Announcer: "Back to Genesis" with Ken Ham, author of Genesis and the Decay of the Nations."

Mark Looy: Abortion is becoming a very emotional issue in our society. What should a Christian be doing about it?

Ken Ham: It's quite sad to realize that many of the major leaders in our world are making more and more laws to remove all restrictions in regard to abortion. Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, there have been approximately 30 million babies aborted in America.

What Christians need to understand is that people in our society are rejecting the God of creation because they've been trained to believe that they're just animals in the fight for survival—a result of evolutionary processes. Therefore, they view themselves as animals, and what has been conceived is just an animal.

To solve the abortion crisis, this nation needs to get "Back to Genesis" and submit to the God of Creation.

This is the transcribed text of just one of the hundreds of "Back to Genesis" radio spots that have been broadcast across the nation and soon to go around the world, hosted by Dr. John Morris and me.

The growth and response of this program, now heard on more than 230 stations in the U.S., has exceeded all our expectations in this first year of operation. The hunger for information on Genesis, the book of beginnings, seems to be growing daily. More and more churches are starting to take their people "Back to Genesis," and an increasing number of Christians are using the information gleaned from our seminars, books, videos, and radio programs to challenge family and friends to return to the truth of the book of Genesis.

Many Christians today are working hard to challenge this nation to return to our Biblical foundation. Requests are pouring in from all over the country for the very popular "Back to Genesis" seminars. But why is this so important? Why do our churches in this nation and around the world need to return to the truth of the Bible, as stated in Genesis? Why develop "Back to Genesis" seminar and radio programs? What is this catch phrase, "Back to Genesis," all about?

Recently, Dr. Duane Gish and I had the unique opportunity of spending three days with a group of Episcopalian priests in Southern California. One of the young priests had seen our popular Understanding Genesis videos shown by a local television station. He said that at first he became angry, but as he watched the programs and checked his Bible, he started to realize how important it was to get "Back to Genesis" and accept it as literal history. He contacted ICR, purchased the videos and other materials, and used these videos to witness to two people he had previously been unable to interest in Christianity. As this material confronted these people, the barriers were broken down and this priest was able to lead them to the Lord. He was so excited; he obtained permission for Dr. Gish and myself to address a gathering of priests during a three-day, intensive seminar program. The response was phenomenal! They eagerly responded to the material, and spent much time asking questions and discussing what they had heard.

These priests will now be challenging their congregations to get back to the literal interpretation of Genesis. But why did these priests need such a program? Why was the young priest angered at first by this revelation? The sad truth is that the majority of our colleges and church leaders of all denominations have compromised with evolution and are teaching that we should not take the book of Genesis literally.

When we look at our nation and observe the increase in abortion, homosexual behavior, suicide, etc., many Christians are saying that the nation has a problem, and there is need to change the laws of the nation to stop this increasing slide into immorality. It is not changing the laws, however, that will provide the solution. There has to be a change of the hearts of people toward God so they will want to have laws in accord with the principles of God's Word. The problem is that the world has abandoned belief in absolutes because it has rejected the God of creation and devised a world view that is in direct opposition to Christian ethics based on God's Word.

Tragically, it is not just non-Christians who have abandoned the teachings of Genesis. Many church leaders are responsible for taking people away from God's Word. The philosophy of the day is just like that described in Judges 21:25, when "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." When our leaders accept evolution and abandon Genesis, the foundational book of the Bible upon which all the rest of the Bible is built, as well as the foundation for all major Christian doctrine, then that foundation collapses, and "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3).

Let me give you a specific example. It may shock you, but I believe we need to be shocked into the reality of what is happening. At this same meeting mentioned above, we were told of an Episcopal priest named L. William Countryman, who has influenced many of his peers and others within the church, as well as various other denominational leaders. Dr. Countryman is Professor of New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California. He has put his philosophy in writing, in a book entitled Dirt, Greed, and Sex. A number of very influential leaders recommend the book, including the Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles, who stated, "One would like to make Countryman's book required reading for conservative church leaders who think they know 'what the Bible says' about sexual ethics."

And what does Countryman say? The following quotes speak for themselves:

. . . the gospel allows no rule against the following in and of themselves: . . . bestiality, polygamy, homosexual acts, or erotic art and literature.

Nowhere, however, does the Bible make monogamy a clear and explicit standard for all Christian marriage.

Concerning children having access to pornographic material, he says:

The pleasure attached to explicit sexual portrayals, in words or pictures, should be accepted as the powerful ally of any effort to teach the responsible use of so beautiful a thing.

Jesus was not friendly toward the family as an institution. Although he was not understood to have abolished it entirely among his followers, he came close to it among his immediate disciples.

Can you see which book (among others) in God's Word he does not take literally? Genesis! This sort of thinking is not specific to the Episcopal church; it permeates many of the denominations in the United States and the world today.

How can we judge the nation on its moral permissiveness, when the church itself has been infected by the same ungodly philosophy? Scripture teaches that the church is to be the light and salt of the world. No wonder Peter says, "for the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God" (I Peter 4:17).

One of the major reasons the church has abandoned God's standards is because many of its leaders and followers have accepted evolutionary, humanistic philosophy and used this to reinterpret Scripture. They have accepted Satan's lie that Genesis is not literal truth, and thus have destroyed the foundation of Christianity.

We say that this nation needs revival! I say the church needs revival! The church is where it must begin! It needs to abandon theology built on the crumbling opinions of men and begin rebuilding on the solid rock—the sure and safe foundation of the Word of God. Only this realization—that all of Biblical doctrine has its foundation in the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis—will enable Christians to come back to the fulfillment of God's ultimate plan and purpose for mankind. The church will then return to the understanding of its moral values and responsibilities—that marriage means one man for one woman for life, that homosexual behavior is an abomination to the Lord, that the family is the first and most fundamental of all human institutions as well as the backbone of society, and that the immorality that is pervading the world today is causing a schism between God and man which can be healed only by a return to God's Word, beginning with the book of Genesis and continuing through the belief in the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (I Timothy 2:5).

For this reason, we are calling the church back to Genesis. Please join with us in this enormous battle. If God's people will respond to this challenge of pointing people to "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," as found first in the book of Genesis and then on through all of Scripture, God once again can bring a revival that will stamp out the sins of crumbling marriages, the murdering of countless numbers of unborn children, the flagrant immorality that brings suffering and sorrow and disease and death. "It (God's) people, (who) are called by (His) name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek (His) face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will (He) hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (II Chronicles 7:14). Then "the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever" (Isaiah 32:17).