A Different World, the Same Mission

The evening of Monday, July 14, I received a phone call from our social media team. They said, “Dr. John MacArthur passed away this evening. Can we get a video response from you to post on all our social media tomorrow?”

I praise the Lord we now have a social media video recording studio set up in a dedicated room at our newly renovated HQ building.

As I had a commitment at the Ark Encounter that morning, I arranged to meet one of our social media staff members at the HQ early Tuesday morning. Praise the Lord for such dedicated staff who go out of their way to ensure we do what is needed for this ministry. What a blessing they are.

Monday evening, I quickly wrote down some notes, and Tuesday morning I recorded a video sharing some of my personal interactions with Dr. MacArthur and how he was one of the very few prominent Christian leaders who understood that the age of the earth was a biblical authority issue. Our talented social media team then edited the video, inserting photos and video clips, etc., and posted the finished video that day on various social media platforms, including my personal YouTube channel. By evening, the video had over 60,000 views on my YouTube channel alone, plus thousands more on Facebook, X, and other platforms.

On Monday evening, I also wrote a short tribute about Dr. MacArthur and posted it on my X and Facebook. At the same time, our writing team worked on a longer, more detailed article that I checked over and provided some photographs for before it was posted on the Answers in Genesis website on my daily blog.

Yes, this sure is a different world than when we first started the ministry. Believe it or not, in 1993, when we first started Answers in Genesis, the internet was not yet “a thing”—Google wouldn’t even officially begin until 1998! YouTube wasn’t founded until 2005, and Twitter (now X) wasn’t founded until 2006. On May 16, 1997, we purchased the domain AnswersInGenesis.org. Our website was underway.

Now, in those early days, when there was a tragedy, like recently with the Texas floods, or a prominent person like Dr. MacArthur passed away, I would be called on the telephone by radio stations to do interviews about these situations. Sometimes Mark Looy (one of our founders) would prepare press releases to send out to Christian and secular media.

What a wonderful opportunity the Lord has allowed us to have to share answers and proclaim the truth of God’s Word and gospel to the world like never before.

But we live in a different world now. We can sit in our living rooms and watch a war occurring in real time! We have the ability now to respond to events almost immediately, and the information we provide can then be instantly available anywhere in the world where people have access to the internet. As a Christian organization, what a wonderful opportunity the Lord has allowed us to have to share answers and proclaim the truth of God’s Word and gospel to the world like never before. So we do all we can to take full advantage of this.

When we heard the news about the tragedies in Texas because of the floods, I was able to respond with a video giving answers as to why such tragedies occur and helping people understand such issues from a biblical-worldview perspective. Within a short period of time, that video, like my MacArthur tribute, had tens of thousands of views. Last year (2024), our YouTube channels had over 47 million views. Our social media audience continues to grow every year.

Dr. MacArthur leaves a legacy of faithfully preaching God’s Word. But now, I have a challenge. Who will take up the mantle?

You know, over the years, I have had the honor and privilege of meeting some of the great Christian leaders like Dr. MacArthur; Jack Wyrtzen, who founded Word of Life; Dr. Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University; and Dr. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. (I appeared on a number of Dr. Kennedy’s TV programs, as well as many times on his radio broadcasts.)

I was also able to meet Pastor Adrian Rogers of Love Worth Finding, who served as president of the SBC for three terms. I spoke at his church on a number of occasions. I was thrilled to be able to just sit down and have informal times with him. And, of course, there were others that I knew as well and had been asked to speak at their churches or institutions.

And all of those greats that I just mentioned, they’ve all gone to their heavenly home. And so my challenge is: Who’s going to take up the mantle in the younger generation? Where are our prominent leaders who are going to take on what they did and stand boldly for God’s Word and proclaim the truth of God’s Word and the gospel?

Now, I know there are a lot of younger generation pastors and Bible teachers out there, but we really do need to take on the mantle of these greats that have gone before us. I’m reminded of what we read in Isaiah 6:8,

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

Who is going to go out there and do this? Who is going to be the next generation of prominent Christian leaders faithfully teaching God’s Word and standing for him?

The rest of the verse says, “Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me.’” I challenge young men out there, take up the mantle. Tell the Lord, “Here I am. Send me. I am willing to go.” And you know what? God can take you up on that. You also can leave a great legacy of teaching God’s Word and impacting hundreds of thousands or millions of people as did Dr. MacArthur and those other greats I mentioned.

In response to that video, and at other times, I’ve had people tell me that they look at Answers in Genesis and our leadership as one of the few trusted organizations with trusted leaders boldly standing for God’s Word and contending for the faith in this world. And there are others—but there are not many. I really don’t like to mention names as I can’t mention them all, but I do want to reference just a few. (1) My great friends Ray Comfort and “E.Z.” (Emeal Zwayne) who head up the ministry of Living Waters. They stand where we stand at AiG and have a phenomenally impactful ministry. And (2) Heidi St. John, who also stands with AiG (and has spoken at our conferences). She has such a great ministry to women through her wonderful podcast and leads a unique organization that reaches so many homeschoolers.

However, we need many more younger generation leaders to take the place of those gone before us! And that’s where I see AiG, Living Waters, Heidi St. John, and others helping raise up generations committed to the Word of God and equipped to be able to contend for the faith and powerfully proclaim the gospel.

We need many more younger generation leaders to take the place of those gone before us!

At Answers in Genesis, we are doing all we can to help raise up the younger generations. For instance, we are using our Answers Academy Christian school to be a model Christian school, teaching apologetics and biblical worldview to not only raise up students at the school but help other schools do the same. We are producing a Bible curriculum and run an Answers for Educators conference to help train teachers. Our VBS curriculum is now used by around 15,000 churches each year, impacting over a million children. We have just revamped our Answers for Kids website and produce lots of resources for young people—and so much more. Our Answers TV streaming platform continues to expand, providing over 7,000 programs now for all age levels.

This leads me to some exciting new projects we are planning. Yes, we don’t just stay still. We are always thinking of what we can do to reach even more people.

Each year for 10 years now, we’ve had a foundation that has given us a match to be used for special end-of-year projects that will help reach more people with the gospel. Keep in mind that the tickets purchased by guests for admission to the Ark and Creation Museum primarily cover the day-to-day running costs. However, for new exhibits and expansions (or to upgrade exhibits), we need to raise the funds from donations.

Our leadership team has spent a lot of time reviewing our strategic plans to reach and impact more people with God’s Word and the gospel. We worked through what we could do within those plans for our end-of-year fundraising campaign this year.

We presented project opportunities to the family foundation, and once again, because of our gospel-proclaiming mission and that our supporters have met the previous matches, they have committed to provide us with a $10 million matching gift challenge! Praise God!

This means they will match dollar-for-dollar every donation given toward this end-of-year campaign, by December 31, up to $10 million for our total end-of-year campaign of $20 million. We provide updates to the foundation, and when they confirm we will meet the match, they send the funds to us. This is why we start as soon as possible, so that we can do our best to meet the match by the December 31 deadline.

I will summarize these projects for you here.

1. Creation Museum expansion. Now that we’ve moved our main office (previously connected to the Creation Museum) to our newly renovated HQ building, we have a large space available to enable the gospel-proclaiming Creation Museum to expand without having to build a building! Our idea is to eventually convert this area to a children’s museum with interactive exhibits. Now, to do this, we have to make a lot of other modifications to redo the current Noah’s Café area (our new restaurant will free up this space too). And we will make other renovations to allow for less crowding and easy movement of people. The expansion funding will also provide for the research, design, and planning development of the future children’s interactive area and exhibits in the former AiG office area.
2. Ark Encounter expansion. With an intention to impact and bring more guests to the evangelistic Ark Encounter, these expansion initiatives include the addition of two major exhibits and expansion/infrastructure activities for future family-engaging attractions at the Ark. The two major exhibits below will include artifacts on loan from the Israel Antiquity Authority (IAA).
   1. Megiddo Mosaic exhibit. This year (Lord willing) we will be opening the new Welcome Center at the Ark Encounter. This new space will enable us to move things around in the Answers Center’s main lobby so we can prepare half of that very large space for the display of traveling exhibits. The first exhibit that will be available to us in about a year or so is the Megiddo Mosaic currently on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. This exhibit has created an incredible amount of interest as it includes a mosaic from a church floor dating back to AD 250 in Megiddo, Israel. The large mosaic contains the first known reference to Christ being God (apart from written manuscripts). I’ve seen the exhibit, and it is stunning—and what a great archaeological artifact to use as a witnessing tool.
   2. Israeli Antiquity Authority artifacts. As part of the Jerusalem building at the Ark Encounter that will house the massive first-century model of Jerusalem that our artists are currently working on, we have a large room (unfinished right now) to display biblical artifacts. The end-of-year campaign will provide funding to finish this artifacts display area and for the loan fees from the IAA to install and display over 100 artifacts dating to Israel’s Second Temple period. People love archaeology, and this will be a worldclass exhibit used to confirm the historicity of God’s Word.

What wonderful opportunities God has entrusted to us to carry out the great commission. We use technology (the internet with many of its different platforms) to take the message out to the world, and we use attractions to bring people from around the world to see and hear the message of God’s Word through the exhibits.

Now here is something very exciting. We have supporters who have already committed $1 million toward the match to help get this campaign moving. This means of the $20 million end-of-year campaign , we already have $2 million (the $1 million donation plus the match). Praise God again!

Would you prayerfully consider a generous end-of-year donation toward this match today as we seek to do all we can to equip Christians and challenge non-Christians concerning the truth of the Bible and the gospel? You may donate at AnswersDonate.com. Remember, your gift and its impact will be doubled right now!

Your generous gift will help us meet this matching-gift challenge and allow us to reach even more people for Christ in the coming years.

I’m so grateful for your partnership, prayers, and support of Answers in Genesis. Thank you for helping us carry out the great commission now and well into the future!

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken