This episode is a vital resource as we interview Ken Ham about Parenting Kids to Face the Giants. Ken is a leading Christian authority on apologetics. He’s the CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis which includes numerous resources for parents, the Creation Museum, and the world-renowned Ark Encounter.

He has been interviewed on CBS News Sunday Morning, The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and many other outlets. 

Join Isaac, Angie, and Ken in a lively discussion on many important topics for parenting right now including the following:

In This Episode We Discuss:

• How to train our kids and be ready to answer our kids potentially faith shattering questions
• The purpose of the family
• How detrimental is it if one parent is trying and the other is lukewarm?
• Parents strategy for protection and counterattack
• Vegemite example for the spiritual training of kids
• Does being the salt work in public education?
• The 7 C’s of history
• The ark encounter
• Homeschooling curriculum that’s coming soon
• What Ken Ham’s parents did well
• The importance of a father’s role in equipping children.

We also discuss his latest book “Will They Stand”, which is an important book for every parent to read. 

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show with parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible,

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Welcome back to the Courageous Parenting Podcast, everyone, if you’re a first time listener, we so appreciate you and you have some great influence in store and we’re excited to do this special guest interview. We rarely have guests, but when they’re really valuable and we are going to get a lot of that, we want to do that.

Yeah. And so we’re excited to be here today with Ken Ham. He is the CEO and at answers in Genesis dot org, you can find out more about him, but also the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. And we have benefited from his resources over the last 20 years and we know and trust them. And so that’s one of the reasons why we are willing to do an interview with him when he came out, the new parenting book that we’re very excited to share with you today.

So, Ken, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks. Isaac and Angie, it’s great to be able to talk with you. And I’m thrilled that you love this ministry and what we stand for, which, of course, is God’s word, the authority of God’s word, beginning right there at the beginning in Genesis.

Oh, it’s so powerful, because if you can’t accurately answer your kids questions and you don’t know where you stand on things, how can we expect our kids to believe in the Bible? Either all the Bible’s true or you put question in people’s minds. So that was such a key thing. I know as a newer dad, when I first I was exposed to your speaking and resources, that was so powerful for me to really have an answer for things. And so I appreciate that so much about your your ministry. I think would be really interesting to find out just the personal side of you and then we’ll dig into some things. So why don’t you tell us about your family? No kids and in what’s going on there?

Well, I have

One wife, which which

Is good because that’s what the Bible says, right? That we have five kids four a married, one that single

We have 18 Grandchildren, just had our 18th grandchild. And so the Lord has blessed us in that way. And I tell you what’s thrilling for us is to see our children all, although we did our best to pass on that spiritual legacy to the next generation. And we see the fruit of that in all of our kids. And now we see them passing on that spiritual legacy to the next generation, which is our grandkids, to bring them up in the church admiration of the Lord. So we are just so thankful to the Lord for that. And my wife spends a lot of time looking after grandchildren. They all live within about 20 minutes of our house. And so you can imagine this kids coming and going all day long, I think all week long,

All of that. That’s what I would say. That has been one of our visions and dreams for the future. Of course, as I know a lot of other people who listen to the podcast, that that’s what we want for our kids. Right. For them to know the Lord in a personal way, to seek following him and to find someone who has the fruit and to be able to ask them questions can sometimes be harder today. So what a blessing that your kids are walking with Jesus, that’s awesome.

Yeah, so cool. So early on, did you have a vision as a father and your wife to you as a mother for a multigenerational legacy, or did this happen later to you? Seems like it must.

Well, you know,

I grew up in a Christian home in Australia. Australia is a pretty pagan country. And my father was a teacher and got transferred to school after school every three years because he was so good at what he did. And he got promoted. And my father and mother

Were just dedicated

To proclaiming the truth of God’s word. They were both brought up in Christian homes as well in Australia. And so I saw my parents having an evangelistic heart and doing whatever they could to reach others with the message of God’s word in the gospel. They started Sunday schools pointed Sunday schools in little country towns where there was no Sunday school and they were bringing missionaries in Australia. There’s a mission organization called the Open Air Campaign, and they would have them stay in the house and use them to be able to run programs so that children could hear the truth and God’s word in the gospel. So my father is very much one who wanted to make sure that they did all they could as a family to not only raise up their own children on God’s word, but also reach others as well. And that all had a great impact on me. And, you know, even growing up, I remember some of the churches we went to, the pastors were quite liberal, in fact, being impacted by liberal theology because some towns only had one church or two churches. And my father would show us from the Bible where what the pastor had said was wrong.

He said a little boy took out his loaves and fishes, so everybody else did the same. No, that’s not what the scripture says. And he would also challenge the pastor as well. And we would say that. And so my father started doing was this. He recognised how liberal theology was causing people to doubt God’s word he didn’t want us doubting God’s word be led astray, so he started researching what all the liberal theologians were teaching and to give us answers. And, you know, looking back on it, he never used the word apologetics, but that’s what he was doing, training us up in apologetics, in other words, giving us answers against the attacks of the day that were undermining God’s word. And that’s something that’s missing from a lot of homes today where we haven’t thought through what are the attacks today and how are our children being led astray. So we need to be able to give them those answers to defend the Christian faith had a great impact on my own life, which is why the Ministry of Answers in Genesis is an apologetics organization. That’s who we are. That’s what we do.

That’s so cool. And since you mentioned that you have a chapter in your book, what a great book, by the way, will they stand? Everybody is going to pick this up. It’s so good. Which is kind of better than your personal stories with the biblical truth and practical knowledge of how to parent today in these cultures that are so against the truth. So really love the book. But one of the chapters is Welcome to the War. I thought it was a good choice of words, interesting choice of words. And it said Parents Strategy for protection and counterattack. And so I’d love to hear I think everybody loved to hear what that’s about.

Well, you know, one of the

Things we have to recognize is scripture uses military terminology quite a lot, you know, in the New Testament. And of course, there’s all the military conquest in the Old Testament, but it uses military terminology in regard to our own lives and to in regard to our spiritual state, because we are in a war. It’s a war that started 6000 years ago, by the way, in Genesis three and said, did God really say, in other words, is a devil creating doubt that you can trust God’s word? And then he said, you can be like God. In other words, you make up truth for yourself. In other words, obey man’s word. And so a battle began between God’s word, a man’s word. And, you know, we see that battle all the way through scripture. It’s portrayed in different ways, like a battle between light and darkness, a battle between those on the narrow way, those on the broad by those who are for Christ, those who are against those who gather, those who scatter. I mean, it’s all the way through scripture. And it’s a reminder that we’re

In a war and it’s a

Spiritual war. And scripture also teaches like in Ephesians and other places, too. But to make sure we’re equipped for the war, in other words, equip by putting on the whole armor of God and, you know, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God and so on. And the question that I like to ask people today is, you know, for instance, parents, OK, the Bible tells us we’re in a spiritual war. We don’t war against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. We’re in that spiritual wars raging around us. And we’ve got to understand the tactics of the enemy. You know, in second Corinthians 11 three, Paul has a warning for us. And this is God through. Paul, I want to warn you, the devil is going to use the same method on you as he did on Eve to get you to position or your kids, your grandkids to position or not believe in the things of God. So what was that method he used on Eve? While we go back to Genesis three, did God really say, in other words, to create doubt, to lead to unbelief? And so I call at the Genesis attack. And the Genesis attack has manifested itself in different ways, in different eras. For instance, you know, I used the example when Peter and Paul were preaching, did anyone ask them about carbon dating? The answer is no, because that wasn’t an issue in their day when Martin Luther was not in those places on the door of the church. You know, did anyone ask him about dinosaurs on the ark? Well, no, that wasn’t an issue in his day. The word dinosaur wasn’t even invented 1841. My point is there’s been all sorts of attacks on the word of God. The devil’s method never changes. It’s an attack to undermine the authority of the word of God. But the way that attack manifests itself

Is in

Different ways, in different eras. And so today I say to people, look, as I’ve travelled all over the world, one of the things that I have noticed is that when people know you are about the Bible and the gospel,

They

Ask the same basic questions,

Oh, why

Don’t we live in a scientific age as in science, the spirit of the Bible? How do you know there’s a God anyway? Well, who may God? But what about the races of people? What about dinosaurs, carbon dating? What about the ape man? Then we all evolve by evolution. Didn’t the universe come by Big Bang and so on. And then I asked people how many of those questions.

In today’s culture, every hand goes up and it doesn’t matter where I’m speaking.

And then I then I asked them this.

How many of

You can answer those questions adequately? And that’s just some of them. And how many of you have equipped

Your children to be able to

Answer those questions? Because they’re the questions that are used today as part of the Genesis attack. And it’s a particular attack on God’s word, beginning in Genesis that has caused many to doubt and not believe God’s word and walk away from the church. And we’ve seen that. I mean, the younger generations, it’s. Down to well, a few years ago, it was down to 18 percent for millennials going to church. Now it’s down to about 11 percent for millennials. And yet if you go back to the older generations, the greatest generation, 52 percent of them went to church. You know, even in the baby boomers, I mean, the baby boomer generation, 30, 30 plus percent went to church. We’re seeing we’re losing the younger generations from the church. And the reason is, I believe, because parents

Haven’t equipped their children

To defend the Christian faith, has allowed the world to to to attack the Bible and God’s word. And we haven’t prepared them for that attack. And they’ve succumbed. And, you know, just quickly to finish off this little bit here, and that is

God

Has told us specific ways that we are to equip our children and how to train them. And and like in the book, I talk about what it means to put salt in them, because there are many parents that say shouldn’t have kids be in the public schools to be the salt of the earth? Well, I deal with that in the book to show that that argument does not hold up against scripture.

Well, you use a great example, too, I think you say Vegemite, which is Vegemite, maybe it’s something eaten in Australia, but, you know, counterfeit. Well, no, it’s actually something they love. It’s like peanut butter to us in America, according to your book. I thought that was super interesting. Yeah. And but you’re making an interesting point there where it’s like, OK, just as it becomes an acquired taste, we need to also equip our kids and understanding biblical ways in biblical truth. And it’s not just something. Obviously, parents don’t save their kids. Salvation is something God does. But parents are the authority over their kids when they’re growing up the God given jurisdiction to jurisdiction to pour into them and to build that. So anyway, anything you want to say about that, I thought.

Well, yeah, you know, I remember when we had our first son, and that was in 1976, our first child, actually. And so there I am in the hospital looking into his little crib. And he looked back at me and he said, Hey, Dad, what are you doing? Eschatology and soteriology and, you know, had in-depth theological discussion. Right then of course, we know that’s stupid and that doesn’t happen. But that’s my point. My point is, you know, when our

Children are born, they don’t

Know about Jesus. They don’t know about the Bible. I mean, God’s word says the knowledge of God is written on our hearts. We know there’s a God without that excuse. I mean, Romans one and Romans two tells us there’s a conscience and law is written on our hearts. But they don’t know about Adam and Eve that up know about the fall of man, the sacrificial system and what that meant, pointing to the Messiah. They don’t know about Abraham Moses. They don’t know about Jesus, the Bible in a manger. And he died on the cross, raised from the dead. They don’t know that our job as parents is to make sure we put that sort of biblical truth in them. And we do know, too, from God’s word, that they have a sinful heart. And the heart of man is this. If above all things and desperately wicked and you’ve had children and you know, they’re they’re not perfect, in fact, that none of us think Scripture says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And so that means we already have a bias against God. When your kids are born, they have a bias against God. And that inner bias we have is there as our sin nature, fighting against what is truth. So we’re going to have a hard job and we’ve got to recognize that because we’re going to fight against something that’s already a negative, so to speak.

And I use

The word I use the example of Vegemite because the Vegemite is that black paste is very

Salty.

And it’s sort of, you know, I got all this sludge left over from the breweries in Australia. I had to do something with it. Right. So I made it into Vegemite. It’s high in vitamin B, so it’s it’s good for you. But you don’t you don’t eat it well, particularly when you’re not used to it. You don’t eat it. Big Teaspoonful. You know, if you get a cracker and put butter on the cracker and then put Vegemite just a thin layer on top, that’s how you would eat it or, you know, to help Americans eat it, put some cheese on top as well. Cheese goes really well with Vegemite. Actually that nice taste. But the reason we love Vegemite so much is because when we were born, our parents would start to my mother would get a little bit of Vegemite wants to do this with other kids because I’m one of six. And she had put a bit of Vegemite on the finger and put it in their mouth and that would get to acquire a taste for it. And so as you get older, you love Vegemite, you’re hooked on Vegemite. Now you give Americans have never tasted Vegemite, some Vegemite to taste. And I don’t know, I’ve seen them screw up faces in the most horrible ways I’ve ever seen in my life. They say, how do you eat that stuff? But that see, to me, it’s it’s like that with pickles. I look at any vegetable you have to soak for millions of years anyway to be able to eat it. There’s something wrong with it. If you guys ever eat pickles, I’ll tell you why you were brought up on them and you were taught to acquire a taste. So you don’t know how bad they are that. But I do because I wasn’t taught to acquire taste. But that’s the whole point. Our parents taught us to acquire a taste and right from when we’re young. And if you think about what Paul said to Timothy, you know that you have learned the scriptures, you know, from a child.

And when when

My wife and I were looking at, OK, God’s giving us

Children, what does

God say about how to train them and how do we do this? And, you know, right from a young age, we started to, for instance, show them books and show them pictures. And even if they didn’t understand, we would still point to the pictures and, you know, even dinosaur books and things, teaching them apologetics. Right. And then as I got a little older, we could actually read the words. And then as I got older, they could read the words and they became the their favourite books. And we would do two things, putting in the sort of biblical truth, teaching God’s word to them.

But first, Peter, three fifteen.

Says Always be prepared to give answers,

So equipping

Them for the world, understanding the Genesis attack of our age, the questions they’re going to hear, the attacks they’re going to hear to prepare them for that. You think about the issues that confront parents today and confront

Children, issues of gender

Issues in regard to marriage and even pedophilia and abortion and the LGBTQ movement, transgender and all these things.

We need to

Know what we believe as Christians and why. And if you start from Genesis one to 11, Genesis one to 11 is the origin of all the basic entities of life in the universe. That’s the foundation for all of our doctrine. That’s the foundation for dealing with gender. Two genders, male and female. God created them. Marriage, God made man from this woman, from his side. That is one marriage, one man, one woman abortion. Well, God made humans in the image of God. No animals are made in the image of God from fertilization. You made in the image of God. Abortion is killing a human being wrong. You’ve got to teach them foundationally. Teach them how to defend their faith. Put the sort of biblical truth in and put in apologetics, teaching them foundationally to equip them ready for this world. And it’s one of the things we realize that more we look to scripture, what is God’s word say about how to train children? And that really that whole testimony of how my parents brought us up. And for us as a as well, looking at God’s word, not what psychologists were saying or others necessarily thought is God’s word say about how to train children and priorities of education. And then to also show that the spiritual legacy my parents passed on to us as children,

That we not

Only are passing it on to our children and now to the to their children and grandchildren,

But that is the reason

That the Ministry of Answers in Genesis Creation Museum and I can counter exists. It’s to show that that legacy was passed on from parents who were bold and courageous in raising up godly offspring. And now look at the millions of people being reached with God’s word in the Gospel because of parents who are obedient to the Lord and wanting to raise up not just offspring, but offspring who love the Lord and stood on his word.

You know, it reminds me, just hearing your story reminds me of something that Isaac teaches in the courageous parent mentor program, he talks about three generations and asked parents, how many kids do you think you’re parenting? And a lot of times they’ll look at how many kids they have and they’ll say, oh, we have three. So we’re parenting three. And then he goes into it to show them that they’re actually parenting a lot more than three.

Yeah, it’s everyone that they impact. Right.

It’s a big legacy. And I think that one of the biggest questions or I guess struggles that parents that we hear from parents today is they feel like they weren’t necessarily raised up to know the answers. So they feel ill equipped in how to give the answers to the kids. And I’ll just say I was raised in a Christian home, but I went to public school and I did believe in creation, but I didn’t know how to defend that particular argument. We were just to pick one of them. Right. Which today there are so many more. Obviously, you just listed a bunch off. But the reality is, is when I became a parent, I realized I have to redeem my education. I need to dig in. I need to do research myself. I need to invest in my own education. And so for us, one of the things that Isaac encouraged me and he said, hey, and when we when we got married, he said, you can spend as much as we can afford on books and good food because we need a library, we need resources, we need to be learning. And that was something that was foundational for us twenty one years ago. And now I see it in my kids as they’re able to have an answer for things.

Right. And they’re still in the learning process. I’m still in the learning process. But for us having a humble heart of going, I don’t know, let’s go look it up and then having different resources, like honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever spent more time on a website getting resources than answering Genesis because like these books, these are the thick ones. But we also have the thinner kid version ones answers one, two and three, volume one, two and three. We used to have those in a basket in the middle of our table when our kids were all like under 12 years old. And at lunchtime, we just each person would pick one question and we’d talk about it. And I don’t think that parents need they need to be encouraged that it’s not as hard as it seems and that there are people that can actually help them with resources that take them back to the word of God. Like you were just saying, like we just need to get back to the basics of teaching biblical truth and not meeting other outside resources like psychologists and different things like that, because we don’t necessarily know if they’re founded in the Bible.

I was just going to say Angie or that one father, he come up to me, said, I’ve got six children, but I realize I wasn’t brought up in a Christian home and I was never taught how to train my children or I’ve had others come and say, well, you know, I’ve grown up in the church all my life, but I just realized I don’t know really how to train children. And I recognize a lot of people are out there like that. In fact, you know, in many ways there’s been a great neglect of many of our churches. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not all churches, but sadly, the majority who have not taught apologetics, many of them have compromised God’s word in Genesis. And as a result, we have all these families out there that really don’t know how to train their children and what to do. And that’s one of the reasons I believe the Lord raised up answers in Genesis. There’s some great Christian organizations that God has raised up to be able to help parents. And, you know, we are one of them. And we have the two leading Christian themed attractions in the world that I can count on, the creation museum. You cannot bring your children and take them on a whole walk through the Bible and have the Bible come alive in a in a marvelous way, bring them to the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter and they can learn so much. And you learn we teach apologetics. We teach them how to think with a Christian worldview. And we have all those resources. Like you said,

The answer is

Books. And there’s many other resources as well.

We even have

And I’ll just mention this here, too. We have a four year Sunday school curriculum, classes, Bible curriculum, and there’s nothing else like it in the world. It’s apologetics, biblical authority, Christian doctrine, Christian worldview, going through the whole of the Bible in four years. And thousands of churches are using it and I say just revolutionizes their churches. But we now are actually launching January 2021. We’re launching the home school edition and we have turned it into a home school Bible curriculum, primarily four to five. But it could also be used for six to eight and even into high school in particular ways. And it is absolutely phenomenal.

And so in other words, there’s a

Help for parents, you know, how are you going to teach the Bible? How do you teach the Bible and teach not just the content of scripture, but teach apologetics and teach them to think to have a Christian world view? Because that’s another part that’s missing, is it’s not just a matter of adding God to their thinking. It’s a matter of having the Bible is the foundation to develop a Christian worldview. And that’s what we do in our materials and that’s what we do in this home school Bible Curriculum. Called answers Bible curriculum that they can get information on at answers in Genesis Thug, and so we are here to help them. That’s what we’re here for, to help them. I believe God has raised up this ministry

To do that.

That is exciting. I just I’m excited about that because we got to hear you speak. I think it was maybe six or seven years ago at a church in Oregon City. And we actually bought that VBS curriculum to with our kids because we had six kids at the time, instead of having a homeschool version would be so helpful. But I can vouch for it if it’s on the similar plane as what we bought.

It’s awesome. I just wanted to say something about the Ark since you mentioned it is when we were there, one of the most powerful things, obviously seeing the life size. Right. OK, you can literally see it and then you walk through it. But there was this chart inside that proves that all the animals fit inside. And I think just the most simple things like that are such a faith building experience to get to know the authority of the Bible is accurate. These things are not stories. These are historical events that happened. And that is such an anchor for kids when they’re able to literally be inside the Ark LifeSize and then see this chart and see exactly how God did it.

Well, you know,

Isaac that going back to my days as a teacher, I became a public high school teacher, actually, originally in Australia in nineteen seventy Five. And the Kids knew I was a Christian because I was going to be heading up the Christian

Group at the school.

And so one of the first science class actually. And they said, so we heard your Christian. I said yes, well how can you be a Christian? I said, Why is that? Well, because

The Bible can’t be true. Why can’t the

Bible be true? Because what’s in our textbooks about evolution and millions of years

And I realized

Right then that what they’re being taught was a real stumbling block to them, listening to the truth of God’s word. And then they

Said, noah, couldn’t fit the animals on the ark.

It’s interesting. That’s been one of the most asked questions I’ve been asked all over the world as I travel around, which which was part of the reasoning as to why, you know, why we’re building the Creation Museum, what can we do next? And I’ve always had this burden. We need to show people the size of the ark and answer those questions. And so I’ve always wanted to be able to build a life size ark to show people, look, we can we can actually see how big it was and how it could fit the animals on board and answer those most ask questions people have that caused doubt, because I know that those questions caused doubts that lead to unbelief. And so

We have now

Built the ark. And it is one and a half times the length of a football field, half the width of a football field. It stands ten stories high at the back end, three point three million board feet of timber and all three decks filled with exhibits answering questions. And it’s interesting, even one of the non Christian leaders in the community here in northern Kentucky and came down to visit the ark. And as we got up to towards the ark itself, I mean, it seems to get bigger and bigger as you walk up to it. It’s a massive structure. And this is a non Christian from the community. And he stopped and he turned and looked at

Me and he said, oh,

This thing’s enormous. Maybe God could have fitted all the animals in after all. So the very fact he said that means even the size was speaking to that person. And, you know, the other thing is like we have many different exhibits in the ark and answer tons of questions.

But one of the exhibits is how

Could he look after the animals and get get the waste away? And we actually show how some of the ancient wooden ships did it and how Noah could have done it to me to show people this was feasible. This could actually be done. And I’ve talked to a number of teenagers that have gone through the same groups er and stop them and talk to them. And I said, which exhibit did you like the best? And many

Times they said, well, learn

How Noah could have looked after his animals and got rid of all their waste and everything that was, that was really cool. Wow. That makes sense. You know, even that speaks to them. It makes a big difference when you answer those questions.

So powerful and so incredible.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. It is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com And subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, a CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit. More about it and you can find out more at CourageousParenting.com,

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done and creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents are trying to raise our kids Biblically like our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of heart. We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. And it’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing dark days

Ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation. It’s incredible. You have a you have a chapter in the book, How to Train Kids and be ready for potentially faith shattering questions, which is what we’re talking about here. What do you think as you’ve experienced this with lots of people, lots of parents and all the things you’ve done? What are some some of those faith shattering questions that happened that parents are ill equipped for?

You know, even before we sort of answer that question to a degree, you may ask it if you went into the average church in America, right. And the pastor let you get up there and you said, I’m going to ask some questions and I want you to tell me how you can answer them.

How do you know the Bible is true, where the Bible come from anyway? How do you know

There is a God? What does it mean? The Bible is the inspired word of God. How would you explain? What is the message of the Bible? I mean, what is it all about anyway? And how do you know Jesus rose from the dead and

Well, where he

Can get his wife if we all go back to Adam and Eve. And how do you deal with evolution and millions of years? And how would you answer the question how to get the animals on the ark? And what sort of animals did he take on the ark? Was it every species or or what was it? You know, if you ask those questions, that’s just some of them. But if you ask those questions, the average congregation, how many people do you think could get up and say, I can answer all those and I’ve taught my children how to answer them?

Yeah, I see.

My point is even the adults don’t know how to answer those questions.

I mean, very few.

And if they do know how to answer them, how are they going to equip their children? And, you know, that’s one of the reasons you showed before Angie the answers book. There’s actually five answers books now answers books. Wonderful. And then the flood of evidence, which is really answers book five. And it’s one hundred and sixty of the most asked questions that we’ve been asked over the years as I’ve traveled around the world for the past 40 plus years. And I know the most asked questions. People ask, you know, where the kangaroo is? Why? Well, what about the races of people? How to explain them? We go back to harmony. What do you do with dinosaurs? And I’ll get the animals on the quarterback carbon dating he those a God. Well, who made God? Well, how do you understand all of that? And is there any evidence for a flood? What about the apemen and what about the billions of years? And what about the Big Bang?

And, you know, we

Know the most asked questions and we have answered those in those books. And then we did the series for kids, the kids answer books, of which there are eight now in that series and answering all the most honest questions. And you see, the point is, a lot of times, I think in our

Churches, you know,

We have a lot of great pastors and a lot of people have a heart for the Lord. But if you just you know, you say, oh, I’m going to today we’re going to teach about the account of Zacchaeus. And it’s sort of like you can teach from the scripture within the scripture and and learn the spiritual things and so on from that. And that’s good.

And we need to do that. But not just that.

We also need to be equipping them, saying, now you’re growing up in this world, which is, you know, through for instance, through the public education system, is throwing so many things at kids that I mean, it’s become very antagonistic to Christianity, very atheistic. And your kids are hearing all this information that contradicts the Bible. And you need to know how to answer these. And then you need to know how to how to defend the Christian faith and teaching them you need to know how to train your children to understand where marriage came from. And then how do you argue with a non Christian? You can’t just go out there and hit them on the head with the Bible. I mean faith by hearing hearing by the word of God. That’s true. But when you’re a witness into a non Christian who thinks the Bible is not even true, you’ve got to use a certain way of

Speaking to them

To be able to get them to listen to you and so on. Are our churches really doing that? And I would say from my own experience,

In a

Majority of instances, they’re not. And that’s one of the reasons why I believe God has raised up the Ministry of Answers in Genesis to be able to help parents and help the church. Now, there are a lot of churches I mentioned earlier is about ten thousand churches have been using our Answers Bible curriculum and they’re saying it’s revolutionising their churches because most Sunday school material and a lot of the BBC programs are what I call fluff And stuff, you know, shallow Entertainment,

Shallow entertainment and just Bible stories, in fact, even

Today. So his point and that

Is using the word story,

Right. The word

Story

Today means something

Different for the younger generations than it did for the older generations. Today, it means fairytale or fiction. And we still use in many of our churches the term Bible stories. We’re going to have Bible stories of the kids today and Sunday school. We’re going to Bible stories. But 90 percent, 90, 95 percent of kids from church homes actually go to the public education system where they believe all we’re learning real stuff there. But at church, we do stories,

You know,

And the other thing I want to challenge parents with is this. There’s a real important point going back to the salt example we gave earlier. You know, a lot of people say, well, our kids need to be in the public school to witness to the other kids.

Well, number one, they can’t

Be sold until they have it. Like nine fifty says have. Sold in yourselves, number two, if the salt contaminated like Matthew five, 13 sells contaminated is no longer good for anything, you can’t just throw them into a system where, by and large, that system now is strong and got out the Bible, that prayer out and indoctrinates them in atheistic naturalism. That’s really the religion of the public education system. We need to be putting the sort of biblical truth in teaching them to defend their faith. Get ready for the world so they can

Be the

Salt of the earth. They can’t just go out there and be salt

To liquid

Till they have it. That’s a very, very important point for parents to understand. And that’s that’s why I was so adamant about teaching them foundationally and teaching them apologetics, as we’ve been talking about.

Yeah. And sadly, a lot of parents don’t read that scripture in Matthew about the salt, realizing that says that the salt loses its saltiness, it’s worthless and should be thrown out. Right. And it’s it’s one of those things where we need to realize that kids, like you said earlier, are not born salty. Right. Right. We’re not. And so we have to equip them. We’re oftentimes telling parents, well, OK, you’re getting upset with your three year old. Right. And they’re having a temper tantrum and you’re expecting emotional self-control. But have you taught them emotional self-control and are you modeling it? You know what I mean? Because there’s both elements of it. Are we expecting something from our kids that they have not learned yet that we haven’t taught them? And I think that it’s the same thing for expecting them to be the salt in a public school education, environment or even in any other secular environment. If we haven’t equipped them and taught them how to answer questions, how to have conversations that importance or even teaching them like I even think about myself when I learned the Roman road right like that, that for me was, oh, now I can actually have a conversation because I can memorize these scriptures that help me to talk to somebody and take them to the word of God, which the word of God can then answer their questions.

But that was just like that. That was such a very first step place. There’s so many more questions than we need to be equipping our kids with. I even think about today and just what’s been happening in the world with being able to discern what is truth. Right. Because there’s so many things being broadcasted. Christians and conservatives are being censored. Right. And so are kids as they’re being launched into this world. That really is a new kind of world in a sense. Then even 10 years ago, I mean, when we started that courageous parenting mentor program and our whole tagline is equipping confident, courageous kids for an uncertain world. And we had no idea two years ago that we were going to be in what we’re in right now. But how does your book, this new book. Right. Speak to parents about this new world or this this changing, uncertain place that kids are going to be navigating now?

Well, you know, one of the things that I really try to do, too, is to help parents understand that, you know, we said before that we’re in a spiritual battle and it’s a battle between God’s word, a man’s word. And so it’s really a battle between worldviews. It’s a clash of worldviews. And I think many parents don’t really grasp the concept.

And that is where does that thinking come from?

Why do we think the way we do, where do we get that from?

Because here’s the point.

We’re not we can’t just add the Bible to our thinking. In other words, even in a homeschool situation, the Bible shouldn’t be a nine to nine thirty. Every day we study Bible. No, if you understand, if the Bible is is what it claims to be and it is the revealed word of God, who knows everything is to know about everything, then it’s the foundation for our whole world view. In other words, in every subject area and everything we do, we’re starting from God’s word because he knows everything. He’s revealed to us what we need to know to build a way of thinking. So it’s like putting on a pair of glasses, right? You put on glasses, everyone wears glasses.

You either have on a Christian

World view glasses or secular world view

Glasses. Right.

And we want to raise up children to have on those Christian world view glasses. I find one of the best ways to explain this is like some practical examples, and that is at the Creation Museum. We walk people through one of the main exhibits. We get a number of different exhibits in theatres and so on. But one of the main exhibits is the walk through history. We call it the seven seas of history. And so it’s a walk through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation with all these lifesize exhibits. And we label them this way, creation, the perfect creation. Second C is corruption, the entrance of sin and death into the world. The third C catastrophe. The flood of Noah’s day for. Tower of Babel and the giving of different languages and for many different people, groups, and then Christ cross consummation, you know, the message of the gospel founded in that history, those first forces’,

Creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion. That’s the biological, astronomical,

Anthropological, geological

History that God

Has given to us. That’s actually a foundation

For

Our entire worldview, is the foundation for the rest of the Bible, is the foundation for all of our doctrine.

And so if we

Really want to know what it means to to be parenting children, we need to make sure we’re starting from God’s word, have the right foundation. Because from Genesis one to 11, for instance,

If your kids say, you know, this

Is what the atheists say today, how can it be a loving God with all the death and suffering in the world? Yeah, look at there. There’s no loving God. Look at this horrible world. And unfortunately, many kids from church homes are being led astray by that by saying how can they be a loving God?

But if you’ve taught

Them a world view, starting from Genesis one

To 11, then

You know, you’re not looking at the world as God

Made it.

You’re looking at the world that he made that’s now suffering from the effects of sin. And so the fall and the judgement of death and the event of Noah’s flood, that that form fossilise all over the Earth. And then the event of the Tower of Babel forming different people, groups and nations were all one race. We all go back to Adam and Eve. And so when you look out at the world, you see all the death and suffering,

You would say that’s because

That’s because of our sin, we sinned against God. That’s the judgment God placed upon us.

So when we

Start from God’s word in Genesis one, two,

11, then we know

Where we’re looking at a fallen

World.

And so it’s not the world as God made it. And so God is a god of love. He made a perfect world. We rebelled against God. But he wants us to spend eternity with him, which is why he sent his son to die in across liberation of the dead and offers a free gift of salvation. And so my point is, if we haven’t trained them from Genesis one to 11 as the foundation for their worldview and their doctrine, they won’t know how to deal with death and suffering. If you want to teach them about marriage, what is marriage? You know, my daughter just right before we had this program here, she sent me a text. She went to one of the medical clinics in the area, your little clinic, and you probably have those things. And she had to fill out a form and ask, what gender are you? Male, female, trans man, trans woman, binary other. I mean, you know, it worries you when you go to a medical clinic if they don’t know the difference between male and female. Right. They’re going there for some medical reason.

But but the point is, this

Is the world our children are growing up in. And you know, Angie, you said something before I put it, and I totally agree with you. And I put it in another way,

And that is our kids

Are now going to be now growing up in what I would call is more the real

World.

Now, what I mean by that. America has had tremendous Christian

Influence and not that it’s

Been a true Christian nation, but has been a very Christianised nation

And Christian

Morality permeated

The culture. But you see,

That’s not really the real world because the scripture says men love darkness rather than light. And there’s more in the Broadway than the narrow way. And we learn what the real world is when you learn about the sin nature of man in the Bible. And what’s happened is and I believe it’s in many ways it’s Christians fault for not raising up godly generations, not equipping people, not impacting the culture like we should. We now see the real world, which is which is this the sin cursed world that we now see it in, people rising to the surface. And and we see it all in a way we’ve never seen it before. And now

Our kids are being thrust into that and

They’ve got to be equipped to be able to stand in this world and and understand it.

Yeah, no, you’re totally true. I mean, I said, can I talk about this concept just traveling internationally and seeing that there is more persecution. Obviously we’ve got the underground church, the ten forty window. And obviously we’ve been spending years praying with our kids, trying to help them to see as much as they can. But they’ve still been raised in America. Right. And so here for anyone who’s lived here for a long period of time, you become desensitized to the reality of what the rest of the world is experiencing also right in real time. But at the same time, it’s always been like that since fall. And I said and so I love what you’re saying regarding actually they’re they’re being raised in more of a real world, whereas it was kind of I don’t know if hiddenness the right word or masked in a weird way,

But I think to a degree and, you know, the question for parents is, have you raised your kids now to be able to live in the real world and cope in the real world as Christians? You know, have we really done that? And that’s that’s an issue. See, it even relates to the education system, the older generations.

And I

Don’t think they understand the problem to it to the degree a lot of them don’t seem to see the problem even when they went to

Public school. But there was

A veneer of Christianity. The Bible was allowed in school and prayer and you could teach creation and that was OK. But for the younger generations, when you look at Generation X and then the Millennials Y and then Generation Z, and now coming up, Generation Alpha, when you look at the younger generations, the public education system has shown the Bible out. By and large, the Bible out, prayer out, creation out.

They didn’t throw religion out.

They threw Christianity out. And now the whole philosophy is you can explain everything without God by natural processes. Naturalism is atheism. It’s become very antagonistic to Christianity. They indoctrinate in a secular humanist worldview. Generations of the kids from the church homes have now been that system. The older generations, many, they don’t realize it has changed from when they went to school. And it’s become extremely atheistic and antagonistic. And they were wondering why we’re losing those kids from the church and were wondering why they don’t want anything to do with Christianity. And we need to understand, you know, even the public education system now is exhibiting what the real world is all about. It’s antagonism to Christianity, you know, because

The

World, the things of this world at enmity with God, they’re they’re at war with God. And unfortunately, we haven’t prepared the soldiers for that war. And we’re losing many of them in battle. Hey Ken, how detrimental is it if one parent is trying hard and the other one is lukewarm? This is a question from our audience. And in in that same question, you know, speak to the fathers, you know, and the rules. And I think it’s so important to reflect positivity, but it seems like so many embrace pessary.

This is a big question that we get from a lot of people often.

Well, you know, that’s something I meant to answer earlier. And we got one of your questions, but I get off on rabbit trails sometimes. So anyway, but that’s a that’s a big part of the

Book, too. And that is we

Have to ask the question, what does the Bible say? Not what you think, not what your opinion is, not necessarily how you even brought it up, but very everyone to ask, what does the Bible say about my role as

A father

And for my wife’s role as a

Mother? What is God’s word say?

And, you know, if you stand back and look at scripture very carefully, the fathers to the children shall make no your truth. Fathers bring your children up in the notion admonition of the Lord. Psalm 78 is a good time to read. Fathers teach your children so they don’t forget to teach their children. Fathers teach your children so that I’ll forget to teach their children and not forget to teach their children. And then the end of the psalm talks about the Israelite fathers who didn’t teach their children.

And you see

A consequence of that. You know, if you don’t

Raise up

That spiritual legacy in the next generation, you’ll lose it. And it only takes one generation to lose it. If you look at when the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and they’ve built twelve stones as a memorial. So when your children ask what are these stones mean, you’ll not forget to tell them what God has done. And one of the things you then read on is that Joshua dies. The elders that were with him die, and then the next

Generation so vile

They lost it in one generation because the fathers didn’t teach the children. And we need to get very blunt here.

And that is

Most fathers, most fathers in church homes today have

Not

Taken on their God, given God commanded responsibility to be the spiritual head of their house, to be the priest to their wife and their family and to head up. Spiritually, the training of that family and for their spiritual input, because that’s what the scripture clearly teaches, doesn’t mean mean that mothers don’t get involved.

But so you got

To go back to Genesis

Here and understand what sin has done, because

As you read Genesis, one of the things you read in the scripture, your desire will be to your husband and he shall rule over you. Many commentators, and I’ve researched this a lot over the years saying that, saying you see this in many areas, Satan always turns things around to the opposite of what God has decreed. Right. He always wants to do the opposite, always corrupts things to do the opposite. And so that

Verse, I believe, is

Really saying what’s going to happen because of sin

Is that women,

A lot of women will want to usurp the authority of the man and his headship role in the marriage in the house. And by the way, we see that in the feminist movement and which has even affected many of our churches and many of our church families. And the

Man who want

To be despotic in in his attitude towards his wife and lording it over his what you see that in a number of countries around the world where you see that sort of thing,

In other words, we’re not

Going to do our nature is we don’t want to be obedient to the roles God has given us. We’re going to we want to do the opposite. And I see that exhibited in so many church homes where mostly it’s the woman who’s taken on the spiritual head. She brought a lot of times because the man doesn’t want to, sometimes because they don’t want him to, because they want to be the leader, because that’s our nature, our nature. We want to drive us to do that. And so we have got to stand back and say, wait

A minute, what does

God say is my role? And I

Believe there are

Others, husbands and wives to get when they need Lord and have not to the roles that God has ordained for them. You know, the scripture says, well, to be submissive to each other in the roles he’s again ordained for us, you know, because, you know, we live in this world today with its emphasis on equality.

But does a scripture

Really teach equality? It depends what you mean. If you if you’re talking about equality in regard to our value before the Lord and in regard to salvation. Absolutely. But if you’re talking about roles,

No

Scripture teaches there a different role. We are not equal in roles. We have different roles. Husbands have different roles to to to wives, fathers to the mothers. And so it goes on.

And so if

Fathers started taking on a God given responsibility, you know, there is a lot there’s a lot that’s been written about when fathers are not the head of the house. And so I challenge the fathers to do what God has told us to do and to take on that responsibility of being the spiritual head of your homes.

Hey, man, we couldn’t agree more. And that’s such an important message. We Ken, this has been absolutely amazing. I know everybody’s going to get a lot out of it. Where can people get the resources? And specifically this new book coming out, will they stand parenting kids to face the Giants?

Yeah, I Absolutely love our subtitle Parenting Kids to Face the Giants. Maybe you could use that for the title of this program. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great title for it. Anyway, our ministry, our main main website is AnswersinGenesis.org. You can go there and that’ll launch you into all the different places that we have that answers in Genesis dot org. And you can go to our store and you’ll see the books there that we have in the DVD and the Sunday school curriculum and homeschool Bible curriculum that we’re launching right now that we believe will be a tremendous asset. The home school is out there and raising children the way we’ve been talking about in this program.

All right, everybody. And so you got to go see the ark to it is hands down one of the best things you can do with your family. We absolutely loved it. We did an RV Trip and get yourself there with your family and check it out. The Christian Museum is right next door to you. So that’s amazing as well. Well, can we so appreciate you being on the podcast.

Well, thank you. Great to be with you.

All right. Thank you.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom dotcom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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