Explaining the Gospel works the same way. We first start with the foundational teaching that God is Creator, and that sin and death entered the world, as recorded in Genesis.  That the foundational knowledge needed to understand the next part—the ‘walls’—that God sent His Son to die on the Cross and be raised from the dead, because death is the penalty for sin. This is the power of the gospel, and why Christ can offer us the free gift of salvation. Then we put on the ‘roof.’ One day there’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth. So there we have the gospel, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation. It’s really like building a house from the foundation to the roof” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.40-41).

In this current moral climate, we can never assume that people possess a foundational knowledge concerning creation, sin, and death…

But do the generations we are preaching to today really understand what sin is, why there is death in the world, and who Jesus is? I don’t think so. It’s like being told by a doctor that you need an operation, but he has yet to reveal what’s wrong with you or why you need it!” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.42).

Many Christians are guilty of only preaching part of the gospel, specifically the power and hope of the gospel. But when you preach the power and hope of the gospel, you’re assuming the foundation has already been laid. This is a faulty assumption, especially in our post-Christian, godless culture” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.41-42).

We have generations who don’t understand the Bible’s original plot—the beginning.  Therefore, they don’t’ fully understand the subsequent message of Jesus dying on the Cross and being raised from the dead. They also don’t understand why they need to believe in Christ in order to be saved.

When I ask people in the Church, ‘What is the gospel?’ I hear people say, ‘Well, it’s the good news: Jesus died on the Cross and was raised from the dead.’

And while this is true, you can’t really understand the good news of the gospel unless you first understand the bad news found in Genesis.  Many in the Church say we need to go out and ‘get people saved.’ But consider this—most people don’t even yet know they’re lost.  So, why would they believe they need to be saved? Saved from what? Saved by whom? Saved for what purpose? You see, unless people realize their need for a Savior, telling them that Jesus ‘loves them’ means very little” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.38-39).

I believe (and the research in various ways confirmed) one of the biggest reasons so many Millennials are leaving the Church, and why the ones who remain are confused, is that we haven’t show them how to defend their faith.  We haven’t taught them answers to skeptical questions that cause them to doubt and disbelieve the Scriptures. We haven’t taught them apologetics. We’ve given them answers to some of the ‘what?’ but not nearly enough of the ‘why?’” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.33).

“I realized that we are in a culture that has indeed, changed. They no longer have the foundational information about God, His Word, and their need for salvation. Our culture, and even many within the Church, have such a minute understanding of Scripture, particularly the early pages of Genesis, that they have little to no foundation go understand the message of Jesus. …many in our culture simply don’t have any foundation to comprehend the message of Christ, ever since the Bible and Christianity have been kicked out of schools and replaced with the godless religion of secular humanism” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.13-14).

“There’s even talk that an ideological civil war is being waged in America.  And as moral relativism enjoys greater national acceptance, Christians, and their worldview are treated with increasing intolerance.

The elimination of prayer and the Bible from state schools was only the beginning. Now Christians themselves are being targeted for the free exercise of their faith in the public square…  Even terminology associated with Christian teaching is being changed or removed. For example, ‘Merry Christmas’ in changed to ‘Happy Holidays.’ In short, Christianity’s influence is slowly being purged from America’s national conscience.

Simultaneously, Christians are not having an impact on culture and those in it, choosing instead to remain content and safe within their own churches and Christian circles” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.17).

“In previous generations, when you said in Sunday School, ‘Let’s read a Bible story,’ most kids anticipated hearing something that happened in history from the Bible. (By the way the word story is take from the Latin word historia, which commonly meant just that—history.)

However, when you say ‘Bible story’ today, most kids (and adults) think ‘fiction’ or ‘fairy tale.’ That is because of this ‘divide’ in generational thinking. Many do not see the Bible as authoritative, trustworthy, infallible, or inerrant, largely, because they have been indoctrinated by secular culture and education. So, they simply dismiss Scripture as a ‘fairytale’” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.21-22).

Picture: There was a small petting zoo outside the museum.

“In research conducted in 2015, we found that 22% of people in their sixties who used to go to church have stopped attending.  But with the Millennial generation, that number was over half (53%). Answers in Genesis also contracted with America’s Research Group to conduct focused research on these American Millennials who have now left the Church. Statistics revealed that two-thirds of young people are leaving the Church in America by the time they reach college age, and very few are returning” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.27-28).

“There’s no doubt there is a widening chasm between the older generation and the Millennials in American.  The older generation, even those aren’t Christian, have more a Christianized worldview because of the significant past influence of Christianity. Today’s younger generations do not have such a worldview because their thinking has been secularized through education and culture” (p.18-19).

The Picture:  “In the fossil record, there are also examples of brain tumors, cancer and arthritis in various skeletons. If these things existed before Adam sinned, then there’s an insurmountable problem because after God made Adam and Eve, He said everything was ‘very good’ (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.73).

“At Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter, we specialize in teaching apologetics by equipping people for how to answer today’s skeptical questions that cause many to doubt the Bible. Sadly, most of our churches, pastors, Sunday School teachers, seminary professors, Bible college professors, and Christian college professors are instructing coming generations that they don’t need to believe in a literal Genesis.  Instead, they’re propagating the lie that a Christian can believe in evolution and its millions of years.  By and large, most of these young people have been told that it doesn’t really matter how they view Genesis, and that it’s not important anyway.  But it is. How you view Genesis dictates how you see and interpret the rest of the Bible. If Genesis cannot be trusted to be an accurate account of mankind’s beginnings and the origin of sin and God’s provision of salvation, then how can we trust it or any other books of the Bible when they make truth claims?” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.34-35).

Picture: The visitor to the Creation Museum walks through the “Garden of Eden” in order to get to the museum, just as the account of Creation prepares us for the message of the Cross.

“Today, 90-95% of kids from church homes attend public schools, where they are taught that evolution (biological, geological, astronomical, anthropological) is fact and not the unsupportable belief that it is. In these schools, the Bible has been ignored and ridiculed. Scripture’s God is mocked, taught as myth, or even relegated to a banned topic. These schools have essentially replaced Christianity with their religion of secularism, as students are taught that life and the universe are explained by natural processes, apart from the supernatural intervention of a Creator. Students are indoctrinated with what is called ‘scientific evidence’ that supposedly disproves the Bible’s account of origins. Sadly, most Christian parents and Church leaders haven’t taught these students how to defend the Christian faith against such secular attacks. Most churches and Christian homes have not equipped young people with answers to the skeptical questions, and statements they hear concerning the Bible. The result of this is that many of them begin privately doubting God’s Word by middle school age, eventually walking away from the Christian church” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.35-36).

The picture:  The outside of the Creation Museum has been landscaped as if it were the Garden of Eden. The idea is to try and picture what it would have been like to experience a world not affected by sin. “But here’s a major problem. As soon as one believes in millions of years, then you have allowed death, bloodshed, and disease (as exhibited in the fossil record) to exist before Adam sinned” (Gospel Reset by Ken Ham, p.72).  See back of bulletin.