Partnering with Faithful Fathers

Now, this month is also a sad time when sexual immorality is celebrated in a big way by those who call this a celebration of “Pride.” Maybe you don’t see the connection yet, but understanding what happened at the Scopes Trial will also help fathers train their families and others how to respond to “Pride month.” This will become clear as we bring all this together.

There was a Hollywood movie made based on the Scopes Trial (which I do not recommend you waste your time seeing) called Inherit the Wind. Sadly, this was a fictional story meant to denigrate Christians, based on a real event. The film had so much in it that was not true. Unfortunately, this movie has been shown (and is still shown) in many public schools, thus indoctrinating generations against Christianity.

The sad thing is the Scopes Trial was a setup by the ACLU (a group of secular humanists) who intended to cause the demise of Christianity as a consequence. And even though we know “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against the church (Matthew 16:18), those responsible for the Scopes Trial did negatively impact Christianity. It was also a turning point in regard to the teaching of evolution in schools, which paved the way to reject the teaching of creation and indoctrinate generations of students (including a majority of those who attended church) in evolutionary naturalism (atheism). In all this, there really is an important lesson for fathers to learn.

In the 1920s, the ACLU in New York City was concerned at the increasing number of anti-evolution bills being brought into various states. Tennessee had passed a bill to make it unlawful to teach any theory that denied the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and it did not allow the teaching that man evolved from animals. That was the bill that the Scopes Trial was fighting.

The 1925 Scopes Trial was a turning point in the history of America—and not just for the creation/evolution debate. The man representing Christianity (William Jennings Bryan—a fine man), sadly did a poor job defending the Christian faith. He went against the ACLU attorney, Clarence Darrow, who was defending John Scopes, a teacher the ACLU had asked to violate the law as a test case.

Even though Bryan technically won the trial, in the whole scheme of things, it was a win for the secularists. In a real sense, the well-publicized trial showed the world that Christians couldn’t defend the history in the Bible—that they were willing to give in to the secular teaching of millions of years.

Cain’s Wife and Failure

While on the witness stand, Bryan, who stood for Christianity, couldn’t answer the question about Cain’s wife and admitted he didn’t believe in six literal creation days but accepted the millions of years for the earth’s age.

That’s when Darrow knew he had won, because he had managed to get the Christian to admit, in front of a worldwide audience, that he couldn’t defend the Bible’s history (e.g., Cain’s wife) and didn’t take the Bible as it is written (the days of creation)—instead accepting the world’s teaching (millions of years). Thus, Bryan (unwittingly) had undermined biblical authority and paved the way for secular philosophy to pervade the culture and education system.

Sadly, most Christians today (including most Christian leaders) have, like Bryan, accepted the world’s teaching of millions of years and rejected the plain words of the Bible regarding the true timeline of history. Thus they have helped the world teach generations of children that the Bible cannot be trusted in Genesis. After years of such indoctrination, generations have now arisen that also (logically) reject the morality based on the Bible. Today, we are seeing the increased elimination of the foundational Christian structure in the nation.

Let me digress for a bit to discuss something I have stressed over and over again in 50 years of ministry. The age of the earth, while not a salvation issue, is a biblical authority issue. Like Bryan, so many Christian leaders over the years have not understood that compromising with millions of years is actually compromising with naturalism, which is atheism. So many (including the majority of Christian leaders today) don’t understand or want to understand that in adding millions of years to the Bible, they are taking a pagan religion and adding it to God’s Word.

Rebuilding the Foundation

After years and years of this happening in the church, it gives the coming generations the idea that one can take man’s ideas and add them to God’s Word—that one doesn’t have to take God’s Word as it is written, as literal history, in Genesis. And because Genesis 1–11 is the foundation for everything, including gender and marriage, current generations have not had the foundation to build a true Christian worldview and don’t know how to correctly look at gay “marriage,” transgenderism, and the whole LGBTQ movement.

This is why Answers in Genesis has always taken such a strong, uncompromising stand on rejecting millions of years and teaching the true timeline given in Scripture of just thousands of years for the age of the earth and universe. It is an issue of biblical authority. And biblical authority has been undermined in both church and culture, leading to where we are today with such a lukewarm church and a culture that celebrates evil—celebrates moral relativism.

Now, as we think about Father’s Day, we need to be reminded that there are many Scripture passages where God clearly teaches fathers to be the spiritual head of their home and transfer a godly legacy to the coming generations. For instance:

The father makes known to the children your faithfulness. (Isaiah 38:19)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

Psalm 78 has a lot to say about fathers teaching their children:

He commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tel them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God. (Psalm 78:5–7)

Yes, fathers are to teach their children and pass on a godly legacy. But as we read in Psalm 78, we find that fathers didn’t do this. After Joshua led the children of Israel over the Jordan River because of a miracle from God, that generation was told to build a memorial of 12 stones to remind the coming generations of who God is and what he did. But we find that next generation lost that spiritual legacy and served pagan gods. They lost it in one generation because the fathers didn’t teach their children as they should have (Psalm 78:8–11; Judges 2:10–12).

Basically, the same situation is happening today. Generation Z church attendance in Protestant churches appears to be down to about 5%. Yes, in one generation, we are seeing the spiritual legacy lost. And I believe a lot of this has to do with fathers not taking on the responsibility of teaching their children and leaving it up to (in the majority of instances) the secular, anti-God education system, and in many instances, pastors and leaders in churches who compromise God’s Word—particularly in Genesis. Most of the younger generations have been told by the world and church they can believe in millions of years and don’t have to take Genesis as literal history. We are seeing a catastrophic generational loss from the church.

Because Genesis 1–11 is the foundation for everything, it is the key to being “woke-proof.” The only way to prepare our children to deal with “Pride month” and the celebration of immorality we see permeating the culture is to train them to think foundationally—that God’s Word beginning in a literal Genesis is the foundation for their worldview, for all doctrine, etc.—to know how to give answers and defend the Christian faith against the secular onslaught of our day.

This is what the Answers in Genesis ministry is all about:

1. Equipping Christians to think foundationally from Genesis and be equipped with answers to defend the Christian faith.
2. Challenging the church to reject compromise, such as with millions of years, and stand on a literal Genesis, which is the foundation for everything.
3. Challenging the world to understand that God’s Word is the true history book of the universe, and because the history in Genesis is true, the gospel message based on that history is true.

That’s why we do all we can to provide resources to impact as many people as possible. Actually, statistics from extensive guest surveys we have done indicate around 100,000 people a year commit their lives to Christ as a result of coming to our two attractions, the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum. Millions have been impacted by AiG’s various social media outreaches, books, videos (Answers TV streaming platform), speaking, and many other aspects of the AiG ministry. AiG’s VBS was used in 15,000 churches last year, impacting over 1 million children. To find out more about AiG’s impact, you can view this amazing 2024 interactive annual report we compiled.

To sum up:

1. Next month (July) is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial. This should remind fathers not to compromise God’s Word with millions of years and ensure they’ve equipped their children to trust God’s Word and defend the Christian faith.
2. “Pride month” should remind us of how far this culture has fallen and how it openly celebrates sexual immorality, thus burdening us to ensure we teach our families the truth about marriage, sex, and gender founded in God’s Word beginning in Genesis.
3. This month, Father’s Day should remind fathers to make sure they are obeying their God-given, God-ordained responsibility to be the heads of their families and be the spiritual leaders they should be.

And we at Answers in Genesis are here to do all we can to help the church and families deal with those three points above. God has raised up this ministry to provide the resources needed to do battle in this culture and raise up godly generations.

Thank you for all the prayerful and financial support you give to AiG—it is vital to accomplish all that the Lord has called us to do.

In Christ,
Ken Ham
Founder CEO