Celebrating the Scientific Heritage of Christianity

​The Creation Museum near Cincinnati in the United States is absolutely magnificent. I spent two days exploring, examining and experiencing the Creation Museum.  It was not nearly enough time.  I look forward to returning again and again.
 
As one who has visited museums all over the world, I must rate the Creation Museum as one of the very best in the world.  The Creation Museum is God-honouring, Bible-based, and Christ-centred.  It is an experience no visitor can ever forget.
 
The Creation Museum is effective both in education and evangelism.  Not only is the museum extremely well thought out and laid out, but it is inspired and inspiring.  The Creation Museum is a modern equivalent of nailing of the ’95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg.  Future generations may look back at the opening of the Creation Museum as significant an event for Reformation in our day as Luther’s bold protest was in the 16th Century.

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The Creation Museum is the brainchild of Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis.  Australian born Ken Ham, has become one of the most in-demand Christian conference speakers and talk show guests.  In 2007 alone he was on Fox News, CNN, ABC and the BBC.  Ken Ham is heard daily on the radio feature Answers…with Ken Ham, broadcasted in more than 900 stations worldwide.  Ken and his wife Mally, have five children and four grandchildren.
 
As a science teacher in Australia, Ken Ham came to appreciate the foundational importance of Genesis to every area of life, and why Creation is so much under attack in the World War of Worldviews.
 
Ken Ham launched Answers in Genesis in 1994.  His best selling book “The Lie: Evolution” showed how compromise on Genesis has opened dangerous doors to undermine Biblical authority and subvert the culture.  In hundreds of public meetings Ken Ham has shown how the breakdown of society and the family, school violence, “gay marriage”, abortion and lawlessness, all relate to the humanist rejection of the Book of Genesis.  Answers in Genesis is dedicated to providing Biblical and scientific answers to some of the most difficult questions people ask about the Christian Faith.

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The state of the art Creation Museum is high-tech.  It is filled with animatronic displays.  The Creation Museum includes the spectacular Stargazers Planetarium.  Each seat is turned into a rocket launching pad as the digital projector showcases a gravity-defying space flight into vast outer regions of the universe.  The breathtaking images and inconceivable distances make this cosmic journey a very engaging experience. 
 
The special effects theatre includes rumbling seats and rising mists as it takes visitors on a fantastic quest to find the real purpose and meaning of life. 
 
The 70,000 square foot museum is located on a 47 acre property which includes three magnificent gardens celebrating God’s Creation.  Over 6,000 plants surround the 3 acre lake, with 500 varieties of flora filling the gardens.  The mile long walkway takes one across arching bridges, through a rain forest garden, past humming birds and butterflies.  Turtles rest on logs in the lake, and carnivorous plants, like the Venus Fly Trap, and the Spider Lily, introduce us to species of plants most of us have never before seen.
 
The botanical gardens and lake surrounding the museum are a delightful location for picnics and walks.  The museum is really designed for the whole family.  It includes in its live exhibits a petting zoo featuring such exotic animals as miniature donkeys, a camel, a zonkey and a zorse and some kangaroos.  It provides a rich and varied experience for its guests.  Since it’s opening, on 28 May 2007, over 600,000 visitors have come to the Creation Museum.

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The Bible speaks for itself at the Creation Museum.  The exhibit halls are gilded with Truth and the gardens teem with life.  The Creation Museum is unique in presenting the scientific evidence for Creation alongside the obvious lies of the evolutionist propaganda.  Clearly Christians do not need to be afraid of debate.  In the free market place of ideas it is clear that there is no conflict between scientific, biological, astronomical, geological and physical Truth and the Scriptures. 
 
The Creation Museum is literally breathtaking.  It includes exceptional fossil collections, mineral collections, reconstructions of the building of Noah’s Ark and eye blinking, mouth chewing, tail swinging dinosaurs.  A 40 foot long Tyrannosaurus Rex, a huge triceratops, and Velociraptors stand in the Dino Den.  Velociraptors weighed 15 to 27 kilograms.  They stood up to a metre high and were 1.5 to 2 meters long.  They were fast moving predators that robbed the nests of other dinosaurs.  Velociraptors had a long stiff tail, large eyes, large hands and a large 10 centimetre retractable claw on the second toe of the hind foot.  Some studies have suggested that Velociraptors could run 60 kilometres per hour.
 
The T Rex stood 4.5 to 5 meters high.  They were 12 to13 meters long, weighing from 5,400 to 6,800 kilograms.

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The Creation Museum not only showcases the large animals, but many of God’s smaller creatures too.  The chameleon is a masterpiece of nature and shows God’s handiwork.  The amazing design is seen in the chameleon’s rapid fire tongue which accelerates five times faster than a fighter jet.   Its tongue shoots twice as far as the length of its body.  A cartilage rod forms the catapult.  A special muscle in its tongue helps cock, trigger and catapult the tongue.  The core of the tongue telescopes outward.  A suction cup tip catches the prey.  Each of these complex parts are useless without the others.  How could all of these parts come together by chance?  It only makes sense that all these parts were designed to work together – right from the beginning.
 
The chameleon’s skin can change colour – to communicate with other chameleons, to show off its mood, and to adjust to heat and light.  A chameleon’s eye has a unique adjustable lens, which can calculate the distance of a moving target using only one eye – much like a modern telephoto camera lens.  Since it only needs one eye to judge distance, the chameleon can move and focus each eye separately, seeing two different images at the same time.  Its brain can process two completely difference images simultaneously.  Its eyes can look 360 degrees at the same time - with two independently rotating eyes. 
 
Then there is the Poison Dart Frog.  A single Poison Dart Frog has enough poison to kill 20,000 mice.  Just one drop from a Golden Poison Dart Frog can stop your heart beating.  Ipibatidine, taken from the poison of the phantasmal poison dart frog, is 200 times more potent than morphine as a pain killer, yet without the addictive side effects.  Poison Dart Frogs raised in captivity don’t have poison – the poisons come from a food that the frogs eat in the wild.

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There is a broad wall display highlighting creation science research on sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon, a formation of petrified forests, carbon dating and radioactive dating methods.  The Creation Museum is dynamic and continually growing and expanding.  I was fortunate to be able to hear a lecture from Ken Ham on the days that I visited.  His Australian accent, keen sense of humour, captivating stories, and exceptional PowerPoint illustrations have made him one of North America’s most effective Christian communicators.
 
The Museum regularly hosts guest lecturers, and frequently presents concerts and workshops.  Some of the live programming has included Snakes Alive!, a Genesis Creation musical adventure, In Search of Noah’s Ark, and a Noah’s Ark based theatrical presentation: Let the Rain Come.  Numerous polished film productions complement the themes of the exhibits including: Six Days of Creation, Dinosaurs and Dragons and The Last Adam.
 
The Creation Museum cost $27 million to build.  Considering that Answers in Genesis is a not-for- profit Christian organisation and that the construction of the museum was entirely financed by private donations, it is an extraordinary achievement.  This privately funded museum is vastly superior to the much better funded state museums.
 
The Creation Museum goes beyond presenting the compelling facts of Creation and takes us on a walk through history to proclaim the Bible as the supreme authority over all areas of life.
 
Ken Ham states: “The devastating effect that evolutionary humanism has had on society, and even the church, makes it clear that everyone – including Christians – needs to return to the clear teachings of Scripture in Genesis and acknowledge Christ as our Creator and Saviour.  In fact Genesis has the answers to many of the problems facing the compromising church and the questioning world today.”
 
For more information about the Creation Museum visit www.creationmuseum.org.   You may also want to subscribe to the Answers magazine (www.answersmagazine.com or write to Answers in Genesis, P.O. Box 510, Hebron, KY 41048, USA).

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Dr. Peter Hammond
Livingstone Fellowship
P.O. Box 74
Newlands, 7725
Cape Town, South Africa
Tel: (021) 689 4480
Fax: (021) 685 5884
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.ReformationSA.org

​Christian Liberty Books
P.O. Box 358
Howard Place
7450, Cape Town
Tel & Fax: (021) 689-7478
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.christianlibertybooks.co.za

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