In the Beginning: What’s Changed in 20 Years?

Ken Ham
Founding CEO
Answers in Genesis

What Hasn’t Changed?

1. God’s Word hasn’t changed.

And the Bible clearly states over and over that Scripture will never change:

Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. (Psalm 119:89)

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40:8)

There’s no doubt the way we present such arguments matures and enables us to be even more powerful in challenging non-believers and compromised Christians as well as equipping the church to defend the Christian faith. However, the biblical arguments used in dealing with the origins issue have not changed.

For instance, a major argument to use against the belief in millions of years concerns what God’s Word states about death. Death is “an enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26), an intrusion into a once “very good” (Genesis 1:31) creation because of sin. In Romans 8:22 we read that the whole creation groans because of sin. The world we live in is not the world God originally made but has been greatly affected by sin and the curse. All that teaching remains the same.

The fossil record indicates not only massive death (fossils of animals), but also evidence that creatures were eating each other and that they carried diseases like cancer. After God created humans, he said everything he made was “very good.” To believe in millions of years is therefore to believe there was massive death and disease before sin entered creation. This would mean that God calls diseases like cancer and death “very good.” No, Christians can’t add millions of years to the Bible. God’s Word has not changed, and these biblical arguments against believing in millions of years will not change.

2. Human hearts have not changed.

Jeremiah 17:9 states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Jesus stated,

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19)

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13–14)

Most of the world will continue to fight against those who stand on the truth of God’s Word.

Most people will reject God’s Word, instead embracing naturalistic evolution, a religion, to try to explain life without God. Most scientists will defend their evolutionary beliefs even though observational science confirms the Bible’s historical accounts, not evolutionary history. Most of the world will continue to fight against those who stand on the truth of God’s Word concerning origins in Genesis. There will always be a spiritual issue regarding this matter until Jesus returns. That will never change.

What Has Changed?

1. Culture has changed.

Because of humanity’s sin nature, as people reject God’s Word and God as Creator, Romans 1 tells us that God turns them over to their depraved hearts. As a result, we will see increasing sexual perversion. We’ve seen a sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, and now the gender revolution. Romans 1 is being played out before our eyes:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:22–32)

2. More people now have heard the truth.

That’s a great change!

Because of Answers magazine and the plethora of books, curricula, Answers TV, social media, videos, and articles on Answers in Genesis websites, as well as the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter attractions, more people have now heard the truth of God’s Word in Genesis and the saving gospel.

Hundreds of millions of people have been impacted by Answers in Genesis in the 20 years Answers magazine has been in publication. That’s a change we will continue to pursue to the best of our ability

3. Within those 20 years, we have now added a children’s magazine.

This is part of our mission to help raise generations equipped with apologetics so they know how to defend the Christian faith and can impact more people with the truth.

By God’s grace, the stand we take on the authority of God’s Word beginning in Genesis will not change. This means Answers magazine will continue its same stand on God’s Word concerning six literal days of creation, no death before sin, and a young earth.

Praise the Lord for the freedom we have to produce such a world-class, God-honoring magazine as Answers! And praise the Lord for the millions of people impacted as we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of this unique, powerful, and fantastic publication.