The heavens declare

How can we see light from stars supposedly millions of light years away if the earth isn’t millions of years old? Is everything we see in the night sky a result of a “Big Bang” that spread out all the matter in the universe? Is there life—even intelligent life—somewhere else in the universe?

The first time I encountered blatant evolutionary thinking about cosmology (how to understand astronomy and our universe), I didn’t have any answers. I was 13, and the books, DVDs, radio programs, and websites we have today explaining cosmology from a biblical perspective just didn’t exist.

When I began to explore the problem, a local clergyman even told me I could believe in evolution and just re-interpret the Bible! Maybe you’ve heard that, too. But if we “re-interpret the Bible” to take out God’s work of creation, we compromise the foundation of the Gospel.

I thank God for my Bible-believing father, who told me, “Son, just because we don’t know the answers doesn’t mean there aren’t any. We just have to search for them and ask the Lord to reveal them to us.”

I began to search. In my final year at university I first found Dr. Henry Morris’ famous book The Genesis Flood (co-authored by Dr. John Whitcomb). Wow! At last, a book which gave me a scientific background to help me defend the Christian faith against ideas about evolution and an old earth! When I showed the book to my father, he was just as excited as I was.

Over the years, God led me to other people committed to the search for biblically and scientifically sound answers to questions that most of the world believed could only be answered by evolution or an earth millions of years old. What has become known as Answers in Genesis was born, and God provided geologists, biologists, and anthropologists of deep faith who could help provide answers. I was able to use those answers in my talks and books so thousands (perhaps millions) of people have answers to the skeptics of this age who reject God’s Word.

But I often had to say, “I don’t know,” to questions about astronomy and cosmology. That just wasn’t good enough! The Bible tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of His hands (Psalm 19:1). I wanted to hear their declaration loud and clear, and I wanted everyone else to hear it too!

I kept searching, and I kept speaking in churches and public forums and on the radio, battling the secular “explanations” that write God out of the history of the universe.

Later, I met Dr. Jason Lisle, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and is devoted to showing the world how the very skies declare God’s work of creation. Praise God!

Dr. Lisle joined our staff and has written insightful, God-filled books and provided guidance for our curricular materials. He’s also a very popular lecturer. When it came time to build a planetarium at the Creation Museum, naturally we turned to him. The CD The Heavens Declare is a recording of the discussion I had with Dr. Lisle concerning the most-asked questions about astronomy and the Bible, including how creation scientists are approaching the distant starlight problem and how the big bang theory has its own time/space problem.

Like everything else in the Creation Museum, the Stargazer’s Room is designed for excellence, with a DIGISTAR projection system and programs that unfold the wonder of God’s heavenly creations. To think that hundreds of thousands—I’ll even say millions—of people will get to sit in the Planetarium and learn Bible-based answers in a field that so many have struggled with!

If only I’d had something like the Stargazer’s Room when I was a boy and first encountering the Big Bang theory and other ways secular scientists have described the heavens! As I sat there with the stars wheeling overhead, a prayer of joyful praise rose in my heart:

I praised the Lord for a father who taught me to search for answers.
I praised the Lord for my Heavenly Father who has allowed us to have answers.
I praised the Lord for raising up creation scientists like Dr. Jason Lisle to research answers for us.
I praised the Lord for modern technology that now allows us to disseminate these answers to multitudes of people of all ages.

Just think—if my father hadn’t encouraged me to seek answers in line with the Bible, if I’d accepted that compromising clergyman’s advice just to “re-interpret the Bible,” Answers in Genesis (and the Creation Museum) might not exist today!

Please partner with us in prayer and with any gift God leads you to send. Answers in Genesis exists to help parents teach their children to resist the indoctrination of evolution and millions-of-years thinking. We need your help to continue to develop and distribute more radio broadcasts and books, to send speakers to churches and schools, and to produce Answers magazines and other resources that show how trustworthy God’s Word really is.

Your gift will be added to the gifts of other Christians who also recognize the importance of upholding God’s Word from the very first verse. I know there are thousands, even millions, of people searching for answers the way I did as a boy. I know we can accomplish enormous things through God’s provision.