Faith on the Edge! Is the Earth Flat?

Terri, Terri are you there? I am here. Okay. Hello. Disclaimer that we're recording.

Yes, I'll do that. So hello, this is Terri Camarazzo and I want to put out a disclaimer first on behalf of Creation Fellowship Institute that we are recording this event.

So I want to ask all of you who are on Zoom with us to turn off your microphones and we also would like to ask you to turn off your cameras so that Pat is going to be the only one whose video is showing while he shares his presentation.

So I am happy to introduce to all of you our speaker for tonight, which is

Pat Roy. Pat Roy served at the Institute for Creation Research for 12 years as the

Director of Broadcast Media. It was during this time at ICR that he and his wife created the

Jonathan Park Audio Dramas, a creation -based audio drama heard by millions around the world.

Pat has served as the Director of Genesis Apologetics. He has traveled the nation speaking to hundreds of audiences of all ages about the importance of trusting

God's Word. And now Pat is working full time as the Director of the

Mount St. Helens Creation Center. But in between there, Pat spent several years along with Kyle Justice as one of the

Creation Guys. Together they traveled and researched and created the documentary Faith on the

Edge, which gives biblical and scientific case against the flat earth.

So we're happy to have Pat Roy here with us tonight to talk to us about that. This is our last regular presentation of our

Virtually There 2020 Fellowship that we've been having every Thursday night since the lockdowns started.

And so we're glad to be finishing with a big bang. Well, you know what

I mean. Pat Roy is our last but not least speaker of our regular series.

So tonight he's going to go a little bit long because he has some great videos and presentation to share with us and he promised not to bore us.

So we're going to appreciate that. And if you're watching along on Facebook or if you're watching on Zoom, if you do have any questions for Pat, you can go ahead and put them into the chat and at the end we'll have a short

Q &A time and ask him a couple of those questions. So with that, Pat, we're happy to have you.

Go ahead. Terry, thank you so much. By the way, I've been watching the different speakers that you've had.

It's been amazing. You guys have had just some, you know, I may actually be the least of the speakers you've had actually.

I'm not sure about that. But anyway, yes, my name is Pat. I'm with The Creation Guys.

The Creation Guys is myself and Kyle Justice. We are partners. Both of us have been in the creation movement for many, many years.

I've been in the creation movement for probably about 35 years. Kyle, about the same. Both he and I are media producers and so it's really kind of cool that we met because both of us have a lot of similarities in our lives.

So tonight I'll be producing this documentary that Kyle and I produced together called

Faith on the Edge. So basically it is a documentary about the flat earth. So anyway, like I mentioned, both of us work in creation ministry and one of the things that we started hearing quite a bit a couple years ago was that many, many of the creation ministries were starting to hear from flat earthers and they weren't happy with the creation movements.

And so as we were talking to different places, we began to realize that maybe we needed to put together a documentary.

Now at first we were hoping there would be a documentary that really debunks the flat earth. And then as we went along, we began to realize that really it's hard to bring somebody back from believing in the flat earth.

Matter of fact, along the way we contacted Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, CMI.

We also talked to David Reeves and a bunch of other ministries that have tackled this subject. And the question

I asked was, have you ever had somebody come back from the flat earth again? And the answer was no, really there hasn't been somebody that started to believe in the flat earth who came back to being a round earther again.

And so we began to realize that the purpose of this project was not to turn flat earthers into round earthers.

And who cares about that anyway? It's just the shape of the earth, right? I mean, what's more important is Christ. So we began to realize that more what we were doing was providing an apologetic so people would know ahead of time the evidence against the flat earth so that hopefully if they heard about the flat earth someday that they would choose not to go that direction.

Okay, so if the shape of the earth isn't important, why is a documentary important about it? Well, what's interesting is when we first started considering the project, we made a post on Facebook and just let people know about the project.

And what we were doing and what was amazing was right away we got a response from a woman.

And this is basically what she said. She said, guys, I need help. My husband became a flat earther.

And ever since then, he's pulled us out of church. He doesn't read the Bible anymore except for to try and prove that the earth is flat.

He no longer talks to our children, except for to try and convince them that the earth is flat. And she said,

I need help. My whole life has changed since my husband became a flat earther. So basically, we took her little message and we asked her if we could post that on Facebook anonymously.

And so we did. And what was amazing is we started to hear from ladies all around the nation.

We heard from so many people that were saying, that's my situation. My husband became a flat earther.

And ever since then, our lives have changed. And he's no longer sharing about Christ. And so Kyle and I began to realize that the shape of the earth really isn't important.

Who cares if it's round? Who cares if it's flat? It really doesn't make a difference at all.

But what we began to realize is that it's important because I believe that it's another distraction or deception that's keeping men and some women as well from the first mission, which is serving

Christ with their whole heart. And so I truly believe that it's a deception that's going on.

Well, tonight I'm sure that there might be somebody there that's a flat earther. And if so, listen, I don't mean to,

I guess, make this like an argument more. It's like what Proverbs says, 21, 17, iron sharpeneth iron.

So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. So listen, I love when Christians can debate when it drives you deeper into the scriptures again and brings you closer to truth.

But listen, I'm not here for a fight tonight. Really what I'm here for is just to provide some thoughts for you to think through.

Well, now the flat earth is going huge. Matter of fact, there are believers around the globe that are actually becoming flat earthers.

And so it is a huge movement. It's not a small movement. I believe that most churches either think that it's a silly idea or they believe that it's really not that many people converting to the flat earth, but it is huge.

Again, we've gotten emails from churches that have split over the whole flat earth issue.

Of course, millions of people are posting on social media. There are millions and millions of YouTube videos,

Facebook posts, all kinds of posts on social media that are giving so -called evidence for the flat earth.

So this is where a lot of this is being generated, is there are just a lot of content about the flat earth.

Matter of fact, you can even take a flat earth cruise nowadays if you want to. You can sign up for a flat earth cruise. And with all the food on the cruise, maybe it should be the fat earth cruise if you eat all that food.

But yes, you can go on a flat earth cruise. Not only that, but one thing that we heard from a lot is that there are flat earth dating sites.

If your wife just doesn't become a flat earther and she ends up leaving you, you can actually go online and you can actually find another date on flat earth dating sites.

So it's really amazing all of the things that are happening out there in the flat earth movement.

I believe that more Christians are converting to the flat earth than any other time in history.

I've spent lots of hours talking to a lot of flat earthers, became friends with a lot of them. Some of them are really awesome people.

But I really do believe that more are converting to flat earth than any other time in history right now.

They're having flat earth conferences. And so these are getting bigger and bigger. There are literally thousands of people that show up to these different conferences.

You guys might have heard of Mike Hughes. He actually flew a rocket in the name of flat earth.

Now I don't believe he was actually a flat earther. I think he was using it as a promotional thing. He actually launched a rocket twice.

The second time he didn't survive it. And basically his thing was, he always said that he was going to go up and show that the earth was flat and not round.

Again, he didn't survive the second launch. So tonight, since I'm a media producer,

I'm going to talk at you a little bit. But I promised you that I would not bore you. So from time to time,

I'm going to drop into some media clips from our documentary. And so one of the things that we did when we first began this project is we wanted to see what the people out on the street were thinking about the flat earth.

Many people these days are starting to believe that the earth is flat. What do you think about that? That's still a thing.

It's round. You keep going around and around and around, man. It looks pretty flat to me, but I think it's round.

Saturn's round. Jupiter round. Everything else is round. I was actually reading something the other day that said the earth is in a doughnut shape.

And the moon is a coffee cup. Right? You never know. It could be flat. I think that it's whatever they tell us it is.

Okay, whatever they tell us it is. Yeah. So, but there's some people that say round, some that say flat. What do you think?

I think unless we actually go out there and explore it for ourselves, there's no way that we could actually know what it is.

No, I don't think the earth is flat. You think it's round? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, you're right.

I guess it's round. Really? I just convinced you just like that? There's a lot of compelling evidence that the possibility that the earth is flat, while in other cases, the earth is actually round.

And the Bible doesn't really talk about the earth being round. What shape do you think the earth is?

Triangle. I feel like that'd be a tough sell. You think it'd be a tough... I bet it's not as tough as you would think it would be.

I don't know. I think the earth is definitely round. For people that believe the earth is flat, maybe that's true.

It wouldn't be the two different shapes at the same time, though. Is that what you're saying? I don't know. I mean, our personal beliefs create our realities,

I guess. So, I think it can kind of be both at the same time.

So, do you know anybody who does believe in the flat earth? Yes. One of my good friends is a flat earth, I guess. No, I don't have any friends.

Tons of boys at my school. Yeah, definitely. There's people who say they do. I think it's definitely a cultural trend.

Kind of caught me by surprise when I found out, but yeah. Why do they become so passionate about it? It almost seems like they become evangelists of the flat earth.

It's like it's an anti kind of movement. A lot of people now are just starting to identify in an idea or a party versus themselves.

Those people need to find hobbies. Maybe that is their hobby. Oh, okay, okay.

Just using your own observations, why do you think the earth is round? Well, I can...

I know, that got me right there. Why the earth is round? Very hard to explain that.

My own senses, nothing I've been told. I would say just from the pull of gravity, and then also you look at the day -night cycle to the rest of the world.

Until they show evidence, that's when I will actually start looking into it. But he's saying the same thing about people who believe that the earth is round.

We've been given these facts. To say that the earth is flat is basically rejecting all of the scientific evidence that we've compiled.

Why do you think that young, younger people are the ones that are having a harder time accepting these things?

Where do you look next for young people to be, you know, upset, kind of overthrow the man, you know, overthrow the machine, is going to be at the government.

And I think that's where a lot of this, these tensions and these questions kind of raise from. So there you go, there we were out on the streets.

Of course, you're seeing probably about a tenth of the interviews that we did. Things that really hit us was one, that just about everybody that we interviewed knew somebody that believed in the flat earth.

The other thing that really hit us was, as you saw, when we asked round earthers to support why the earth was round, a lot of them couldn't come up with evidence based on their own of why the earth was round.

And so those were some interesting points to us. Well now, what it really comes down to, the most important thing, is what does the

Bible say about it? Many people these days are starting to...

There we go. What does the Bible say? Very important as Christians, right? The Bible should be the very first authority in our lives, right?

And so as we've talked to flat earthers, we've heard this statement over and over again, the Bible from cover to cover is a flat earth book.

I've also heard this, there are over 200 verses that clearly state that the earth is stationary, flat, and enclosed.

And so basically what I want to do for the next, I don't know, 15 minutes or so, is I would love to go through and make their case for them and talk about what the

Bible says. So here's a model. We talked to a lot of flat earthers and basically this is the flat earth model that I think a lot of them propose.

And so you'll notice that we've got a disc -shaped earth, we've got the dome that's over the top, we've got the great deep, you'll see that there's pillars holding up the earth, you can see the firmament is a hard firmament that is around the earth, and then

God's in his heaven, which is above the earth, and it's surrounded by water. And so these are some of the things that they talk about when they look at the scripture.

So let's look at some of the scriptures that they use for that and let me make their case for them for just a minute.

By the way, when we did this in our documentary, we ran this past a few of the different flat earthers that we had been working with.

We let them make changes, we let them kind of make their case, and basically they came away and said that they felt like we had represented them fairly well with the biblical case for the flat earth.

So let's run through those real quick. So basically Isaiah 40 .22 of course is the one that everybody goes to.

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.

Okay, so the first thing that they say is that circle is a flat disc, it's not a sphere. Okay, here's another one that they say that there's ends to the earth.

Thome whom I have taken from the ends of the earth. Okay, so that's Isaiah 41 .9.

So they would say that there are ends on that disc. Okay, one of the other things that they say is that the earth is stable, it's not moving through space, it's not spinning on an axis, but it's actually stable, and it's on pillars.

And you'll see here in 1 Chronicles 16 .30 that it says that it be not moved.

Okay, here's another one when it's talking about the foundations of the earth, Job 38 .4.

Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the of the earth? Okay, here's one for the pillars, 1

Samuel 2 .8. For the pillars of the earth are the lords. Okay, here's a verse for the underworld.

And no man in heaven nor on earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book. So basically they make the case that there is an underworld in between the disc and the pillars that it's on.

Well, a big part of the flat earth is the firmament. Genesis 1 .6

-8. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.

And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said,

Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

And it was so. Now what flat earthers say is that that word firmament, which is rakia in Hebrew, means to pound out.

And so basically what the case that they make is that that dome is actually made out of a possible hard material.

And so basically that's the idea is that the firmament is a hard material that was pounded out.

And to back up that idea, they used Job 37 .18. Passed out with him spread out the sky which is strong and as a molten looking glass.

Okay, so could that be a hard material that composes the firmament? Okay, and then of course

God's throne. He made darkness his secret place. His pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the sky.

So in the flat earth model, God's throne is surrounded by water and is above the firmament.

So that very quickly are some of the verses that they use to talk about the stationary earth, the flat earth, the earth being on pillars.

And so again, this is kind of a visual representation of what we ran past a bunch of flat earthers and they seem to like this diagram and say that this pretty well represented what they believed.

So now here's the question that really got us as we were working on this documentary is we came to find that the flat earthers were incredibly passionate about this flat earth.

I mean they are passionate about it. And at first we didn't know why it was so important.

And then finally one day I was talking to one of the flat earthers and they helped me to understand.

By the way, I think it's very important whenever you're proposing an idea that you understand your opposition's idea so well that you can articulate it and that you can say why it's important.

Here's why the flat earth I believe is important to so many flat earthers. Second Thessalonians 2 .11.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.

And so as I interfaced with hundreds of flat earthers I began to realize that they believed that the strong delusion was that the earth was a sphere and they believed that that had its roots in satanic lies stretching back all through history and to accept the round earth was actually to accept these lies and that it was actually that delusion that was talked about in second

Thessalonians 2 .11. And that's why I believe that many flat earthers are so passionate about it.

Now one of the things that I heard from many flat earthers as I was talking to them is literal. You've got to take the

Bible literally. Matter of fact, I would even say that that's one of their strengths is that they are saying that they are willing to take the whole

Bible absolutely literally. But here's my question. Could it be that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness?

Now listen, I'm a young earth creationist. I believe in the account of Genesis. I believe in the plain meaning of Genesis.

But is the Bible always literal? Well, you know, I used to say that when I first became a creationist is that I believe in the literal creation and I believe that the

Bible is literal. Well, yeah, I think sometimes it is being literal but are there times when it's not?

Here's John 15 .5. I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing.

Well, is Jesus literally a vine? Are we literally branches? Do we literally have fruit?

I mean fruit that comes out of us? No, I think everybody would agree that that's not literal.

God's painting a picture for us. How about this? John 10 .9. I am the door, by me if any man enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture.

Well, is Jesus actually literally a door? No, I don't think it's literal there.

I think again he's making a word picture for us. How about this one? Job 26 .7.

Is this literal? He stretches out the north over the empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

Well, wow, if that's literal, how does that work with the pillars? So here's the question.

Is the Bible always literal? Can we take it absolutely literal? Well, are there some rules?

And the answer is yes. We have to follow rules about when we take the

Bible literally and when we realize that maybe it's a word picture or being metaphorical, right?

So it's very important. Matter of fact, it's important to understand that the Bible has many different literary styles. There's historical narratives like Genesis or Exodus where God is telling us the story of a historic event and how it took place.

There's statutory passages. There's passages where God is giving out the law and it's written kind of like a legal document.

There's genealogies where God is telling us about the different generations and who they were.

There's prophecies. And in those prophecies, sometimes it seems like it's getting very metaphorical.

There's also sections of the Bible that have poetry. And again, we see word pictures and lots of metaphors being used when he's writing about the poetry.

Jesus told parables, right? They were stories with a truth that was tied to a story. That's important to understand.

And there's also epistles, right? And so we've got to realize what part of the

Bible are we reading? Are we reading a historical narrative? Are we reading poetry?

Are we reading a parable? It's really important that we understand which we're reading.

And that brings me back to 2 Timothy 2 .15. Study to show thyself approved unto

God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So it's very important to understand what

God was communicating to us when we read the word. And it's important to remember those different literary styles.

Now, when we did our documentary, we said that it's really important that we have an expert to help us with the documentary.

And so we went to Dr. Stephen Boyd, and he's a Hebrew expert. And Dr.

Boyd is also a well -known Hebrew scholar and professor of Bible and theology. And so we went to him and asked him to help us as we looked at some of these verses.

So I'm going to run back through these real quick. Isaiah 40 .22, it is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.

Well, a lot of people have pointed out that that circle means a circle. And it's true, according to Dr. Boyd, it does mean a circle.

But he points out that basically God's perspective is a circle.

It's also highly metaphorical. When you look at this passage, it talks about the circle of the earth.

But check it out. It also talks about grasshoppers, that the inhabitants are like grasshoppers.

The heavens are a curtain, and he spreads them out like a tent. And so we've got to realize that there's metaphorical language going on there.

God is not speaking literal. He's painting word pictures for us. Also, Dr.

Boyd says that this passage is really talking to the greatness of God. It's him that's sitting upon the circle of the earth.

And to him, we're like grasshoppers. He stretched out the heavens and spreadeth them out. It's the greatness of God.

And that's what he says that passage is really about. Okay, how about the ends of the earth? Well, are there really ends to the earth?

Or is it that God is trying to communicate that there was remote places to whom

I have taken the ends of the earth and called from the chief men thereof? I think he's talking about how he took it to remote places.

Matter of fact, check out this scripture. Psalm 22, 27 says, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the

Lord. You know, I don't think it's talking about literal ends here. It's talking about how it was going to the remote places of the world.

It was going all around the world. All right, how about the scripture that said, let it not be moved?

First Chronicles says that it's not moved. Well, this comes from a heavy, heavily metaphorical passage itself.

As a matter of fact, when it says that it's not moved, it means that it's being stable. It's established. It doesn't mean that the earth is not moving.

Matter of fact, here's a verse, a couple of verses down. It says, then shall the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of God.

The presence of the Lord. Well, are trees literally singing? No, I think it's a metaphorical passage.

God is painting a picture in these passages. All right, how about the pillars of the earth?

Well, again, I think he's saying that the earth is established, right? That God has established the earth.

I don't think it's talking about literal pillars. Matter of fact, again, it looks highly metaphorical.

Matter of fact, just a couple of verses before that, we read, there is none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside thee, neither is there any rock like our

God. Is God literally a rock? Okay, the firmament.

Remember that the flat earthers want to translate firmament as to pound out.

Okay, they say the word rakia is to pound out. But according to Dr. Boyd, he says this.

The Hebrew noun rakia comes from the verb raka, which means to spread out. So rakia simply means expanse.

But using an uncalled for derivation of rakia from the verb rika, which means to pound flat, flat earthers make the case that God formed the firmament out of a hard material, maybe similar to bronze.

But again, the actual word is rakia used in this passage, which simply means an expanse. And that expanse is called heaven.

Which can refer to our atmosphere, a place where the stars exist and God's dwelling place.

So the concept of the firmament portrayed in the flat earth model isn't what we find in the scriptures.

Well, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament show his handiwork. And again, it's showing

God's glory, his greatness. As a matter of fact, when I began this project, one of the things that I began to realize is that the universe is never ending.

It just keeps going and going and going. It's so big that we as humans don't even understand it.

When I look at that, I see that the heavens declare the glory of God.

And yet if we take that universe and we reduce it down to a little disc, a little flat earth, to me, it takes away some of the glory of God.

Well, I said that the flat earthers said that there's 200 plus flat earth verses. We tried to pick the best to represent their case.

There's many verses that said similar things to the ones we said. But when we began to look at this list of 200

Bible verses, we began to realize that most of them really didn't have anything to do with the flat earth at all.

Matter of fact, check out this one right here. Be still and know that I am God. And they use that verse to show that the earth is unmovable and on pillars.

And as you can see, it really doesn't have a lot to do with the flat earth when you see it in context. Again, it just brings us back to 2

Timothy. Study to show thyself approved to God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

I think it's super important that when we handle God's word, we try and realize what is he communicating to us.

And when we may take verses literal that are not meant to be literal, we begin to talk about trees that sing, rivers that clap their hands, that God is a rock,

Jesus is a vine, we are branches. We can get into trouble that way. And I guess our biggest concern is

I'm getting to be an older guy. And through my life, I've seen movements that on the outside look very biblical.

They use the Bible. And yet the way that they interpret the scriptures actually leads you to some very wrong heresies.

I saw that with the end of the earth proclamations that were being made. I've seen that with other cultic groups.

They use the Bible and people read the word and they say, wow, this is such a biblical movement.

But in reality, it's actually taking them away from the truth of the word. After all the study

I've done, I kind of believe that this is where the flat earth is at. I truly believe that they're using a lot of scripture.

It sounds so noble to say that you've got to take God's word literally. But in the end, I think it's deceiving many people as to what the

Bible has to say. Well, let's turn from scripture and talk about God's word and God's world.

Should God's word and God's world be in harmony? Yeah, they should be in total harmony with each other because God created both the word and the world.

And what that means is that we should be able to go out and investigate the world and see that it's right in harmony with God's word.

And so we can go out and explore. Here's some favorite verses I have. So we can go out and explore creation, and it should lead us to worship the creator.

Check out Proverbs 25 too. I think

God is well pleased when we go out and search his creation and we can learn truths about the creator from his creation.

So both the Bible and the scriptures, I'm sorry, both the scriptures and the world have to be in harmony with each other because they've got the same author.

Romans 1 20, For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

So again, we can go out and search creation and we can find out truths about the creator.

So I think it's not wrong for us to search and learn what we see from exploring the world.

Well, as we made this documentary, we asked Dr. Danny Faulkner, an astronomer from Answers in Genesis to join us.

And basically, I'm going to have some clips from Dr. Faulkner as we go along. We're grateful for Dr.

Faulkner's help. Matter of fact, he's written a book recently about the flat earth and he's really the expert on tackling this flat earth thing.

And so that's why we wanted to have him as part of the documentary that we were making. Now, when it comes to the flat earth,

I would say that one of the best proofs for the flat earth was first proposed by this guy,

Samuel Rowbottom. And basically, he did an experiment called the Bedford level experiment.

And basically, what he did was he went out to a very straight, very flat stretch of river.

And basically, what he decided is that he was going to have a friend in a rowboat, go out with a flag. And his friend went out six miles from where he was.

And then he used the glass to be able to see him. And his thought was, if the earth was round, the curve, he should be on the other side of the curve.

And he shouldn't be able to see his friend in the rowboat. However, if it was flat, he should be able to see him.

And so this is an incredible experiment, because it should actually end that if there was a curve, he shouldn't have been able to see his friend.

If you go a mile, you get a drop of curvature of eight inches. So if you mount a telescope eight inches above the surface of the water, then in a mile's distance, it would be tangent to the earth's surface.

And then it would start to fall away beyond that. And each mile, it's eight inches squared. So after two miles, it would be four times eight, which is 32 inches, a little less than three feet.

And then it would be six feet, three miles, and so forth. By the time you get out to five miles, six miles, the curvature would be close to 20 feet or so.

Thank you, Dr. Faulkner. So Rowbottom wanted to test that idea.

Any reasons that if the earth is curved, he should not see the boat, he shouldn't see the person in the boat, he shouldn't even see the mast with the flag on it.

Well, lo and behold, he sees the mast, the flag, the boat, the person, he sees every bit of it. So here's the question was, why was he able to see it?

I mean, if he saw the rowboat six miles away, and the curve wasn't blocking it, was he right?

Was the earth actually flat? Well, when we began to make this documentary, we decided to do our own

Bedford level experiment. This is part of the

Columbia River at Astoria, before the river goes into the Pacific Ocean. And this area right here, way across from just a little to my right, where there's a foundation and a bridge and such, all the way to where nearly the river goes in is 6 .8

miles. Now, what's special about that? Well, at 6 .8 miles, that's a little longer than they actually did for the

Bedford level experiment. That's right. I think what I'll do is I'll go up to the top of the rocks, which should be above 10 feet.

I'll wave the flag, we'll see if you can see it. And then what I'll do is once you see me, I'll climb down to the level of the water and let's see what happens.

Okay, so I'm in the car, I'm headed across the bridge. Okay, so I finally made it here to the bridge, and I'm just gonna wait now until Kyle calls me.

More than six miles away across the bay. So we're here to recreate the

Bedford level experiment, and we're not the first ones to try and do this. As a matter of fact, if you watch on YouTube, there's a lot of different people that have done this, but a lot of them are done by shooting a laser across the body of water.

Well, there's lots of problems with that. The first one is there's a lot of refraction that happens with the light, and it messes up the experiment.

Also, what starts off as a little dot with the laser, by the time you get miles and miles away, can actually become very, very big.

I'll get all my gear in here, and we shall head out to the sand to try and get

Pat on the line. Here's that big lens. So the way we came up with the idea for the flag is one day

I was watching a YouTube video, and they had guys with a camera on one side of a body of water, and then the other team was in a helicopter, and basically the helicopter was going lower and lower, and when this guy with the camera could no longer see the helicopter, they radioed each other, and the helicopter was actually a long ways away from the shore.

Okay, I have the camera set up now, and we just had a wave come in.

In fact, that's not good, because now the camera's sinking just a little bit, and I'm starting to see the roadway.

That's amazing. Six, almost seven miles. A little bit of detail.

It's rather windy, so it's a little jumpy. Oh, here he is.

Hello. Okay, Pat, we're here. It's a little hazy still.

Are you there now? I'm as high as I can go, but again, I'm about 20 feet off the water.

I'm not seeing you. I am right at the end of the bridge. I don't know. I'm kind of wondering if I need to go up higher.

This puppy is a heavy, heavy setup. Hello. Okay, Pat, I'm seeing cars way over there.

I'm just not seeing you. Okay, question. Do you see radio towers behind you?

Yeah, there are radio towers way behind me on the other side of the bridge. I can see.

I don't see how you can see that. The bridge is in your way. No, I can see them. As it turned out, the towers were another 7 tenths of a mile past Pat, and both men hoped that such a visible landmark would help

Kyle find him. I'm having a hard time finding where the bridge starts and the land ends.

For that reason, Kyle gave it one more try by moving a little higher away from the water. I'm still holding the flag.

I've got it spread between my two arms. I personally don't think you're getting enough definition on the camera for this to be able to work.

Yeah, I don't think we're going to get it. I don't think so either. It was becoming very obvious that things were just not working out.

You know, we gave it a shot, so there you go. Kyle and Pat were bummed out that they had put so much effort into this experiment just to have it end like this.

But then, as God often does, he was about to grant them victory in the midst of failure.

So after looking at the footage in the studio, I came back the next day just to look at these towers, because I was really curious.

How tall were they? And what was the distance of the alternating colors? And how many colors were there?

And I'm looking now. These towers have a brown base, and then they go up alternating colors between red and white.

Red and white, red and white, and red, with a signal light on the top.

But these towers behind me, I think, gave a really good clue about the curvature of the

Earth. The bottom of the base of the left tower was about four feet above water level.

The brown steel base is seven feet tall. Each painted section is almost 28 feet in length.

Using Google Earth, they learned that Kyle was exactly 7 .52 miles away from the left tower.

He moved to three different locations. At the first, with the camera five feet above the water line, an online curvature calculator told them that the water at the base of the towers should be 15 and a quarter feet below the horizon.

From Kyle's first position at the edge of the water, Pat and the part of the bridge he was standing on was completely out of view.

And you can see that much of the lower sections of the towers were missing. Kyle could just see the top part of the lower red section.

But then when he moved up further, his camera was at about eight feet above the water line, and now the water line at the towers should be 11 feet below the horizon.

Here's what Kyle saw from this position. The part of the bridge where Pat was standing was still missing, and so was the tower base.

But now he could see more of the first red section of the tower. Then Kyle moved to the third position, with the camera now approximately 11 feet above the water line.

That would put the water line at the towers just below eight feet under the horizon. From this point,

Kyle clearly caught the bridge and almost all the first red section. What they had accidentally caught on camera was exactly what they had been after in the first place.

Their experiment clearly demonstrated the expected curvature of the Earth. Okay, somebody asked,

I can see, was this in Washington? Yes, it was in Washington. It was actually the mouth of the Columbia River.

So the question is, why could Rowbottom see the boat when he was watching in his experiment, but yet in our experiment, we couldn't see the tower?

Well, I think the observation, there's another observation that actually gives us the answer to that.

This is part of... Sorry, there we go. There's a photographer named

Joshua Nowicki, and I want to clarify, I don't believe that he's a flat earther. I believe he's a very good photographer.

I like his work. He's got a website out there with pictures. And several years ago, he went across Lake Michigan at a state park in southwest

Michigan, and he takes this telephoto lens on his camera and he's got some pictures of the

Chicago skyline. You can make out the Willis Tower and the Standard Oil Building, JLN Hancock, several other buildings.

It's impressive. If you run the calculation, this thing's over 50 miles away. The bottom of the skyline should be like 1 ,600, 1 ,700 feet over the curvature of the earth, even the

Willis Tower. The tower on the very top that sticks up might poke up depending exactly where you are, but it's going to be real close.

You shouldn't see any of the building at all, yet you do in this photograph. Now, again, most people see this and they realize that if the earth is curved, then we shouldn't see all of this.

We do, it must be flat. That's the modern equivalent of the Bedford Level Experiment. So a lot of people are convinced.

That's their exhibit A they like to put out there. So that's a real problem. And the question is, well, so he didn't, on the

Bedford Level Experiment, he was able to see the boat. So it seems like that's flat. We did our experiment, but it seemed like it was being blocked.

Well, what they don't tell you with Joshua Nowicki's work is there's also times, as you can see on the screen, where you can't see the skyline.

As a matter of fact, look at this time -lapse video. Sometimes you can see the skyline and sometimes you can't.

Matter of fact, what's really strange is look at it. It's actually jumping up and down, right?

Sometimes we can see the full skyline and sometimes it's covered. So there's got to be something going on there.

And the answer actually has to do with the temperature of the water. The weather conditions are vitally important here because every one of these photographs, and in fact, the

Bedford Level Experiment that Rowbottom did a century and a half ago, they were all done in the summer or in the spring sometimes when you get temperature inversion.

We all know that with increasing altitude, the temperature gets less and less. Have you ever driven up the side of a mountain?

When you get at the top of the mountain, it's pretty chilly. And so if you go down from the top and down towards the ground, the temperature will increase all the way down.

Except if you're doing this in the summer or spring, on a warm, clear day, and you're doing it over water.

Because see, it takes a long time to heat water up. It's got what we call a very large specific heat.

You ever notice it takes a lot of time to get water to boil on the stove? It's because it requires a lot of heat to make water do that.

So the point is in the summer and the spring, a large number of bodies of water, such as bays and oceans and great lakes and so forth, they remain kind of chilly.

Now, the air that comes in contact with that water will get chilled. And when that gets chilled, you'll end up with a layer of cooler air across the water and then warmer air above that.

And then the temperature will decrease as you go higher. So the question is, how does that allow the light to bend?

I mean, how does light go around the curve of the... Suppose you have an object sitting over here like the skyline of Chicago and light rays start to come out across, running pretty much tangent to the surface of the

Earth at this point. Now, if the Earth is curved, then that moves tangent.

It will start to climb, ought to try to climb up out of that cooler air into the warmer air above.

The problem is the speed of light is slower in cooler air than it is in warmer air.

And whenever you have a light, any wave phenomenon, really going from one medium to another, where the speed of the wave is different, you'll get this curving that will take place and it will curve back into the medium where the speed of the wave is slower.

So the light will bend around the curvature of the Earth. So think about this.

The Flat Earthers will show videos of different places like the Chicago skyline and many others.

You can watch all kinds of YouTube videos where they show that you can see long distances away and they make the case that the

Earth would have to be flat because we don't see the curve. And hundreds, thousands, thousands of people watch those videos and they come away convinced, right?

And then the Ball Earthers, the ones who think it's spherical, they show videos in which you see the curve and skylines are blocked, right?

And so what ends up happening is that people come away going, well, I guess there's really not an answer to it.

Sometimes you can see the skyline and sometimes you can't. And maybe you really can't trust either of them.

But what Dr. Faulkner just did is he explained the very physical phenomenon that determines when we can see around the curve and when we can't.

It's an exact science. And so what's interesting is that Ball Earthers can explain when we can see the city, right, using the phenomenon that Dr.

Faulkner pointed out. But when Flat Earthers can't see around the curve, they really don't have a good explanation for that.

And so it's really important to point that out. By the way, check this out. Here's some pictures taken by Dr. Faulkner. He used a camera and a very large telephoto lens to take a picture of this freighter.

And you can check it out. As it's turning to go away from Dr.

Faulkner as he's taking the pictures, you can actually see that it's dropping below the curvature of the

Earth. And so I think it's pictures like this where we say that's amazing because it clearly shows that there's a curve.

Now, Flat Earthers will come along and look at pictures like this and others. And they say that there's some kind of an atmospheric phenomenon that's causing it to happen.

But they really can't explain it. Now, when Dr. Faulkner explained the reason that we can see the skyline, you'll notice that he gave us the specifics on the actual phenomenon that was taking place.

I noticed a lot of times when Flat Earthers try and explain pictures like this, they say that it's some kind of an atmospheric phenomenon.

But they really don't have a really good scientific answer for that. Well, sometimes we can see over the curve and sometimes it can't.

But it's not unknown. We totally know the science behind it. Okay, we are running out of time.

I'm going to keep moving real quick. Let's talk about the Flat Earth model. Basically, what they believe is that there is a disk.

They believe that the sun and the moon are traveling in a circle, a circuit over the

Earth. I began to learn that they believe in different seasons, that that varies, that orbit that it takes.

Now, when I think about the Flat Earth, the thing that I think that they cannot answer, which is so simple.

Matter of fact, there's some very simple things that disprove the Flat Earth. The first one, in my opinion, is the sunsets.

Now, think about it. What they say is if you've got the Flat Earth, here's my really professional model, and you've got the sun that's traveling around in a circuit, really, we should never actually see the sun go over the horizon.

Well, again, they try and explain that with some atmospheric phenomenon, but they really don't explain it very well.

They don't give any really scientific answers. They give some suggestions on how that happens.

Also, I watched one YouTube video, and there's several like it, where they tried to show how it looked like a sun was setting, even though it didn't.

Basically, what they did was they drew a sun on a piece of paper, and then they had this camera, and they had a tabletop.

Basically, what they did was they moved the picture of the sun further and further away. And what it looked like from the camera was that it was actually setting over the edge of the table.

Well, now, a lot of people have been fooled by that. A lot of people have told me that that's proof that in a

Flat Earth, it can look like the sun is setting. But the problem with that is they've actually got the camera lower than the table.

Of course, you're not going to see it. And so, in my opinion, it's really just kind of a deception with that.

The way that they should really do it is lift the camera above the tabletop, and then move the picture of the sun further and further away.

Now, think about this. In the Flat Earth model, if that is traveling around in a circuit like that, when it's further away from us, the sun should appear smaller.

And then when it's directly overhead, it should appear much larger than that. So here's the question.

Is that what happens? Because in a Round Earth model, the sun should stay the same brightness as it crosses across not the same brightness, but the same size.

And Dr. Faulkner gives an answer to that. Well, I can take their own numbers, their model.

And I did this for the conditions at the winter solstice at midnight. If the Flat Earth model is true, then the most distant place the sun could be for me in Kentucky would be at midnight on December 22nd.

The sun would be way over here. I take their numbers, I do the calculation, and I find the sun would be like 14 .5

degrees above the horizon. Why don't I see that spot in the sky? It just doesn't work because of that.

So as a matter of fact, Dr. Faulkner did an experiment with that. Does the sun stay the same size across the sky?

They were within a millimeter the same diameter, you know, less than a percent difference between the two.

So when you look at the images that he took with the experiment he did, the sun does stay the same size as it crosses across the sky.

And that's a real problem for Flat Earthers. Here's another one. Again, going back to my professional Flat Earth model here.

Remember what they're saying is that the North Pole is in the dead center. And then you've got the South Pole, which is a bunch of impassable mountains, okay?

So this is the South Pole. Now, what's interesting is if you were at the Antarctica, okay, you should not be able to see the sun.

Now, remember in a Round Earth model, basically what happens with the tilt is that at the right time during the year, as that's spinning, you would actually be able to see the sun 24 hours a day from near the

South Pole. But in a Flat Earth model, there's no way that that would work because remember, the

South Pole is out here. As the sun is traveling around, there's no way that you would see it for 24 hours.

So the question is, can we see the sun for all 24 hours at the right time of the year near the

Antarctica? And actually, there's a man by the name of Anthony Powell, and basically -

And they were within a - And you can see what he's done here is he has set up a camera jib.

It's got the watch there so you can see the actual time. And it's also got a tracker so it's following the sun.

And as you watch this, it's making an absolute complete 360 -degree circle.

Basically, this in itself proves the Flat Earth wrong. And in fact, this is so devastating for the

Flat Earth that they claim that this video is fraudulent. But what's amazing is

Anthony Powell has challenged anybody to go and shoot the same video.

And if he was proven wrong, he promised that he would pay the expenses for their flight to go on the trip and find it out.

In my opinion, this video all by itself completely annihilates the

Flat Earth idea. By the way, he was at a place called

Scott Base near Antarctica. Okay, I'll keep moving because we are running out of time.

Okay, let's talk about the moon from the Flat Earth. Now, something that's interesting is I talked to lots of Flat Earthers.

They've got different models, right? So different ideas about the sun, different ideas about the moon.

But one of the common ideas was that the sun was more like a spotlight and the moon was its own spotlight providing its own light.

And basically, Flat Earthers have said that there's a huge conspiracy that the moon is not actually reflecting the sun's light, but that it's producing its own light.

And one of the evidences they use is they note that the light from the moon is different than the light coming from the sun.

The point is, though, is this is kind of a silverish light. Right. So you're going to get something that reflects the color temperature that is on this.

In the same way, the moon reflects a reflection of the properties of the surface of the moon.

Right. That's one of the things that some of the Flat Earth proponents have said, is that when you look at the moon's light, it's different than the sun's light.

Well, that's true. And it's because anything reflecting the light is going to absorb some of the light and reflect other parts of the light.

And so the light would be different. It would. That would be coming from the moon. It would. I'm going to put this away so you don't feel like I'm going to get you anymore.

Thank you. There we go. All right. You know, our time is growing short and I'm going way long.

I'm going to skip over a few things that we had. But here's the one thing I've learned during this project, is that many times

Flat Earthers were using rescuing devices. Well, what's a rescuing device? Well, when it comes to creation versus evolution,

I feel that the evolutionists are using rescuing devices many, many times, right? How did non -living materials become alive?

Well, life formed on the back of crystals. Well, okay, that's a great rescuing device.

But is there any real evidence for that? Or what about comets? Comets indicate a young Earth, right?

Is there a source for comets? Well, they come up with the idea of the Oort Cloud, right? And so again, it's a rescuing device.

It's ways to tell a story to try and solve the problem without there really being any facts.

And so listen, when it comes to the sunset, when it comes to the fact that constellations are different in different hemispheres, stars turn one direction on one hemisphere, the other direction on the other hemisphere, when it comes to seasons and satellites and so many myriad of problems, the thing that I learned was that flat earthers had a rescuing device for all of them.

And they were a story to try and get out of the trouble without actually scientifically solving the problem.

And so that is what I came across many, many times are rescuing devices. My next section was going to be on the

Apollo moon missions. I think I'm going to pass past that. That is a big topic. Many flat earthers, well, of course, all of them,

I believe, deny that the Apollo moon missions happened. And so I think

I'm just going to keep going right past that. We actually asked General Charlie Duke, who was astronaut on Apollo 16, to be a part of the documentary.

He clearly says that he saw a round earth. But again, they say that those pictures and that those missions were a fraud.

Here's kind of a saying that I came up with during the project. Here's what I heard from flat earthers all of the time.

How do you know that the earth is flat? Because there's no credible evidence to show that it's not flat.

Well, how do we know when evidence is credible? Well, of course, when it shows the earth to be flat.

I noticed that there was a lot of circular reasoning like that. Listen, I'm going to skip over because we are almost out of time.

And I wanted to save the best for last. Actually, and Pat, just to make sure that you know, you can have up till eight o 'clock.

So I want to invest it wisely. I've got a great little segment

I want to show you. And so Kyle and I produced this documentary. And again, if you would like to know more about the

Apollo moon missions, we put together a whole section on that. If you'd like to see more about that, you can take a look at our documentary.

But an exciting story I wanted to share is we were almost done with the documentary. And we were praying about it.

And we said, well, Lord, what do you want from us next? Is there anything else that you want in the documentary?

And it was kind of amazing. We were contacted by a guy by the name of Victor Brewer of Aerial Image Solutions.

And basically, Victor has a company where they do a bunch of aerial imaging.

And basically, he told us that he had spent quite a few years and a lot of resources trying to debunk the flat earth.

And that he was going to be doing a weather balloon launch. And we were so excited about that, we said, boy, that's got to be on the documentary.

And so we put out a fundable campaign. And some very generous people, including Calvary University, actually paid for our plane tickets and our hotel.

And we got to go out and join Victor Brewer and his team for this historic weather balloon launch.

Now, we'll talk about it a little bit in the segment I'm going to show. But as soon as you say weather balloon launch, the first thing that flat earthers say is, well, it's going to look round from up in the atmosphere, right?

Because you're using a fisheye lens. Well, this experiment was a historic experiment because it had never been done before.

We weren't just trying to get a picture of the earth. We were actually measuring the drop away. And so basically, what

I'm going to do is I'm going to skip past a bunch of slides. And I'm going to run that segment from you. And for me, this was the most exciting part of the documentary was this balloon launch.

So let me get there real quick. Here's all the great stuff you're missing. Too much time.

Okay, General Duke. Okay, I should address that real quick.

I hear all the time flat earthers say, all of the pictures we have of the earth are composites.

Why are they always composites? Why don't we ever just have pictures of the earth, right?

And they say NASA is always composing computer generated pictures of the earth.

Well, think about it. We've got to be about 20 ,000 miles out to get the earth in a frame by itself.

And so we haven't been out that far very often. There's only been a few times that we've been out that far.

And so yes, a lot of times what happens is that we've got satellites that take different pictures.

And then they sew that together for the image of the earth. But here's the answer to that is actually in 1972.

There's an actual image of the earth all in one frame. Here's another one that took place in 2017.

Okay, I'm going to skip over real quick to the balloon launch. There's General Duke. Okay, so here's the weather balloon launch.

I hope you enjoy this. This is about a 12 minute clip from our documentary. But to me, this experiment puts a nail in the coffin of the flat earth.

Now, how did you first get interested in the whole flat earth thing? A couple of relatives got involved in flat earth and started kind of falling for it.

And I met up with a friend named Brandon and we started talking about the costs of, you know, debunking flat earth. And he said one of his relatives was involved in flat earth as well.

And so we ended up deciding to try to go at it together. And he funded it. And I kind of came up with the experiments based on what

I'd seen on YouTube. And this went on from there. The camera that they were attaching to the balloon was very impressive.

It was an Insta360 Pro2 VR camera. It would be taking 360 degree video.

This camera was part of a cutting edge experiment that Victor and his team had devised. You see, there have been several other weather balloon launches that have shown the curvature of the earth.

But the challenge is the altitude. For the curvature to be even barely noticeable, you would need to be higher than 6 .6

miles. Even video from balloons that have gone much higher still can't show that dramatic of a curve.

So they've been dismissed as not showing anything significant enough to be convincing. Another tact to disprove previous balloon launches has been to point out that the cameras have a fisheye lens that just create the illusion of a curve.

As a matter of fact, when Kyle and Pat first announced the news that they would be going to Victor's balloon launch, the skeptics were already calling out fisheye, before the launch had even happened.

What's never discussed is that it isn't a mystery. We can know the specific distortion of a lens and correct for it, but that just doesn't make for a convincing argument.

Every single lens has a certain amount of distortion. And you can find the lens that has the very least amount of distortion, but it's still pretty difficult to say, hey, this has no distortion.

It's like a lawyer in a court of law, you know, if they can prove within a reasonable doubt, you know, that there's distortion in this lens.

We can't know for sure the curvature is actually caused by the curve of the earth. And the whole point is trying to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

You know, we're treating it like it's a court of law. And in a court of law, they could easily say, hey, distortion.

And to solve all these problems, Victor and his team have invented a new experiment that they were just about to launch.

A lot of times when we send up weather balloons, people want to see that curvature of the earth. It almost looks like the images that we'd see from the space station, right?

But a weather balloon can't get up far enough to see that dramatic curvature, right? So a lot of times when we've had weather balloons in the past, people have looked at that and said, well, that still looks awfully flat.

So you realize that problem and you realize that a better way is instead of trying to see the curvature, which you're not going to get that high, but what you will get is you'll get the drop away.

And there's an exact science to measuring how much drop away you get. So the concept behind this is you have nowadays what are like 360 panoramas.

And so like, you know, everyone knows Google Street View. Google Street View is a panorama. And everyone's familiar with being in Google Street View.

It's like you're being you're out of place. The problem is you can only look in one direction at once.

So I, you know, I lay in bed at night thinking, like, how do I view the entire horizon? Until I realized, you know, when

I'm editing these 360 panoramas, basically that 360 view unwraps to be a two one ratio image.

And what you can do with that is the horizon, all the distortion from the horizon, all the curvature basically goes into the top and bottom.

And you're left with a straight line for the horizon. So what you do is that horizon line is representative of 360 degrees.

You can take one at ground level or at, you know, 200, 400 feet. And you can see that it's pretty much the panorama is half sky and half land.

And if it's half sky, half land down near the ground, essentially what you have is you have a base starting point.

Then you go up in altitude and you see if you have more sky than earth.

Now, if you have the same amount of sky as you have of earth, there's a real problem. But if you have less earth and more sky, you know that there's drop away occurring.

If there's drop away occurring, that can't occur on a flat plane. So Kyle, here we are at the launch site. Is this cool or what?

It is amazing. It's beautiful out here. Beautiful day. The weather is exactly what we hoped it would be.

Well, they're getting the tanks out for the hydrogen. Don't be smoking near the tanks, would you?

Yeah, I wasn't planning to. I never have myself.

So they're going to be then filling the balloon with hydrogen.

And then it goes up after that. So we're excited. We're here to see that happen. Since Dr.

Faulkner had played such an important role in this production, Kyle and Pat invited him to join them. And they were delighted when he showed up.

You have spent a lot of time talking with people who believe in the flat earth. And you see all the time when you see the weather balloons go up and you kind of see the curvature a little bit.

They always claim fish islands. While doing it this different way, why should it be 50 % of both?

If you've got a flat earth, the horizon doesn't curve away. It keeps going on out. And they would say the edge of the earth is 10, 12, 15 ,000 miles away.

Wherever you are here in North America probably, it's going to remain horizontal. If you get up even 20 miles, 20 miles out of 10 ,000, it's barely going to rise at all.

But if it is curved, it doesn't go straight out. It bends downward. And that's what's going to happen here if the earth is spherical.

The moment had finally come. And Victor asked his daughter, JL, to help him release it. All right, three, two, one, let go.

Then it was time for the team to jump into their vehicles and begin the chase. They were able to follow its path using a tracker app on their phones.

As it turns out, the balloon was in flight for about two hours and traveled about 96 miles.

We tracked it all the way and then we started to see it descending. I had Victor telling me the altitudes while he was talking to me on the phone and he was kind of telling me exactly where to go.

Once it dropped, he sent me the latitude longitude coordinates and I just punched those into the GPS. It led me out to this house right here.

Excellent. And then where did you find it at specifically? Right in the middle there in this field area.

The balloon actually came down on your property, right? Yes, it did. Now, how did you find out about it?

Well, I had this guy pulled up the driveway and he told me what he was doing.

He said there was a balloon up here in the field. He went up there and he found the balloon. I couldn't wait for him to get back so I could see what he found.

It had been a textbook launch. Uneventful flight and ended in the perfect landing. So what were the results of our balloon launch?

Here's the actual footage captured by the camera. Remember, this video was shot in 360 degrees, but we can only show you one angle at a time.

What we see certainly appears to show the curvature of the Earth. But again, many in the

Flat Earth movement will cry out that it was a fisheye lens. Yet, this camera doesn't utilize just one lens.

It was comprised of a spherical array of six lenses which capture a 360 -degree equirectangular panorama.

You may see some distortion due to the lens. Therefore, since we want to present an airtight case, we're not putting forth this video as evidence for the curvature of the

Earth. Now we'll rotate the camera angle upward to catch the amazing moment when the balloon burst, and the camera started its free fall back to Earth as the parachute deployed, delivering it to the place we found it at the ranch in Switzerland Township.

Remember, the purpose of our experiment was to determine if we could capture evidence of drop -off due to curvature.

If the Earth were flat, there shouldn't be any at all. As the balloon rises, the horizon would continue to stay absolute dead center in the middle of the image.

In other words, there would be equal amounts of ground and sky, regardless of the altitude. However, in a spherical

Earth model, as the balloon rises in altitude, the horizon would move downward to show more sky than ground, revealing drop -off, indicating that the

Earth is curving downward. By the way, this is a claim made again and again by flat earthers, that the horizon rises to meet your eye.

But the problem is that most of us never get high enough to be able to test this idea. The Earth is so huge that we'd have to go so far up that it's not really possible.

And even then, the drop -off would be so slight that we probably wouldn't notice it. But with our experiment, if there really is drop -off, our 8K camera could clearly catch it by comparing a photo taken at low altitude and then comparing it to one at the peak of flight.

There are three different ways the altitude of a balloon can be determined. A system based on GPS, the ascent rate and time, and finally, triangulating from known objects on the ground.

Any one of these can independently determine the height of a balloon. Unfortunately, during our flight, the

GPS -based system failed to work, so the height was instead confirmed by Victor's team using triangulation.

It turned out to be roughly 120 ,120 feet, or 22 .75

miles. Remember, if the Earth is flat, the horizon should stay exactly in the center of the frame.

We basically see that. In this picture caught at roughly 4 ,000 feet. Notice that the horizon is in the dead center.

But because it comes from a 360 -degree image, all the distortion is pushed into the top and bottom of the image.

Now look at this image taken at our peak altitude of 22 .75 miles. When we compare the two, we can easily see drop -away.

There's more sky on the right of the picture than the left. As the balloon increases in height, the horizon was dropping further and further away, so the horizon doesn't rise to meet your eye, like claimed by those in the

Flat Earth Movement. So the experiment failed to prove the Flat Earth Model. But how do the results compare to the

Round Earth idea? Based on the known circumference, we'd predict that the horizon would be at a 6 .1

-degree angle from center at the balloon's maximum height. That angle would equal 45 miles of drop -away if the

Earth is about 25 ,000 miles in circumference. So what did we discover? The drop -away can actually be measured by using this image to count the number of pixels above and below the horizon on both pictures.

When the team did this, they determined the horizon was at an angle of 5 .9 degrees, which equals 44 miles of drop -away.

These numbers aren't exactly what we had predicted, but it's within 3 .9 % of error, which isn't bad.

We believe the numbers can vary a bit because it's hard to tell the line between the horizon and the cloud cover above.

So Victor and his team experimentally disproved the Flat Earth Meme that the horizon rises to meet your eye and successfully confirmed the curvature of the

Earth. Again, this is an experiment that's never been done before. While Flat Earthers may still call out fisheye, which isn't even relevant to this experiment, it used a method based on actual numbers and measurements, and it delivers a serious blow to those that believe the

Earth is flat. Anyway, that kind of ends my presentation.

I'm sorry that I had to skip through some of the slides there. I just wanted to let you know that that took place in Ohio.

I can see that people were asking that. I wasn't answering the questions on the chat because every time

I did that, it would stop the PowerPoint. So I guess basically

I want to conclude by saying again why this is important, and then I guess we'll do questions. Again, Kyle and I, when we first started this, we did not realize how deep this rabbit hole went.

We had no clue that people were so passionate. We had no idea that so many people were committed to the

Flat Earth. Again, I spent probably way too much time, hundreds and hundreds of hours talking to Flat Earthers, and I love their heart.

I love their passion. I love that they want to go for the truth, no matter the cost of their reputation or anything else.

But in the end, I've come away convinced that the Flat Earth is a wrong idea that's distracting people from the real truth.

And again, we've seen some fruits from Flat Earth that don't look good. We've seen families who are pulling their, or dads that are pulling their families out of church.

We're seeing church split. And again, we got lots of emails from wives and other people talking about the damage to their family.

Is the shape of the Earth really important? No, not really. But what is important is we don't want

Christians distracted by things that are not true that's taking them away from the truth of the gospel.

And I guess that's kind of my conclusions after working on this project for a very long time.

And I guess at this point, we'll take some Q &A. I'll do my best. I've got to tell you, this project was actually probably about two years ago.

And some of it is starting to get a little bit fuzzy, but I will do my best to answer any questions.

Okay, well, Pat, that was really great. And it seems like maybe since that last video, you might have backed away from your microphone a little bit.

So you just seemed a little quieter, so. Okay, is that working? I can hear you.

Hopefully, everybody else can hear you okay then. There was, I know that there were a couple of questions about where things were.

But one of them, I don't know if you saw this one, it says the video that showed the sun going around.

Can you tell who did that video and where people can see the rest of it? Right, he's not a believer.

His name is Anthony Powell, and he is a documentary producer. He's done a lot of work down in the

Antarctica, near the Antarctica. And he, when we first contacted him, we said, your video is incredible.

Can we have permission to use it? And he said, yes. So anyway, if you Google him, you want to Google Anthony Powell, the

Flat Earth, Antarctica, and it'll probably pop right up. Okay, and just a reminder, if you guys have questions, whether you're on Zoom or on Facebook, go ahead and put them into the chat.

We do have a little time left. So Pat's more than happy to answer some questions.

That is true. All of a sudden, your microphone seems to be working better. Yes, I had a little knob that wasn't turned.

Okay. So if you can see, I've literally got the Zoom commando center here. I've got three screens.

I've got microphones, amplifiers, lights. I tried my best to give you the best audio and video

I could tonight. So it's literally a commando center. I'll have to send you a picture of it later on. Well, yeah, that'll be fun.

But do you want to go ahead and repeat why it was what you just said at the end while we see if somebody can type some questions?

Yeah, I see that there's one about gravity. Yeah, John has a question. I have skipped the gravity slide. Yes, I'm so sorry.

I packed in way too much for tonight. But yes, think about gravity.

Flat earthers need to deny that gravity exists. And the reason why is because we know from all the physics and everything how gravity works.

And when you've got a round, huge body, a sphere, like the earth, we can predict gravity well, everything that we predict from gravity works pretty well with that spherical earth.

And so flat earthers oftentimes will deny that gravity is really a thing. And basically what they do is they find quotes on the internet where people say that gravity is so complex, we really don't understand it.

We're still trying to understand it. All of that's true. But I guess you got to think about it.

Physicists all the time are incorporating gravity into their equations to predict all kinds of things.

So yes, we may not understand everything about gravity because many times things that the creator has done are so far beyond man's understanding.

So yeah, there's a lot to understand about gravity, but actually we do know enough about it that we can make predictions about it.

And those predictions all work in a round earth model. And so flat earthers have got to deny that gravity exists.

And to me, that's just amazing. That is going a very long way to try and have a rescuing device for their flat earth model.

Definitely. And Pat, we have a special guest with us tonight. One of our previous

Creation Fellowship speakers, John Harris, who's the director of Living Waters Europe.

He's visiting from the UK via Zoom. So I think he has a couple other questions.

He went ahead and turned on his microphone and camera. So he's gonna chat with you on air here.

Hi, Pat, it's great to hear your presentation. It was absolutely brilliant. Sorry, you couldn't take all day.

I would have loved to hear everything you had to say. You know, you probably know what it's like trying to pare down a presentation, right?

I just tried to fit too much into this. So it's very true. Last time I did a talk similar to do with flat earth.

Actually, I took two hours and then question time lasted another four. So another four hours.

Another four hours. You know, I believe that actually. By the way, it's been interesting. Every time that Kyle and I have presented this in person, by the way, we go out as a team.

And it's kind of fun because we team present when we do this presentation normally.

And boy, that is the same thing that we have found is that, John, there is so much passion, so much interest in this.

Every time we've spoken on it, the audience has been fully engaged. And then usually the Q &A, like you said, goes for hours.

So there is some real passion on both sides with this issue. And Pat, have you noticed the rescuing device for the gravity, denying gravity, is to use buoyancy and density.

Have you come across that? Right, exactly. Matter of fact, that was one of the sections in the PowerPoint that I cut out is

Dr. Faulkner explains that very specific thing is that many of them try and answer it with buoyancy.

And they say, when we see things float in water and that type of stuff, those are the type of things that we see when we see things that look like gravity.

But then Dr. Faulkner goes through and explains, no, actually gravity, we understand pretty well. We can calculate things based on gravity.

Yes, and of course, if buoyancy and density is the answer, then that means the heavier air goes down.

That's why lighter things like helium will go up. And the opposite happens when you have heavy objects, the air goes up and the heavy object comes down.

And of course, when that happens, I ask the flat earth believer, well, what would happen if there is no air at all?

Because you can produce a vacuum in a chamber, you can take all the air out. And of course, the majority of them tell me, well, if that happens, of course, whatever's inside the vacuum would just float because there's no air to go around.

But that's an easy experiment you can do. You can get those chambers and take all the air out. And even a feather, this is an experiment

I did, will go straight down. In fact, it falls even faster. And of course, there's no explanation why the feather or any object doesn't, sort of, why down?

Why not sideways, up or down? Because air is all around us anyway, right? Because gravity is the reason why things go down.

So buoyancy and density, and of course, have you heard of the principle of acceleration? They think the earth is accelerating upwards and that's how they're keeping, they're moving, things are falling down.

Right, so John, if you go and you look at what the actual Flat Earth Society itself says, that is their explanation.

And basically, for those of you that aren't familiar, they would say that we're on the flat disk. And basically, what's going on is we're accelerating upward.

And that's what's keeping us on the earth. Oh boy, the problem with that is it needs to be constant acceleration.

And within just a very short time, you would have to be moving at almost light speed, right?

So there's some real problems there. But John, here's what I found in dealing with flat earthers, is they distance themselves from the

Flat Earth Society. As soon as I say Flat Earth Society, they actually say to me, those are a bunch of round earth trolls that are trying to make us look bad.

And so John, you've probably found the same thing is we have stayed away from what the Flat Earth Society says. Matter of fact, on the first cut of this documentary, we actually had a section in there explaining the accelerated disk and gravity.

And boy, we had so many flat earthers so upset at us and said, you're just creating a straw man.

We don't believe at all what the Flat Earth Society says. You're just trying to make us look bad. And so we actually went back and made a second cut of our documentary.

And we actually cut that out. And we said, okay, we wanna be fair to you guys. We don't wanna create a straw man.

We'll cut that out of that. So that's one thing that I've noticed is as soon as you say Flat Earth Society, instantly somebody's going to label you as trying to answer the trolls, right?

It's very true. In fact, they give it a name. They call it the controlled opposition, which is very interesting.

But I find the Flat Earth Society's arguments much more convincing than the ones that are reaching.

I think the acceleration idea would be a more convincing argument. But of course that creates other problems for the

Flat Earth because the Earth is supposedly not movable. It's the foundation of the firm.

And you can't have it accelerating in any direction. But that would certainly make a much better argument, although there are many problems with it.

Right, right. And again, right away you get into the fact that you need a constant acceleration. And again, you'd be moving faster than the speed of light, not very far into that model.

So John, kind of what I found is that you've got the secular Flat Earthers and you've got the Christian Flat Earthers.

Yeah. We talked to both. Originally in our documentary, we were going to cover both camps, but then we realized that our real heart was just to reach

Christians. And so we decided not to really talk about the secular Flat Earth movement at all. But yeah, there's two different camps there.

And then we found probably like you have as well, John, each one of those camps is splintered into several other camps, right?

And by the way, we noticed that once you get into Flat Earth, then you start to get into a whole bunch of things like the moon is actually a spotlight and it's providing its own light.

And then you start getting into all these other rabbit trails of other conspiracies and all these other things.

And so it was really kind of an interesting journey for us talking to the different Flat Earthers. Have you also found out that they get very confused these two things together, like the heliocentric view and the geocentric view, they suddenly think because they believe the earth is geocentric, that means the earth must be flat or that kind of thing.

They kind of confuse those models together. Right, yeah. In other words, once they take one, then they jump on the other.

Yes, yeah. We found that those go together. And of course they would have to, right? Because their model is the

Flat Earth on pillars, right? And then you've got God's throne above it. Of course, that's the whole universe right there, right?

So yeah, so the two actually do go together a lot. Yes. Yeah, people,

I mean, sorry. That was a question that came up on your meeting, John. Where are these pillars?

Well, that's exactly right. I mean, there are some creationists that believe in pillars.

They believe that the earth has pillars, but they refer to them as some sort of foundation under the crust of the earth.

But of course, the Flat Earther would say there are some pillars. And the answer to what is the

Flat Earth resting on is I don't know because nobody's gone there to view it. So there is a lot of I don't know and appealing to mystery.

And it's not very good science, of course. And many of them also complain saying, well, we don't have funding to go and find out and send out rockets in this space.

Therefore, we can't prove our position. Isn't that unfair? It just seemed like the last couple of thousand years of science that we've accumulated seem to not matter anymore because it matters what we know today.

And it matters what people without funding can actually observe. And therefore, our belief must be true because we can't prove it to be false or we can't go out there and prove our principles.

Therefore, what we believe must be true. And so it's very backwards thinking. And it's so complicated because if they can't prove it, then they obviously are hard done by and it's not their fault that they can't.

So, yes. Right. And so, John, a lot of times the way that goes too is that it goes back to what I've seen is that they believe that it's a spiritual deception, right?

Yes. So basically, a lot of times when I talk to a flat earther, what they say is, why don't you just believe the

Bible? Take the literal position of the Bible. Just trust the Bible. And you're exactly right.

When you present them with evidence to the contrary, it always goes back to that same statement that I said.

And I think this is so powerful. This was my experience dealing with the different flat earthers that I did.

How do you know the earth is flat? Because there is no credible evidence to show that it's not flat. How do we know when evidence is credible?

Well, we know that it's credible when it shows the earth to be flat, right? So if I've got pictures from NASA that show around earth, obviously those were faked.

If I launch a balloon and I show and measure the drop away, obviously that was faked.

So, you know, it's like they throw out the evidence without really even having a reason why other than it contradicts what their belief is.

And to me, John, I would love to spend the rest of my life. If I had another life, I would love to study worldviews because to me, it has been an interesting journey of how somebody can get into a worldview and they get to the point where you can show any evidence and none of it, it's almost like it's bulletproof, right?

The worldview is bulletproof. There's nothing you can question. And anytime you throw out anything, there's always a rescuing device to explain it away.

Even if the rescuing device says, well, I don't know yet. They would even use that kind of claim.

And it's really complicated because there seems to be absolutely no way they can think of the world in any other way.

I've met people who said, once you go flat, you can't go back. And they are so convinced that there is no way it could be any other way.

And not only that, they would look at you as you're being unbiblical. You know, how can you be like the unbeliever?

How can you not take God's word as being authoritative? And they would even turn around and say things like, well, you're like the evolutionist who doesn't take the

Bible as being truthful. And therefore you've just destroyed the authority of the

Bible and things like that. So it's very complicated and there is no way they can see it any other way. I mean,

I have got family members who believe in flat earth and the conversation is not normally easy to fix.

I've got friends who believe the earth is flat. And of course, there is nothing you can tell them to prove it otherwise.

There's nothing you can do. It's almost, like you said, bulletproof. It is, it's bulletproof.

And so usually what I say to a flat earther, and again, I've not been successful really ever.

So again, our purpose for doing this documentary was to prepare people ahead of time. But here's what

I usually say is, you believe that because I believe in the round earth, I believe the great satanic deception.

And their answer is, yes, you've believed in the satanic deception. So usually my answer to them is, what if you're thinking too small?

What if the satanic deception is much bigger than the shape of the earth? Because it's true, right?

The great deception is when Satan deceives all of us and we follow him instead of Christ.

There's a great delusion, a great deception that's coming. It's not following Christ. It's bigger than the shape of the earth.

Because really the shape of the earth is not that big of a deception. It's really not. It's just, whether it's flat or round, who cares?

And to be honest, Pat, I sometimes throw the question back at them and say, how do I know that you're not being the one who's deceived?

You're right. Distract us from what really is. Exactly. How do I know it's not the other way around?

And it's really interesting because they take all sorts of figures and they say that adds up to 6 .66. Yes. That is evil.

Or as if the number 6 is the way we know whether something is true or false, you know, the speed of the earth, you know, spinning at 6 ,660.

So some numeric value that brings us to 6 .66. And my answer to that would be, well,

I can make flat earth add up to 6 .66. So are you going to reject it now? Or I mean, I can make the leaders that you believe in,

I can add up the numbers in such a random way and get 6 .66 out of it. Are you going to accept that that is evil too?

Or are you immune from that same logical thinking? Right.

Exactly. Matter of fact, it's kind of funny because when it comes to NASA, they say that NASA is actually

Hebrew, right? Or I believe it's deception, right? Yes, it is. Yeah. The only problem is NASA is not the word in Hebrew.

They've actually got the wrong word, right? So it's things like that where they become convinced with these arguments.

But when you check into the arguments, they kind of fall apart, right? And I don't know, for me, it was just kind of a frustrating experience.

But at the same time, I met a lot of really neat Christian flat earthers, men that I would say were godly men who were going for it, who loved the

Lord, who were doing that. So I don't want to paint the case that every flat earther is involved in wrongdoing.

But I would say that there is a huge trend towards some real trouble issues with the flat earth.

At the same time, it was kind of fun to get to meet some of them that were neat Christians. Matter of fact, one guy even, we went out and did some street witnessing together the week after he and I met and had a great time sharing

Christ with him and going out and talking to different people. So I don't want to paint the picture that all flat earthers are not good

Christians. There's a lot of really great, neat people that are flat earthers. It's just, unfortunately,

I feel that they've got caught up in this deception. And Pat, just so that I don't dominate the question time here,

I'll give chance for - Oh, I love it. You've got all kinds of great knowledge. I'd go for it. I mean, you were right about the

Hebrew word that they refer to saying Nasa is evil because it says Nasha, because there's a

Hebrew word called Nasha. And that's a phonetic fallacy. When you have a word that sounds the same as another word in another language, it doesn't mean the same thing.

I find the logic of saying Nasa chose the word Nasha or close to the word because it's kind of like giving away their deception.

Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants... If you want to be a deceiver, you don't want to give it away. But what is interesting is that there is another

Hebrew word that's closer to the word Nasa, which is Nasa. And it's really a strong...

You know, have you heard of the Strong's number that we have in Hebrew that we use the lexicon to find out what the

Hebrew word means? Now, five, three, seven, seven - Yeah, right. Go ahead. Well, that is the word

Nasha they use, but only literally two numbers away, five, three, seven, five, has a word in Hebrew called

Nasa, which is really funny or Nasa if you want. So it's more closely resembling that. And actually it means to be lifted, to be uplifted or to carry, to sustain, to endure.

So why not use that word, which sounds even more close to the original Nasa name, you know?

Right, exactly. And I guess that was kind of my experience with this whole thing, is that the case for the flat earth was built on things like that.

Yeah. So it's a bit deceiving to use a word that's not so close to the original word they're trying to kind of tell us that Nasa cannot be trusted because of that.

When there is a more appropriate, closer Hebrew word, the whole argument doesn't stand anyway. You can't use a word in one language.

I mean, I speak three different languages and the number of times I come across words that sound the same, that means totally different.

I mean, they don't have any resemblance unless the root word means the same, but it's a bad argument and they should really avoid that.

But they use it all the time. It's used a lot. Okay, so going to the chat, how do the flat earthers deal with the seasonal rotation of the stars?

The fact that stars progress through a 360 degree change over the course of a year. So what they believe is you've got the, here, let me get out my flat earth.

So they believe that you've got the sun and the moon in rotation, the change of seasons is that pattern getting tighter and then looser again.

So that's how they would explain the different seasons. Now, I had a chart and the biggest problem or one of the big problems for them is that we see different constellations in different hemispheres, right?

And when you think about their model, the Northern Hemisphere would be a small ring in the center and the

Southern Hemisphere would be, yes. Can you pick your plate up a little bit? Sorry, how about that?

That actually solves two problems. So they would say that the Southern Hemisphere is the outer ring here.

They would say the Northern Hemisphere is a smaller circle there. And so basically that's a real problem when you think about it.

Why does this circle see completely different constellations from this area on the earth?

So that's a real problem. I've never heard a really good answer for that from the flat earthers.

So there's problems like that. And again, just the sunrise and the sunset itself,

I think is a huge killer. And then of course, eclipses are a real problem.

So there's some real death knells, in my opinion, to the flat earth. Well, and kind of on the same line, our friend

David McQueen, who's watching along with us on Facebook, he says that when he taught college freshmen science, they would pretend that the earth was flat for one day.

And so he wants to know if it's a good argument to use to ask the question, why does the hull of a sailboat go below the horizon before the sail?

Yeah, I think that that is a great question. Matter of fact, I showed those pictures, right? Where we saw the ship going below the horizon.

I think that's excellent. The way they answer that though, is they go into a whole rescuing device about how that's atmospheric distortion that causes it to look like it's going behind the curve.

And boy, I have watched video after video. John, I know you probably have too. Oh boy, they go a long way to try and explain their selves out of that.

And they really don't give specifics to be honest with you. They don't really give any physics on how it's actually happening.

So yes, I think that that's a great thing to show people because it demonstrates very clearly that things can go behind the curve of the earth.

Okay, well, I think that maybe we've hit all of our questions. So if you want to tell us again how people can find the documentary if they want to watch the whole thing.

And then if you want to tell us a little bit about your new ministry, what you're doing up there.

Mount St. Helens, that would be really great. Yeah, super. Thank you so much for the chance. Yes, if you'd like to know more about the documentary, the full thing is two hours.

Whoo. So it's thecreationguys .com. So you've got to do the

T -H -E, thecreationguys .com. We've got that documentary.

We've also got a few other documentaries. And then we've also got other episodes in the can that we just haven't released yet.

So if you're interested in checking us out, it's thecreationguys .com. Terry, my current ministry is working at the

Mount St. Helens Creation Center. And I'm absolutely loving it because I believe that Mount St.

Helens is probably one of the greatest apologetics for creation. We see layers that were formed in a matter of hours.

We see canyons that were cut in a matter of months. And basically, it blows away the whole idea of millions of years.

We've got Dr. Austin, who took a sample of the day site on the dome there and had it radioisotope dated.

And a rock that was basically a little older than seven years came out to be millions of years old.

Basically, this is a very important place for the creation movement. You could say that Grand Canyon is also a very important place.

Absolutely. But guess what? I actually think that you need Mount St. Helens to interpret Grand Canyon.

We have had so much fun here. We've got a large building. We have got a little museum set up that people can go through and check out the different aspects of catastrophism that takes place.

We also have a little bookstore that's here. And then we lead tours to the mountain all the time during the summer months.

Matter of fact, we were taking about two or three trips a week up to Mount St. Helens. And that was a lot of fun.

Now that the weather's changed, they've actually closed the gate because it's all snowed in. And so now what we're doing is we're doing creation worldview classes.

We have kids that are coming in. We're teaching them about creation every week. And then we're also doing Saturday hands -on workshops.

And basically, that's just a chance for kids to do experiments and learn about creation. So it's been exciting.

There's been a lot of activity going on here. Yeah, that does sound exciting. It sounds like the Lord is really using you, so.

Oh, it's been fun. Okay, well, would you like to go ahead and wrap us up in a word of prayer?

And then after that, we'll go ahead and turn off the cameras. Absolutely. One last point to make when it comes to this whole thing.

I think it's very important that, boy, you watch the exchanges online from Christians and Christian flat earthers and Christian ball earthers.

And boy, you see a lot of nasty conversations going back and forth. I just want to encourage people that we always want to be

Christ -like in our responses. We always want to be loving and Christ -like. And I think when it comes to this whole thing, flat earth, ball earth, boy,

I think it can be really contentious. And so I just want to remind all of us that we need to make sure that we're doing all of this in love.

And so that's a really important thing. So I'll close in prayer. Dear Father, thank you so much for this group that meets.

And God, I thank you for all the amazing speakers that they've had over the summer. And God, I just pray,

Father, that we would be bold in our witness for you. God, help us to be bold to speak to neighbors and to friends.

And God, creation is so awesome. But Father, I believe that that's just the door to sharing the gospel.

And so, Father, I pray for all of us that you would help us to be good at sharing eternal stuff. And God, we just pray for tonight, this presentation, as people come back and watch it.

God, I just pray that you would use it for your glory and that it would not be a point of contention, but actually, I guess, an encouragement, a blessing.