a God? Where did

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God come from? Isn't the Bible just a book of mythology? How do you know the Bible is true? How could Noah get the animals on the ark?

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What about the Big Bang? I mean, all these are used to try to undermine what people believe today, what your children believe about the

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Bible. And so putting that biblical sword in right from their young age is teaching them answers to these skeptical questions, getting them ready for the world they're living in and teaching them foundationally from the

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Bible so they know what their doctrine is. You have to teach them from Genesis, which is the foundation for marriage, for sin, for why we die, for why we wear clothes, for why

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Jesus died on the cross, teaching that foundation. And can you do that right from when they're born?

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And I say yes. In fact, we produce books for all ages, even little rhyme books for two, three, four, five year olds that teach doctrine and apologetics.

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But even more than that, you know what my wife and I used to do when our kids were born? You know, we would then start to show them pictures, children's books with pictures and talk through some of the accounts in the

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Bible or talk about dinosaurs or, you know, all sorts of different topics. Now, people thought we were nuts.

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But as our children got older, they loved those picture books, they loved them.

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And then we started to teach them more about the content. And then we would start to even read them the content because these are some of the apologetics books that we have produced over time and books dealing with biblical authority and so on.

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And then our kids would start to read and they became their favorite books. And so right from a young age, you're teaching them to acquire a taste of the things of the

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Lord. Children are like vacuum cleaners. I mean, they really suck up information.

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A lot of times we think we can't teach them those things until they're much older. That is simply not the case.

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You need to be putting as much of that biblical salt, the foundational teaching, apologetic teaching into them while they're young so that as they grow up, then they have that with them.

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We've seen our kids do that with our grandkids and then our older grandkids.

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We see them defending the Christian faith on social media. We see them witnessing to others using those arguments that they were taught because they were brought up on that.

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And that's the way that we brought up our own children. Our own children are all passionate for the Lord. If they see someone contradicting

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God's words, they know the arguments to use with them because they've been brought up right from a young age to understand that.

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And, you know, for many parents, I understand they said, well, I don't have the information. I don't know how to do that, which is why we produce books and curricula.

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We even have a homeschool Bible curriculum based upon our four year Sunday school curriculum we have called

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Answers Bible Curriculum. So there's lots of material out there and we're producing those materials.

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I believe the ministry of Answers and Genesis is at the cutting edge of dealing with where the battle's at, what's being used today to drag your children away, to capture them for the world.

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How is the devil doing that to help parents to be able to have that right foundation to be able to fill them with that biblical salt?

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Amen. And you can start early. Like he said, I was talking with a friend of mine recently who was a one year old, was making some very poor choices.

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And I was saying to him, you know, in addition to this and this and this, you need to be speaking God's truth to him.

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Because even if he won't get it all, even if he won't understand it all, he gets used to hearing that God has expectations, that sin hurts and that there is an important relationship that God wants to have with him.

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And that is incredibly important. And you can never start too early with that. Now, this next question is closely tied to the last,

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OK? It's a very important concept for me, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the role of the church in the spiritual discipleship formation of our children, because I think a lot of people get this wrong.

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I think a lot of them think to themselves, well, as long as I'm sending my children to the church, everything is going to be OK. And then conversely, what is the role of the parents in the task of the discipleship and formation of our kids?

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Well, firstly, let's look at what the scripture says. Children are entrusted to the parents. Read Psalm 78.

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Fathers, teach your children so they'll not forget to teach their children and they'll not forget to teach their children.

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Fathers, teach your children. Fathers, bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I mean, over and over again through scripture, it's very obvious that parents are given the responsibility for the education of their children.

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Education starts in the home, regardless of anything else. It starts in the home. I think a lot of times what's happened is, you know, a lot of fathers have been taken on a

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God -given responsibility to be the spiritual head. And I think they've sort of just handed that responsibility over to the church.

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And what their kids go there twice a week, maybe for for an hour each time. And you expect them to get all their training there.

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And 90 to 95 percent of kids from church homes actually end up in public schools where they're getting how many hours a day and indoctrinated in a system that has become progressively antagonistic to Christianity and very atheistic in its worldview.

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And the foundation being that man determines truth. And we wonder why we're losing generations of these kids.

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And another problem is this, you know, in a lot of our churches, sadly, they don't teach apologetics.

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Now, there are some that do, but in the majority of churches, you'll find the majority of our

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Sunday school teachers, Bible study teachers, youth group leaders say Genesis doesn't matter.

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You can believe in evolution. They're not really sure. I've even had conservative pastors tell me, oh, I don't want to believe, don't want to deal with the issue of Genesis because there's people who believe in evolution.

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It creates division and so on. So you end up not even being taught the right foundation from God's word for our worldview to know what we believe and why we believe what we do.

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And they're not being equipped with apologetics. In fact, a lot of times what we do in our churches, in our Sunday schools, is we teach

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Bible stories, if you know what I mean. You know, Jonah and the great fish feeding the 5 ,000, Paul's missionary journey, Jesus on the cross,

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Noah in the ark. Don't you believe those? Well, yes. But well, what's wrong with that?

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Well, number one, by the way, the word story has changed meaning. The word story today means fairy tale to most people.

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Where kids have the idea today, we learn real stuff off TV and real stuff at school, but at church we have stories.

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So I challenge parents, stop using the word story because it's changed meaning. Talk about the account in the

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Bible, the record of history in the Bible. The Bible's a history book. But we teach from the

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Bible within the Bible, but are we teaching them to defend the Christian faith? Because as I travel all over the world and talk about Christianity, when people hear

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I'm all about the Bible, they ask questions like, well, wait a minute, we live in a scientific age. Science is just through the

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Bible. How do you know there's a God? Well, where did God come from? Well, wait a minute. What about evolution?

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Millions of years. And a lot of times our churches have told kids, don't worry about that, just trust in Jesus. But they need to worry about that because those questions are used today to try to create doubt, to stop them from believing

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God's word. And so we need to look at, I say to parents sometimes, write down how many hours you spend a week actually being with your children, training them in biblical things, training them to defend their faith, training them in spiritual things compared to what the

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TV has as an influence on them, compared to what other people have as an influence on them, compared to what the church has an influence on them, or the school, if they go to school, has an influence on them.

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You know, write down your role and what your commitment is. And in most instances, you find the parents have very little influence on the kids.

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They've handed that off to the church, to the public schools or to the kids down the road or whatever it is.

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And we wonder why we're not passing on a spiritual legacy. So you see, it's very, very important for parents to take that role seriously and realize education starts with them.

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They're responsible for those kids and they're going to answer to the Lord for those kids. Remember that.

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And they are beings that are going to live forever. So take seriously your role in passing on that spiritual legacy.

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Amen. Now, as we come to the end of our time, I have two more questions. One's pretty straightforward.

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The other is an interesting hypothetical question, but allow me to set the stage, OK? You've been blessed with children and grandchildren.

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Your participation in the parenting process today is very different from the experience of the majority of our listeners.

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Still, we have many grandparents who are regular listeners and many families who live with or interact with their grandparents on a regular basis.

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So what challenge would you give specifically to the grandparents listening? How should they view their role in the continued spiritual formation of their kids and their grandkids?

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Well, you know, we know when we have children that marry and they leave home, they leave father and mother and and they cleave onto each other and then they have children.

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But still, grandparents can have an incredible, incredible impact on their children.

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My wife and I have a phenomenal impact on our grandchildren. You know, one of the things

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I will say about my wife is she she devoted herself to her husband and and the husband support for him in the ministry and then to her children and now to her grandchildren.

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And she's always been there for them and had a tremendous impact upon them.

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And so she spends a lot of time with each of our grandchildren and they get to love her and she teaches them, teaches them even how to cook and how she cooks and teaches them how to do things in the home.

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And she teaches them things of the Lord. And when they have struggles, she talked to them, she counsels them.

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I can hear her on the phone talking even to our grandkids now that have that have phones and she'll be talking to them and I'll hear her counseling them on the phone as they struggle with issues.

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And so we can continue. It's important to develop those relationships. That's the first thing that we need to make sure that we've got those relationship with them to show that love to them and to do whatever we can for them to show how interested we are in them.

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And as they build up that trust, you know, I find that they they start to open up to us and we can continue to give them biblical counseling and answers and to help them.

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And what a blessing it is to see the impact that we can have in our grandchildren. Of course, you can be buying them apologetics books from Answers in Genesis to give to them for Christmas and for birthdays and special anniversaries.

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You can be doing that or subscribing for them to our Answers TV streaming platform so they have good

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God honoring family programs instead of just watching some of the garbage I see on Disney and Netflix and places like that.

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So you can be a great influence on them like that. And, you know, my wife and I look at it.

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We can't take, you know, material resources with us to heaven. And we want to use whatever resources

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God entrusts us to to be involved in helping our children and our grandchildren right now while while we're here.

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And that's that's an interesting philosophy we have in regard to legacy of material things is that we we try to use whatever we have.

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And, you know, we're not like some people out there that own, you know, large investments, whatever, but whatever

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God's entrusted to us, we want to use whatever we have to impact our kids and our grandkids right now while we're here.

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Now, here's my second hypothetical question, OK? And this is specifically for those in the audience who are either new to parenting or just new to biblical parenting.

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If you could travel back in time, OK, no doubt you will go all the way back to the beginning.

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But let's say on your way to Eden, you just so happen to stop 48 years ago and gave Ken Ham, the brand new father, just one piece of advice.

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What would it be? One piece of advice. Well, you know, before I answer that,

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Aaron, let me say that one of the things that I also recognize is the only reason

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I would have advice to give is because God takes us through all sorts of trials and mountains and valleys and experiences and challenges us to step out in faith and to trust him.

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And we make mistakes and and and able to recognize that.

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And so we're able to hopefully be an impact on our own children and grandchildren and give them all that experience now because of what we've gone through.

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But if I was able to go back, then you know what? You know what I think really, for me, it would be.

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It would be to to have more, more further in warning parents and warning grandparents what can happen to their children if they don't train them up the way they need to be training them up.

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I think that's what it would be for me is is that I've seen what's happened and I've seen so many parents lose their children to the world and so many grandparents lose their grandchildren to the world.

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That, you know, we certainly concentrate on doing what we could for our kids and we weren't perfect and we made mistakes and, you know,

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I'm sure we wish we'd go back and say, let's do it this way this time or not do that or whatever.

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But I think I would have much more fervor for saying we've got to warn other parents. We've got to warn other grandparents.

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We got to we got to make sure that that they're raising their children up and and spending the time and taking the responsibility and not just handing it off to the church and the schools and warn them about compromise in the church that can destroy and warn them about the atheistic education system that can destroy their kids.

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I think for me, that would be the thing, because I'm heartbroken to see what's happening to families across our

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Western world. Praise God, you don't have to go back in time 48 years to warn us like you just did.

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So thank you very much for that. Thank you for your ministry. Thank you for Will They Stand.

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Thank you for Answers in Genesis and the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. God has used them in a mighty way to expand his kingdom and harvest glory for himself.

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So thank you for submitting to the Lord and following his will for your life in those areas. Well, thanks

44:06

Aaron, it's been great to talk with you. Now, if any of our listeners would be interested in learning more about Ken Ham's ministry and his books, please go to TruthLoveParent .com

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forward slash Ken hyphen Ham to find links to all of them. OK, we also have a whole page at TruthLoveParent .com

44:21

dedicated to the Ark Encounter, another all about the Creation Museum and another featuring Ken's parenting books.

44:27

And if you happen to purchase any of the books from Answers in Genesis using our Amazon affiliate links, it will not only be a blessing to Ken and Answers in Genesis, but also to TruthLoveParent because Amazon will give

44:39

TLP a commission on the purchase, which I think is just kind of cool. And there's still plenty of time before Christmas to get your book for that you or for your friend.

44:46

So I pray you'll do just that. Now, Ken, I obviously just encourage our listeners to learn more about your book and ministries by heading over to TruthLoveParent .com,

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which is kind of unfortunate and a little unfair because you've got two wonderful websites and our website will definitely send people over there.

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But is there any and we'll also give them the social media links too for all of the ministries. But I'm curious if you have any special news you'd like to share or somewhere you'd like to direct our audience to go some information that would be great for them this time of year.

45:15

Well, you know, it's interesting, next year, 2021, our theme is going to be waking up the church and we're going to be really pushing people to be challenging their own churches, to be teaching children apologetics and teaching them foundationally from God's word.

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And in January of 2021, we are launching our four -year homeschool

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Bible curriculum. Now, we have a four -year Sunday school curriculum called Answers Bible Curriculum. And so we have writers here who have taken that and modified it.

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And we launched the first year in January, and then it'll go on for four years, a homeschool

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Bible curriculum for elementary into middle school. And then we're going to produce some special curriculum for high school a little later.

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But it's apologetics, biblical authority, chronological, teaching doctrine, teaching

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Christian worldview. There is no other Bible curriculum like this in the world. And I encourage parents to look for that.

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So we're launching that January. You don't have to be homeschooled to use it. You could just use it in your home just for devotions.

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That's what you could do. And so look for that coming in January as we, you know, launch our really launch an emphasis to get the church teaching children and teaching them things that we've talked about.

46:40

Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Now, again, thank you again for spending this time with us and your labor of love in Will They Stand?

46:47

Now, ladies and gentlemen, please go to TruthLoveParent .com. Check out Ken Ham's special guest page at TruthLoveParent .com.

46:53

Learn more about the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter under our Family Fun section. And please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets so more parents can learn about these amazing resources.

47:03

Now, you've waited this long and I appreciate that. If you'd like to win a copy of this fantastic book, click the link in the description or go to TruthLoveParent .com

47:11

and select resources at the top of the page. From there, it'll be easy to access our giveaways page.

47:18

Answers in Genesis was very kind to send two copies that you guys will have the opportunity to win. You can enter your name up to three times to win.

47:25

All of the instructions are there at TruthLoveParent .com forward slash giveaways. You have the full 12 days of Christmas plus three extra days to earn your chance to win a copy of Will They Stand?

47:36

And the two lucky participants who win, those will be announced on January 8th, 2021 on the giveaways page.

47:43

My friends, if we want our children to grow up into Christ, we must parent in truth and love.

47:50

That will include the various and significant truths in Genesis and many of the biblical insights from Will They Stand?

47:57

So to that end, please join us in the new year as we discuss the greatest parenting challenges you will ever face.