Quick Summaries: Creation and Evolution

Quick Summaries are pithy paragraph-long reviews
of releases that cross our QBR desk. 

These are reviews for when you don't have all day 

to decide whether a resource is worth
your time, money, storage space, or trouble.

 
Evolution Vs. God: Shaking the Foundations of Faith. Living Waters Publications, 2013. (Review copy provided by New Leaf Publishing Group, www.nlpg.com.) DVD movie. $9.95. (For low-cost bulk copies, call 800-437-1893.) EvolutionVsGod.com  www.livingwaters.com  (LHP)

Ham, Ken, General Editor. The New Answers Book 4: Over 30 Questions on Creation/Evolution and the Bible. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2013. 410 Pages. Paper. $14.99. www.masterbooks.net (LHP)

Ham, Ken, and Bodie Hodge. The Answers Book for Kids 5: 20 Questions from Kids on Space and Astronomy. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2013. 48 Pages. Cloth. $7.99. www.masterbooks.net (LHP)

Ham, Ken, and Bodie Hodge. The Answers Book for Kids 6: 22 Questions from Kids on Babel and the Ice Age. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2013. 48 Pages. Cloth. $7.99. www.masterbooks.net (LHP)

Ham, Ken. Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2013. 256 Pages. Paper. $13.99. www.masterbooks.net (LHP)

 
Purdom, Georgia, General Editor. Galapagos Islands: A Different View. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2013.  104 Pages. Cloth. $18.99. www.masterbooks.net (LHP)

Our congregation is currently doing a Sunday Morning Bible Class series on apologetics, defending the faith. The resources featured in this Quick Summaries review have been helpful to me in answering questions about creation and evolution, as well as responding to secular humanism, especially with the new Cosmos miniseries on TV.

Watch Evolution Vs. God here: 

+ Our Sunday Bible Class will watch this video soon. I commend it for your use, too, especially with pastoral supervision. Apologetics is not evangelism. Evangelism is presenting the Gospel so that the Holy Spirit can create faith where and when He wills. Apologetics, in my view, is designed to create doubt in one's non-Christian worldview, to "shake the foundations" of a way of viewing and living life outside of Biblical Christianity. Recommended!

 

+ Helpful for a Pastor's shelf, home use, or a Christian school library, The New Answers Book 4 discusses dragons, eviscerates evolutionary humanism, answers concerns about climate change, and tackles the tactics of the new humanists. Thick yet approachable, detailed yet focused, Ken Ham's latest volume as general editor is a successful attempt to help Christians, especially Missouri Synod Lutherans, defend the faith and gain knowledge consistent with and compatible with Holy Scripture as God's Word. We would love to see volumes 1, 2, and 3, as well as future additions to this series. Recommended.

+ The Answers Book for Kids, Volumes 5 and 6 adapt the approach of larger Answers Book format for age-appropriate "kid" use. Affordable, fact-filled, colorful, and pithy, I would love to have each volume published to date in my Classical Lutheran school library. Volume 5 tackles the old saw that Christians thought the world was flat in addition to other questions about space and astronomy young people ask. Volume 6 has a focus on Babel, the post-Flood world, and the Ice Age. Recommended. 

Today, most Bible colleges, seminaries, K-12 Christian schools, and now even parts of the homeschool movement do not accept the first eleven chapters of Genesis as literal history. They try to fit the supposed billions of years into Genesis, and some teach evolution as fact. Our churches are largely following suit. Ken Ham, international speaker and author on biblical authority, examines how compromise starting in Genesis, particularly in regard to the six days of creation and the earth's age, have filtered down from the Bible colleges and seminaries to pastors—and finally to parents and their children. (Publisher's website).

+ Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church is recommended as a great follow-up to reading The Lie, Already Gone, and Already Compromised.  

+ Georgia Purdom, general editor, and her dozens of contributors take "a different view" of the Island creatures of the place that inspired Charles Darwin. I loved the photos, scientific evidence, and Biblical revelation of creation side-by-side. 

Where Darwin once visited and later used evidence from to support his faulty case for evolution, discover the wonder of God in this full-color book filled with vibrant images of these glorious islands in the Pacific, as well as powerful insights that give Him the glory due His name. Your faith will be strengthened as you learn the importance of a biblical worldview from some of the best apologetics speakers in the country. It's an overall emphasis on Galápagos as testament to God's majesty and mercy rather than the empty legacy of one man! (Publisher's Website)

More information about each of these titles
may be found on each respective publisher's website. 

The Rev. Paul J Cain is Pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church, Sheridan, Wyoming, Headmaster of Martin Luther Grammar School, Yellowstone Circuit Visitor (LCMS Wyoming District), a permanent member of the Board of Directors of The Consortium for Classical and Lutheran Education, Wyoming District Worship Chairman, and Editor of QBR.