What Happened?

Twenty-five years ago I was telling the church how important it was to understand the ‘discontinuity’ that occurred in the world because of sin.

Over twenty years ago, I looked like the person in the photograph below—but I now look like that photograph to the right! What happened?

During our special children’s dinosaur programs, where I co-teach with singer, sculptor and artist Buddy Davis, I ask the children to look at Buddy. Then I show them a picture of Buddy at age 22 (over 30 years younger), and then I playfully ask the children, ‘What happened?’ They laugh, of course, but they all get to know the answer: sin and the Curse!

Twenty-five years ago, I resigned my job as a public school teacher in Australia to go full-time into a ministry then called ‘Creation Science Supplies.’ Eventually the name was changed to ‘Creation Science Foundation,’ and ten years ago the ministry adopted the name of Answers in Genesis (taken from us, its USA sister organization, which had just started in 1994). This international AiG ministry now has offices in six countries.

Twenty-five years ago I was telling the church how important it was to understand the ‘discontinuity’ that occurred in the world because of sin. There was no death of animals or man before Adam’s sin, thus there could be no fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures millions of years before sin.

Because much of the church adopted a belief in millions of years and evolutionary ideas, people gradually lost the concept of what sin had actually done to the world. Also, because of this compromise, much of the church began reinterpreting the Word of God beginning in Genesis.

Back in the 1970s, I was warning the church that if they continued to reinterpret the Bible in Genesis on the basis of man’s fallible ideas, eventually people (and the culture) as a whole would begin to reinterpret the morality (e.g. marriage is one man for one woman) built on that foundation in Genesis.

During this anniversary year of my resignation as a teacher to go full-time into creation ministry and to begin what God has blessed in becoming a worldwide ministry, I’m reminded of two things from the photographs:

Because of sin, our physical appearance changes—eventually resulting in death. That reminder is why people have to be saved to spend eternity in Heaven.
The Word of God does not change. The message of the importance of the book of Genesis (being foundational to all Christian doctrine) is as relevant today as it was over twenty-five years ago. The warning based on Scripture given back in the late 1970s—that if God’s people reinterpret God’s Word, Christian morality will be undermined and then we would expect to see increasing abortion, homosexual behavior and so on—is still as relevant today as it was then.

The exciting Creation Museum near Cincinnati will be based on God’s Word. Even though some of our arguments against the apemen, fallible dating methods, etc., will be updated from time to time, we will show that the message of the history in Genesis and the message of the gospel (and the doctrines and morality built on that history) will not change. We pray that this facility and AiG’s other outreaches will continue to stand uncompromisingly.