Another Creationist Planetarium

Some people mistakenly believe that the Stargazers planetarium inside our new Creation Museum is the first creationist planetarium of its kind. Actually, I visited one north of Atlanta many years ago, and for several years Pastor Tom Baird has been traveling the country with a portable StarLab planetarium--- sharing with visitors that the heavens declare God's glory (Psalm 19). In fact, at one of our first AiG family camps back in the 1990s, Tom brought his unique StarLab program up from Florida to the Indiana camp.

Now as far as we know, the Stargazers Planetarium at the Creation Museum is the first to have such sophisticated programs as those put together by our astrophysicist, Dr. Jason Lisle—which will eventually be used in other creationist planetariums around the world.

It was good to meet up with Tom and his wife Maggie as they visited our offices and the museum on Sunday. In the photo, Maggie is holding a stuffed-animal poodle. There is long-running joke between us about "mutant" dogs like poodles!

The planetarium takes about 25 minutes to put up and is "air-supported" (a large fan blows in air to keep the theater up). One of his two models can handle about 70 people at one time---about the same as our museum's planetarium.

To find out more about Tom and Maggie's creation ministry, including their Noah's Park Dinosaur Museum and Planetarium east of Orlando in Florida (the museum comes in a portable version that travels with him) go to www.gospelfossils.com. While there, you can see what his portable planetarium looks like after it’s inflated.

FROM JAPAN TO IOWA--THREE INTENSIVE WEEKS

Carl Kerby (AiG speaker) just came off three very intensive weeks of ministry. You will be interested in his report:

I’ve been doing ministry in Japan for the last 11 years and this year God really opened doors to many of the churches there.

Mr. Horikoshi-sensei is 84 years old and very influential in Japan. He’s been a driving force behind Christian schools and built many successful churches in Japan. He also loves the Creation ministry and Answers in Genesis. He has started a new ministry called, “Inouchi Arigato no Kai.” (This essentially means ‘Be Thankful for Life’.)

His board members are seven pastors from some of the largest churches in Japan and cover the entire nation of Japan.

While I was over there I had the opportunity to meet with these men and then speak in three of their churches. The responses were huge, to say the least. As a result of the meetings they are getting behind Ken Ham’s visit to Japan next August and will distribute the DVD’s recorded of Ken’s talks when they’re finished.

In addition, before I left Japan they were so excited that they scheduled me to come back to Japan next year to speak in all of their churches. This trip will start in Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan and go through the entire country to the southern-most island, Okinawa. I had so many positive comments from the people as well as the Pastors. The Pastors told me over and over again, “My people really understood what you were talking about!”, “You have to promise to come back!”

I spoke every day in Japan except for 2. I spent over 15 hours on the trains as well as over 30 hours on planes. It was worth it!

Two days after getting home from Japan I had to go to Des Moines. My wife Masami went with me on this trip thankfully. We were able to stay with friends of the ministry while there and the ministry was amazing.

On Monday we went to the Iowa State Fair, sort of! We worked at a booth that is sponsored by Regular Baptist Churches in the Des Moines area. The friend that Masami and I stayed with has been sponsoring this booth for a long time now and has had fantastic ministry with it. You just can’t believe how many folks are walking through there! They’ve done a fantastic job on making the booth attractive and it really stands out.

As you can see, one can’t miss the pictures of dinosaurs and the questions that are so visible. Questions like: “If there really was a world-wide flood, what would the evidence be?” (Sound familiar?) and “Where Did The Dinosaurs Come From?”

While there I had the opportunity to share with a number of folks. One of the major tools they are using in this outreach is a scale model of Noah’s Ark with a train running around underneath of it. This really shows how big the Ark really was. Children love to come and see the train. While they are there we had the opportunity to share with the parents about the Ark and how it wasn’t just a tiny little boat with giraffes sticking their heads out of the chimney. There are dinosaurs on the ark—a great teaching point! On more than one occasion I heard children asking their parents about dinosaurs on the ark. We had the opportunity to share with the whole family what the Bible teaches on this topic and how what we see in the world around us is absolutely consistent with what we read in the Word of God. For those that can’t stay for long conversations hundreds of AiG’s booklets that give answers to a variety of questions are given away.

We had teachers, preachers, parents, and students. There were people from all walks of life. It was a very encouraging time of sharing the truth in the secular world. I was very encouraged by the number of folks who came up and told me that they had already visited the Creation Museum. I also had a lot of additional folks tell me they were planning to come visit in the near future as well. One lady is planning a bus trip next June. She told me how she took 6 people with her to visit the Museum last year, 18 this year, and now she wanted to fill a bus! It makes me feel so good to hear how excited people are about their faith as a result of AiG’s various ministries.

Today I begin speaking at a two day AiG conference in Jacksonville, Florida. You can obtain all the details from our website.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying

Ken