Sunday, March 28, 1999
Answers in Genesis: Not just a museum
Main focus is its ministry
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FLORENCE — Amid the conflict and controversy, there lies a ministry. Answers in Genesis (AIG), the evangelical Christian organization that has earned a reputation in Northern Kentucky for its persistence to build a creation museum, is more than just that, organizers say.
The ministry, which professes to defend Scripture from the first verse, is about the work of God, and that involves more than building a 95,000-square-foot museum, said Ken Ham, executive director and AIG founder.
AIG has been looking for a museum site in Boone County since 1996. It has tried two different spots, but has had not luck in getting the county to change the zoning.
In November, the Florence-based ministry filed a lawsuit in Boone Circuit Court against fiscal court members and the planning commission because its request was rejected. Since then, the lawsuit has been put on hold pending a fiscal court decision.
“As an organization, we're not just all about creation vs. evolution,” Mr. Ham said. “All of the attention can't distract us from doing what we're called to do.”
And that includes espousing the Gospel, defending God's word, equipping the church and dispersing the truth, he said.
AIG was founded in early 1994 to help churches return to a belief in the authority and reliability of the Bible.
Mr. Ham, who was a teacher in Australia in the 1970s, said he felt a burden being a Christian and at the same time required to teach evolution, so he started the Creation Science Foundation, which is now known as AIG.
“I wanted to reach these people with the message of salvation,” he said.
He then moved to California to work for the Institute for Creation Research.
About seven years later, Mr. Ham, along with Mark Looy and Mike Zovath, set out to find a location that would be best for a national headquarters.
After looking at several cities, they picked Northern Kentucky because if its demographics and proximity to an international airport.
Mr. Ham said the men's calling from God to settle in Northern Kentucky is not at all mystical.
“We're going to have faith that God will help us do this, but we also have to go out and work diligently to do it.”
Mr. Looy said that means doing their homework and working with the county.
But AIG is focused on more than zoning regulations; members are also continuing their ministry. And a big part of that starts with the first 11 verses of the Bible.
“When we deal with Genesis, we're talking about Adam and Eve and original sin and the great flood,” Mr. Ham said. “We're talking about where we came from.
“That's why it's a big part of what we do.”
The organization supports a literal interpretation of the creation of the world and man, and believes that Genesis is a simple, but factual presentation of actual events.
“As a ministry we believe in the accuracy and authority of the Bible from its very first verse,” said Mr. Looy, AIG's spokesman. “While some portions of Scripture can be called poetry or allegory, the first few chapters of Genesis are written literally.”
AIG members also believe that the flood described in Genesis was a historic event that God initiated, and that killed every living creature on Earth that was not taken in Noah's ark.
The group's statement of faith says that the biblical record provides a reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the origin and history of life, mankind, the Earth and the rest of the universe.
“The best facts of science support what the Bible teaches about creation and the flood,” Mr. Looy said. “However, the question of origins is outside observational and testable science; but because we believe the Bible is God's word, we will accept its teachings over the opinions of fallible evolutionary scientists.”
The group has several ways it uses to get its message across.
One way is through Creation, a magazine that comes out quarterly. It includes articles written by leading creationists, news and suggestions on how to deal with evolutionary arguments.
“About 22,000 people around the world subscribe to the magazine,” Mr. Looy said.
The group also has a daily radio show called Answers with Ken Ham that is heard locally on WAKW (93.3 FM) and 300 other stations world wide.
And AIG sells Christian-oriented literature.
But the best way to bring all this together would be a museum and headquarters, Mr. Ham said.
“It would be a center that would promote Christian morals and family,” he said. “We're all about fighting social evils in our culture. We can help young people see they have a purpose in life.
“We believe we can provide a foundation of absolutes from God.”
And just as their beliefs start from the first verse of the Bible, so would the museum.
“It will be a walk-through history,” Mr. Looy said, literally from the first day.
As visitors entered the first room, they would see what Scripture describes that God made on the first day: the heavens and the earth. And on the fifth day, God made sea creatures, the book says, so visitors would walk through a 54-foot-long bass.
The museum would also feature a miniaturized version of Noah's ark and an explanation of how it had to have been built to accommodate that many animals: a volume of 1,396,000 cubic feet and a tonnage of 13,960 or the equivalent, 522 railroad stock cars.
“The museum will also show that the rest of the Old Testament is historically accurate, and we'll demonstrate that through various archaeological displays,” Mr. Looy said.
Organizers are discussing ways to show the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, although that's still in the conceptual phase.
But until Boone County Fiscal Court votes on the rezoning issue in April, dinosaurs and other exhibits already gathered for the museum will remain in storage.
“We still feel a burden for this center,” Mr. Ham said. “The Lord is calling us to present these models in such a way that will bring glory to him.
“(So) we will continue to pursue this until the door is completely closed and we can no longer go through it.”
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