“Your Story’s Better”

Illustration by Viktor Miller-Gausa

Ken Ham
Founder/CEO
Answers in Genesis

Back in the late 1970s when I was visiting Mossman, North Queensland, Australia, not that far from where my mother was born and grew up (Babinda), I met a missionary who was in charge of a settlement for Australian Aborigines.

The missionary told me that one day he read to the people the Bible’s account of the creation of the first woman, Eve: “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” (Genesis 2:21–22).

After he read this, one of the older Aboriginal elders said, “How come you have a story about the creation of woman, like we do, only your story’s better?”

It was amazing to me to read through these legends and find quite a number that sounded very similar to certain events in the Genesis account.

Because of my special interest in the Genesis account of origins, I had already collected some books—obtained from the secular natural history museum in Brisbane—on Aboriginal myths and legends. It was amazing to me to read through these legends and find quite a number that sounded very similar to certain events in the Genesis account.

For instance, there were flood legends. One told about three sons on a boat who survived the flood. In another one, the boat landed on a mountain at the end of the flood and a rainbow appeared in the sky.

They also have a legend about the origin of death as a result of the first woman. The creator told her not to touch his special tree, but she took sweet honey from it anyway, and death entered the world as a result. Another legend said that woman was made while man was asleep, only she was made from some sort of plant.

No doubt the elderly Australian Aboriginal had heard many such legends from his parents, and he recognized the similarity between the Genesis account of the creation of the first woman and the legend he knew.

The missionary then used this opportunity to help the Aborigines understand that the Genesis account was the original one, and that their legends were changed versions of the original. This enabled the missionary to help them understand the truth of God’s Word and point them to the saving gospel.

Another Eye-Opener

I experienced a similar event a few years earlier in 1975, during my first year as a science teacher in Dalby, Australia. During the class dealing with human origins, I happened to mention that all humans are descended from two people (Adam and Eve) and because of what happened after the flood—at the tower of Babel with the giving of different languages—families moved away from each other, forming different nations and cultures. I explained that all humans are one biological race and are related, and therefore we’re all just one big family.

After the class, three Aboriginal students came up to me and asked if I could explain this in more detail. They were extremely interested in all I had to say. As I talked to them, I realized that Darwin taught in his book The Descent of Man that the Australian Aborigines were closer to apes than light-skinned people in the supposed evolutionary story of man. It is also true that scientists in England sent people to Australia to collect specimens of Aborigines to display in museums, and sometimes the Aborigines were illicitly killed—all in the name of evolution!

What a difference it made to those students to learn that they were all part of the one big human family—and related to me and their classmates and everyone else in the world, but certainly not to apes!

A Message for Everyone

Ever since that time, I have had a real burden to teach everyone I can the truth about the one human race—that all humans belong to one race; all are related; all are one color but different shades of brown. So we all have the same problem, sin. God’s Son became a member of the one human race (as the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ). Jesus died and rose again for the entire race, and he offers the free gift of salvation to all members of the human race who will receive it.

That’s why so many people are fascinated by the Creation Museum’s and Ark Encounter’s detailed exhibits on the tower of Babel, the one human race, the origin of nations, and the evil of racism and prejudice.

By the way, in the year 2000, the Human Genome Project announced to the world, after mapping the entire sequence of the human genome, “There is only one race, the human race.” Observational science confirms the Bible’s account of one race!

The battle over racism and prejudice is actually a battle of two worldviews—one based on man’s word (man’s evolutionary story about the origin of life and the universe) and one based on God’s Word (the true account of origins as given in Genesis). A much better place to begin the battle against racism is Genesis, which gives the true history of life!