Apologist Ken Ham exhorts students to build worldviews from Genesis truths

Liberty University welcomed Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham to the Vines Center stage on Wednesday. Ham’s inspirational Convocation message focused on encouraging the students to develop a worldview based on the Word of God instead of the word of man.

Ham is a speaker, author, and biblical apologist who defends the authority of the Bible from Genesis. He is the visionary behind the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter and the CEO and President of Answers in Genesis, an apologetics ministry. Over 15 million people have attended the Creation Museum since its inception in 2007, with over 100,000 people committing their lives to Christ each year. Ham also hosts the daily radio program, “Answers,” broadcast on 1,000 stations, and is the author of more than 30 books.

Students ought to know how to defend their faith by using Genesis 1-11 as the foundation of their worldview, Ham said, building from God’s earliest works and words. Ham said that in Genesis, a battle began over two ways of thinking: man’s word and God’s Word.

Adam and Eve doubted the authority of God’s Word when He told them not to eat the fruit from a specific tree in the Garden of Eden. They ate from the tree anyway, denying God’s truth.

“Our propensity because of our sin nature is that we would rather believe the word of man than the Word of God,” he said. “Your worldview is your whole way of thinking about everything, and it depends upon beliefs you already have. A Christian worldview is understanding you begin with God’s Word, like building a house, and you have the right foundation so you can build the walls and a roof.”

Ham asked the students what worldview “glasses” they have on, whether they are viewing the world through a lens of man’s word or God’s Word. He dissected this concept further by starting at how the Bible is God-breathed truth and the Word of God, and God is an all-knowing and all-powerful being that we cannot compare to.

“How much do we know compared to what God knows? Next to nothing,” he said. “He knows every heart. He knows our thoughts. He knows what we’re going to say before we say it. The hairs of our head are numbered. Do you realize how great God is?”

Genesis 1-11 is the foundation for the rest of the Bible and for every theological doctrine, Ham said, and one of the popular questions he said he receives is how death, suffering, and disease fit into the Bible, which teaches about a loving God.

“When you build your thinking on the Bible to look at the death, disease, and suffering aspect of things, we start with Creation. Everything was good. Everything was exceedingly good. … But then (sin) changed everything.”

He discussed the timeline of Creation, the corruption of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, the catastrophe through the flood, and how sin affected the world. Ham said the first sacrifice was God slaying animals to cover Adam and Eve in their shame and sin.

“It’s a temporary clothing, but it can’t take away our sin,” he said. “That’s why we need to be clothed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ who takes away our sin,” he said, noting that now we don’t need animal sacrifices because Jesus sacrificed Himself for us once and for all.

“A man brought sin and death into the world, and a man would have to pay the penalty for sin. (God) stepped into history in the person of His son to become Jesus Christ — the God man, the perfect sinless son of God, born of a virgin, but one of our family, a member of the human race — to die on a cross, conquer death, crush the head of the serpent, raise from the dead, and offer us a free gift of salvation.”

He said we are currently living in a “groaning world” because of sin, but in heaven there will be no more death, disease, or suffering.

Ham said a lot of Christians say there are “too many problems” to figure out from a Christian worldview, like abortion, euthanasia, pedophilia, gender issues, climate change, the age of the earth, and more, but he argues that these are all symptoms of one problem — having the wrong foundation. Ham emphasized that the government and its legislation is not the solution to this problem; the ultimate solution comes from the Gospel.

“It’s always been God’s Word and the Gospel. If you are going to deal with any issue, any issue at all, you have to start from God’s Word in Genesis 1-11 because it is the foundation for everything.”

Ham walked through examples of how Genesis 1-11 provides the foundation for gender and marriage within the first two chapters, where God created Adam and Eve and designed the marriage covenant. He discussed abortion and how Genesis 1-11 emphasizes man being created in the image of God and therefore is special and separate from other kingdoms of life (animals, plants, fungi, etc.). Ham said what differentiates us from animals is having a moral conscience and a unique human DNA, starting at fertilization.

“If we are human beings made in the image of God right from fertilization, abortion is killing a human being right from fertilization — not six weeks or anything else, but right from fertilization. We need to take that stand,” he said.

Ham said we live in an unfair world, so some people try to argue emotionally on these issues, but we can’t deny God’s foundational principles just because life is unfair.

“We need to argue foundationally, because we need to see people change their foundation from man’s word to God’s Word, build a Christian worldview, and trust Christ for salvation. That’s the only way you can get that change.”

Ham closed by emphasizing the power and authority of the Bible.

“(The Bible) is not just the word of man; it’s not just a book you add to your thinking. This is the word of the infinite, the everlasting creator God who knows all things. And we need to acknowledge who God is, like Job did, and build our thinking on every area in God’s Word, beginning with the first 11 chapters that are foundational to everything.”