Building Noah's Ark w/Ken Ham

Apologia Studios

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The ramp system is quite an ingenious design, the way this is, as I said, designed as a ship, built as a building, anchored to these three towers.

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You can see over to the left, this is the middle tower. The east tower's back there, and then the west tower's up there.

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The middle tower is actually the biggest tower. But there's this ramp system, so people walk up from the first deck to second to third.

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They come in on the first deck over on the back of the arc, and we'll look at that a little later.

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I'll show you where that is. And so they come in there, they'll go around, see the various exhibits, teaching exhibits, and then they walk up this ramp, because it's all handicapped accessible, or people can use elevators too.

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And as we walk up the ramp here, you can get a bit of a look down here into the first deck.

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So, okay, so on a personal level, why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep pushing, you keep dreaming, you keep working, you're laboring, why do you keep doing it?

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What is the most important thing in the entire universe for anyone? Jesus. Isn't it to know Christ as Savior?

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70, 80 years, 90, people live too on this earth, compared to eternity is nothing.

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Nothing. And isn't it most important that we do what God tells us to, go out, do business till he comes, preach the gospel, make disciples, go out and give answers what you believe, contend for the faith.

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We're in a battle, we're in a spiritual war. And that's why in the Bible, we read a lot of military terminology, simply because there is a battle.

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It's been going on since Genesis three. And we're soldiers in this battle. A soldier doesn't just sit back and enjoy eating and sleeping and whatever, and having fun.

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A soldier needs to be out where the battlefield is at. And that's what we need to be doing. And so we're just trying to reach as many people as we can, impact as many people, engage as many people as we can.

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Christian and non -Christian. Christians, to help them raise up generations who know how to answer the skeptical questions of this age and defend the

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Christian faith. Because you think about it, today the mockers are out there, the scoffers. Second Peter talks about the scoffers, who reject creation and reject the flood and reject coming judgment.

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And they scoff. No, I couldn't have built that ark. There's no way you can fit the animals on board. There never was a flood.

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There's no evidence for the flood. Man evolved from ape -like creatures. The Big Bang, that's how we all got here.

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No, the Bible's not true. We need to be out there dealing with those scoffers so that they don't influence the coming generations.

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Because you know what it says in second Peter? It says these scoffers will reject creation, reject the flood, reject coming judgment by fire.

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And then it says, beware lest you also fall. Beware. And unfortunately, generations of our kids have fallen because they've succumbed to the world.

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So behind me we've got some of the cages that you'll see on deck one. The log four animal cages are behind me and then the log three animal cages are over to the side there.

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What these are gonna house, these are gonna house the smaller animals of Noah's Ark. This log three cages will hold things like the small snakes, the rodents, chipmunks.

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The log four animals will hold animals in the size range of a raccoon or possibly a koala.

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And these will be, when you enter the deck one, you'll see stacks of these cages in there showing how

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Noah could have transported the animals. Well, I was gonna say, do you feel like an animal in a cage? But you're a human being, you're made in the image of God, and so you're separate to all the animals.

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So, but these are the large cages. There's many different sizes of cages and lots of cages.

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And that's only part of the exhibits, of course, having the animals in the cages. There's a lot of other sort of exhibits, teaching exhibits.

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But of course, people expect a lot of animals and so we're certainly gonna have those. And they are exquisite.

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When you look at them, they're sculpted animals, but they look so real. Very talented artists. You realize

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Noah's Ark is a picture of Jesus? It's a picture of the gospel. How so? Noah was told to build one door in the ark.

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And the animals went through that door and then Noah and his family went through that door. The only way they could be saved from the judgment was to be in the ark, the ark of salvation.

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God himself shut the door. Think about the fact that God's son steps into history to be

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Jesus Christ the God -man and said, I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he'll be saved.

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There's only one way to heaven. There's only one door. Now, the door to Noah's Ark shut and the judgment came. And God put a rainbow in the sky after the flood as a sign he would never again send a global flood.

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So we're not building this ark to float because of another flood. Hasn't it happened?

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It's to be a reminder that God's word is true, that the flood really happened, that Noah's Ark is true, and a reminder that there is another judgment coming by fire and there is an ark of salvation, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And that door is open. That door hasn't shut yet. And generations of kids, even from church homes, are being dragged away from that door.

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We wanna do our best to get them to the door. We can't force them in because faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.

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But we can get them to the door. We can answer their skeptical questions. We can help them understand

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God's word is true. And really the emphasis at the Creation Museum and the emphasis at Ark Encounter and the emphasis through Answers in Genesis is the history in the

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Bible is true. That's why the gospel based in that history is true. And one of the last exhibits here on the third deck as they go through the bow will be exhibited on the doors in scripture.

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The door to the tomb that was rolled away. The foolish virgins who went away when the door was shut and then it was too late.

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The door to the sheepfold. Jesus is the door to the sheepfold. Jesus has said, I am the door.

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And we're going to be challenging people. They need to go through that door to be saved. And actually the final exhibit is a series of panels with life -size figures on them.

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And they're college students at a college, university. And they're battling with questions.

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How do I know the Bible is true? How do I know there's a God? Well, what about this? Or what about all the skeptical questions?

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And as you go through, the questions are answered and those students start to listen and start to think.

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And one of them becomes a Christian and you're sort of left up in the air what happens to the other one. But it's like going through the pages of a book and that's how it's set up.

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And as you go through, you want to go to the next page and the next page, because this is like a mystery book and wow, what's going to happen?

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And we want people to identify with those that are there. And we want to see people, one to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So this place is to equip Christians, to defend the Christian faith, to embolden

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Christians. Hey, you know what? Don't be intimidated by the world. There are answers and you can know them. Get out there and defend your faith and proclaim the gospel.

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Raise up generations of kids without those doubts. Beware lest they fall. And for non -Christians, it's to challenge them in a nice way, a gracious way.

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We're not hitting them on the head with the Bible. You know, that we're not imposing this view on them, but to come here and to engage them in challenging them that we want to say the

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Bible's true. This is feasible. This happened. He could feed them. He could look after them.

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This was a real event. It did happen. The evidence is all over the earth. Most of the fossil record. And there's another judgment coming, but it's the final judgment.

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And we want you to be in the ark of salvation for them. Yeah. I love that you're doing this.

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And I think that it's two things I love about it, about what you do.

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One is you recognize, Answers in Genesis recognizes, your ministry recognizes what the world has already captured and understands that when you capture the young people, when you capture their minds, you own that next generation in terms of ideology, worldview.

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Well, you know, Hitler said, he who owns the youth owns the future. Yeah, he understood that. He did understand that.

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And unfortunately we've let the world capture many of those young people from the coming generation. We send our children off to secular education to let the world disciple them.

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And what you have recognized is we need to disciple our children and train them in a biblical worldview.

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And then I think another thing that I love is that you are pointing image bearers of God back to their creator.

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So like Romans 1, we know God, we suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness. Even with the creation shouting to us, we become fools.

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Our thoughts become futile. This is, I think, a beautiful opportunity for Christians to take people's hands that are suppressing that truth.

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And you lift it back off again and say, look. And you let God, of course, do

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His perfect work in their lives. But this is an awesome opportunity to point people back to the truth about the

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God that they know. I remember meeting someone over in the gardens of the Creation Museum. And he was standing there.

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And I saw him standing there and he had some tears in his eyes. And I went up and talked to him. And he said he's a pastor. And he said,

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I just realized something. You people are so bold in what you say. You're not ashamed of what you say. You're not intimidated by the secular scientists of this age.

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And look what you've done. And all the people coming here and I need to be bold like that.

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And he said to me, this has emboldened me. And I believe the Ark will do that too. As parents come here, because a lot of us, we're intimidated by the world, intimidated by the scientists.

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And as they come through here and see what's laid out for them, it's going to help them say, I don't have to be intimidated by the world.

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Well, if you can do this and stand so boldly. We have secular media here. When they say to me, what's this all about?

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Well, to get people to understand the Bible's true and that the gospel is true. And when they say to me, so you're on about the gospel.

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Absolutely. We're on about the saving gospel. We're on about the Lord Jesus Christ. We're on about God's word. And we're not ashamed of that.

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But because it's done in such a massive way here in first -class way and professional way, it ministers to the secular world.

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The secular media come here and they're amazed. And I've had non -Christians involved in the secular entertainment industry in America who stood here and said, doesn't matter if they're

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Christian or non -Christian, they're going to come. They're going to come and see this because this is massive. We need to be impacting the world.

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We need to be out there where the world is at, engaging them, do something to impact the world. Why shouldn't we build an attraction like the world does?

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Normally it's Disney's and Universal's that do this sort of thing. Why shouldn't we do something like this? Come here, come here,

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Ken. I love this man. Awesome, awesome. You know, you see, you're looking down on this and you're sort of getting that feeling and this is the second deck.

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Now above this is the third deck, below this is the first deck. And then there's a roof deck too.

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There's a roof deck? And we're going to have a restaurant up there, 600, 700 seat restaurant on the roof.

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We'll go up there. Do you have like a particular place where there's an opening where the dove is released kind of a thing?

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Well, we'll show you up in the roof. Okay, okay. Wow. This is just incredible.

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Ken, you may have answered this already, but are you going to have an exhibit to show what some of the tools?

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Yes, we actually, you know, no one knows what tools Noah had, but you go back and look at some of the ancient cultures that we would say date back closer to the flood and you look at the style of housing and clothing and so on and say, some of that would have been handed down and they're tools.

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And so there are hundreds and hundreds of tools, artifacts that we have at our design studio being made right now.

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Some really amazing stuff. For instance, one of them that I mentioned earlier is a wood lathe. And you can actually use your feet and make it work.

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And it actually is a working wood lathe. We say, why wouldn't

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Noah have been able to invent something like that? So this is going to really challenge people's thinking about Noah, about life before the flood, about how intelligent people were.

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I mean, we have the ancient man exhibits dealing with that showing, even today we don't understand how people built some of those massive structures, but it's going to really challenge people's thinking.

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So we had something we wanted to do with you. Okay. All right, when we had you on our TV show, excellent show, everyone loved it.

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We talked about - By the way, on the TV show, we mentioned Dr. Who, right? That's right. One of my favorite TV programs.

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That's right. Did you notice when you came inside the ark and it's bigger on the inside than the outside? That's right. There was another thing we talked about on the show and that was how much you absolutely hate.

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Yeah, hate with a capital H. These. And we heard that this is the greatest thing known to man.

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This is an exotic food. And of course you've got to have a certain IQ to be able to taste it.

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And I don't know whether you've ever tasted it. Have you ever tasted it? I've never tasted it. So we were going to say, we can have this amazing thing right now, the top of the ark, and we will sample some

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Vegemite. You really need to have butter to do it properly. That's what we heard. You need butter. So we thought we would do a trade.

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You take a bite of a pickle. We'll try the Vegemite. I don't think so. I mean, anything you have to soak for millions of years before you eat it, there's something wrong with it.

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Well, I tell you what, look, I'll put a little bit of Vegemite on my finger like this. And look at this. Ready? And you, now, this is going to be amazing.

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That is really nice. How about you do the same? Okay, let's do it that way. All right. Okay, you do the same. All right. You can already smell it.

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Put it in your mouth. Ken, you can smell it. I put the whole lot in my mouth. I'll let you keep that because I'm not going to eat it. Is this oil or glue or?

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No, it's basically yeast and salt and got a lot of vitamin B in it. It's actually really good for you.

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Okay, let's try it. Okay, put it in there. You must admit that's pretty nice.

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I mean, I can tell because you're speechless. That's nasty. I can actually tell on the back end of that exactly why somebody would like it.

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Now, actually I do kind of like it. It's like a soy sauce. To acquire a taste for this, it's sort of like the

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Bible, you know? From a child, you've known the scriptures. If you brought up as a child, having your parents put this on your tongue, get you used to it, you acquire a taste.

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That's why I like to use Vegemite as a Bible teaching tool. You don't like Vegemite because you weren't taught to acquire a taste for it.

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We need to teach children to acquire a taste for the things of the Lord, right from when they're born. That's why we do the ark and the museum, bring them in, help teach them.

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But if you want to learn how to eat this, get a cracker, put some butter on it. Thinly spread it, and then put a piece of cheese on it.

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And you'll like it. I actually, I'll be honest, now that I'm finished, I actually like it. It tastes kind of like a soy sauce, a very salty soy sauce.

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I said sort of, maybe. Yeah, it's good. I mean, to an American probably. I'm gonna wash mine down with a pickle. I don't want to do that because I don't want to die up here.

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That's awesome. What I appreciate very, very much about what you're doing is you're investing.

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And I've kind of talked about this before, but you're investing in this world and equipping. So Answers in Genesis, your homeschooling curriculum, everything you do to talk about Christian education, the fact that you've built a creation museum, you have now an ark, you're investing in the world for the kingdom of Christ, which is something that I think, if you look at the last generation of Christians, the last two generations, in many ways we've checked out of media, we've checked out of culture, we've checked out of things like building a museum for people to walk through.

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And you know, you talk about investing. So let's talk about Jesus and the parable of the 10 minas in Luke, where he gives resources to people and says, do business till I come.

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Go and invest in the work of the king. And where to do business till he comes. And I think a lot of people have checked out, well, things are getting worse.

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I've had people tell me it's so depressing, what can we do? You know, secularization has taken over, we just need Jesus to come.

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Wait a minute, he said, do business till I come. You know what we need to be doing? Contending for the faith, Jude. We need to be giving reasons for what we believe, 1

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Peter 3 15. We need to be out there doing business till he comes, preaching the gospel, making disciples.

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We should be trying to reach as many people as we can in the most impactful way possible. And that's what we're doing here at Answers in Genesis.

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I love it. The Creation Museum and also the Ark Encounter. I love it. What do you think, Joe? I'm in awe,

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I love it. I think - You ever been in anything like this? I've never seen anything like this.

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And here's what I think is so special about it, Ken, and I just want to encourage you with this. It's not like you just did something.

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You know, well, let's just do a little Creation Museum or let's just do an ark. You didn't just do something. You guys are making this spectacular.

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It's something people will actually buy a plane ticket and they will fly across country with their family. They'll fly across the ocean.

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The ocean, yeah. To come and see this spectacle, it is fantastic. By word of mouth, once people come here, you're going to find it's going to grow and grow and grow.

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Our researchers say for the first five years, it'll just continue to increase in number of people coming.

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And of course, we're not stopping here. We've already got phase two, phase three, phase four, and so on planned. We've already got the permits for 200 plus acres to be developed here with a wall city, a pre -flood wall city, and then a

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Tower of Babel, and then a first century village, and then an amphitheater, and all sorts of other things as well.

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Because we want to make this a family themed attraction. We're also putting in here a massive zipline course like we have at the

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Creation Museum. Only here, you'd be able to zip across the valley to the parking lot. That's fantastic. And so again, a family friendly place.

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It's going to become a tourist destination, a vacation destination for people. And the interesting thing to point out is that unbelievers invest in museums that tell their history of the world, right?

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And they invest in - All across the country. All across, they're everywhere. Every state has something, some science museum exhibits, something that tells their story.

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And I think it's a beautiful thing in my mind that as a Christian, you guys have developed a means of doing that and telling the true story of -

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The true account. The true account, sorry. The true account of the world. The true account of the world. See, I didn't correct you on the way.

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Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. I'm glad to be corrected. The work that's gone into the exhibits is exquisite.

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I mean, they are remarkable. I've never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. We have people working with sculptors, artists, fabricators.

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We have our own wood shops, metal shops, CNC machines, 3D printers, all that they're doing. We have some people that have worked with Hollywood who say, this is better quality than Hollywood.

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And shouldn't we be doing that as God's people? Absolutely. Shouldn't we have the best because we're on about the truth? That's right. Shouldn't we be leading the way?

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And in some ways, we've already had some Christian groups here are building certain facilities and displays.

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And you know what they've said? What? Wow, we need to take what we're doing to a whole different level. And so we're sort of setting a standard there.

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Yes, yeah. Because Christians, unfortunately, have a reputation of doing stuff in a cheesy way. Yes. Not all

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Christians, but that is a bit of a reputation out there. That's their reputation, yeah. And people come here and they say, wow. You see the museum, the

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Creation Museum, the level of professional exhibits there, that's the sort of level here. And when you go to the design studios, it just blows your mind to see what they're doing there.