Ken Ham: Episode Description
Among other things Ken shares:
- What was it like for Ken to grow up in an Australian Christian Family?
- What influenced Ken to become a teacher?
- “It’s only what’s done for Jesus that lasts”
- Why Ken still teaches at the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum
- What does Ken see as the possible contention between faith and fact and the need to prove the things of God?
- How Ken handles personal attacks for what he believes
- What is the complimentary side of knowing the Word and having a personal relationship with God?
Ken Ham: Episode Transcript
Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student wellbeing, character development, and academic improvement.
Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project where well-known Christian share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. Here’s your host, Brendan Corr.
Brendan Corr
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project podcast. We hope that you’re enjoying the stories of prominent Christians who have found success, not in spite of, not because of, but in concert with their faith. Today, we are welcoming a globally well-known Christian who’s become prominent in defending the faith and advancing the cause of God’s truth. Dr Ken Ham has been the founder of Answers in Genesis, established the Creation Museum, which has become one of the highlights of attractions around the world. Ken was born and raised in Australia, took his first degree from the Queensland Institute of Technology, moved to the US in 1987, where he began his work with Answers in Genesis and since established the Creation Museum. Works mainly as a biblical apologist, giving faith-building talks to thousands of young people and adults, and became internationally known for his very much watched debate with Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Ken has a wife, Mally. He resides in Cincinnati in the USA, has five children and 16 grandchildren. Ken, that is a full life that has been described in just a few sentences there. I know that we could list a published author and current speaker to that list. How do you find time to fit all of that into the 24 hours of a day?
Ken Ham
Well, 2 Peter 3 says a day’s like a thousand years, right?
Brendan Corr
Very good.
Ken Ham
We can take that verse and use it that way. So the first thing I need to understand is we’ve lived over here in the States since 1987. Do I still have somewhat of an Aussie accent?
Brendan Corr
Well, I was going to pass comment. I thought, “I’m very proud of you, Ken.” That Aussie, you still sound dinky-di, which is fantastic.
Ken Ham
Well, people over here tell us that we still sound Aussie. Our kids don’t unfortunately. Oh, and by the way, one little update from the figures you gave there, we actually have 18 grandchildren.
Brendan Corr
Wow. Well, congratulations.
Ken Ham
17 and one on the way. So that means 18. I’m pro-life so that’s one.
Brendan Corr
Amen. That’s fantastic. Blessed is the man who has a Quiverfull…
Ken Ham
We decided our quiver is five because we have five kids.
Brendan Corr
That’s great. So how have you gone about keeping your Australian … or has it been hard to keep your Australian identity in the midst of a very dominant US pop culture?
Ken Ham
Well, it’s interesting, I’ve often wondered, people have asked us how have we kept our Australian accent and my wife also has kept her Australian accent. I don’t know, we’re born and bred in Australia and maybe because the Australian accent is so well-liked over here, people just love it. People tell me, “It doesn’t matter what you say. We just love to hear you say it.” So see, I can get away with anything.
Brendan Corr
That is awesome, isn’t it?
Ken Ham
I think because I speak so much and speak over here in America and around the world, and also we have been able to go back to Australia almost every year, sometimes twice a year. My mother passed away last November-
Brendan Corr
I’m sorry.
Ken Ham
She was almost 92 and she was ready to go and wanted to be with the Lord, so it was a praise time and sad, obviously, for those of us left behind, but she was such a godly mother, prayed for us every day. But while our parents were alive, we wanted to go back to Australia. It’s one of the things that we particularly asked the Lord for and we’re able to go back each year. I think going back to Australia and just mixing with our family and friends and talking to them a lot on the phone and FaceTime and speaking a lot. So it was interesting when I first came to America in the ’80s, that’s when Crocodile Dundee was popular. Do you remember that?
Brendan Corr
Yes!
Ken Ham
I had dark hair then and a darker, long beard. As I had passed people would say that “he looks like Abraham Lincoln and sounds like Crocodile Dundee”. So what more did you want for?
Brendan Corr
That’s right. That was your door in. I was interested. One of the things I might come back to in our conversation down the track was the importance of the formative years and the notion of having even your language patterns and speech patterns locked at a strategic part of your life becomes an important factor that you rely on or that holds you steady into later parts of your life. We’ll come back to that as a notion, but, Ken, tell us a bit about your family of origin. Ken, you obviously come from a strong background of faith. What was it like growing up in Australia in a Christian family?
Ken Ham
Well, my mother died at almost 92 and my father died at 66 years old. So my mother lived for quite a long time without my father, but when my father was dying in hospital and I was over in the States here, and one of my brothers sat with him and said, “Dad, why did you love God’s Word so much?” And he said because his earthly father had passed away when he was 16 years old. He said he turned to the words of his heavenly father and he read them over and over and over again, saturated himself in the Word of God. I say that to say that I was born into that home, where I had a father and mother who just committed to the Word of God and they had an evangelistic heart. My mother, when she was a teenager in North Queensland at the foot of Mount Bartle Frere, just South of Cairns. Bartle Frere is the highest mountain in Queensland. Her parents had a cane farm there and she started a Sunday school because she wanted to reach the local kids with the truth of God’s Word and the Gospel. She would get on a bicycle and she would ride one and a half miles and collect these two little girls whose parents had nothing to do with the church, put them on her bicycle, one on the handlebars and one on the bar of the bike, then ride three miles to the Sunday school that she started, then take them back home and then ride back home herself. It’s interesting. She met that couple when they were in their 80s and they pointed back to that time and one of them, in particular, said, “I’m an on-fire Christian because of that.” The other one said, “Well, I’ve drifted away, but I’m coming back.” I heard that story when I was a kid about eight my mother would just say, “Oh yeah, I used to ride down here and take these kids to Sunday school.” That had an impact on me. Then my father, he loved to teach the Bible and he would have Bible studies in his home. As we grew up in North Queensland, my father was a teacher and got transferred every three years because he was so good and was promoted. But lots of little country towns, some places where there were no Sunday schools, he would start Sunday schools and some places only one or two churches. It’s interesting. Sometimes those churches had what I would call liberal pastors and my father would open up the Bible and show us. When he said that a little boy took his eight loaves & two fishes so other people did the same and just to set an example, that’s not what the Bible says. This was a miracle. One of the things my father started doing was researching what the liberal critics were saying because he recognised that that could cause us to doubt and not believe the Word of God. So he really started teaching us apologetics at a young age. You think about it, the ministry of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum and behind me a second themed attraction, the life-size Ark, which is absolutely incredible, attracting millions of people from all over the world. They’re apologetic centres, that’s what they are, and Answers in Genesis, our emphasis is standing on the authority of the word of God and giving people answers so that they won’t succumb to the questions of the day and the secular attacks on God’s Word and they won’t doubt God’s Word and that doubt lead to unbelief. That’s the way our parents taught us. When I was 10 years old, it was interesting, my parents used to invite in evangelists from the Open Air Campaigners. Do you know the Open Air Campaigners? A mission organisation started in Australia and we used to have the Open Air Campaigner missionaries stay in our home and my parents would run evangelist programmes and those were the days when there were no seatbelt and they would pile 20 kids into a car and take them to a programme. When we were in Innisvale, we actually were in a little town called Mandu outside of Innisvale. When we were in Innisvale, Innisvale Presbyterian Church actually, they ran this programme with one of the Open Air Campaigners, and it was when I was 10 years old. He had a challenge for us as kids, for those who really want to commit their lives to the Lord and go where God wants them to go and you’re willing to do that and go anywhere he wants you to go and do anything he wants you to do. He had a little piece of paper and I remember signing that because I said, “Yes, what my parents have taught me. Yes, standing on God’s word. Yes, I’ve put my faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, and yes, I’m willing to go wherever he wants me to go and do whatever he wants me to do.” It’s interesting. Many years later, I met a young lady at a church in Brisbane at Sunnybank Methodist Church, actually, and she was 17 years old and I was 19 at the time and we got married two years later and she told me that her parents sent her to Sunday school and her mother particularly wanted to go to Sunday school and she heard the message of the gospel at Sunday school and she made a commitment. Because it was a challenge one day for those who wanted to commit their lives to the Lord, and she said, “Lord, if you did this for me, you died on the cross for me, you did that for me. I want to go wherever you want me to go and do whatever you want me to do.” It’s interesting. We both had made that same special commitment and the Lord brought us together, not knowing that we would leave home, Australia, and come to America and the Lord would have us involved in a ministry that impacts millions and millions of people a year. So right at that young age, God had a special plan for our lives that we didn’t even know about at the time. We look back and I often had people ask me, “If you knew then what you know now about your ministry and being over in America and so on, what would you do?” I said, “Probably run the other direction,” but God has brought us through all sorts of circumstances. I mean, I could talk for hours about the faith steps we’ve taken, the valleys we’ve had to go through, the mountain tops and then the valleys. If anyone wanted me to summarise what life has been like since we started the ministry in our home, actually in Sunnybank in a suburb of Brisbane in Queensland in Australia, and we started that back in actually embryonically in 1977 and I left school teaching in 1979 to go full-time with no guarantee of any salary, money, anything like that. My wife and I were totally committed to the Lord to do that. But if you look over the years, if anyone said, “How would you explain it all,” I think it’s sort of like the Israelites conquering the promised land. The Bible says little by little and they had to go in there and conquer Jericho and fight the giants. I mean, that’s what it’s like. It just seems to be one battle after another. Then, of course, just recently, we had this COVID-19 situation. We had to shut down our attractions for three months and put off 80% of our staff. We had about a thousand staff and that’s been traumatic and it’s been a struggle. Now we’re reopening and trying to work on that. That’s another stress in itself. Sometimes I say, “Lord, we go through all these struggles over the years. You miraculously see us through it.” He’s done the last three months, He’s seen us through miraculously in regard to keeping the ministry and being able to pay the bills and so on and have a skeleton staff on. We looked at all that and say, “Can’t we just have peace in the land for a little while?” But it just seems to me … when you come to a mountaintop, I always say, “Oh no. You know what that means. Now there is a valley on the other side.”
Brendan Corr
That is true, the ups and downs. Yeah. It must be an amazing thing for you to stand at this point in your life and look at the things that God has brought to fruition through the ministry, and to remember what it must’ve been to start that ministry back in your home at Sunnybank. It’s quite big.
Ken Ham
It’s miraculous. I mean, you look at that structure behind there and I’m sitting in our Answers Centre, which is a 2,500 seat conference centre that we have here as well. Behind the Ark is a zoo and beside the Ark is a restaurant that is allowed to have 2,700 people. It is a massive, massive building. Then we have a children’s playground and we have a virtual reality building experience that actually we will be opening up this July of 2020, and people will be able to sit in seats. It’ll be almost like a ride and you put on these glasses and you’ll think you’re in a time machine and go back to the time of Noah and build the ark and experience the flood. I mean, as you look at this and the Creation Museum, which is 45 minutes from here, and it’s a whole walk through the Bible, and just seeing the people coming. Well, they’ll be coming back once we reopen. But when we’re open, you just see these people pouring in and these mums and dads and kids impacted by what they see. The non-Christians, 30% of those who come are non-Christians, and I look at all this and people often stand there looking at the ark or the Creation Museum and they say to me, “How could all this come about? How could a conservative Christian ministry …” and we’re so evangelistic and we don’t hide that from what we do. We’re always bold about that. We don’t hit people on the head with it, but we boldly present God’s Word in the gospel, through the ark, through all the three decks of exhibits and through the theatres that we have here, and the same at the Creation Museum. “How could all this happen?” God called us to do it and he’s provided miraculously and I can honestly say we’ve never had the money to do what has been done. We have to keep stepping out in faith all the time, but God has raised up people all across America and around the world who support this financially. It’s just amazing to see what’s happened. It’s a God thing. That’s all you can say. It’s a God thing.
Brendan Corr
Amen, amen. Let me roll you back a little way. You went through school in Queensland and obviously, your father was a teacher, you became a teacher. Was that always what was going to happen for you? Was there something … the influence of your family setting you on that track of being a teacher?
Ken Ham
Well, I guess in the sovereignty of God, he predestined me and I had no choice, right? But my father was a teacher. His father was a teacher and actually, his father was a teacher.
Brendan Corr
Wow!
Ken Ham
So I grew up in that environment and my father loved teaching and he was a great teacher, a great communicator. He loved teaching the Word of God. My favourite picture of my father is him sitting there with his Bible on his knee, teaching the Word of God. I mean, he had an incredible impact on my life and my mother had an incredible impact on my life. Just seeing their love for each other and their love for God most of all, and the fact that they would never knowingly compromise God’s Word, and just to grow up in that situation. I believe what you have to do is ask the Lord what he has for you in your life. I mean, to look at the gifts that he’s given you and trusted you with and your life’s experiences, so growing up in a home with a father who was a tremendous communicator, a tremendous teacher, and as I began to grow up as well and into my teenage years, I love to communicate with people. That’s the gift I believe the Lord has given me, is a gift of communication. So I believe that he has called me to be a teacher because that’s what I am.
Brendan Corr
Yeah, I was going to say that.
Ken Ham
It’s interesting. I’m the CEO of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, the Ark Encounter. It’s the largest apologetics ministry in the world and we have the two leading Christian themed attractions in the world. I’m not a CEO. I never trained to be a CEO. I tell people, “I’m a teacher, I’m a communicator,” but I was also brought up in a home where my parents did not consider material things important. To them, training their children to love the Lord and reaching out to others with the message of the Lord Jesus was the most important thing to them. So I think that that also has had a tremendous impact on us as well because it’s … my mother’s words echo, I can hear them right now echoing in my mind. “It’s only what’s done for Jesus that lasts.”
Brendan Corr
Amen.
Ken Ham
“Material things are not important. It’s only what’s done for Jesus that lasts.” I still hear her saying that.
Brendan Corr
What you’re really describing, you’re still a teacher, but with bigger audiovisual materials, bigger teaching aids that you have now?
Ken Ham
Yeah. One of the things I learned as a ministry grows like this, look for the people who know how to do the things that need doing, look for the people that have the expertise and pray for the Lord to bring them alongside. So like here at Answers in Genesis, I mean, I’m the main visionary to give the overall vision for the ministry and that’s what the Lord called me to be, is a visionary in regard to this ministry. It started in our own home. I sort of got that entrepreneurial spirit. In the secular world, I guess they might call me a risk-taker. I call it stepping out in faith in the Christian world. But not irresponsibly. Responsibly stepping out in faith. But to look for the people who have the expertise to look after the finances or the expertise to look after audiovisual or whatever it is and let them run with that within the overall vision. My main task is still being a visionary and teaching. I teach here at the Ark Encounter and I teach at the Creation Museum because I want to communicate this message to people.
Brendan Corr
Ken, you’ve named your organisation Answers in Genesis and you’ve described the main ministry, the main focus of your ministry, as apologetics, defence of the faith. Can I ask you a little bit about where or what you see as the possible contention between faith and fact and the need to prove the things of God?
Ken Ham
That’s a very good question and to answer that, let me give a Bible passage first of all. First Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer. Always be prepared to give an answer for what you believe.” The Word’s answer there; or defence, in some translation it says defence, comes from the Greek word apologia, from which we get the word apologetics, which means to give a logical reason defence of the faith. So we’re an apologetics organisation, but the Bible also says, “By grace, he is saved through faith. It is not of yourselves. It is a gift of God.” The Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. “How shall they call on him and not believe? How shall they believe in him of who they have not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher?” So I’ve always looked at bringing those two things together. Actually, I see it from a big perspective through the whole Bible and that is man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty and they go hand in hand. That’s why I personally don’t like labels, like when people say you’re a Calvinist or an Armenian, I say both. Because really, I look at it from a perspective of there’s our responsibility, there’s God’s sovereignty. We’re told to go out into all the world and preach the gospel. We’re told to give reasons for what we believe, but I also understand I can’t save anybody. It’s only God who does the saving. So my analogy for this apologetics ministry would be Jesus coming to the tomb of Lazarus. So Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus. Lazarus is dead. Remember, we’re dead in trespasses and sin for those who are not Christians and the non-Christian needs to be raised from the dead. Jesus comes to that tomb and what does he say? He says, “Move the stone away.” Now you think about it, with one thought, Jesus as God, that stone could have disappeared. But no, you can move the stone. So you do that. That’s your human responsibility. You move the stone and trust me, you have faith in me. Okay, we’ll move the stone. Then what happened? The Word of God raised the dead. “Lazarus come forth.” So to me, apologetics is like us moving the stone. What are we doing? Well, I know I’ve met so many people over the years that say, “How can you trust the Bible? Because what about dinosaurs? Noah couldn’t get the animals on the ark. Well, how do you know there’s a God? Well, what about carbon dating? Well, where did Cain get his wife? What about the apemen? What about evolution?” They’re taught all these things that make them doubt and not believe the Word of God. So we give those answers. But in giving those answers, what we’re doing is saying, “Look, I want you to understand the Bible is God’s Word.” I keep pointing them back to the Word of God. I’m not trying to prove the Word of God. I want to show you that God’s Word in Genesis, concerning creation, concerning the entrance of sin and death, concerning the flood of Noah’s day, concerning the Tower of Babel. Make sense of the world. Why do we have all these people groups and not different races? We all go back to the Tower of Babel, back to Noah and his family, back to Adam and Eve. Death in the world is not because God’s an ogre. We sinned against God so now it’s a fallen world, it’s a corrupt world. The fossil record is actually the record of the flood reminding us of the wickedness of man and God’s judgement. God’s salvation in the ark, I’m sure it’s too far back for you to see, but that ark has one big door on it and at night it’s lit up with a cross and inside it’s lit up with a cross. It’s a reminder. I love to see parents getting their photographs with their children in front of that door with the cross lit up inside on the second day. It’s a reminder as Noah and his family went through the door to be saved, so we need to go through the door to be saved. So it’s all about Jesus, all about that evangelistic message. So what we do, give those answers, to answer those questions. That’s our responsibility, but we’re pointing them to the Word of God and the Gospel to be saved. You know the number of people that have said because they’d gotten the answers and really listened to the Word of God that the Lord has saved them? So he uses that ministry in that way. I can’t bring responsibility and sovereignty together. Only God can do that. So we just need to be faithful. I give answers to convince everyone. The Bible is truly knowing I don’t do the convincing, it’s God that does, but never separate giving those answers about fossils, the age of the earth or whatever it is. We never separated from the Word of God and pointing people to the Word. If we’re not doing it to preach the gospel, there’s no point in doing it at all.
Brendan Corr
So what I’m hearing you say, Ken, is that there is … God isn’t asking us for a blind faith that isn’t based in what is real and what is sensible and what is understandable. He doesn’t ask us to cast off our capacity to reason and think, but neither are those mechanisms going to be what … we can’t argue somebody to salvation. We can’t convince them by the literal evidence alone, that there is this joint work between our rationality and the Spirit of God that speaks something beyond that to quicken our hearts. Is that a comparison or complimentary?
Ken Ham
Absolutely. That is exactly it! We need to be faithful, giving the answers, preaching the word and pointing people to the Word of God, removing those stumbling blocks, moving the stone, knowing we don’t do the convincing. It’s God that does the convincing. To me, that is sort of relaxing to think about that because I’ve actually had people say to me, “I’ve been witnessing to my uncle for years and years and I’m not getting anywhere. I’m a failure.” What I say to them is, “Look, if you’ve done your best to answer their sceptical questions and to point them to the Word of God and the gospel, remember it’s God that does the saving. Not you. You just need to be faithful.” Sometimes, sadly, I think when you think of some of the atheist movements in the world and atheists that come and protest here at the Ark each year out the front because they hate what we’re doing, sometimes I think even preaching to them is so that they will have no excuse. They’ll stand before God one day and he’ll say, “You had no excuse, you heard the answers, you heard the gospel.”
Brendan Corr
Let me ask you a bit about that context because you’re living in a society, American society, that’s going through a period of change from being staunchly Christianized, if not Christian, to being much less sympathetic to people of Christian faith. How do you respond, how does it make you feel when you have the criticism, that scepticism, that personal attack on you and what you believe and what you’re doing from those that don’t understand?
Ken Ham
Well, I think of Noah. Do you think about Noah, a preacher of righteousness, in a world where everyone would have been against him because the whole world was wicked? It was only his family that went on that ark. In America, yes, it’s become very secularised. I mean, the perverseness in regard to sexuality and so on. When you think of the LGBT movement and transgender, and then the abortion issue, 60 million children murdered in their mother’s womb since 1973, since it was legalised by the Supreme Court and the drag queens they invite into libraries and schools and then basically the public education system that’s throwing God out and prayer out and the Bible out, and teaches everyone from an atheistic perspective. I mean, you look at all that, but there are still millions of people that are righteous in America. America is in big trouble. God’s not going to stand idly by. When you think of what Hitler did at the Holocaust and the millions of people that he persecuted and killed, but then you think of 60 million children murdered in their mother’s womb since Roe versus Wade, God’s not going to stand back and do nothing. In fact, when you read Romans 1, I believe it’s a picture of what’s happening in our whole Western world. As people rebel against God as creator and worship the creature more than the creator, and then you go through the sexual revolution and then there’s the homosexual revolution that you read there in Romans 1 and as God withdraws his restraining influence. We’ve seen that happen through our whole Western world. We’re seeing it in a big way here in America. It is true that born again evangelical Christians who stand on the authority of the Word of God, who contend for the faith, who as we’re told to in Jude, and who will not knowingly compromise God’s word beginning in Genesis, we are a minority, but you know what? We have God on our side and what we’ve got to look at is we’ve got to be faithful. When I think of Noah preaching in that world before the flood, if he can do that, he’s a preacher of righteousness, we can do that. You read through Hebrews 11, we think things are bad now. When you think of the riots that have been going on in America and the looting and all it’s happening, it’s sort of frightening in a way. And all that happened in regard to the coronavirus and nobody knows what to believe anymore, actually. I think there is so much contradictory information and inconsistencies and I think people are starting to question what is going on? What is this all about? It’s a great time for us to come out and say, “Look, we’ve got the answers.” A lot of people are fearing death from a coronavirus. For Christians, we’ve got to take our responsibility, there it is again, our responsibility of looking after our health and making sure we do what’s right there. But in the sovereignty of God, we can’t add one hour to our life either. We know that if something would happen to us, we’re going to be with the Lord for eternity, but we need to have that burden to get out and tell others about it. There are still millions of righteous people, so to speak, in this nation in America. There’s many in Australia too, as you know. They’re a minority, but nonetheless, if Noah can preach to those people, if people in Hebrews were prepared to be sawn in two and go destitute and live in caves and … Think of people in the past, think of the days of the Roman empire and Christians who were thrown to the lions. We’re not anywhere like that yet. Yeah, Christians are being persecuted more and more in our Western world, but we need to be faithful to what God has told us to do. Go into all the world and preach the gospel. Contend for the faith, give reasons for what you believe, and that’s what we needed to do to the best of our ability. I committed to the Lord, that’s what you called me to do. That’s what I want to do. He’s allowed us to build these themed attractions that impact millions of people, and now our website and our own streaming service at answers.tv that reaches around the world now. Then all the books and the videos. I think, “Look what God has done.” Really, it goes back to parents who taught their children to stand on the Word of God, without compromise. I want to urge parents to make sure you look at your children. Every child is a being who’s going to live forever and ever and ever, in heaven or hell, the Bible says, and how important it is to train them right from a young age. Brendan, the example I use here in America is Vegemite.
Brendan Corr
Oh, good on you.
Ken Ham
Because most Americans, you give them a taste of Vegemite and they hate it. I love Vegemite and the reason is because our parents brought us up to acquire a taste from a young age, and that taste is with us for the rest of our lives. A number of our grandchildren, they’ve been brought up on Vegemite and they love it. I remind people that when you look at what Paul said about Timothy and about how he was trained from a young age to know the Scriptures, we need to be teaching our children. That’s what our parents did with us. They taught us to be Vegemite kids, to acquire a taste for the things of the Lord, for apologetics, for a defence of the faith, for evangelism, for standing on God’s Word without compromise right from a young age. That to me is what real Christian education is all about, helping the parents do that.
Brendan Corr
Amen. Ken, that brings us back to some of the first comments that we had in our conversation, the importance of those formative years. We made the comment that part of your acquiring or retaining your Australian accent was because of those language patterns, those speech patterns. The formation of those sounds was so ingrained in those earliest … differently to your own kids who grew up listening and hearing something so different. You’ve used the analogy of Vegemite, the taste sensitivity to that. But I hear what you’re saying, the importance of shaping a faithfulness and understanding of the Word of God, the power of the Word of God, the truth, and the unfailing-ness of the Word of God. Just as a last little reflection, we’ve talked a lot in this conversation about the Word, about Scripture, about that expression of God’s character and personality that is captured in Scripture-related truth. What do you think is the complimentary side of knowing the Word, but also knowing the God of the Word, that personal relationship with a living Lord?
Ken Ham
Well, in Hebrews 1 we read, “Without faith, it’s impossible. He that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.” God reveals that to each one of us and when you have that personal commitment to the Lord when you really truly believe his Word … What does the Scripture say? “To seek wisdom and truth as you would seek after silver and gold.” When you do that, God will show that to you. I remember when my wife and I were considering, “Should I leave school teaching and go full time?” We 80% said, “Lord, we’re willing to do it.” Then 90%, and then 95% and 98%. But it wasn’t until my wife was reading Matthew 6 to me one day as we’re driving in the car out to Dalby where I first started teaching school, out there past Toowoomba. “If God so clothes the lilies of the field, how much more is he going to look after us?” Right then in the car we prayed, and for the first time we said, “Lord, we’re 100% committed to you to do what you want us to do.” Then things started falling into place. My challenge is to people too, is if you commit your life to the Lord and you really mean it … I mean, not 80%, not 90%, not 98%. When you can say, “Lord, I really want to do what you want me to do. I really want to go where you want me to go. I 100% mean it,” he can do great things through each of you.
Brendan Corr
Exceedingly, abundantly above all we could ask or think. Dr Ham, it’s been an absolute delight to spend some time talking with you, learning from you. We honour the commitment that you have shown to the truth of the Word of God and for the way God has used you to advance that or to declare that to so many people and to so many places and for the gifts that he so obviously has blessed you with to be able to communicate that message. Also to hear that for the strength of that commitment to the Word, it is informed by the deep personal connection with the God of the Word or the God who is the Word. Thank you so much for your time. We will pray that God continues to open new doors for you and for your ministry to make the impact that he has planned for you and may God be with you and bless you.
Ken Ham
Thank you, Brendan, and hey, I’d love to see you over here one day and give you a tour through the Ark and the Creation Museum and maybe bring all the school students too.
Brendan Corr
Hey, we might see about that. That could be a fantastic little excursion we could organise. Dr. Ham, thank you so much.
Ken Ham
Hey, thank you.
