Stop MYTHING the BOAT!! Dan Lietha Cartoonist

Creation Fellowship

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a good laugh about this later, right? Yes, we will. Yeah, it's having a good laugh about it right now.

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Okay, all right. I'm ready now. How's now? Yes, take four.

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Okay. Okay, Dan Letha was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

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He received Christ as his Savior at the age of five or six, and he also started drawing at a young age.

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Dinosaurs and his love of animals played a key role in his motivation to start and keep drawing.

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After high school, Dan attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey, and graduated in 1987.

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He married his wife, Marsha, in 93, and two years later, illustrated a children's book called

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A is for Adam. That project was for Answers in Genesis, and then he continued to do some volunteer work for them with illustrating for two years until he got hired full -time in 1997.

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While with Answers in Genesis, Dan illustrated thousands of speaker presentation slides, as well as many books and other publications and products.

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Some of his most popular work came from his three cartoon features, Creation Wise, After Eden, and Let There Be Truth.

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After 23 years with Answers in Genesis, last November, Dan joined the ministry team of Reasons for Hope.

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His new cartoon feature is Truth Jabs, and it's an editorial style cartoon that brings a

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Christian worldview perspective to current events. Dan lives in northern

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Kentucky with his wife, Marsha, and their 16 -year -old daughter, and he wants you guys to know that content from tonight's presentation was used in developing the

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Fairy Tale Arc exhibit at the Answers in Genesis Arc Encounter, and tonight he's going to share some insights and a secret about that with us.

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Okay, go ahead, Dan. All right, thank you very much, Terry, and now

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I'm going to share my screen and make sure this thing works okay. There we go, and share.

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All right. Yay! All right, good. Well, thank you for inviting me to be your speaker for this evening, and tonight's talk is called

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Stop Mything the Boat, and this is a topic that's kind of near and dear to my heart, being a cartoonist and illustrator for so long.

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And working in the apologetics area for so long that, well, I'm going to give you a little behind the scenes of how this got started and everything, but, you know, we've been to the

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Arc Encounter many times, and like Terry said, there's a portion of the

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Arc Encounter that has a featured area that talks about fairy tale arcs, and so you zoom in, you go into this place, and you see all these books that are illustrated with these little arcs, and there's a book right in the middle, this particular one, and that actually has my artwork on it, okay?

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So we're going to zoom in. A couple weeks before the Arc Encounter opened up, I got this request for this piece of artwork that I did for an illest, well, for a magazine article that I produced on fairy tale arcs in Answers Magazine, and so I altered the artwork a little bit before I gave it to them, and so I'm going to show you the secret hidden thing that's in this particular piece of artwork, okay?

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So there's the artwork right there, and I want you to pay particular attention to the elephant and the lion, okay?

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And so my wife's name and my daughter's name are hidden in this artwork, so I'm going to zoom in just a little bit.

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I'm going to zoom in a lot. My daughter's name is hidden in the arc, or the trunk of the elephant.

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If you can't see it, there it is right there, okay? All right, so everyone see it?

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All right, and then my wife's name is hidden on the lioness's jaw, right there,

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Marcia, M -A -R -C -I -A. So they always like when I hide their names in my artwork, and it's good to make brownie points with your wife when you do that.

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So I've been working for Reasons for Hope now since November, so I'm the new kid on the block, and I really don't have a ton of new artwork to show yet.

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We've been creating a lot of videos and stuff because of the whole COVID thing, and so that's kind of limited the new artwork that I've been able to do, but I've done lots of illustration and lots of cartooning over the past 25 years in apologetics ministry, and here we are, the new

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Reasons for Hope family that I have, and I love these guys, and it's a blessing to be working for this ministry.

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And here's just a few new pieces that I'll show off real quick here. Dr. John Whitcomb passed away recently, and so I did a piece of artwork that's a little bit different from my style and such, so honored him with that.

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And then Ravi Zacharias, I did sort of the same type of thing with a different type of style, but I wanted to honor these gentlemen with their lives, and we're grateful for their presence here on this earth while they were here.

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And then this is my new cartoon, Truth Jabs, and so like I said, it's more of an editorial cartoon.

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I get to watch the news and hopefully put some perspective on things that are going on around us. And then

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I've also got some videos on YouTube and Facebook on instructing young artists how to draw, so you can draw like baby

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T -Rexes, and you can draw along with me. And then sometimes my Draw It and Know It feature is

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Bible verses, and so I'll draw out a Bible verse, and Proverbs 3 .5

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says, Lean not on your own understanding. This gentleman here has been leaning on his understanding, and he's been adjusting to lean on it because it keeps moving, and it's about to get him in some serious trouble.

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So it's fun to draw these things and to present the truth from God's Word, so that's been a real blessing.

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And then coming up next week, I've got a drawing camp that you can look on the Reasons for Hope Facebook page and find out all about that, so pray for me as I'm doing this thing.

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It's a first time for me. All right, so into the ark topic. Like I said,

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I spent about 23 years with Answers in Genesis, and I've seen lots of speakers give lots of Noah's Ark talks.

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And here my good friend, Dr. Georgia Purdom, is giving a talk on Noah's Ark, and she's using some of my artwork in doing so.

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Usually the speakers will talk just like a minute or so about that we shouldn't do these fairytale arcs.

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We shouldn't use those arcs because they're not good. And so it's good that the speaker tells people that, but I can imagine sitting in the seats, a lot of people are so attached to them that they're kind of like, well, okay, that's your opinion.

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I'm going to keep, you know, liking them. And so I thought, you know, I could probably flesh that argument out and help people really think through this issue.

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So like I said, this is probably going to be one of the most layman -friendly talks that you've ever had.

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But I hope it makes you think, and I hope it makes you, it challenges some things that you maybe have held on for years.

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One thing that I do want to make sure that I am clear about is that there are a lot of parents, and there are a lot of grandparents that have given

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Noah's Ark books to children and grandchildren, and they're very well -meaning in doing so.

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They want the next generations to love God's Word, and they want them to be involved in thinking about biblical events.

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And so I've got a collection of Noah's Ark books in my collection. I collect the small arks, particularly for artistic reasons, and I open them up, and I see lots of them that have a signature in there similar to this, to my precious grandson,

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Eric, love, Grandma Emily. And so I'm touched every time I see one of these things, but I want to, and if you've done that sort of thing,

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I'm not here to condemn or point fingers or anything, but again, I want to challenge some thinking about things that we see around us all the time.

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These little arks are generally marketed to children, but they go beyond that.

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They're in Christian bookstores, and they're in churches and nurseries, and so we see them all the time.

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And so a lot of us just don't stop to think that there might not be something good about this. And like I said, they're just all over the place.

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You guys are going to see more little arks tonight than you've probably seen in the last year and a half. But again, that's the point, that they're all over the place, all right?

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So I did this cartoon a while back, and it shows a lady that just loves these cute little arks.

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And again, there might be some people in this audience that are kind of leaning in that direction, and I don't want you to feel like I'm calling you evil.

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You're not. Again, this is something that we've equated with. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I do want to reiterate that.

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Particularly if you're an illustrator or you're a publisher, a book publisher, these things are very popular, and so some people are just making a paycheck or, you know, this is just the formula that works.

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It's a successful thing. And again, I want to challenge that tonight. If you've ever looked at Ken Ham's book

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Already Gone, which I would highly, highly recommend, it has some very startling statistics in it.

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And basically it says that if you take a church youth group and you line up all the kids, this is a conservative church youth group, and you take away two -thirds of those kids, that's actually what's gonna happen when they get out into the real world, they get out in the college, they're gonna start moving away from the church.

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And so when people see that they often think it's it's college that's the problem. Actually it's not.

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There's surveys that statistics in this book that tell us that kids have questions about the

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Bible and those things aren't getting answered even in conservative churches. And so questions about Genesis, about Noah's Flood, about creation, all those things are really hot topics.

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And kids aren't getting answers in the church, at least they're not getting satisfying answers, and so when they get to college then they can physically, you know, separate from the church because they're out of the home.

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And so the the formative years, the young years, are very very important for children to get answers and to be taught right, specifically about origins and Genesis.

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All right, so 1st Peter 315 is very very important to our ministries. In fact it's where we get our ministry name.

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But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks for you a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.

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And so I really want to do that tonight. I don't want to make anyone feel bad, put fingers, and all that sort of thing, but again

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I'm challenging ideas hopefully with gentleness and respect. What is the most asked

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Noah's Ark question that I've heard over the past 25 years? Well there's a couple forms of it, and they go something like this.

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Either it's, how did all those animals fit on the Ark? That's a huge question that people have.

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Or sometimes it's not posed so nicely. It's more like an accusation. There's no way all those animals could fit onto Noah's Ark.

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All right, so that that capacity is an issue for a lot of people. And a lot of people will say,

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Dan, get a life. This isn't this isn't an important thing. There's a lot more important things in life. But I'm gonna say that this may be a symptom of a problem, and I think it's a it's a piece of the puzzle.

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And so I think we can take this way of thinking about Noah's Ark and use it to apply to other things too.

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So let's keep this in mind that this doesn't only work for Noah's Ark. This type of thinking about being careful about how we teach children and the importance of it applies to other things too.

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All right, so Noah's Ark is a huge vessel, humongous, and we are blessed that God in his wisdom and grace and mercy actually told us in his word the size of the

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Ark. And so if you do check in Scripture there there's numbers there that tell us exactly how big

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Noah's Ark was. And so Dan?

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Yeah. All right, so play.

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Now do you have one slide? Yes, now it's the whole screen, so that's perfect. Okay. All right, so I'll start again.

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Robin, are you ready? Yes, please begin.

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I love that picture. That's so cute. It is cute. Don't get too attached to it. All right, so the question is, if the

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Bible is so clear about Noah's Ark, why do we see so many small arcs around us?

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And so that's a question that I want you to ask yourself. What is the reason for this? And I'm gonna reveal my answer at the end of the talk.

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All right, so it has something to do with children. It has something to do with the ages of children.

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And so again, these small arcs are marketed to children. But yet, think about it.

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Disaster movies are very popular these days, and so we get a little taste of what a disaster would be like.

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And an end -of -the -world disaster happened back in the Genesis times.

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And so this was not a pleasant type of thing. This was the world ending.

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This was thousands, millions of people perhaps dying. Most of the animals on the surface of the earth dying.

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People fighting for their lives, watching this Ark float by that they should have been on, but they weren't.

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And the waters are rising up, and horrible terror. Just tragic, okay?

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So not a very good time at all. And yet, if we were to make a movie out of that and really reflect what was going on, this sin -cursed world that God decided to wipe out, and then the horror of the judgment of God coming down on that world, it would at least be

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R -rated as a movie, and probably even worse if we really wanted to reflect all the things that happened there.

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So the problem is, how do you take a story that's horrible like that, and how do you distill that down to something of a

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G rating? And then the challenge there is, how do you be true to Scripture?

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How do you stay true to what you're supposed to communicate about that biblical event? All right, so here's some encouragement from Psalms, because we are supposed to communicate those things to the next generation.

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Psalm 78, two through four says, I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.

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We will not hide them from their children, but tell them to the coming generation, the glorious deeds of the

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Lord in his might, and the wonders that he has done. So God wants us to take the things that are good, and the things that are maybe harder to communicate, to hear, and he wants us to communicate those to the next generation.

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And so we're to ask ourselves continually as we're teaching, are we being true to Scripture?

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That's my encouragement for you tonight. James 3 .1, I get so nervous, or this verse just makes me sit up, because there's many of us that are teachers.

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Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that those who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

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So as we're teaching children, especially, these things, we're to be very, very careful with how we do that, and honor

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God's Word as we're doing so. So keep asking ourselves, are we being true to Scripture?

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So if we're going to communicate about Noah's Ark and the flood, what elements should we be communicating to be faithful to Scripture?

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Well, it's an account of man, sin, sinful man. God saw man's sin.

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God, being a righteous God, judged man's sin. There was a flood that he sent to judge that sin, but there was a warning that went out, and there was a righteous man named

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Noah, and he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah obeyed. There was a large vessel that God instructed him how to build.

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There was a lot of animals that went on this ark, so that's part of the account. Noah's family went on this large vessel.

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They were saved from the flood and from God's judgment, and then they got, they had a new beginning after they got off, and there was a rainbow promise.

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And so those, I think, are very key elements to the account. On the flip side, though, what is the world teaching?

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By and large, a lot of the books that I've collected talk about Noah built an ark.

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They don't give a reason, some of them. God sent a flood. Oh no. Cute animals and a fun boat ride.

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And that's really how you can sum up the majority of the books that have been produced for children that are supposed to communicate about Noah's flood to the young ones.

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And so the problem is we've taken this, you know, horrible story, well horrible historical account, okay?

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I try not to use the word story. And we've distilled it down into a fairy tale. We've taken all the necessary needed things out about God, and we've turned it into this feel -good, you know, makes you smile type of thing.

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And that's not what happened at all. Not that we're trying to scare children, but we've got to communicate important things.

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So again, we need to ask ourselves, are we being true to Scripture? So we look at Scripture, and we see the real numbers that God has given to us.

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And you know, as biblical creationists in the book of Genesis, we're kind of, you know, known for sticking to the numbers.

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So we're going to talk about that in a little bit. All right, so those numbers are very, very important. So the rules for Christians really,

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I think, should be that we need to honor God in giving us those numbers when we illustrate Noah's Ark. On the flip side, what does the world do?

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What's, what are their rules? Pretty much, it doesn't matter. We don't care what the Bible says. We're gonna do what we want to do.

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And so I have some samples here that, if you think I'm being a little, you know, flippant about that, you can find

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Noah's Ark in any shape and size. You can find it, it seems like it's an artist's challenge to stuff the

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Ark full, as full of animals as you possibly can. And so in a submarine, really?

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So these people aren't really even trying. I don't think they even know, maybe haven't even cracked a

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Bible. So some people are on that end of the scale. But again, far too many of the

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Arks are small and cute, and I don't think they're being faithful to the account.

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Now, I was in a, in a bookstore the other day, and I want to tell you about a book that I found.

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But again, in Genesis chapter 1, we find out six days. Six days of creation.

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Biblical creationists, six 24 -hour days, right? So that's, that's what we were sticking to, and anyone tells us anything different, and we get a little, you know, into that.

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Exodus, six days. So God's Scripture is clear, six days. Here's a book that I saw in the bookstore, and it's, it's marketed to very, very little children.

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Look at the numbers on the bottom. My first 4 .54 billion years, the earth.

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So we're teaching little, little, little kids those big numbers. As biblical creationists, are we, you know, getting a little excited about that?

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Yeah, I did when I saw that book. I thought, that's not right, and I'm, I feel bad about that book being in existence.

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Okay, so I got a little excited about that. When we see these books, and they don't reflect biblical numbers either, do we get a little excited about that?

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That's just the challenge I'm throwing out there for you. All right, so there's problems ahead when we, when we commit to numbers that don't agree with what

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God said, and we, we kind of conform to what the world's doing, and a lot of people will tell me, come on,

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Dan, they're just children, lighten up. All right, well, let's think about that. What's one of the first things that we teach children when they're, when they're growing up?

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The concept of big and small, and there are plenty of books on the market that do a really good job of teaching little, little children the concept of big and small.

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Very, very important, and you know, there's other books that children like me still get, they get my attention even more, because they deal with dinosaurs.

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I love dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, a lot of them are huge, and that's part of the magic of dinosaurs, that, you know, the little children will imagine these gigantic creatures, love massive, gigantic dinosaurs, and these books show them as massive, giant dinosaurs.

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So why am I bringing this up? Well, think about it. Dinosaurs, kids love dinosaurs, they love big dinosaurs.

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Dinosaurs are allowed to be big, so why isn't Noah's Ark granted the same type of rules?

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Why is a giant boat always constrained to be small for children? And we teach them

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Noah's Ark was small, yet dinosaurs are large. Okay, those little

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Ark books need to go away. That's, that's my, my bottom line. All right, so think about this too, and I've done a lot of research in this.

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What is the second most popular large ship in history? Now, if I could have everyone raise their hands and give me the answer,

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I think I would be able to say that on the tip of your tongue right now is a ship called the

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Titanic, right? We've been to the Titanic Museum down in the Pigeon Forge area, fantastic place, please go if you are in the area, but I will tell you that I've looked at lots of children's books about the

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Titanic, and I have yet to see one book that doesn't show the

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Titanic as massive and huge, even when it's taught to little, little children. So why is the

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Titanic allowed to be large, but Noah's Ark, it's got to be small. What's, what's the, the, the solution to the mystery?

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Some people say, well, it's the, you're, you're against cartoons, Dan, because it's the cartoons that are showing

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Noah's Ark is small. Well, no, one, I'm a cartoonist, I love cartoons, and two, there are plenty of books that show the

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Titanic as massive, such as this one right here, but yet that's a very cartoony style, and so, you know, that's not the, that's, that's the solution either.

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Well, some people say, well, let's keep the arks, the small arks for the little kids that don't know any different, and then as they grow older and older, we'll make the arks bigger and bigger, and that might seem like a solution, but actually it's not, because again, those little arks are, are focused and they're marketed with all the marketing might to get those little kids to play with them and love them and enjoy them, and just as a little side note here,

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I went to a Christian bookstore a couple years ago, and I did a little challenge for myself. I wanted to see how many

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Noah's Ark books I could find in 15 minutes. These are the books that I found in 15 minutes.

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I didn't find any ones with large arks in them, they were all small, so that was really, really a sad time, but it was a very eye -opening exercise for me, but see these little arks that are marketed to these little children aren't just marketed to little children anymore.

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A lot of people grew up with them, and so that affection remains with you as an adult, and so you've, you've kind of gained this flavor as a child, and now you see these plates and teapots and lamps, and these aren't for little children, and snow globes and Christmas tree ornaments and jewelry and even fine art paintings, and there's some fine artists that make a large part of their living off of making these

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Noah's Ark paintings for adults, and you know, some of them might end up in children's rooms, but, but still these are adults making a living off of making a fairy tale out of the account of Noah's flood.

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So lots of things that are made for adults. You can go to a Goodwill or whatever, and you can just pull

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Noah's Arks off the shelves. Again, these aren't for little children. Music boxes and all kinds of stuff. Proverbs 22, 6, think about it.

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Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. You've heard that? Sadly, I think that that can work the other way around, too.

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Train up a child in the way you should not go, and he may not depart from that.

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So getting a good foundation as a young child is a very, very important thing.

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You can find Noah's Ark merchandise with pretty much anything, right? There's all kinds of products with Noah's Ark on them that have no connection to anything that's trying to defend scripture or communicate the truth of scripture.

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It's just a fun thing. Slot machines, yeah, so lots of crazy stuff.

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You know, when I was working with Answers in Genesis, and the Ark Encounter was being built, we heard an accusation, and thinking about the products that I've just shown you,

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I think it would be safe to say that there's millions and millions of dollars spent on manufacturing those items, and there's millions and millions of dollars being spent on purchasing these items going in your homes, and so there's a lot of money involved here.

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And when the Ark Encounter was being built, a lot of people would come to us, and they would say, it's a waste of money to spend millions of dollars on the

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Ark Encounter, you should spend it on the poor. You know, I appreciate people that have a compassion for those that don't have money, and they need things, you know, there's a lot of people that do.

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And so this argument comes from a well -intentioned, you know, type of thinking, but my response to it was, it's a waste of money to spend millions of dollars on fairytale arcs, we should be spending it on sharing at the gospel.

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And so that's what Noah's, or the Ark Encounter does. You go to the Ark, you find out that it's a picture of salvation, you find out about the

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God that is the author of salvation, and man's sin, and judgment, and all those things at the

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Ark Encounter. So I think it's a very worthwhile place to go to, and it's helping people find their way to heaven.

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So in a large way, too, I think it's helping change the perspective of people that have seen these little arcs, and now they've got burned into their memory, this massive ship that might cause those little arcs to look a little funny now and out of place, which

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I really, really hope happens, because again, Noah's Ark was a massive, massive vessel, and so you start to think these little arcs, they don't, they wouldn't work real well, and so that's the type of image that I want people,

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I want you to be challenged with this image right here, and think about that the next time you see these little story books with these little arcs.

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Alright, so I'm going to talk about some confusion, too, when you commit to the little images where we're getting into bad water.

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Here's a book that's one of my favorites in my collection. It says, How Big Was Noah's Ark?

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So I love the title. Look at that image. What's the answer going to be?

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So let's open up the book. We find out that, now, these are metrics, so I'm just gonna assume that those are the right numbers.

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So we're starting good, we got good numbers, but then you back the camera up, and you think, oh, they messed it up, and you see someone like me that's visual,

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I will look at the image, and that's what sticks. I can look at the numbers. How many people are gifted enough that their brain can visualize what those numbers mean, and then they would realize, well, it contradicts the image there, but for me, given a choice, and I think for most children, too, they're walking away with that image.

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So How Big Was Noah's Ark? That's what's in their mind, but it gets more interesting, and it gets kind of worse in the rest of the book, because just a few pages later, it says,

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How Big Was Goliath? And if you read the text there, it says that Goliath was over nine feet tall.

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Okay, so it gives Goliath's numbers, but it shows a giant man, and he's allowed to be a giant.

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So I thought, well, what if I took Photoshop, and I did a little Photoshop magic, and I was consistent with what they just did to Noah's Ark?

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What would that look like? And there you go. All right, so if you were at the store, and you're buying something for your grandchild or your child, and you saw them do that to Goliath, would that be a book that you would buy?

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Probably not, because you know that they're misteaching about Goliath. But again, for so many of us,

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Noah's Ark just flies right by, and we like it, and we get it. Why do we do that?

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And then here's part of the thinking, too, I think, especially for artists. We need to keep the

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Ark unique. The Ark is unique, and we need to treat it that way. So follow along with me.

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Here's some images of a cartoon distorted, no, these are highly distorted, okay, cartoon distorted bus, a plane, a boat, and then

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Noah's Ark. You remember that game at Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other? One of these things here is not like the other, and of course it's

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Noah's Ark. So which one of these items would be a stumbling block if it were portrayed as a distorted cartoon image?

30:41

Well, let's think about that. Would a distorted cartoon image of a bus be a stumbling block for somebody?

30:48

No, because we've seen thousands and thousands of school buses in real life, so you can distort the school buses all you want.

30:55

It's not going to change my perspective about what a real school bus is. The same for the plane, the same for the boat, the big ship, but for Noah's Ark, we don't have the real one, and so we're not treated to common instances of seeing that image, but we see the small ones.

31:14

And so the Ark encounter, that makes it all the more exciting for me because now people are getting to see a realistic image of what the

31:21

Ark is, and hopefully that image of the Ark will become their default image, the one that when they hear

31:26

Noah's Ark, they're pointing in their mind to that image right there. Alright, but sadly for every one of those large

31:33

Ark, biblical -sized Arks that are in our world, if you go on Google search and you look for Arks, you'll find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

31:45

It's not even close of these little little Arks, and so I'm afraid that so many children, that's their default image about what

31:53

Noah's Ark is, and that's what they grew up with. So again, the Ark encounter, highly recommend that you go there.

31:59

Take your children, take your grandchildren, have them look at that giant vessel and imprint that in their minds about what the

32:07

Ark really was. Again, it's not wrong, it's not a stumbling block to have cartoony rockets because we see rockets in the news a lot, and so there's no question there about what those things really are.

32:22

Alright, here's one that maybe a lot of people haven't thought about. Why should the church help atheists mock scripture?

32:30

Do you realize that's what we're doing when we have those little Arks and we embrace them and we have them produced so often in our culture?

32:38

Atheists love fairy tale Arks. Now, there's a lot to think about with that thought, and so you see mocking of creationists with small

32:49

Arks a lot. There have been protests at the Ark with atheists holding up these little fairy tale

32:56

Ark signs, and this particular one says, this fable won't float.

33:01

We know this never, this isn't real, this never happened. And you know what? I hardly agree with that atheist.

33:08

It's not often that I agree with atheists, but that one I'm saying, amen, yes, preach it, that never happened, that fable won't float.

33:16

And you know what the fallacy there is? The fallacy there is that's a straw man fallacy. They don't want to show the real

33:22

Ark during their protest because that's realistic, that Ark works. But they'll show a cartoon, shrunk -down, impossible

33:31

Ark, and then they'll criticize that and they'll make their argument against that. It's like this wrestler here, this, well it's

33:37

Bill Maher, an atheist, saying you creationists are just wimps and easy to defeat, but he's not wrestling an atheist or a creationist, he's wrestling a straw man, which is just anybody could beat that.

33:50

So that's what the straw man argument is, and those little Arks are straw man arguments for the atheists.

33:56

And sadly a lot of people fall for them, and a lot of people get embarrassed. Yeah, that's what I believe. Well, you know, stand up against them, point out that's not the

34:03

Ark that I believe in. And so many times you see articles online and they're using the little

34:09

Arks to get in the people's minds, it's a fairy tale, it's not real. They're cute, and sometimes my stuff gets misused too, and I cringe a little bit when

34:19

I see people taking artwork from creationist websites and then using it for other purposes. So you get a little thick skin in my business after a while from seeing that so much.

34:30

And then atheists will take those cute Ark images and mix it with horrible mockery of Scripture, and that's what's happened here.

34:38

They know that the Ark account, the flood account, is horrible death and judgment and all that sort of stuff, and yet there's so many children's books that try to make it look cute.

34:47

And so they're having a go at the creationists here with this book. So again, I ask the question, why so small?

34:54

Why do we often see Noah's Ark just shrunk down into these little boats with just a handful of animals on it that would never survive anything near a storm, much less a worldwide flood?

35:06

All right, well, here's the answer. Do you have your guesses as to what I'm gonna say? Well, the answer is the main reason

35:13

I think is, it's the animals. It's really all about the animals. You see, the size of Noah's Ark is huge.

35:22

The animals that went on Noah's Ark, and there are many animals, they're all small compared to the

35:28

Ark. And so this image right here, I think, is pretty much how you, if you want to show the animals and you have to show the

35:34

Ark at the same time, this is kind of how you have to do it. Because if you put the animals next to the

35:39

Ark, the Ark just gets to be so big you can't see the whole thing. And so here's a picture of the

35:45

Ark encounter, just a part of it. You see down at the bottom, there's people down there. And again, if you showed animals next to those people, you can't show the whole

35:55

Ark. And so I think people are just trying to, you know, I want the whole Ark and I want some animals too, and so we're gonna shrink it down so you can see both at the same time.

36:03

So it's a solution that works, but the consequences are not good. And so we see that a lot, and that's the images that people are carrying around in their mind, that the

36:16

Ark was small. And so again, good intentions sometimes lead to unfortunate circumstances.

36:23

So again, if you want to show the animals and the Ark at the same time, you have to move the animals closer to the camera and the

36:30

Ark further away. Here's something else to think about. The flood account comes from the

36:38

Book of Genesis. The Book of Genesis, by and large, to atheists and the world, is not a popular, well -loved book because it talks about a different origin than your science books at school and that sort of stuff.

36:52

And so people think it's outdated, people think it's a fairy tale, all that sort of stuff, but Noah's Ark is super popular.

37:00

So how can the world embrace something so heartily as Noah's Ark because it's from the

37:07

Bible? Well, think about this. Scripture says, For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded by water.

37:23

The Bible says they're willingly ignorant. I think what's happening here is that we've taken the biblical account, the truth of Scripture, and in some instances we've done this, but other people, whoever produces the books, have stripped out all the biblical content that's offensive to people.

37:45

God's judgment of sin and that sort of thing, that God exists even.

37:51

And so if we've taken out all those biblical elements, we've presented to them a fairy tale that the world can embrace then because it's really not biblical anymore.

38:02

They're willingly ignorant. They don't want to look at God. They don't want to look at the truth of God, but hey, if they can look at the

38:07

Noah's Ark account and love it, that should be a warning flag to us. Okay, and so these types of books that are loved by so many people, are loved by atheists or whatever your background is, there's not enough in here for them to be offended by it.

38:27

And so again, red flag, red flag. So if we're promoting these small Ark books and we're giving them to children and that sort of thing, in a sense we're kind of helping some people.

38:38

And again, I don't want you to get upset, but just kind of take inventory of what you're thinking about Noah's Ark is.

38:46

We should be on about promoting a real huge ship and these little books promote that it's just a little boat.

38:55

These little books talk about it's not the judgment of man's sin. It's about a lot of cute animals.

39:01

It's not about God's salvation. It's about a fun boat ride. And I want you to look at that title on this book right here.

39:09

I about flipped when I saw that book title. I cannot believe the amount of biblical ignorance that whoever made this book and illustrated it has.

39:19

The Ark even has a little bit of size to it. But a dream vacation, the end of the world scenario with millions of people dying and the world being destroyed is a dream vacation.

39:29

That book cannot have any, you know, stitch of biblical content in it with a title like that.

39:37

Romans 12 2 says, and do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

39:47

So here's an area where we have to kind of make a choice. Are we gonna, you know, hold on to those little

39:53

Arks and continue to misteach children? Even if we want them to be exposed to biblical things, there's consequences to getting that imagery wrong.

40:04

Or are we gonna follow what God says and, you know, really take these things a little more seriously.

40:10

So I hope you're moving in that direction. Alright, think about the rainbow too. We see rainbows around us.

40:16

Those of us that are biblical creationists, Christians, I love the symbol of the rainbow because of the meaning behind it.

40:24

That promise that God gave us that he'll never again flood the world like he did at that one time. But again, the world has taken that thing from God's Word, stolen it, and is using it for some very unpleasant, unbiblical reasons.

40:37

Something that is highly objectionable to God. Now these people need to know the love of God. They need to know the gospel.

40:45

But again, what they've done is they're willingly ignorant and they're taking symbols from God's Word and misusing them to promote their sin.

40:53

Something that's, you know, very objectionable. And at the Ark Encounter, they even took the rainbow colors, lit the

40:59

Ark up, which was beautiful. And when that got out into the news, a lot of people were saying, hey, what are you stealing our rainbow for?

41:07

You're misusing the rainbow. No, they've taken God's rainbow and they're using it in right ways to promote

41:13

God's truth and God's Word. So I have one last little story to tell you.

41:20

And for those of you that might be at a hard sell on this, I want you to pay particular attention because I've got quite a library of Noah's Ark cartoons in my repertoire, my portfolio.

41:33

This particular cartoon was posted a number of years ago on the Answers in Genesis website, or the

41:40

Facebook page. And so it was up there for a few days and some of the comments that were coming back were very, very interesting.

41:46

And this one in particular, let me read the cartoon for you first. The first panel says, the little baby or toddler in his crib and he's got

41:54

Noah's Ark stuff all over the place. And the mom says, he loves the story of Noah's Ark because it's all about a cute boat full of animals.

42:03

Next panel. He grows up. He rejects the story of Noah's Ark because it's about a cute boat full of animals.

42:11

That cartoon went up and it gets lots of responses when it gets posted. There was a particular gentleman that wrote about this cartoon.

42:21

And he said, when I first saw this argument, I thought to myself, how completely silly.

42:27

And you know, I get that from a lot of people. I get that from really, really good friends. I get that from really, really good friends that are

42:33

Christians. And so it's kind of an uncomfortable thing to talk about something that seems so not important until you've heard about it.

42:42

And pay attention to this particular testimony. So this gentleman thought, this is nuts.

42:48

This is silly. This cartoon is crazy. Then it continues. The other day

42:53

I'm outside with my grandsons and my seven -year -old grandson and I started talking about Noah's Ark. It about blew me away when this young kid reasoned that Noah's Ark and the flood are just stories because, and here it is, the pictures he had seen.

43:12

The cute fake childlike pics makes it clear to him that an ark like that could not do what the story claimed.

43:21

Then he continues. So for an adult, we can tell it's a childlike representation. But a child on the other hand lacks the ability to reason this out, but can still reason that what they are seeing isn't possible.

43:35

He's right on. So that's the bad news. The good news is, oh, and on to end on a positive note, the boys are super excited to see a real reflection of the ark, if not this year, next year.

43:46

So I assume that they've probably gone to the ark encounter already. And hopefully, that young doubter has had his mind changed because he's seen the real, authentic, biblical -sized ark.

43:59

Praise the Lord. So again, as teachers, as parents and grandparents, we should be trying to find more materials on the biblical stuff that's accurate, and kind of weeding out all the non -biblical stuff.

44:19

But at the same time, though, we can use that non -biblical stuff to teach as well. So put your child's biblical glasses on and help them to see what

44:28

I've been talking about tonight in this presentation. And then they can say, okay, that's not the real ark.

44:35

I know what the real ark is. I know what the Bible says. And so there's some value in those little arks. So don't necessarily, you know, do away with them, but use them as gospel opportunities to teach your children truth.

44:47

So rethink Scripture, well, rethink using Scripture and applying it in the real world, in the things that you see and purchase and how you give gifts.

44:56

And review those books a little more carefully sometimes before you give them to your dear ones to help them know what

45:03

God's Word says more. Alright, so be true to Scripture in your gift giving too.

45:09

Alright, so my email, if you want to reach me is dan at r4h .com.

45:16

And then you can check out the Reasons for Hope ministry at r4h .com. We're on Facebook and you can find my

45:25

Truth Jab cartoons on Facebook as well. And then we have lots and lots of material on the

45:31

Reasons for Hope YouTube channel. A lot of the videos that I was talking about, the Draw It and Know It feature, they've got a lot of growing library of those things.

45:40

And so you can check those out and help your child become more biblical in their worldview using those materials too.

45:49

So thank you for watching. And now I'm hoping to get this back to a non -shared screen.

45:57

Okay, stop share. There we go. There we go. Oh, that was really good.

46:02

There it is. That was very good. Thank you so much, Dan. Did I step on too many toes? Probably not enough.

46:10

I think we're going to do some Q &A, but I have a question to start off with. So you showed us a lot of books and even toys that are not things that we should buy our kids or grandkids.

46:25

But what about things that we should like? Is the answer is in Genesis? Or are you aware of any other publishers that are putting out books and toys that are a closer model that maybe we can still introduce our kids to the story?

46:42

That's the hardship of doing this presentation because it's easy to say that's not what we're supposed to do.

46:50

But then where do you go after that? And so right now the ARC Encounter is a good place to go to.

46:56

Answers in Genesis has a lot of good materials with biblical sized ARCs. I guess after that I would just say try to be as discerning as you can because any even

47:08

Christian publishers have a wide variety of sizes of the ARC.

47:14

And I wish a lot more publishers and editors would listen to my talk and get a grasp for, okay, maybe we shouldn't be making those and we should be making large

47:26

ARCs instead. So it's harder to find what I would like to do if I had more time.

47:32

And I've got plans to make more biblical sized like wall decals and that sort of stuff.

47:38

But it's just a matter of having the time to do it. So I can only just say try to be as discerning as you can and pay attention when you find an

47:46

ARC that's good size. But even after that it gets more difficult because so many people don't check out scripture with even the details of the

47:54

ARC. And I did another video recently that has a lot of the details like you'll find pictures of Noah and his family going out and gathering the animals.

48:04

Well they didn't do that either. You'll find pictures of Noah and his sons closing the ARC door. The Bible plainly tells us

48:10

God was the one that shut the door. And so again people aren't paying attention to detail when it comes to biblical accounts.

48:19

And they just feel free to kind of make it up as they go it seems. So be discerning and try to find the stuff as best you can.

48:27

Okay and we have a question from Mark. He says on the answers cover from the magazine.

48:34

What is the large fin -like projection on the box of the ARC? I don't remember reading that design feature in Genesis.

48:43

I presume it's there somewhere at the bow of the ARC. Well the

48:48

Bible gives us the very basic dimensions of the ARC. It doesn't give us all the fine detail of what the

48:57

ARC surface may have looked like. A lot of people picture this long shoebox type of thing.

49:04

And I don't think it necessarily means that the ARC was you know flat on all the sides and that sort of stuff.

49:13

Dan are you able to share that picture again so we can look at it while you're explaining that? Sure let me let me track that down.

49:24

Let's see the magazine cover you mean? Yes. Okay all right let's share the screen.

49:32

We'll try this again. Share and play.

49:42

All right did I get the right screen? Yes perfect. Okay so that yeah if you look at the

49:48

ARC encounter ARC it looks very very different from most Noah's ARCs that you see. And the reason for that is they're not trying to be unbiblical but I think that some people it really depends on where you fall on you know are you going to be it has to be inside those dimensions or is that the capacity there.

50:10

There's a video that the Eastern Genesis Ministry produced called Thinking Outside the Box that would give you a better explanation to what

50:17

I'm going to tell you tonight but I'll try to I'll try to do it some justice. All right there's a gentleman by the name of Tim Lovett from Australia and he's an engineer by trade and so he took it upon himself to really look into the dynamics of Noah's ARC and the biblical dimensions and he took the biblical dimensions to some ship engineers people that build ships and these people were amazed at the dimension of the

50:44

ARC because that's the right ratio mathematically to get an ARC that would survive in rough seas and yet have a good a comfortable ride.

50:55

So you could you could change that dimension and you could get a more comfortable ride but then the ARC would be more susceptible to damage from a storm or you could go the other way and make it really you know really tough but then your ride is terrible.

51:08

And so that that dimension right in the middle there is just perfect and so a professional that is a ship builder will see those dimensions in the

51:18

Bible and go that's not an accident God knew what he was doing. All right but then he also looked into history and he saw that a lot of ancient ships had this this protrusion on the front kind of sticking out and then they had another thing kind of in the back and so he started paying attention to where did people get that idea and so his thinking was that perhaps some of these things that we're seeing in ancient ships were handed down from people before them.

51:48

Maybe Noah had that sort of thing on the ARC and so he started experimenting around with it and he made a model of the

51:54

ARC and he took it out and he had that that fin that you see on the on the ARC today the

51:59

ARC encounter and he took it out and put it in the water and he found that those things stabilize the

52:06

ARC. What you want to have the ARC do is when the waves are coming at you you want to be heading into the waves all right you don't want to be parallel with the waves because your your

52:17

ARC will rock around like crazy and everyone will get seasick and it'll be terrible but but that device on the front of the

52:24

ARC and the fin in the back helps it head into the waves and so that's it's given a better explanation in the answers in Genesis product but I hope that helps.

52:38

That was very good so later on after they landed Noah was selling blueprints to his

52:44

ARC. That's kind of nice. Yeah it's an interesting concept what types of things did get handed down and why do we see those things in history?

52:55

It's an interesting concept. No I agree they people today are still mimicking things that they did a long time ago.

53:05

All that information was you know passed down through the ages just atheists are not really willing to see that they think that man of today is the smart one are the smart ones and man of the past are not.

53:22

Yeah there's some amazing technology in the past and again depending on your worldview we're looking for that sort of stuff because we know man was intelligent in the past but that's the handicap of having a worldview that that doesn't leave you open to that possibility and you're shocked when you see that sort of stuff and it becomes this great mystery that shouldn't be there.

53:44

Right. Jeff the geologist says the fins seem to be there to catch the wind.

53:51

The wind will orient them so the boat will be perpendicular to the direction of the waves.

53:57

Oh very interesting. Okay so that was if anybody wants to unmute and ask a question

54:06

I I think are you okay with that Dan or do you just want to slip out? I'll be here as long as you need me to.

54:15

We could go ahead and end the recording now and then people could feel a little more free to just yeah