The ‘What’s the Evidence?’ team is in the midst of our 9th year at various Wisconsin county fairs. We have opportunities to talk with a wide variety of our neighbors. Some people wonder, “Why the fair for a Creation Evangelism booth?” The answer is simple: all kinds of people go to fairs; church goers, Christians, evolutionists and unbelievers. The number of people we reach each summer is easily in the thousands. I could share story after story of conversations we have had. Real people and real conversations.
One teenage boy came to the booth. We talked about fossils and the flood, and this led to Jesus dying for our sins. I told him that as a youth I went to church and saw Jesus hanging on the cross but never knew why He died. He told me he wondered the same thing, since he knew Jesus was innocent. His ears were open as I shared Scriptures with him telling of the salvation God gave to all men as a free gift. He thanked me for the talk and shook my hand.
At one fair, several middle school age kids stood in groups as I told them of Noah, judgment during the flood and salvation from sin. They asked many questions. Several times I was told by kids they knew nothing of Noah or Jesus; many did not attend church. Some counties have a higher percentage of kids who attend church and know the Bible accounts. We hope our presence in these counties is an encouragement to our neighbors there.
Before one fair opened, two separate middle school age threesomes came by to take some amber. They sat on the floor and talked about the Lord. I was amazed at how deep our conversation went. God does great things!
Sometimes there is hostility toward us. My husband was talking with a mom and kids about dinosaurs, fossils and the flood. The mom became upset and swore at him, dragging her kids away. This is a rare occurrence, but it does happen. Sometimes a firm believer in evolution comes to the booth and conversations about complexity and DNA occur. Sometimes a former church goer will visit; often they are convinced the Bible is wrong and evolution is true. We trust the Lord to grow the seeds we plant.
We also know that those who oppose us are watching us. Most recently we came across an article in Earth Magazine. http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/creationism-comes-county-fair
The article goes into great detail about our booth and the catalyst we were to the formation of an evolution-based opposition booth in Dane County. They ridicule the idea that fossils formed from the Biblical flood and man and dinosaurs coexisted, and they simply ignore the scientific evidence supporting those ideas. Their evolutionary paradigm permeates government run schools, museums, PBS and more, yet they could not let our 10x20 foot booth go unchallenged and are calling for more evolutionary outreaches.
Could it be they fear the public finding out the truth behind their hollow claims of vast amounts of time and chance accounting for our existence?
Does it Really Matter if God Made Dinosaurs to Eat Plants?
So what does this have to do with the title of this article. The implications of the question in the title are profound, and it is not lost on unbelievers. The fact that God created animals to be plant eaters is foundational to the created world He made. Genesis 1:30 says, And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. Conventional science tells us the T-rex was a meat eater. Did God create him that way, or did something happen to make this once perfect world a cursed world?
The perfect world created by our LORD, and recorded in Genesis 1 and 2 was “very good”. It did not include death, fear, struggle, etc. Plants, and not meat, was food for all the animals, dinosaurs included. The fact that the world we now live in does include death, fear, struggle, etc. tells us something is wrong with us and our world. Understanding the created world vs the cursed world is a much needed understanding in this God-hostile culture.
After all, God is good. Death is our enemy that He overcame for us. Evidence abounds that animals, even today's carnivores, can survive on a vegetarian diet.
These simple yet profound ideas are part of the conversations we have with both kids and adults each summer. Is the Bible true? Do we believe it is true from the very beginning? Will we work to defend the truths in Scripture and teach them to the next generation? Those who oppose us know what is at stake, do we?
