Are You Aware of the Battles Against AiG and the Truth of God’s Word?

Some days in this ministry, I frankly feel exhausted. There seems to be constant daily battles! But I remind myself that Answers in Genesis, a Bible-upholding ministry, is engaged in an ongoing spiritual war; when one battle is over, another front opens.

To illustrate, here is a list of just some of the many “battles” that have involved AiG in the last year. It’s not a complete list, but it still reminds us of the battles raging around us. Many are quite startling:

2010

November: An American Atheist billboard appears near the Lincoln Tunnel entrance at New York City with its message for Christmas: "You KNOW it's a Myth . . . This Season, Celebrate REASON!" The atheists are becoming more active each year, and every Christmas they ramp up their propaganda.

2011

January: Rev. Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and I debate on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 TV program over the passing of tourism incentives for our Ark Encounter project.

February:

• The Calvin College biology department issues their “Perspective on Evolution,” a statement from a Christian college endorsing evolution as the best scientific explanation for life on earth.
• U.S. Congressman Pete Stark of the Bay Area of California introduces a bill to proclaim February 12th as “Darwin Day.”
• Bill Nye, “The Science Guy” of PBS-TV fame and well-known atheist, visits the Creation Museum for two minutes to stand in the museum driveway and take photos.
• Former Eastern Nazarene College physics professor, Karl Giberson, and BioLogos founder, Francis Collins, publish The Language of Science and Faith, arguing for theistic evolution and against the origin of sin as taught in Genesis.
• Political activist/blogger Joe Sonka and a friend try to crash “Date Night” at our museum by pretending to be (in their words) a “flamboyantly gay” couple.

March

• Pastor Rob Bell publishes Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived in which the biblical view of hell is undermined.
• I’m dropped from the “Great Homeschool Conventions" programs in Cincinnati and Philadelphia for revealing the biblically compromised teachings of Peter Enns of BioLogos, also a speaker at these conventions.
• NASA astrobiologist Richard Hoover claims life on Earth may have come from other planets in the Journal of Cosmology.

June

• The office of the secretary of the Assemblies of God denomination sponsors a conference entitled Faith and Science Conference promoting theistic evolution.
• Tim Keller, well-known author and senior pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan (New York), again endorses evolution as a possible way God created.
• Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State posts a YouTube video mocking our Ark Encounter project and the Bible’s account of Noah.
• Christianity Today magazine publishes an article entitled “The Search for the Historical Adam,” questioning the historicity of Adam and Eve. The cover features an “ape-man.”
• In a USA Today article on the recent Miss USA beauty pageant winner, Alyssa Campanella shares how she believes in evolution; the article disparages Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter.
• New York legalizes “gay marriage.”
• A Washington Post blog discusses presidential candidate Michele Bachmann as an evolution-doubter and disparages the Creation Museum.

July

• Chinese scientist Xing Xu claims that Archaeopteryx is not a bird, but rather a feathered dinosaur.
• Hank Hanegraaff—the “Bible Answer Man,” president of the Christian Research Institute, and host of the Bible Answer Man radio program—endorses William Dembski's book The End of Christianity, which presents an unbiblical position on the creation and evolution of humans.

August

• The General Presbytery of the Assemblies of God adopts a revised statement on “The Doctrine of Creation,” now allowing for evolution and millions of years.
• Calvin College professor of religion John Schneider is forced to resign after casting doubt on the historical accuracy of Adam and Eve and their fall into sin.
• GOP presidential candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry is questioned about evolution by a child at a political rally and a video of it goes viral.
• Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary, writes an article for the Washington Post entitled “The Theological Case for Evolution” that criticizes the Creation Museum.
• A columnist for the United Kingdom Christian website Network Norwich calls Answers in Genesis “a cult.”

September

• BBC TV launches a major new dinosaur series in the United Kingdom that, as expected, promotes evolution and millions of years.
• Prof. Richard Dawkins, Sir David Attenborough, and 28 other prominent UK evolutionists ask the British government to censor the teaching of creation in Britain’s publicly funded schools.
• Karl Giberson (former vice president of BioLogos and former physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College) and Randall Stephens (history department chair at Eastern Nazarene College) publish The Anointed. Answers in Genesis is singled out at the very outset of the book as a proponent of an “anti-intellectual populism undergirding evangelical ‘truth,’ and that the movement takes its cues from a handful of enormously influential but only dubiously credentialed authority figures.”
• Science magazine publishes additional articles supporting the claim that Australopithecus sediba was an ancestor of humans.
• Darrel Falk, president of BioLogos and biology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, responds to my lecture on the “Anti-biblical Teachings of BioLogos” and critiques AiG’s stand on Genesis.

Did you get tired reading this list? Well, I did—and that’s just the short list.

Equipping the “Troops”

Amidst all this opposition, here is what Answers in Genesis is doing to counter the attacks on the Bible and equip people with effective Bible-defending “weapons”:

• Provided incredible new apologetic resources on the AiG websites, with 17 million users a year accessing the sites!
• Wrote and published various books, such as Already Compromised, The Fall of Satan, How Do We Know the Bible is True?, Demolishing Contradictions, etc., and released a five-year commemorative issue of Answers magazine (winner of a 2011 top award for Christian magazines)
• Continued the extensive writing and development of an entire integrated Bible curriculum for all ages (seven age levels), to be released fall 2012
• Produced new faith-defending video sets, including my 12-part Foundations series and Dr. David Menton’s excellent Body of Evidence anatomy series
• Conducted hundreds of apologetics conferences and other speaking engagements at churches and colleges in the USA and around the world
• Announced the building of Noah’s Ark as part of the Ark Encounter project—a reminder that God’s Word and its salvation message are true
• Added new exhibits, a 1,000-seat lecture/multi-purpose room, and observatory to the Creation Museum (over 300,000 people again visited last year)
• Produced another Vacation Bible School (VBS) program, now used by thousands of churches a year!

Now this kind of list doesn’t make me tired at all! It gets me excited! I often tell people that I look on the resources that AiG produces as Christian “patriot missiles,” equipping believers in daily spiritual battles that seem to be heating up around the country!

And remember: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

To equip and maintain the “army” in the increasing battles across America, AiG needs to continually supply supporters like you with Bible-defending resources (such as those I shared above). Without your prayers and financial support, it would not be possible.

Will you please consider making a donation today to keep equipping the “troops” as they “fight” on many fronts to defend our Christian faith and proclaim the gospel message?

And thanks for standing with us on the front lines in the battle for hearts and minds!