Why Gen Z Is MUCH Different From Previous Generations: Ken Ham (Transcript)

George Barna, LifeWay, and others have done research, and we’ve done our own research, to find out that about two-thirds of young people were leaving the church by the time they reached college age, with very few returning.

Over the past 30 years, as I’ve been speaking, I’ve been talking to pastors all across this nation and other nations too in our Western world who are saying we are losing the coming generations. And we did the research on that. We sent America’s Research Group out to find those millennials that used to go to church and no longer go to church and ask them, “Why did you leave?”

Invariably, the answers came back: “How can you believe in a loving God with all the death and suffering in the world?” and “What about science and evolution and millions of years?” Because of what they’ve been taught, to them it caused them to doubt that you could trust God’s word. And because much of the church wasn’t telling them to believe God’s word in Genesis and equipping them with answers, but telling them, “Don’t worry about that, you can believe whatever, just trust in Jesus,” we see that they walked away from the church.

Declining Church Attendance Across Generations

I want to show you again what I presented in the first session because I want to elaborate on this today. When we look at church attendance in America, we see what’s been happening. You can’t deny that this is happening. There’s been a lot of research on this.

This is from the Pew Research Center, and we’ve done our own research actually in regard to these issues. You see church attendance for the Greatest Generation (born before 1928) was 56%. The Silent Generation was at 44%, the Boomers at 32%, then there’s Generation X at 27%, then the Millennials at 18%. And then when you get to Generation Z, George Barna said they’re the first truly post-Christian generation.

By the way, it only takes one generation to lose a culture. That’s all it takes, one generation. They are twice as likely to be atheists as any previous generation. And I want to make that statement again: Generations X, Y, and Z are going to fundamentally change the church and culture.

The Generational Divide in Christian Values

So what I wanted to do in this session is this: I wanted us to look at how we should be teaching our churches, how to impact the culture with the message of the gospel. I believe we need to understand this: in a way, I drew a line right here. The Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, and the Boomers are more Christianized. They have more of a Judeo-Christian ethic.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re Christian, but if you think of the founding fathers in America, not all, but many were Christians. Nonetheless, they basically had a respect for the Bible, and the Judeo-Christian ethic from the Bible is what permeated the culture. So for these generations here, they were more likely to say marriage is between a man and a woman, gay marriage is wrong, abortion is wrong, transgender is wrong, and so on.

But when you look at X, Y, and then Z, they are much more secularized, much more atheistic. They’ve grown up in an education system different from the ones the older generations grew up in. 90% of kids from church homes go to the public schools. Now, for the older generations, the Bible was in school. It was still secular, but it wasn’t as anti-Christian as it is today. Today, they basically throw the Bible, God, and prayer out, and they teach evolution as fact.

The Challenge of Modern Education

If anything, they’re very anti-Christian in things that they do, you know, drag queens and all sorts of things and teaching about different genders and so on, as you’ve been discussing this week. And so they’ve grown up in a much more atheistic system. And then they’ve come to our churches and asked these questions. And by and large, sadly, the majority of Christian leaders have said, in fact, the majority of Christian leaders have totally supported public schools and said, “That’s okay, go there.”

“You can be a witness in the school because we’re to be salt and light.” Actually, the Bible says you can’t be salt until you have it. And if the salt’s contaminated, it’s good for nothing. And our job as parents is to put in as uncontaminated salt as possible.

It’s not going to be totally uncontaminated because they got used to us. We have a very deceitful heart, every one of us, but to do as much as possible to get them to be mature adults equipped to be able to survive in this world and to be witnesses. I think we’ve got a whole… that’s a whole other talk that I do, but I just want to mention that. Just to be provocative again.

The Battle Between Generations

But you see, there’s a battle going on between these generations and these. When we were going to be building the Ark Encounter, we actually did research, a general population study in America to find out how many people would come. And we also had our researchers ask questions about the spiritual state of the nation. And one of the questions was this: “If you went to church regularly as kids, do you still attend most Sundays or did you stop attending?”

And notice this: in the 60s generation, 22% that went to church have stopped attending, but in the 20s generation, it’s 53%. You can’t deny the research. It’s been corroborated from lots of different sources, secular and Christian. Because you see, Generation Z, the first truly post-Christian generation, is a consequence, I believe, of a lack of training, a consequence of a church that hasn’t taken a stand on God’s word beginning in Genesis as we should.

The Challenge of Presenting the Gospel Today

Now, I say all that and then I say to people, for instance, if I was to talk to people in the church and say, “So what should we be doing?” Well, people say, “Well, we need to go out and proclaim the gospel. That’s what we need to do.” And I say, that’s true.

But I want to suggest to you that we have a problem today. And the problem is, I don’t believe we’re presenting the gospel in the way the younger generations will understand it. And I’m going to explain to you why I say that. And the other problem is, the younger generations actually speak a different language.

You know what I mean? For instance, in the older generations, if you went to the public schools and said “God,” most people would think of the God of the Bible. But if you go today and say “God,” they say, “Which God? There are many gods.”

Here’s another example. In the older generations, when you’re in church and you would say, “Kids, come forward, we’re going to have a Bible story,” you would think, “Oh yeah, having an account from the Bible and it’s real, it’s true, it’s the Bible.” But I want you to tell me, right?

I go out on a limb doing this, obviously, but I want you to tell me, what does the word “story” mean today? What’s it come to mean today? You tell me. Fairy tale, fiction.

And yet in our churches, a lot of times we still say “story.” You know what’s happened today? There’s been an attack on God’s word as a book of history. The history is not true. The history in Genesis is not true. The word “story” has come to mean fiction, fairy tale. And yet here we are, “Kids, we’re going to have a Bible story. We have wonderful stories at Sunday school.”

You see, we’ve got to understand the change that’s occurred in those younger generations. I believe much of the church has been oblivious to it. When I say much of the church, please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all churches, all pastors, I’m just saying, by and large, the majority. And that’s true.

You know how many churches there are in America? What are they? 350,000 churches or something? See, but there’s a minority that do stand on God’s word. But even many conservative pastors, as I said in the other talk, have said to me, “Well, we don’t want to preach on Genesis because, well, you know, it’ll create division and so on.” And you mean you’re worried about standing on God’s word because you might lose some people from the church and you might lose some money in the collection plate or you might… I mean, let’s be honest.

The End of an Era: Billy Graham’s Legacy

In 2018, Billy Graham passed away. Yahoo News said this: “There’ll never be another Billy Graham because the world that made him possible is gone.” Here’s an intriguing thing: The secular world understands what has happened, but I don’t think much of the Christian world does. See, even Tucker Carlson on Fox News had a tribute to Billy Graham and he said, “Billy Graham basically just preached the Bible. In the America of his time, that was enough. People stopped him on the streets to shake his hand. We live in a different country now.”

Oh, we do. We live in a different country. We live in a different culture. Let me try to explain what that difference is.

In 1959, I was a little boy, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little boy in 1959. And Billy Graham came to Australia as an evangelist. And the response was incredible. I mean, literally hundreds of thousands of people, people impacted, people who actually were converted and so on. I remember my father telling me, “The Bible says man is coming to Australia.”

That’s what my father called him. The Bible says man, because he was known for this: “The Bible says, repent of your sin. The Bible says, put your trust in Christ. The Bible says, Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible says all have sinned.” Had an incredible impact on Australia. Closest Australia ever came to revival.

But when evangelists like Billy Graham go back today and preach the same messages, nowhere near that response. It just doesn’t happen. People think about it in regard to America or the Western world, even other countries. I mean, we used to have these big crusades in the past.

The Changing Landscape of Christianity

There’s even been revivals and massive numbers of people come. You don’t see that today. Something has changed. You know what? The secular world’s right. It’s a different culture now.

So why the response back in the 50s? And, you know, he came back in the 60s and got that sort of response, but not that response today. I’d like to suggest this reason.

The Decline of Biblical Knowledge in Schools

See, when I was a young boy and we went to school in Australia, guess what? By law, teachers had to read through the Bible in the public schools. Now, most of those kids didn’t go to church, but we inherited the British system. And so those kids knew about Adam and Eve. They knew about sin. They knew about Noah. They knew about Abraham. They knew about Jesus, the cross. They knew about the baby in a manger, the resurrection, because the teachers read through the Bible.

Even when I was a teenager in high school, we would recite the Lord’s Prayer on assembly before we went into school. “Our Father, which art in heaven,” everyone would recite it. Most of those kids didn’t have a clue what they were reciting, but they recited it. Because that’s what you did.

But if you go to Australia today, they don’t read through the Bible in schools. In fact, it’s like America. They basically throw the Bible out of the public schools, and you don’t recite the Lord’s Prayer on assembly. Evolution is taught as fact. It’s become a very atheistic system. If anything, the Bible would be taught against.

The Shift from Acts 2 to Acts 17 Culture

You see, what I want to do is to say this. The younger generations are living in a different culture to the older generations, and I believe you can distinguish it this way in the Bible. The older generations, and when I went to school in Australia, we were more in an Acts 2 type culture. But the younger generations today are more in an Acts 17 Greek type culture.

Most of our evangelistic methods and approaches in our churches are based on an Acts 2 approach. An Acts 2 approach only works in an Acts 2 culture. Increasingly, we’re not an Acts 2 culture, which is why increasingly many of our churches are not impacting the culture.

A verse of scripture that to me describes it is this: “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.” The younger generation are much more like the Greeks. The older generation are much more like the Jews.

A Radical Idea for Revolution

See, I’ve got an idea, a radical idea for a revolution. We start a revolution here at the Ark Encounter. Tell that to the news. Let’s see what happens. We start a revolution. If we do that, we could have meet and greets.

So what’s my radical idea for revolution? Now, this is going to blow you off your chairs. This is so radical, you’re going to say, how did he think of that? I mean, this is incredible. You’re ready for it?

How about we start sharing the gospel the way God does it in the Bible by starting at the beginning? What a concept. Isn’t that radical?

I mean, you buy an Agatha Christie murder mystery and what do you do? You read the last chapter, find out who done it, throw the rest of the book away. You say, well, that’d be stupid because if you don’t start at the beginning, you don’t understand the plot, you don’t understand what happened. Oh, exactly.

The Importance of Genesis

You know a problem in the church? A lot of people, a lot of people start by reading towards the end, reading in the New Testament. In fact, I find a lot of people are much more interested in Revelation than they are in Genesis. Genesis is sort of an outdated book and who cares? And it doesn’t matter. It’s got no… And you know what? You have a big conference on eschatology. Oh, all these people come. Wow. This is important. We’re going to find out, you know, did Jesus come back tomorrow or not?

Have a conference on Genesis. “What are you doing that for? You shouldn’t be doing that. That’s divisive. Don’t do that. You can’t have that in the church.” Oh, you know how many times that’s happened? And we’ve been canceled from churches because of some people, minority in the church that said, “You can’t bring him into this church. He’s divisive. He believes Genesis.”

But think about that. And here’s what I would say to you. Revelation is not foundational to the rest of the Bible. Genesis is. Revelation is not foundational to all your doctrine, your Christian worldview. Genesis is.

And I’ve said enough this week to help people understand giving up Genesis and particularly the first 11 chapters is why we’re in the mess we’re in and the church is in the mess it’s in. And yet we’re more interested in Revelation.

The Lack of Emphasis on Genesis in Churches

And I mentioned yesterday for those that were here, you see this even in churches’ statements of faith. I see it all the time. You look up churches’ statement of faith when it comes to Genesis, “God created.” And so it’s very general. Comes to Revelation. “You must believe in a pre-tribulation, pre-rapture, whatever this, that, and the other.” And it’s got all the details.

Why don’t you have the details like that about Genesis, regardless of what your eschatological views are? Why don’t we do it about Genesis? You look at our statement of faith on the website, how detailed it is, because we recognize, even if you say we believe in Adam and Eve, what does that mean in today’s world?

Because you’ll find, even in our theological seminaries and Bible colleges, professors who believe in Adam and Eve, but they believe Adam evolved from this particular group of people over here and all the rest of it. And there wasn’t one man, one woman. I mean, you have got to be so specific today.

It’s like, even if you said we believe in a worldwide flood, what does that mean in today’s world? Well, why so many people means that part of the world. That’s what Hugh Ross teaches, for instance. It was a local flood, but he calls it a worldwide flood. I mean, you’ve almost got to put in your statement of faith, “If you had a bucket of water and a globe and you dipped it into the bucket, that’s what we believe for a global flood.”

I mean, you’ve got to get that sort of specific today. But I find most churches, Genesis doesn’t matter. It’s very general. Revelation. Oh, very specific. We’ve lost it. We got it all the wrong way around.

The Importance of Understanding the Bad News

You know, when I ask people, “What is the gospel?” People say to me, “Well, the gospel is the good news that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead.” And I say, “How can you understand the good news if you don’t understand the bad news in Genesis?”

People say, “Look, we just need to go out and get people saved.” I’ve got news for you. They don’t even know that they’re lost and what it means that they’re lost. You’ve got to get them lost first to get them saved.

See, as a teacher, I was really radical because I used to teach my students so they would understand what I was saying. And I would do it by building a house. In the first session, I talked on this. I start with the foundation. God is creator. Sin and death entered the world. That’s foundational, the foundational knowledge to understand why we need a Savior, what our problem is, why God sent his son to be one of us, to die on the cross, be raised from the dead, offers a free gift of salvation. One day there’s going to be new heavens and a new earth to come, the consummation of all things. All of that is the gospel. All of that.

The Generational Gap in Understanding the Gospel

Now, in a sense, try to understand this. The older generations who are very familiar with Christian terminology and Adam and Eve and so on, the foundational knowledge to understand the gospel was sort of inherently there. Right? So you didn’t have to concentrate on that, so to speak. But I think what a lot of the older generations in our churches have missed is that the younger generations don’t have that foundation and they assume that they do and they’re still presenting the gospel the same way.

“Trust in Jesus, Johnny, if he died on the cross for your sin,” they have no idea what you’re talking about. You see, we tend to concentrate on the hope and the power of the gospel and not the foundational knowledge. But those younger generations don’t have this. And people who have brought up in the church all their life and go to church every Sunday, there are many of them are oblivious to what’s happened because, well, I went to public school and wasn’t a problem for me and I don’t know what’s happened to my kids and my grandkids.

I believe the church should always have been teaching the gospel starting in Genesis. We should always have been presenting all that. I can tell you stories about stories, accounts, about pastors who’ve said to their people, “Now once you go out door knocking and witnessing, if anyone brings up evolution, creation, Genesis, ignore that, it’s a red herring, just tell them about Jesus.” You know why they bring up those issues? Because that’s a stumbling block to them.

Acts 2 vs. Acts 17 Approaches

You see, let’s look at Acts 2 and Acts 17 real briefly here. In Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, Peter, maybe standing on the temple steps, maybe people were coming to bring their sacrifices, he preaches a pretty bold message. “You crucified the Son of God, but God raised him from the dead.” And when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said, “What shall we do?” And he said, “Repent” and so on. “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Three thousand souls were saved.

Wow, wouldn’t you like to see a crusade like that tomorrow? We used to see them like that, because we used to have an Acts 2 type culture. You see, who was Peter preaching to? Well, mainly Jews, or those convinced, or very familiar with the Jewish religion.

At that stage in their history, did they believe in God? Yes, one God. If you said sin, did they know what sin was? They knew about Adam and Eve, they had the writings of Moses, they knew death was a penalty for sin. They knew of the promise of the Savior, Genesis 3:15, Genesis 3:21, the sacrificial system that was set up. They had all that. Their stumbling block was that Jesus was the Messiah. That was the stumbling block.

Remember, “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.” The Jews were a creation-based culture, who understood the terms, but their stumbling block was the message of the cross.

The Language Barrier Between Generations

You know, I like to explain it to people this way. I like to say to people, when my wife and I came from Australia to America, we thought, well, they speak the same language here, so we should be able to just fit in, and we don’t have to go to language school. Until I found out Americans don’t speak the same language. I thought you spoke English. I found out it’s a different language, it’s called American English. Very different to Australian English.

You imagine, we arrive in California, which is a different country anyway, and I have a problem, this was in 1987, I have a problem with my car, and I said to somebody, “Could you help me, my battery’s flat.” “Your battery’s what?” “Flat.” “Did you run over it or something?” “I left the lights on.” “Your battery’s dead.” “Dead? It can’t die, it’s not alive.”

I found out, you people say dead battery, we say flat battery. And then I took the car to put petrol in it. Petrol’s a liquid you put in the car. I kept going, “Gas, gas, gas.” There’s no petrol, how do you put petrol in a car when they only sell gas? Half of you don’t even understand that. That’s because you’re Americans, that’s why.

And then, and then there’s the embarrassing ones. I was on the phone, somebody said, “So what are you doing?” I said, “I’m nursing our baby.” Silence. And then you hear, “You’re doing what?” “I’m nursing our baby.” “That’s what I thought you said.” I did some research and found out, much to my embarrassment, that nursing a baby in Australia doesn’t mean what it means in America. In America, it means something very different, because in Australia, when you say I’m nursing a baby, it means I’m holding the baby.

I was holding the baby, so I was nursing the baby. In America, I found out it means I’m breastfeeding the baby. Slightly different. And I thought, oh good grief, that person thought I said I’m breastfeeding the baby. Maybe they thought we Australian males had an upward evolutionary, you know, mutational change of some sort. And you need to understand this, because you can go to those animal parks in Australia and you imagine when somebody says to you, “Would you like to nurse a koala?” And if you’re an American, that could conjure up some horrible images, unless you understand what it means.

Now people, here’s what I’m trying to get across to us. There’s many, many differences like that between these two cultures. I’m telling you, it’s a far greater difference between the older generations and the younger generations. They even define right and wrong differently. They define truth differently.

I have them say to me, “But there’s no such thing as absolute truth.” Well, is that a true statement? And are you absolutely sure about it? I mean, they have no idea what, they’ve never been taught logic. And they’ve been brought up in this culture where everything’s relative and subjective, and it’s all about feelings and very different to the older generations. Have we considered that and how we approach these people in there that are left in our churches like that?

You see, the Jews were on the right road, the narrow road that led up to the message of the cross. There’s two roads, narrow and broad.

The Shift from Acts 2 to Acts 17 Culture

They’re on the right road, but their stumbling block was the message of the cross. And so I suggest to you that Billy Graham was preaching to primarily an Acts 2 culture. I would say the whole Western world used to be Acts 2, generally speaking, in the different cultures: Canada, Australia, United Kingdom.

But there’s been a change. The secular humanists understand the change. The atheists understand the change. This is from an issue of a secular humanist magazine in 2010 called the “Fading Faith Issue.”

They were talking about the fact that like in England, all these church buildings turned into mosques and antique stores, and talking about decreasing attendance in churches by the younger generations. I mean, in England, church attendance is down to 4%, basically. America’s heading there. You want to know where you’re going to be if we keep going the way we are? Look in England. That’s where we’ll be.

The Decline of Religion in the Developed World

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticeable, slightly, quietly, imperceptibly religion. When they say that, they usually mean Christianity. It’s shriveling in America as it already has in Europe, Canada, Australia, across the developed world. Increasingly, supernatural faith in the Third World… the First World is entering the long-predicted secular age where science (when they mean science, they really mean evolutionary naturalism) and knowledge dominate.

See, that’s a whole other issue about a lot of our seminary profs and so on are so enamored by the word “science” that, oh, if science built all this technology, then when they talk about millions of years, we’ve got to believe that too. It’s not the same sort of science at all.

The Historical Roots of the Problem

I believe that this started happening in the 1700s and 1800s when atheists and deists who want to explain everything without God said the fossil record was laid down over millions of years before man. Then there were Christian leaders who took the millions of years and put in a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and then reinterpreted the days of creation. Then along came Darwin and then many Christian leaders said we can say God used evolution and then God used the big bang.

By and large, what started to happen in the church and permeate our colleges and seminaries was you don’t take Genesis as written, we take what man has said, we reinterpret it and come up with all these different interpretations of Genesis and there’s all these different positions which relegates it to “it’s not important, doesn’t matter, John, you trust in Jesus.”

The Generational Shift in Faith

And then I believe 12 years ago, this has been bubbling under the surface. What’s been bubbling under here is the younger generations, the change in the education system they were going to becoming much more atheistic and anti-Christian than what it was, not that it’s ever been Christian but it had more, had a Christianized influence to a degree.

That’s been happening, churches have been encouraging kids to go to that system, 90% of them do and they come into our churches and we teach them Bible stories. And we recognize something’s happening, they’re losing, they’re leaving and so you know I have a bird’s eye view of the church that many people don’t have, I’ve spoken in all 50 states, I’ve spoken in hundreds of churches, colleges, I see the patterns.

The Changing Face of Church Services

You know what the patterns are? Increasing entertainment, decreasing teaching of the word and we’re not teaching apologetics and we’re not dealing with these issues and we don’t want to be divisive and so the praise team becomes the dominant feature of the church. And they get you to stand up for an hour and sing four songs 50 times each and they have five words per song and I often stand with my wife and I say I have no idea what this song means, what are we singing?

I’m not sure, is this theology? I’m not sure what it is. And you know what, to be honest most of our praise teams have become performance oriented, it’s a performance. You stand in the congregation like I do and watch the people, most of them aren’t singing, you can’t sing a lot of those songs.

Now I’m not saying there’s not good modern music that you can sing, you can, there’s good modern music you can sing but a lot of what they do is performance because there’s this idea of entertainment.

The Shift in Church Priorities

Then you know like one church I went into in Wichita actually and I was to speak and they got all the flashing lights and the strobe lights spinning around. I thought good grief, they invited me and I go down and I sit down the front. This happened and the girl comes up to me in black leather tights and she looks at me. “I am the stage manager, nothing happens on that stage without me giving the okay. I will get you up at the time that I decide for you to get your computer ready.” Okay, sweetie.

And you know what else I’ve noticed when you go to churches? I’m the speaker. The praise team has a priority. If I want to set my computer up ready to speak I’ve got to get there at three in the morning because they all come in and practice for hours and one minute before start time. “Oh you can set your computer up now. Oh by the way I’m not sure how long the praise team are going to go. You know I told them to cut it down but if they go too long you just have to cut your talk down from 20 minutes to 10.” Do you know how many times that’s happened to me?

Now I don’t care if you have an hour of music but I want equal time. But I’m saying that to say this, 12 years ago the bubble burst. In a big way. It’s not the cause of the bubble but the bubble burst.

The Political Shift and Its Impact on Faith

I believe the person who really did that was this person. See many people don’t realize that before he was president, President Obama when he was senator back in 2006 he spoke at a conference called “Building a Covenant for a New America.” What do you mean by a new America? The America you see today. Listen to what he said. Remember we once were we are no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation and a Buddhist nation and a Hindu nation and a nation of non-believers.

That was one of the mantras of the president. It’s in his book “The Audacity of Hope” he said it as he went around the world. “Whatever we once were we are no longer just a Christian nation also a Jewish nation, Muslim nation, Buddhist nation, Hindu nation.”

You know I believe he’s saying there we’re no longer a nation that believes in one God. We’re now a nation that believes in many gods. Isn’t that great? We’re no longer a nation where like the founding fathers we start with God’s word and build a worldview and so marriage is a man and a woman. Oh no we have a different foundation now. Man determines truth and so anything goes except Christianity. Because you see we no longer have that foundation in this culture.

The Importance of Genesis in Christian Doctrine

See as I said in the first session Genesis 1 to 11 is the foundation for the rest of the Bible. It’s a foundation for our whole Christian worldview and when you start with Genesis the doctrine of marriage is founded in Genesis but then every single doctrine of theology ultimately is founded in Genesis. So when you start from God’s word marriage is a man and a woman. Abortion is killing a human being made in the image of God. There’s only two genders male and female.

You start from man’s word oh then anything goes and what’s happened in our culture is very easy to see. Not that it was a Christian culture but it was much more Christianized and people had a respect for the Bible and the morality came out of that. Now we have a culture where the Bible’s gone and now it’s man that determines truth so anything goes which means Christianity can’t because all of those will say you can’t say gender is only male and female. You can’t say marriage is just a man and a woman.

The Challenge of Tolerance

You know it’s like when I talk to some of these people they say but you’ve got to tolerate all beliefs. “Like you?” “Yes we tolerate all beliefs.” “You know you’ve got to tolerate all views when it comes to marriage.” “Okay my view is that they’re all wrong and this is the right view based on the Bible.” “But now you’re being intolerant.” “Wait a minute aren’t you being intolerant of me?” “No we’re allowing all views.” “No you’re not you’re not allowing my view that says you are wrong.” You see it’s that conflict of worldviews isn’t it?

The Birth of Many Gods

You know in Newsweek 2009 there was an article “The End of Christian America” and there was a sentence that stood out in that article more than any other. “The present in this sense is more about, is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods.” The birth of the Acts 17 culture in our western world.

See when Paul went to Mars Hill and you have all these idols and altars and these different gods and atheists and pantheists it was everything except Christianity. And he spoke to the Epicureans who were like the atheists, the Stoics like the pantheists, the others that were there, a mixture of everything. And he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. By the way that’s just like Peter didn’t act too. Peter got 3,000 converts. Paul they said “What’s this babbler talking about?” It was foolishness to them, they didn’t understand at all.

Remember the preaching of the cross is stumbling block to the Jews but to the Greeks it’s foolishness. See the Greeks had the wrong foundation. They had no, they didn’t have the writings of Moses, they had no concept about Adam and Eve and the fall and the promise of the Messiah and the sacrificial system. So to them the preaching of the cross was foolishness. They didn’t have the foundational knowledge to understand the gospel.

Evolution and Ancient Cultures

They were actually an evolution-based culture. Don’t get the idea Darwin invented evolution. Darwin just popularized a particular view of evolution. There’s always been evolutionary views and beliefs when people reject God as creator. The Greeks believed in evolution, the gods evolved, we evolved from the earth. They didn’t understand the terms so the message was foolishness.

See compare a culture like the Jews with a culture like the Greeks. A culture like the Jews, God, we understand one God. Sin, we understand Adam and Eve and so on. Death, yeah death is a penalty for sin. Saviour, that’s their stumbling block. The Greeks, God, which God? There are many gods or no God or whatever. Sin, what is sin?

The Problem of Death and Suffering

Death, oh now here’s a crucial issue and I dealt with this yesterday for that for some of you might have been here for the session I did for the Ark Encounter yesterday. Death, you know the younger generations when we do the research when you talk to them or go and look at the atheist websites. You know what we need to be doing? Understanding what is the world going to say to lead these people astray that I’m teaching whether it’s my kids, my grandkids, the kids in church.

Do you research what they’re saying out there so you’re ready so you can get them ready for it or do we just come every Sunday and have a Bible story? You see you will find they will say out there there can’t be a loving God look at all the death and suffering in the world. In fact many of the leading atheists in America say they were brought up in church homes and there was some tragedy in their life, sickness, disease, death, abuse or whatever. There can’t be a God and they’re angry at God.

But here’s the problem. Most of our Christian institutions and most of our church leaders are blaming God for death because they teach millions of years. If you believe in millions of years the death, the struggle, the evil, the disease you see today has gone on for millions of years. The Bible teaches it’s a result of our sin. Adam’s sin brought death into the world. The whole creation groans because of Adam’s sin.

The Problem with Millions of Years

If you believe in millions of years there’s a massive problem here. You believe that all the fossil layers were laid down millions of years before man. That’s where it came from and it came out of the religion of atheism. But if you start with God’s word you know what God’s word says? Originally Adam and Eve and the animals were vegetarian. We weren’t told to eat meat until after the flood when God said just as I gave you the green plants now I give you everything and as I said to the people yesterday that means you can eat a hot dog because it’s defined right there.

In the fossil record there’s lots of examples of animals eating each other bones in their stomachs. Wait a minute how could that be before sin when originally all the animals were vegetarian? Not only that if you believe in millions of years in the fossil record there’s lots of example of diseases in the bones. Well documented. Tumors, arthritis, abscesses, cancer. Wait a minute after God created Adam and Eve and everything with the creation was finished he said everything he made was very good. Are you accusing God of saying cancer is very good?

The Problem with Our Teaching

And here’s a problem we’ve got. In a lot of our children’s materials in our Sunday school material and in our children’s books there’s “look at the beautiful world God made out there.” This is not a beautiful world and it’s not the world as he made it. This is an ugly world because of sin with a remnant of beauty because it’s changed because of the fall. We give kids the idea this is the world as God created then the atheists say “See see you can’t believe in a loving God this is what he created.”

You know that’s why sometimes I think when we sing that hymn “All things bright and beautiful the Lord God made them all.” We need another verse “All things mutated the Lord God cursed them all.” Imagine singing that in church but you get the idea we’re giving the kids the wrong way to think.

There are fossil thorns said to be hundreds of millions of years old in the fossil record it’s very clear thorns came after the curse. How can you believe in millions of years? These two things can’t be true at the same time which means the fossil record couldn’t have been laid down millions of years before man which means you have to explain all the fossils and to make a fossil you have to cover something quickly and preserve it and there are billions of fossils thousands of feet of sediments all over the whole earth. How could you explain that after sin? Well the flood of Noah’s day explains it. It’s the graveyard of the flood.

The Creation of “Greeks” in Our Churches

And you see to the Greeks they don’t understand. We actually have helped create Greeks in our churches by telling them you can believe in millions of years. We’re creating Greeks. We try to marry it in a gap theory or the days of creation or whatever.

See the Greeks were an evolution based culture who didn’t understand the terms of preaching the cross was foolishness. The Jews were a creation based culture who didn’t who understood the terms but their stumbling block was the message of the cross. If you think about it the Greeks were on the other road. How do you get that Greek to understand the message of the cross?

Reaching the “Greeks” with the Gospel

You’ve got to take them off the wrong road, start them on the right road that leads up to the message of the cross, which is what Paul did. Look at it from a big picture perspective. He looks around, sees all these altars, idols, temples, gods. You know, when I was over in the British Museum in London a number of years ago, I wanted to get a picture of the Greek gods, and I did. There they are. Not very powerful, couldn’t get out of the glass case.

Paul looks around and he sees an altar to the unknown God. You know, in their hearts they knew something was missing. What does Romans 1 tell us? God’s made it evident to all that he’s creator. What’s it say in Romans 2? The law is written on our hearts. They knew something was wrong and he said, “I found this altar to the unknown God. Let me tell you who he is. He’s the creator. He doesn’t exist in temples made with hands like your gods. He doesn’t need things like your gods. He gives life and breath to all and he made of one man.”

The Importance of Understanding Our Common Origin

This is another thing that is so important in our culture to understand. We all come from one man. We’re all one race. Stop talking about races because the way the world talks about races, it’s dividing people up and they’re all different and so on. The Bible says all have sinned, we’re all one race. We’re all Adam’s race. We’re all one family.

When the Human Genome Project mapped the human genome in the year 2000, what’d they say? “Oh, there’s only one race.” Wow, who would have thought of that? That’s why I encourage people, when you go to the doctor and fill out all the stupid forms they give you these days, say “What race are you?” Write down “Adam’s.” And if you know the person at the desk will jump and say, “What is this Adam’s race?” Adam? Adam was the first man.

Do you know Adam was the first man that God created? You know we’re all descendants of Adam. You’re a descendant of Adam. I’m a descendant of Adam. Do you know Adam rebelled against God? That’s called sin. You know what happened? Because of that, death came into the world. That’s why we die. You’re going to die. You’re going to die. Do you know that? That’s because you’re a sinner. But do you know what God did? He stepped into history to die on a cross, be raised from the dead, offers a free gift of salvation. Get on your knees and repent.

I mean, 30 seconds you give the gospel right there. Because of the Tower of Babel, 150 years after the flood, God gives different languages. Look at Genesis 10. You know, 70 language groups probably because there’s 70 family groups move away from each other, form different cultures, but we’re all one race.

The Need for a Biblical Foundation

That’s why we have a number of materials on this. I started speaking on this in 1975 because the Australian Aboriginal kids in my class and I realized how important it was for them to understand they’re my relatives, part of my family, because they were taught to be the missing link in evolutionary history by Darwin. Shocking. But you see what I’m saying?

Look, today’s Greeks, by and large they don’t have this history here. This is when you walk through the seven C’s of history at the Creation Museum. Creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, the geological, biological, astronomical, anthropological history that’s foundational to the rest of the Bible and everything else. Most of our churches have gotten rid of that.

Even a lot of our Sunday school materials, Bible study materials, like Bible Study Fellowship. Whatever view you want about Genesis except the literal one, you don’t have that. I mean it is shocking what’s going on out there and see we’ve got generations of kids raised up trusting Jesus and we’ve let this go and said it doesn’t matter or you can believe evolution whatever and now we wonder why they don’t have a Christian worldview. Now we wonder why they don’t understand the gospel.

Paul’s Approach to Evangelism

See what Paul was doing was taking that Greek off the wrong road. Let’s start you at the right beginning. So you have the right foundation, the right history, so you understand the message of the cross and then oh the gospel’s never changed. It’s the method by which you reach them with the gospel.

He preaches Jesus and the resurrection and look what happened. Some mocked, some said we’ll hear you again, some believed, some believed. Wow. I’ve actually had seminary professors say to their students don’t use the methods of Paul in Acts 17. He got all intellectual about his faith, defined his terms, he only got a few converts. See if Paul was here today, we’ve actually got quotes like this, if Paul was here today he’d say “Oh I was so wrong, oh I tried to get all intellectual and I was a failure. So use the methods of Peter. Look he went out there and boldly proclaimed Christ and thousands of converts.”

I would say this, Paul from a human perspective was incredibly successful because it would be like me speaking to a whole auditorium full of atheists. They’re very hard to reach and to get some converts, wow. See Peter was preaching to an Acts 2 culture like the Jews, Paul was going to an Acts 17 culture like the Greeks. You can’t use an Acts 2 approach in an Acts 17 culture.

The Challenge of Changing Worldviews

It doesn’t work. Paul had to in a sense change Greeks as types into Jews as types. He had to take people the wrong foundation, wrong worldview, give them the right foundation, right worldview. That takes a lot of work to do.

Coming in to build a house they got the wrong foundation, you’ve got to take out the foundation, you’ve got to put in the right one before you build a house. You see a whole Western world I suggest to you is once very much like the Jews. When it’s like the Jews and you preach the message of the cross and you’re the Bible says man people understand and you see people converted. But think about what’s happening.

You know the gray represents the rock, the word. And the tan color here represents the sand, man’s word. Build your house on the rock, build your house on the sand. And what’s been happening is that the younger generations have been secularized.

The Generational Shift and Its Impact

They’ve been Greekized and you see the change in the whole American culture. And really what I’m saying is X, Y and Z are more like this. The older generations are more like this. And we have a conflict right now between these two generations.

And when this generation become, when these generations and particularly this one become the dominant voting block in this nation, it will catastrophically change the culture. You’ve seen nothing yet compared to what could happen in the future. You know I personally believe the next election is a tipping point right here. We’re right at that tipping point.

And it could go one way or the other. We don’t know. God’s in control right. He raises up kings and destroys kingdoms. He puts interesting people in power. For his purposes.

The Challenge of Voting as Christians

You know, my fund, we send a supporters letter out each month and my supporters letter for the month of November actually tells people, you know what, we shouldn’t vote as a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. What we need to do is, you know, and we’re not voting for a pastor. We’re voting for whose policies we think would be the best in regard to free exercise of religion and proclaiming the truth of God’s word and so on. And that’s how we vote.

The “Greekization” of Western Culture

You see our culture in the West has become very much like the Greeks. We send generations of kids to the Greek education system. The public education system by and large, it is a pagan Greek system. And yet I can’t believe the number of pastors that encourage all the students, “Oh yeah, the public schools, go into public schools and witness to the kids.” We’re losing the majority of those from the church because they’ve never been filled with salt to defend the faith and know what they believe. We’ve sent them to be contaminated.

How many hours do they spend in the education system versus at home or a church? Are we counteracting all those hours? People, we’ve lost those coming generations. It’s our fault. We haven’t spoken up against the system and what’s going on. We haven’t challenged the people in our churches, by and large. And when you preach to the Greeks, it’s foolishness to them.

The Problem with Church Education

But see the bigger problem is 90% of kids from church homes have gone to the Greek education system and they watch Greek television, Greek internet, Greek books and magazines. They’re on the broad road and there might be some of them left in our churches. And then we send people out of their churches and we go to them and say, “Repent, Jesus died on the cross.” They have no idea what you’re talking about.

You see, what has happened, I believe, is this. What we tend to do in our churches is Bible stories. A lot of what I hear are sermons on Sunday are from the Bible, within the Bible. Let’s read through the account of Zacchaeus here or whatever. And we’ll talk about that and this and that.

But how many of us are saying, “Look what’s happening in the world here. I want to equip you. I’ve looked at what the world is going to say to you to try to get you to not believe God’s word. I want you to have a Christian worldview in regard to the marriage issue, the abortion issue, these other issues.”

Yeah, we’re going to teach through the whole Bible. Yeah, we’re going to teach every aspect of scripture and so on. But we have got to be raising them up to have the right foundation. Are we doing that?

The Need for Apologetics in Church Education

You see, because here’s what’s happening in the public schools. We teach a real history. What do we do at church? Bible stories. Jonah, the great fish feeding 5,000. Paul’s missionary journey. Jesus on the cross. Noah in the ark.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe those, but here’s the problem. We’re not teaching apologetics. Hey, we’re going to do the account of Noah today. Here’s what the world is saying. They’re saying Noah’s ark couldn’t fit the animals on the ark and they’re saying there’s no evidence for a flood. We’re going to talk about fossils and stuff.

You know, I went to a church once and one of the older generation ladies, she saw me, she said, “You’re the speaker today, Sonny.” “Yeah, yes, ma’am.” “What are you speaking on?” I said, “I think I’ll do dinosaurs today.” “Dinosaurs have nothing to do with church. You need to be speaking on Jesus.”

Therein lies a big problem. She has no concept. No concept that dinosaurs are used today to drag kids away from the Bible. And when you talk about dinosaurs, you’re talking about the history in Genesis and you’re talking about creation and you’re talking about the fall and the entrance of sin and death and the flood and you get the whole foundation for the gospel.

The Need for a New Approach to Church Education

That’s the problem with a lot of the older generation. You don’t bring dinosaurs and fossils into church. Do you know how many times I’ve been told that over the years? And you know the number of times I’ve gone to churches where I hope you, I hope you’re going to just present the gospel today. That’s what we do in church, we present the gospel. Yeah, I’m presenting the gospel starting in Genesis.

You know who’s teaching apologetics? The public schools, universities, the media. “Kids, here’s the evidence for evolution. Here’s the evidence for the big bang. Here’s the evidence for millions of years. Here’s the evidence Noah’s Ark can’t be true. Here’s the evidence the Bible’s not true.” What do we do in our churches? Let’s have a story.

It’s one of the reasons we developed Answers Bible Curriculum. There is no other curriculum like this in the world. Sunday School Curriculum, over 10,000 churches have been using this to one degree or another. A lot of those churches, the only reason they are, is because people in the church said, we want this in our church. And so, to percate them, the pastor says, you can use it for your grade level, that’s okay.

It’s apologetics, biblical authority, chronological, through the entire scripture, teaching Christian doctrine, teaching the foundation, teaching a Christian worldview. Different ages, all synchronized, there is nothing like it in the world. But that’s how we should always have been teaching.

The Impact of “Greekization” on Christians

Do you realize we’re all Greek to one degree or another? Think about this for a moment. When people come to the Ark and the Creation Museum, and people write to us, or we see them at the ministry headquarters, people often say, “Okay, so how do you handle carbon dating? Okay, so what do you say about dinosaurs?” Okay, and so we answer those questions.

What about light from the furthest star? Do you know why we have those questions? By the way, we want you to ask them, because we want to give you the answers. Do you know why we have those questions? Because we’ve been Greekized. We’ve all been impacted by the world, and it means our churches haven’t been teaching the answers. That’s what it means.

And it blows my mind the number of people say, “It takes like millions of years to get from the furthest star, so how can you be saying the world’s only thousands of years old?” You mean, because you don’t know everything about life, everything about space, everything about how God created, and then he finished the creation, and everything about what has gone on, because you don’t know that, therefore this can’t be true. Is that what you’re telling me? Have we helped people understand what God’s word is?

The Need for “De-Greekization”

See, the whole world is Greek. We’ve got to remember that the world is the broad way. The narrow way is within the broad way, and it’s hard work to drag people in the right direction. Hard work. People say to me, “Well, who comes to the creation museum?” Well, Christian Greeks and secular Greeks. That’s who comes. Well, what’s the purpose of the creation museum? Well, as they go through, we want to see them de-Greekized.

It’s a theological process we call de-Greekizing. We need those words in dictionaries. I made those up, but I like them. Same for the Ark. Christian Greeks and secular Greeks come here, and we want them to be de-Greekized through the process of de-Greekizing.

One of the greatest things you can do from a conference like this, and from coming to the Ark and the creation museum, is to go out and start de-Greekizing. De-Greekize yourselves. That’s why we have the answers books.

Do you realize the answers books, those five books that we have there? Let me see if I can find them here. Those five books, these four, the answers books, and the flood of evidence. A hundred and sixty of the most asked questions, because of the Greeks, so that we can de-Greekize you with the answers.

Have we been teaching all those in our churches and to our Sunday school? Little kids hear about dinosaurs and millions of years and evolution, and have we been teaching these answers to them? Or is it, let’s have a Bible story.

The Need for Reformation in the Church

You see, my book, “The Lie,” that’s, other than the Bible, the Bible is the textbook of this ministry, this is the message of the ministry, the textbook of the ministry, that’s that message about the foundational importance of Genesis, and people, that is the message we’ve got to get to the church.

You know, I’ve had people say to me, we need revival in our nation. I don’t believe you can have revival until we have reformation. In fact, I believe we need another reformation in our churches. We need to be out there nailing Genesis 1 to 11 on the doors of churches and Christian colleges across this nation, because that’s where we lost it.

And when we repent of compromise, when we, as a church, repent of taking man’s pagan religion and compromising with God’s word, when we repent of not raising up generations with the right foundation and with those answers, when we repent of that, then we pray God will bring revival.

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