200,000 Creation Museum visitors this next week

As of Saturday evening, the running total of Creation Museum visitors since opening is almost 198,000! Depending on numbers (early and midweek numbers since the end of the Summer vacation period have been around 700-800 per day), we expect to reach the 200,000th visitor by mid week. Only 50,000 to go to reach our projected yearly total for the first year! (Remember, May 28th was the official opening day.)

WILDLIFE SCULPTURE

In a blog a few weeks ago, I included an item about a Wildlife artist and his wife who donated a bronze wildlife sculpture to the Museum. Since our landscaper has now placed the sculptures in place, I thought you would like to see a couple of photographs of this beautiful sculpture.

SUBTLE BUT POWERFUL “HIDDEN” MESSAGES AT THE CREATION MUSEUM

One of the Museum Design team, Doug (who has many talents including sculpting), sent me this fascinating information about “hidden” messages in the exhibits at the Creation Museum. This is not a comprehensive list, but I thought you would be as fascinated as I was—and of course, you can look for these when you visit:

As you know, this place is less about the Creation/Evolution debate than it is about the authority of Scripture and the reality of our loving Creator God, Jesus Christ. Many, many of our guests have expressed that this is the exact message they receive as they go through the museum.

As we were putting the Creation Walk together, we prayerfully looked for God's leading. As we worked, little things kept popping into the artwork that pointed to Christ.

For instance: in the naming of the animals scene we put male and female representatives of several kinds of animals. This is fitting because God not only had Adam name the animals, He was showing Adam that he had no suitable mate. This may give us a glimpse into God's reason for creating us—ultimately to be the bride of Christ. (Gen. 2:20, John 3:29)

You will notice that the lamb stands alone, without a mate, covering the nakedness of Adam. This can be viewed as an artistic picture of the Messiah to come.

As you go down to the Tree of Life, you can see that it is abundant and full of fruit and flowers. ... [T]he flower comes first, then the fruit. Since the Tree of Life in Revelation bears twelve kinds of fruit, one for each month, we chose to depict the fruit of the current month and the flower of the month to come. (Rev. 22:2)

At the Tree of Knowledge we see a stark contrast—there is very little fruit. Thirteen pieces, and only one is open. We chose green berries to represent the knowledge of good and red to represent the knowledge of evil. The thirteenth fruit represents the traitorous, Judas-like betrayal that Adam and Eve would soon partake in.

Scripture doesn't tell us much about this tree. We don't know what it looked like, but we do know that as God was making this tree, He knew the price He would have to pay. This is why we designed the crucified figure of Christ into the tree. Jesus is the “Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). God was not caught off guard when Adam and Eve disobeyed Him.

In the cave of Sorrows, we chose to place two lambs on an altar. A life for a life. Scripture doesn't give us specifics. Did God kill one animal, or many? Did He build an altar? We don't know. (Gen 3:21)

We chose to build an altar because that is what God required later (Gen. 8:20, 12:7, 22:9 to name just a few). I agonized and prayed about how to represent the altar and it dawned on me that it would be a good idea to make the altar out of rocks that were too big for Adam to lift, subtly suggesting that God must have stacked them. I chose to use three stones to represent the Trinity. The animals on the altar are lambs, representing the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29)

There is so much more to say, of course, as we move into the valley of corruption, Cain and Able, Methuselah, and the ark—a foreshadowing of Christ, but we can get into all of that later. I simply wanted to share some thoughts behind a few of the many artistic decisions that had to be made.

I would never encourage anyone to use our artwork to form dogmas, but these are subtle details that few would notice on their own. I use them as a fun way to “let people in on hidden details,” sort of a “behind the scenes” opportunity to share Christ and emphasize his plan of Salvation from the beginning of Creation.

What an honor it has been so far to work in a place that so clearly spells out the Good News of our Savior Jesus! God bless you!

Well, that should stimulate you to look more closely at the exhibits in the Creation Museum. I praise the Lord for artists like Doug who not only design and produce exhibits, but because of their dedication to the Lord, they seek to really communicate the message of Christ through what they do.

TENNESSEE MEETINGS

Mally and I are in Tennessee right now. I am speaking over two days at Stevens Street Baptist Church in Cookeville. You can obtain further information from the events listing on the website. Please be in prayer for these meetings.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying.

Ken