Well, good morning, everybody. How are you? Good. You're all stunned. Where's he from? I'm originally from Australia, but I live in Atlanta now, which is why I've developed that strong southern accent you can hear. So, yeah, my name's Gary Bates. I'm the CEO of Creation Ministries International, and we have seven offices around the world, employ lots and lots of scientists, and we deal with this old chestnut of creation versus evolution. As you saw on that short video, that's all we hear. and we're taught it is science. We're gonna discuss some of that today. You know, when you came in, you probably saw some of the book tables there, et cetera. That's information for you. We call ourselves an information ministry. Let me just say, I'm not here to sell you a bunch of books, because that's not how our ministry is funded. Last year, we spoke at 336 or 34, I'm not sure, churches in the US alone, and we come out to create awareness about this creation evolution issue, and get information into your hands for two major reasons. Firstly, to equip yourselves and your families, and secondly, to fulfil the great commission with that information to reach your neighbours, et cetera. I apologise for my voice. I've been at the homeschool conference up in St Charles, given five talks over the weekend, and I developed some terrible virus, so you're not getting that usual lovely dulcet tones of the Australian accent this morning. Good news for you, though. Someday you'll hear it all, because you're going to be speaking it in heaven, but anyway. Let me just start off this morning. What type of information am I talking about? So let's indulge the little Aussie here this morning. Maybe you're here because you've had questions, or you've got questions that have been asked of you by your friends, your children, your grandchildren, and they go like this. You know, if the Bible's true, we all came from Adam and Eve. Who did Cain marry? Ever had that one? Or if the Bible's true, we came from Adam and Eve, what about the races? Where did the different races come from as people think there are races? You know, we're told there was an age of dinosaurs 300 to 65 million years ago, so why can't I see dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible? Or what about this one? I think the number one question we get about the nature of God, a challenge to our faith, is this. If God is a God of love, why does he allow all the bad things in the world? You ever had those questions? Well, I'm not going to pick anybody out, but let's just do a snap poll. If you've ever received or had those questions, pop your hands up in the air. Keep them up, please, because just do a head turn and have a look. That's about 90% of you raised your hands, and I only asked you four questions. And people have dozens of questions in that area, don't they? You've all received them. And those questions are intellectual stumbling blocks to people believing in the truth claims of the Bible. So that's what we bring all that information out for. We're faith funded. We're supported to produce that information. One of the great sources of information is our website. Our ministry's been going for 41 years, and there's 41 years' worth of creation research on that website all free. You can type into the search engine, you know, what about carbon-14 dating? People think that proves millions of years. If you've got a pen, I'm going to give you the web address. I apologize, it's a very convoluted web address to remember. There it is, creation.com. So for example, you're at home watching the Discovery Channel and you see these anthropologists in Africa and they say, look, here's a fossil leg bone of a hominid that was a precursor to man and lived 2 million years ago. You see it. How do you deal with that? Whenever they have these claims, we usually have an article and try to respond to it as quickly as we can. And so I encourage you to sign up for our free email news called infobytes. I'll give you an example. When things are in the media, remember Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter? His zoo was just a couple of hours north of where I lived in Brisbane, and when he was killed by that stingray, lots of people commented on our site, because we allow comments at the bottom, and they said, well, why did a god of love design stingrays that kill people? How would you answer that? Well, we just put a paragraph in our email news and then see a link to the article, send it out to folks like you on our electronic mailing list and then you forward it. So easy in this digital age. And do you know that became the most visited article on our website in just 10 days. So that's how you can use these events to provide answers. So when you go out today, you're going to see the ushers there. They're going to be holding up some sign-up forms for the Creation Magazine. You can sign up for the Infobytes there. But I'll let you use your mobile phones in church today. How radical is that? You can text your email address, your zip code, to that number up there. You might want to write it down, take a picture of it. I'll keep it up for a few slides if you want to do that. Of course, you can always unsubscribe if ever you want to. And I'll get on with the major talk. You know, we employ, I think, probably more scientists than any Christian ministry in the world. And boys and girls, listen, that's a very valid point to make because our scientists got their degrees in the very same universities as their revolutionary believing counterparts. The issue's not about science. We're gonna unpick that today. It's about worldviews. And I've depicted the two major worldviews like two trees. You know, the Lord Jesus spoke a lot about trees and fruit. I'm gonna use his analogy today. Now, look on the left-hand side. We've got this tree called humanism. What does humanism mean? Humanism simply means man decides truth for himself. You can make up your own rules about life. Now, why do people think that? Well, humanists always believe in evolution. That's the foundation, that's the soil that that belief system is planted in. And if you subscribe to that as your worldview, well, what kind of fruit might you think it would produce? Well, look at some of the problems the church is dealing with. You know, racism, murder, gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion. But I submit to you, they're not the problems. They are the fruit of, or the symptoms of, a foundational problem, which is humanism with its roots in evolution. The idea there is no God, no creator to be accountable to. Contrast that with the tree of Christianity there. See, everything you and I need to know about the Christian faith, the nature of God, our need for salvation, where do we get that information from? Hopefully you got one with you, hold it up. The Bible. It's God's word, his revelation to mankind. And if you subscribe to that as your worldview, you should produce fruit in accordance with that worldview. We'll believe that abortion is wrong and believe in the sanctity of life because we're made in the image of God. And he knew us before we were even formed in the womb. We'll love thy neighbor as thyself. You know, that's interesting. You know, many years ago, before we even had the genetics revolution, we'd send missionaries off to third world countries. People looked different to the majority of us here. But they trusted God's word. And you know what? Science has caught up with what the Bible says. We now know we can fit all the varieties of human beings on this planet. We could have fit them within an original human couple. We are 99% genetically alike. What does that support? It supports the Bible's history that we were all descended from an original man and woman. See, most people believe in evolution for one simple reason. I can't emphasise this enough. It's all people are ever taught. It's not tomorrow or maybe or perhaps mums and dads, grandparents, boys and girls. They will be taught evolution as a scientific fact in the classroom tomorrow. How are they going to hear the alternative? How are they going to make an informed decision if they don't even get to expose to the other point of view? I stand before you as a former evolutionist, like my scientific colleagues. That's what we all believed. And you know, when I first became a Christian, I tried to fit the millions of years of evolution in the scripture. Well, you know, don't worry about Genesis. I mean, there could be many ways to interpret it. Well, a side issue, I mean, we've just dealt with that. It's not as if it's a foundational issue. What about the idea it's not important? Well, let's check this out. Did you realize there are over 100 references to the book of Genesis in the New Testament? And specifically Genesis 1 to 11, those 1 to 11 chapters are creation, the fall, the flood, the dispersal after the flood, the Tower of Babel, there are 60 references. Every New Testament author references Genesis 1 to 11, right? Every Genesis 1 to 11 chapter is referenced in the New Testament. Now I'm starting to think it's important. And the Lord Jesus himself referenced Genesis 1 to 11 on 16 occasions. Wow, why did they do that? Well, they did so because they built a church doctrine upon that. The doctrine of salvation, soteriology is based upon the events in the Garden of Eden. Let's take one of those fruits, gay marriage, right? Well, Jesus was questioned about marriage. You can read it in Mark 10 6, and he replied thus, have you not read? What do you think he was referring to when he said that? The Old Testament, the Torah, the law. Have you not read at the beginning of creation God made them male and female, therefore, you know, what God has made, the creator let man, humanism, not separate. The basis for his authority argument of what defined a marriage was what the creator had made in real time, in real history, in real time and space. It wasn't some fairy story. You see, you've probably all seen pictures like this. This is this evolutionary tree of life. And, you know, down the bottom, apparently you and I, we're just nothing more than evolved pond scum. And it makes you feel special, doesn't it? Millions of years, survival of the fittest, death and struggle leads to your average civilised American there at the top, right? Or Australian. Now, why did I caricature it like that? Well, think about it. They call it a tree of life. Is it a tree of life? If you know anything about evolution, it's a tree of death. Death is the savior. Culling out the weak, you reproducing your genes to outcompete your neighbor. It's all about, you know, they call it survival of the fittest. It doesn't sound like blessed other meat, does it? You see, death is virtuous under the evolutionary scenario. The Bible indicates there's a different reason how death came into the world as a result of sin. And in fact, ladies and gentlemen, when we see bad things happen out there and we see tsunamis and earthquakes because the ground was cursed in Genesis and people die of cancers because you and I were cursed, it should be a reminder that something's wrong and we're living in a cursed and fallen world. We go back again to Genesis to understand why death and suffering is in the world. You see, that's the foundation of what we call a non-Christian worldview. And what's a worldview? You hear that word a lot, right? But a worldview is like a set of glasses or a framework. Here we picture it like a telescope through which people interpret all reality. Mums and dads, you might not realise it, but once our kids reach the age of understanding, they've actually pretty much already developed a worldview for themselves. You can be a Christian. but actually not have a logical, consistent Christian worldview. Our thinking should be based upon the scriptures. Let me distill our worldviews down for you another way. I like to talk about those three big questions, and you've heard of them. They go like this. Why are we here? What's our meaning and purpose to life? Right, sorry, let me start again. Where do we come from? Why are we here? What's our meaning and purpose to life? And the third one, of course, is what happens to us when we die? Now, let's go through those two scenarios. If evolution is true, question one, tell me, is there any meaning and purpose to life, really? No, you live, you die, that's it. What about life after death? There isn't any under that scenario, is there? But if the Bible's true, if God is creator, you and I were created with meaning and purpose, made in his image. And by the way, the decisions we make in this life, they're gonna affect where we spend eternity. Now, the reason I did that, let me just demonstrate something. Questions two and three will always be determined by what you think about question one. created or evolved? Are you starting to see why I'm saying it's a foundational issue? Would it be fair to say anybody could even think has had to consider that foundational question which gives the value to their meaning and purpose, et cetera? Now, I'm going to tell you some bad news before I get to all the exciting good news, because I've got, you know, like 45, 50 minutes this morning to convince you this is such an important issue that you need to be involved in and can easily be involved in. So I've been doing this for a long, long time, about 30 years. And the statistics I'm gonna show you, I can bear out time and time again. Already this morning in the first two services, I've had parents come up to me and say that their kids are gonna be one of these statistics that I'm gonna show you. There's an organization in the US called Barna Research, you've probably heard about them. Been surveying the church for many years, pastors use their research. In a confidential survey of Christian teens in the church, So these are young boys and girls in Christian families sitting in our pews. Confidentially, they revealed that only one in three of them intended to continue attending church after they left home. You see, what's interesting, I come from Australia where we don't have a lot of churches. In fact, I often point out we think there are more churches in Atlanta where I live now than in the whole of Australia. And I'm going to be really blunt with you this morning. What I see, you know, particularly in the conservative South is, oh, those statistics, but that's not my son or daughter, because they're powering on in the youth group and the Sunday school. But you know what? They're not equipped with the answers they're going to get in higher education or out in the world. See, evangelism starts at home, apologetics, giving a reason for what we believe. That's why this is important. Well, let's line it up a little bit. Here's some students. And one says to the other, you seem a bit down. That science class of yours went for ages. What happened? She said, teacher said, but nothing special. We came from pond scum. We're just evolved apes. They said, so what are they teaching in your next class? And she says, self-esteem. Many a true word spoken in jest, right? Okay, so what are we going to do about the science? See, we hear the word evolution and science in the same sentence. But evolution is not science. The type of science you and I understand is what we would call operational or experimental science. It's where you do experiments and you build upon that. It's the type of stuff that gives us technology. But when you're dealing with the past, whether it's creation or evolution, we're in the era of historical science, history, alleged events that happened in the past. Take a closer look at it. Operational science means you can do experiments in the present, repeat them, test them, and so on. If I wanted to do a test to test the boiling point of water today, right, I could do it today. Tomorrow, I'll keep getting the same results. And when I boil it, I noticed something interesting. Steam escapes gas. And I think, hmm, I could capture that, get a wheel, get some copper wires, and then you keep getting better over time. That's the experimental method. But what about the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds 65 million years ago? Anybody see that? Or humans evolved from ape-like creatures 2 million years ago. No one was there. You can't repeat it. You can't test it. Both creation and evolution are belief systems about the past, worldviews. And by the way, evolution is full of alleged one-time events. That's the problem. Now, I remember being in a church in South Africa some years ago, and I'll never forget it, because at the end of the service, this young man literally ran up to me and got in my face, and he was a young atheist brought along, and he said, you creationists, he said, you bang on about operational science, he says, and you ignore examples of it. I said, what do you mean? He said, fossils. Boy, if I had a dollar every time somebody raised fossils with me. Fossils. Fossils take millions of years to slowly form. He said, therefore, your idea of what he called a young earth, I call it the biblical age of the earth because that's where we get the age from. He says it's blown right out of the water by the very science you just spoke about. How would you answer that? So I showed him this picture. Have a look at this. This is a fossilized ichthyosaur. We believe that it's an extinct marine reptile. But what's really neat about it, have a look at that, there's the baby coming out of the birth canal. Now, my wife's with me on ministry this weekend. She doesn't always travel with me. But listen to this, mums. We've got four adult children, and when she was pregnant with our firstborn, we lived in a very rural part of Australia. And she was having trouble in labor, and they flew her on an air ambulance called the Flying Doctor up to a city. And when she eventually gave birth, she was in labor for 37 hours. Yeah, but can you imagine this poor creature slowly giving birth over millions of years while it was slowly being fossilised? What do you reckon? Of course not. See, when you see that picture, you can understand that something rapid and catastrophic happened to it in the process of giving birth. And yet here's a picture from my grade 11 biological science textbooks. By the way, you've got these, this is being taught, this method at elementary age now in this country. And here's the fish swimming along, and he sinks to the ocean floor when he dies. Now, I just believed and accepted that for many years. But does anybody see the first mistake? Well, what do you think happens when fish die out in the ocean? Do they sink to the ocean floor? They're going to float, aren't they? You notice those nature documentaries on TV with all the thousands of dead fish on the ocean floor waiting to be fossilised? See, in the real world, that fish is going to get scavenged. It's going to get eaten. Nothing lasts very long in the natural world. Now look what they're saying. While that fish is lying on the ocean floor, look at these high mountains. They've disappeared. A little bit of water carries a little bit of sediment down. The present is the key to the past. Students are going to hear about uniformitarianism, taking what we see today and extrapolating it back hundreds of millions of years in Earth's history. And the sediments cover the fish. It becomes permineralised, and then the process starts again. But folks, how do you get a fossil like that, excuse me, using that process? See, what you need, here's the fish swimming along. You need a lot of mud and water in a short amount of time. You can bury the fish quickly in those layers, and before long, you can get yourself a rapid fossil. You might be thinking, hang on, that's a bit simplistic. Because it's the process of permineralisation, where the organic material is replaced and turned to stone. That's what takes long periods of time. But it doesn't. To get a rapid fossil, all you need are the right conditions. Check this out. This is a soft felt hat. Buried in a volcanic explosion in New Zealand and 20 years after the initial eruption, they found this cabin and this hat along with other artefacts had turned into a piece of solid rock in less than 20 years. You just need the right set of conditions to get a rapid fossil. Check this one out. From my home state of Western Australia, right up in the far northwest, the outback, the owner of a trailer park found this solid rock ring exposed in the sand at low tide. What do you think it was, anybody? Yeah, lots of people say a tyre. Check it out. It's a roll of fossilised fencing wire. And you can even see the individual strands of wire so precisely fossilised we could measure the gauge of the wire. You just need the right set of conditions to get a rapid fossil. And check this one out. And again, let me point out all this stuff. This is my subliminal advertising, by the way. Look at this creation magazine. It's where it all came from. It's easy to understand. It's a lay magazine. They're going to give you an opportunity to get that at the end. But a family walking along a beach in Australia said they saw that rock, kicked it over, and got a surprise because inside was a toy car. So fossils can form quickly under the right conditions. Rocks can form quickly under the right conditions. But listen very carefully, boys and girls, listen when you get exposed to this in higher education. All the rock layers around the world they claim is evidence of hundreds of millions of years. And in those rock layers are fossils, dead things. And they say that's a record of evolutionary development on the earth. Well, remember this. They don't have more evidence than us. We have the same evidence. We have the same facts, both creationists and evolutionists. The same rocks, the same fossils to look at. But the story you hear about them is our belief system being applied to the data, right? We already made our mind up about how the world came to be before we ever look at the facts. Now, I know most of you probably don't believe in evolution, but if you're like most, you've probably struggled with this biblical age of the earth being thousands. And I've learned that it's because most people don't know where the idea of millions of years comes from. And I'm going to show you. This is it. It's not radiometric dating or anything like that. I'll show you that later. Let's use the Grand Canyon. Can you see these coloured bands of rock? See these layers? That's called strata. And in the strata are very fine layers called sedimentary layers. They believe that particles are washed in or blown in. Each layer takes a year. And so they look at the Grand Canyon. There are hundreds of millions of layers. So they assume they're looking at hundreds of millions of years of Earth's history. Now, who's heard stories like this? The Colorado River. wound its way through the canyon and eroded it over tens of millions of years. In fact, you've all heard stories like that, haven't you? So you look at it and say, there's evidence of deep time. Well, I'm going to show you something that turned me from a long-age evolutionist into a Bible-believing creationist. And some of you will be familiar with the events in Mount St. Helens in Washington State in 1980. Now, they knew it was going to erupt because the mountain was swelling. There were many earthquakes going on. Look at it venting. And when it did erupt, it didn't blow its top. Look at that. It blew its side. One third of the volcano erupted, and it blew lumps of rock as big as a city block over six miles from the blast site. But you know what? This is just a baby when we consider some of the geologic events in Earth's history. And in the aftermath of the initial eruption, there were flows, and it laid down bands of strata, just like you'd see in the Grand Canyon. There's a lady at the bottom. It's like a scale. See this middle section? Let's have a close look. Laminations, sedimentary layers, thousands of them. And the conventional way we're taught to interpret that is, must have taken thousands of years. Well, that 22-foot band of strata there was actually laid down precisely on June 12, 1980, in just three hours as a result of the catastrophic events of Mount St. Helens. When you go back to Mount St. Helens today, there are canyons all over the place. By the way, there's the dates for the other two flows. So look at this canyon here. It's called Engineer's Canyon. See the little river running through it? It's called the North Fork of the Toutle River. And again, let's just do a self-check, because when we look at that, we might immediately think, because of our education, wow, that little river eroded the canyon over a long period of time. For the reason it's called Engineers' Canyon is nearby Spirit Lake had overfilled with water from the volcanic eruption and Army Corps engineers diverted water from Spirit Lake into what was a little gully and they eroded that out in just a few months. By the way, don't think the material was soft and washed away. The floor of the canyon is solid basalt. That's hard volcanic rock. And you can see the striations or the scouring of the rock where it's been eroded by fast-flowing mud and water. Excuse me. And if you look at the screen, see my pointer there? That side canyon they called that Little Grand Canyon. Here's another picture of it. And I'd love to tell you that one took a few months to carve out, but actually that was formed in less than 24 hours as a result of a giant mud flow. See? See, what we're talking about is not a little bit of water, a little bit of sediment over a long period of time. We're talking about a lot of water, a lot of sediment, a lot of mud, a lot of debris over a short amount of time. It can do an incredible amount of geologic work. And, you know, all over the world, ladies and gentlemen, we do find thousands and thousands of feet of these sedimentary rock layers with dead things in them, fossils. They say that's a record of millions of years of Earth's history. We have the same facts. Let's put our biblical worldview glasses on. Is there an event in the Bible, an event in the Bible's history you think could have laid down some of those layers? I mean, I'll give you a clue, it involves a lot of water. What are we talking about? The flood. The flood of Noah. So next question. How long did the flood last? Not the rain for 40 days and 40 nights. How long did the floodwaters stay on the earth? A year. 12 months. So think about this. If all those sedimentary layers were laid down in Noah's flood, where did the millions of years just go? It's not there, is it? By the way, if there's no millions of years, there's no time for revolution. In fact, that picture there, I could do a whole talk on the order of the fossils. It's actually what we'd expect from a global flood because of the Bible starting in the deep oceans, et cetera. All that stuff comes from Creation Magazine. And again, I'm not here to sell you a magazine. That magazine for 41 years has had no advertising. Don't worry, we've been asked because it goes to 110 countries in the world. But we resist doing it, so faithfully I can come to church and promote it to you as a resource. And that's the type of information we have in there. I want to deal with the six days of creation. This is the thorny one we get hung up on. You know, when I first got saved and I was an evolutionist, I used to use this passage here, where the Lord, a day's like a thousand years. And of course it goes on, a thousand years are like a day. Kind of cancels itself out, doesn't it? See, that would be using a passage out of context though, because that's talking about the patience of God. that he's not willing that any should perish. Here's another one, the gap theory. Some of you, my vintage and a bit older, if you were weaned on the Schofield Study Bible in Baptist circles, they argued for something called the gap theory. Still quite popular today. And it goes like this. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, Genesis 1.1. And then we insert a big gap of time. And I'm leaving a gap of time. I'm letting my brother catch up here. You going all right? All right, there he is. Now why did they do that? Well, they believed that the rock layers was evidence of millions of years. So they put a gap of time between Genesis 1, 1 and 2. But those rock layers were full of fossils. The Genesis floods not to chapter six. So they invented something called Lucifer's flood to explain all the rock layers and the fossils in the gap. Okay, this is pretty easy to deal with to be honest. Can anybody give me chapter and verse where I'd see Lucifer's flood mentioned in scripture? Is it in there? See, that's called eisegesis, by the way. That's where you add outside ideas in scripture. The exegetical approach, okay, is to test scripture with scripture. By the way, Lucifer's flood, it's called ruin reconstruction, okay? He ruined a pre-Adamic world and then God had to recreate. Actually, most people who subscribe to gap theory don't know the full story about it. So let's go to this passage. Exodus 20, 11, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, that's verse 1, 1, no period, no gap, and the sea and all that's in them rested on the seventh day. Everything in six 24-hour days. There's no gap. And by the way, I don't know if you recognize this passage, it's a very significant one. It's actually one of the Ten Commandments. Inscribed by the finger of God in tablets of stone, right up there with thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not murder. I mean, we have a problem with those other commandments? Of course not. By the way, when we go back, let me ask you, Lucifer's flood, is Lucifer, Satan, a fallen angel? Were all the angels made by God? Yeah. At end of day six of creation, God saw all that he made, and it was very good. Satan could not have fallen before day six of creation. He couldn't have been doing that terrible work there. So there are all these interpretations. You know, today theologians are getting more convinced, well, maybe the flood was not a global flood, it was a local flood, despite the language of Genesis and the mountains being covered. But let's think about this. We know the size of the ark from scripture, 462 feet long, 70 feet wide, 60 feet high, three decks. Noah took somewhere between 70 to 100 years to build this massive ship. Why did he take all that time and go to all that trouble? Because think about it, he could have packed a suitcase and walked off to another country at that time. Why were birds on the ark if the flood was local? Remember they released the dove, no dry land, no dry land until eventually there was. Theistic evolution is the idea that God used evolution. He lit the fuse of the Big Bang. By the way, the Big Bang is something that a group of creationists, and be careful when someone calls themselves a creationist, we call them progressive creationists, Dr. Hugh Ross, Reasons to Believe, he believes in soulless ape men before Adam and says God created a Big Bang 14 billion years ago. The framework hypothesis, sadly, this is one of our more popular views in seminaries today, and you've probably heard the idea that Genesis is not meant to be taken as history, but it's kind of poetry. The gap theory I dealt with. But let me deal with this one, the day age theory. This is probably the most popular. You know, the days might be millions or billions of years each. That's what the progressive creationists believe. Because they say the word day, which is yom in Hebrew, can mean an indefinite period of time. And you know, that's actually correct. But it's a bit of a bait and switch to say that means that in Genesis. Because we always understand the meaning of words from the context they're used in. Let me give you a couple of examples this morning, make it really easy. Here's another quick quiz. If I said to you it took me three days to fly from Brisbane, Australia to St. Louis, how many 24-hour days have I spoken about? Someone quick. Good. Not a trick question as you saw. The reason I wanted you to do it quickly is I didn't want you to think about it, have time to think about it. And you didn't need to because when I put a number in front of the word day, I just defined the context to you. You knew I was talking about a 24-hour day. So if I said, hey, It's really good to be with you here this morning. Actually this evening, I'm gonna be speaking in another church. Evening and morning, you understand, are parts of this day, a 24-hour day. So let me change the context on you. What if I was to tell you a story about something that happened back in my father's day? How many 24-hour days am I speaking about? You can't tell. See how you can change the context? So what's the context in Genesis 1? Well, we start in verse five, God called the light day, darkness he called night, there was evening, there was morning, there was one day, three definers of the context. But you know what? It goes on. There was evening, there's morning, there's a second day. Evening and morning, a third day. Evening and morning, a fourth day. Now, I don't know about you, but you're starting to see a pattern here. Evening, morning, a fifth day. Evening, morning, a sixth day. Six times over three definers of the context. I mean, to be honest, if God really wanted to define them as 24-hour days, could he have made it any clearer? And you know what amazes me? Is we'll sing great worship songs and we'll ponder, you know, God of wonders, all the galaxies. Do you know our sun is but one of 200 billion stars in our Milky Way? The next galaxy is 2 million light years away. And the next one after that, 20 million light years away. And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, all containing hundreds of billions of stars. And the Bible says God determines their number, and he calls them all by name. But you couldn't have made it in six days. Why? Because scientists have said the world's 4.5 billion years old. No, they don't. They just interpret geology incorrectly. That's it. See, check this out. Outside of Genesis 1, the word day, yom, in the Old Testament appears with a number 410 times. Evening and morning without the word day. Evening and morning with the word day. We've got all these different combinations, and it appears 523 times, and no one ever questions those as anything but a 24-hour day. It's only in Genesis that they question it. That's the wrong exegetical method. See, but here's the other issue. There's a deep theological problem if you try to add millions of years and evolution to the scripture. Do you remember those days of creation? God saw that they were good, good, good, and day six he says very good. The Hebrew term there is tov miyod, which means perfection, completion, finished. So if the evolutionary interpretation of all those geologic layers around the world with dead things in them is correct, that's a record of death and disease and suffering on the earth over millions of years. So would Adam and Eve been stood on a fossil graveyard underneath them and God looks down and says, yes, that's all very good. Is death good? No, death stinks. It was an intrusion into God's perfect world. See, look, in the New Testament, one of those New Testament passages, it makes it clear there was no death and bloodshed before Adam. Sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. No death before Adam. So let me go back a step here because even if you don't believe in evolution, but if we try to add millions of years to the Bible, remember the millions of years comes from the rock layers. There are fossils, dead things in the rock layers. We've inadvertently put death before the fall. That's a gospel issue. If death was in the world for millions of years, why did Christ come? What's so bad about death? So summing up, evolution says death's a good thing. It's what led to mankind. But the Bible says it was our actions that messed up God's creation, it's his. He put us as the stewards here and that's the problem, we messed it up. And even though we messed up God's perfect world, he sends a rescue mission from heaven to pay the penalty of death that was due us for fouling up the nest. And you know, people want to know if God's a God of love. Isn't that an incredible story of love, ladies and gentlemen? That that incredibly wise and infinite creator of the universe humbled himself and became a man and took our place. See, we got what we didn't deserve. That's called grace, unmerited favor. That's how much love God has. And boys and girls, if you're here and you're in the church, You know, going to church doesn't make us a Christian, even you big boys and girls too. See, being a sinner, it's not what we do, it's who we are. Blame it on Adam if you like, but we're all just as bad as him. And that's because of the Bible's history. But check this out. Here's the good news. The second last chapter in the whole Bible, Revelation 21, look, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, no more death, neither sorrow. Nor crying neither shall there be any more pain. The former things have passed away." And check this out, the very last chapter in the whole Bible, Revelation 22, says, look, in the New Jerusalem, I don't know if you realize that, there's the tree of life again. And there should be no more curse. What curse is it talking about? Which book in the Bible do we have to go to to find where the curse entered the world? Back in the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis. So you got the last chapter in the Bible referring to the very first book in the Bible, the undoing of that work. And how can God do that? Because he's the creator. How can he raise the dead? Because he's the author of life. That's the God we worship. Don't put him in a little box, ladies and gentlemen. We're not limiting God. God limits himself by his word. And if I haven't convinced you yet, here's another one of these statistics, particularly applying to our Southern Baptist churches. They said back in 2002 that 88% of our young ones will leave the faith at age 18, never to return. As I said, when I come over here and I see such a church culture, why are we not even keeping the ones that we've got? And they've been surveyed for years. So I took a small film crew, And I went on to college campuses in Atlanta. And you can watch it on creation.com forward slash fallout. There's a trailer there. And as the students walked past, I asked four questions. That's it. And the first question was, were you raised in the church or not? And if they said no, we let them keep walking. We wanted these young ones that said they were raised in the church. So the second question to those kids was creation or evolution, what's true? That's all we asked. Out of the hundreds of students we surveyed, ladies and gentlemen, only five children said they still believed in creation. So the next question, when you were at church, did your parents, pastors, leaders, anybody show you the wealth of scientific evidence we have to support biblical creation? Every single student who was raised in the church and now believed in evolution, not one of them had ever seen this information. The handful of kids who still believed in creation, every single one had seen it before. And here's the thing, they didn't get all the answers, but at least they knew there were answers. The last question, do you still attend church? And all those kids that said they now believed in evolution, except for one young man, and we put him in the video to show we weren't stacking the deck, no longer attends church. The handful of students who said they believed in creation, every single one of them said they still attend church today. Still think this is a foundational issue? My 30 years of ministry, this is the number one issue. Attack the book of Genesis, attack the foundation of the Bible and the gospel, and the rest will just topple away, ladies and gentlemen. Well, let me leave you with this quote here, and I'm gonna show you some resources in a minute so you know where to look. A town hall columnist, Mike Adams, he's a professor, and he said this, if Christianity dies in America, it will not be for a lack of the evidence of its truthfulness. It will be for a lack of the dissemination. That means the sharing, the spreading of the evidence of its truthfulness. I said I've been in ministry for nearly 30 years. You know, when I first started, there were about four books on creation. Today, there's not only us, other good creation ministries, we have thousands and thousands of resources to support you in this area, more than at any time in the church's history. And I have to be honest with you, I don't get tired of sharing this information. I'm so passionate because we are uncovering so much more information. You know, Darwin knew nothing about the study of genetics, right? We're in the genetics revolution, so that's why I can say all humanity is closely related. There's one race. The human race, that's it. That's what science shows. So our website, 12,500 free articles on there. There's a weekly TV show, and the lead article changes every day, keeps you up to date. Some books, this one here, The Answers Book. If you don't mind me saying, I think every Christian home should have a copy of that, because it's the 65 most asked questions on creation evolution. And you were sitting there when I mentioned galaxies and stars, and you thought, well, hang on, Gary. How did we see distant starlight millions or billions of light years away if we think the universe is only thousands of years old? We get insights from scripture and real science using Einstein's theory of general relativity. Refuting evolution. That's basic high school science. That's what our young ones will be taught in high school. It deals with the curriculum or junior college. It's the largest selling creation book of all time. Now, we put those in a pack. and you buy two books, you get a third resource for free. If you just want the answers book, if there's some left, it's $14, normal price for a book, but what we're doing here for this church is if you buy one, I'll give you one for free. Why is that? Because we want you to give one away, all right? Give one to someone else who's asked you those questions. Geology, as I said, is the culprit for millions of years. Don't think this is a hokey, dumbed-down children's book, you adults, grab this book, Do it with your young ones because you will learn a lot about where the idea of millions of years comes from. We had a family write to us and say their six-year-old daughter, they took her for a walk. She picked up a rock, told them the name of the rock. Why is that important? What is she seeing? God's world. Noah's flood all around her. And there's a companion dinosaur book. People think dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. We have lots of evidence they didn't. There's a five-cover hard pack. Elementary-aged, you can see the price for five hardcover books. Parent helps in the back. If the stuff I've said to you today is, well, I've heard all that before, Gary. That was pretty basic. You wanted something in-depth, this is the Rolls-Royce of creation books. It's an 800-page scientific, theological, and historical commentary on Genesis 1 to 11. It's got everything. That's the one book that has everything. Dinosaurs and man living together. They carved them, they pictured them, and they called them dragons because the word dinosaur was not invented until 1841. It's a modern word. And when I talked about all this evidence we have, it's just not in the area of biblical creation. Do you know there's a ministry here in the U.S. that's going to the Middle East because of ISIS have been burning monasteries and burning books. And they're trying to digitise all the ancient Greek manuscripts before they get lost. And when they're in these monasteries and they're pulling off books, they're actually finding more manuscripts that we didn't know we have. We have more manuscript evidence today than we had 100 years ago. So you can be sure that the very words you have in your English translation Bibles convey the very words and meaning that God wanted to communicate to us. I told you this is an exciting time to be a Bible-believing Christian. By the way, have a look at that inside this booklet. Oops, sorry, wrong way. We Defend Inspiration. How did God, you know, choose the books that we have as people think? But check this out on the inside back cover. I did up a chart and showed you the 2,800 cross references in the 66 books of the Bible showing you the unity of scripture. Isn't that exciting? They're like a blur. And it wasn't mentioned, but my claim to fame, I'm a Christian ufologist. Wow, what's that? Guy studies UFOs and aliens for a living. This was my first book. became an Amazon top 50 bestseller, the only creation book to do that. And I don't mention that to boast, but to point out more non-Christians have read this book than Christians. See, the whole concept, believe it or not, of God creating alien life, and I know Christians struggle with this, but you can look it on our website or read the book, is a gospel issue. But people do have experiences. They see things and they have real experiences. And I tell you, I come from a very conservative Christian background. It was very confronting to me. And there are these people who claim that they've been abducted by aliens, four million Americans. Well, I can tell you something's happened to them, but it's not aliens. And we have testimony after testimony. It was made into a movie last year. It's been on over 1,000 screens around the world. My board asked me to do it about three years ago. And we've had testimony after testimony of people confirming what we showed in the movie, that their experiences stop when they call on the name of Jesus Christ. So you and I, we don't mix in those circles. We're sanctified. We're protected by the blood of Christ. But people outside the church who don't know the Lord, never read the Bible, never been in church, well, if the Bible's true, there is a spiritual realm. There is activity going on all around us. And that's a great resource you could give to somebody who's not interested in Christianity. Say, hey, here's a book about UFOs and aliens. And guess what? At the end, it's all about Jesus. And I have a little bit more time. Let me tell you an interesting story. We just send our documentaries off to film festivals and whatever. The world's largest film festival is held in Los Angeles every year. It's called the Remy Film Festival. It's where Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, they cut their teeth. And we just sent it off there for a bit of a laugh. We thought at least the reviewers are gonna see a Christian movie because it's all about Jesus in the end. Well, surprise, surprise, a few months after the festival, we got a package in the post, and it said we won a bronze reward at the world's largest secular film festival. What does that mean? They had over 5,000 entries that year, and alien intrusion, unmasking, and deception ranked in the top 10% of all their submissions. Isn't God good? That just blows me away, all those people got to hear the gospel. You can get them in a pack out there. Last thing. Creation Magazine. If there's one resource you should get, there's no advertising in it. There's a children's section. I mentioned radiometric dating. Well, here's an example. This rock, we know the age of the rock from the volcanic explosion was 50 years, and we sent it off to a radiometric dating lab, and it came back with an age of 1.35 million years. Something wrong with the dating methods there, isn't there? Boys and girls, you'll love this one. Check this out. I should have brought it with me, because I've got one. It's a fossilised teddy bear. Now, do you think that's millions of years old? But when people think fossils take millions of years to form, could you see how one picture could really shake their foundational view? And information changes lives, ladies and gentlemen. This young man wrote to us a few years ago and he said, your work was very important for me becoming a faithful believer in the Bible. I was an atheist and convinced of evolution until a year ago and I started to listen to those crazy young earth believers trying to disprove them and here I am now, praise the Lord. You can subscribe somebody else. This young man came up to me in a church in Australia with tears in his eyes. And I said, look, could you write down your testimony? People would be encouraged. Look what he wrote. Thank you for your ministry. As a friend, as a child, a friend bought me a subscription to Creation Magazine. I attended public schools where evolution is taught, but with the information provided to me through your magazine, my faith was never shaken by evolution. I am now a Sunday school teacher, and my favorite topic is showing God's glory through creation. I attribute your magazine, a magazine. as a major contributor to the strength of my faith and my love of science. And that's why we promote it quite assertively. So when you go out, see the guys, the Yashas, they're going to be holding up their hands, grab one of these forms off them. The magazine is $29 for one year for print. But what we do out on ministry as an incentive for you to get it, we're going to give you the digital for free. The digital is $19 by itself. When you get the digital version by email, we allow you to share it. So your children, your grandchildren, or a friend at work, you could share it with as well. You get our free monthly newsletters, which tells you what's happening here in the US. So you're going to get the first edition today. You can start reading. You're going to get the free digital version sent to you. But if you sign up for two years, which is cheaper, just $50, we're going to give you all that plus a documentary. And this was where we retraced Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. We went to the Galapagos in South America and we interviewed evolutionists and we said, you know, if Darwin knew what we know today about science, do you think he would have been an evolutionist because of the things that shaped his views? And I'm also going to give you another DVD. And this is that documentary called Fallout where I interviewed students on campuses. And do you know when I asked them what was their best evidence for evolution, 90% of them said the fossil record, the fossil record, the fossil record. And yet that is the easiest thing for us to explain as creationists, ladies and gentlemen. What we see in the fossil record is completely consistent with a global flood. So all of that is there. Sign the form, how many years you want it. Don't forget to put your email address so we can send you the digital. Take it to our volunteers at the tables and they'll give you the free gifts. One last thing in Creation Magazine. We're told that the last dinosaur died out 65 million years ago according to evolution. And all over the world, we're finding unfossilised red blood cells. That's what you're looking at, still in its organic state. We're finding ligament, flesh, Blood vessels that are still soft and stretchy. This is not rocket science. I mean, how could they even be a million years old and remain in its organic state? It fits the Bible's timeframe of creation a few thousand years ago and the flood. See, that's evidence that changes somebody's mind. Dinosaurs are one of the most asked questions. Let me leave you with this passage. Be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that is in you. And of course it says to do this with gentleness and respect. Can I encourage you that evangelism starts at home, ladies and gentlemen? Equipping our children to have answers when they go out into the world. Maybe you're sitting here today and you've had doubts. Maybe you've been coming to church, you've had doubts about the scriptures and whether God really exists because, well, I don't know if the Bible's really true. Or maybe you're sitting here and I've maybe rattled your cage a little bit. I'm sorry for that because maybe one of your cherished icons of inserting millions of years in the Bible, I've just kind of dealt with as well. But let me ask you, you can trust God at his word. We are in an exciting time to be Bible believers, ladies and gentlemen. We have so much information. You know, what we see out there in God's world, should always agree with what we read in his word, and it does, if we're wearing the right set of glasses. Don't take the secular, non-Christian interpretation of the world to try to tell us what God's trying to say to us today. I'll leave you with that thought. God bless you, and I'll be around if you've got some questions. Thank you so much. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Gary. The worship band is going to come out and close us out, but let me just capture your thought for a couple of minutes. Some of you, in response to what Gary shared, are saying, wow. And some of you are saying, so what? There's both of you here today. I know it. We've all been there. Wow, and so what? Let me remind you that the God of all creation, the God who created the heavens and the earth, everything on the earth and under the earth, is the God who created you. Uniquely you. In the image of God, you. He created you for His purposes, for His glory. He wants to redeem you, as He does me, and He does that by buying us back at a great price. Redemption is buying back at a price. And the price He redeemed us was the price of the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. So today, the God of all creation is pursuing you in a love relationship known as salvation. The Bible says, God so loved the people of the world that he gave his one and only, that whosoever would call upon him would not perish, but have everlasting life. God wants you to know him. And let me share this. All of us have three options in response to God's pursuit. Number one, we can run as far and as fast as we can away from God. And many do that. That's a rebellious heart. Second, you can stand still. You're not running, but you're not moving toward him. That's a stubborn heart. But the third option is a surrendered heart, where you say, oh God, in response to your love for me in creation and in allowing me to live and have life and breath, I acknowledge that I'm undone, incomplete in my sin, and I want to be made whole. and only happens through you. I run to you with arms wide open. That's a surrendered heart. And that's what He wants from all of us. And unless and until we surrender our heart and our lives, we will stubbornly and rebelliously walk through life never knowing truth. Please, as this worship band plays and closes out today, you reconcile in your own heart and mind. Do I know the God of all creation?