Creation Research - UK Update

April 2012

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Dear Friends,

Greetings! You last heard from us just before John Mackay’s UK visit in autumn 2011. This tour was generally well-received and as busy as ever, with John spending a lot of his time in the south of England and a week in South Wales. John will be here in October and November this year, and I am presently working on his itinerary. He will be visiting Northern Ireland and Scotland again, as well as the Isle of Man. The rest of his time will be spent mainly in northern England. Details of his speaking engagements will be announced in our next UK Update - see the important announcement below to make sure you receive it.

The week I started this newsletter, my wife and I attended the marriage of one of our supporters, a young man known as JP. It sometimes happens that people come along to John's meetings to object to his views, and JP was one such. When we first met him in 2005, JP was not a Christian; he had been brought along to a two day seminar in Sheffield by a friend. JP was an evolutionist, convinced that as a science/engineering graduate it would be easy to argue against all that he was to hear. Writing a few years later he said, “John Mackay showed me with crystal clarity that my faith in evolution was just that; faith, and he used the last thing I expected him to use: science, geology and fossil evidence. I would have sworn blind that these things were married to Darwin’s theory, which I now realised was not fact, not proven, not evidenced, and not science.”

John and I knew nothing of all this until he introduced himself to us two and a half years later. This was just before a meeting at the other side of the country in Stoke Ash, Suffolk. After listening to John he had struggled to come to faith, his doubts continuing to battle with his desire to believe in Jesus Christ. JP was asking questions of the pastor of a Calvary Chapel fellowship which was being planted in Norwich. He remembers the pastor saying “Faith isn’t a feeling, no-one else can tell you you believe, it’s not a test you can take or a certificate you can earn. Faith is what you choose to place your trust in.” Realising then that it was his choice whether or not to put his trust in Jesus Christ, by the end of the day JP had surrendered to Him.

When we next met him in Suffolk, JP had brought his pastor and most of the Norwich fellowship down to the meeting. Since then he has continued to follow Christ. In 2009 he moved to York to work in the Gospel for Asia office as part of the administration team. He has now married Angie, one of the other staff there and we ask you to pray for them and other young people as they seek to serve Christ in an increasingly hostile Western culture. It is a real encouragement for us all and especially for John when he learns that someone was helped along the road to Christ by his ministry, even if it took some time for the news to reach him! Please pray for John to continue proclaiming with boldness Jesus Christ, God the Son, who is the Creator, Sustainer, Saviour, Lord and Judge of all.

Recent events

John has spent most of the early part of this year in North America, speaking in universities as well as churches. He is always very aware that no matter how many times he has spoken, he still needs Holy Spirit wisdom for each presentation. A recent example of the importance of such guidance occurred in February. John writes:

“On Wednesday February 8th I gave a presentation at the University in Nanaimo (Canada). The science auditorium was packed and the meeting was followed by a real confirmation of us being right where God wanted us to be. I had asked the Lord Jesus what he wanted me to deal with for this presentation and the Lord had led me to deal almost exclusively with fossils, and especially with the living fossils I had collected along the icy shores of Canada's Vancouver Island that day. After the two hour lecture and question time one student shared how he was a Christian but had been on the edge of giving up as the last year had been so hard. All the fossil evidence for evolution presented had been so overwhelming that he was beginning to conclude the Bible was not accurate, and he had asked Jesus only last week - ‘Please Lord, send someone who can help me to understand and know what to do because if your Bible is not true I have to know.’ Now that student stood in front of me beaming with joy. ‘Jesus really does answer prayer. He is real.’ The student’s doubt had been dealt with and he knew he could follow Jesus fully in the sure knowledge His Word is true.”

What a wonderful Father we have, who hears our cries for help when we are humble enough to call upon Him.

Now for some encouragement following the difficulties in Queensland last year. Much of the state was hit by massive floods at the start of 2011. John and Anne’s property which also houses the Creation Research office, book storage and fossil storage buildings was not in the worst affected areas, but our open air museum 120 miles north was almost completely destroyed. You may remember that Dean Davis (who has worked with John for many years on video production) lost both his home and editing studio which were located in different parts of Brisbane. Many of our supporters also suffered loss in these floods. However, out of all those trials came the salvation of at least one person. One of our long time supporters brought a non-Christian friend, Des, along with him to the reopening of the Jurassic Ark outdoor museum, and Des took the opportunity to talk to John. John then flew to the UK and shortly after arriving here, received an email telling him that Des had become a Christian! We are so thankful to all of those who gave donations to help specifically with the repair of the Gympie site, and trust that news of some of the fruit from this will encourage you.

Queensland has remain relatively dry this year, but other parts of Australia have had very bad floods again. New South Wales has had widespread problems, with at least 2000 homes being flooded, more than 17,000 emergency calls made and hundred of millions of Australian dollars' worth of damage done. John asks you to pray for the Christians there; he has spoken in the affected areas for many years and knows that many of our supporters will have flood damage to contend with. It would be really nice to think that as believers in Christ we would be insulated from such events, but since the day Adam sinned, mankind has collectively and progressively ruined His very good creation. As John often emphasises, the earth’s weather has got worse and worse since the Flood - snow and ice is first mentioned in the book of Job. Global climate has continued to be unstable with extremes in every direction, and Christians learn to trust The LORD alongside non-Christians as mankind reaps what it has sown.

The rulers take counsel together

You may have noticed that across Western societies, including Britain, there is increasing momentum in various corridors of power to fulfil Psalm 2, albeit unawares. The enclosed article, The European Union and the Book of Genesis, highlights just one area where politicians think that they and not The LORD are in control of the earth. The present financial crisis, especially in the West, is the result of materialism and greed, not just amongst the bankers but in everyone who took out loans they could not afford. Unbelievers are having to tighten their belts, and we Christians are being squeezed along with our neighbours. Many ministries have seen the level of donations fall significantly. At Creation Research we have seen both gifts and sales fall over the last few years as our supporters find they have less money available. One US supporter told John that the income from his business has dropped by fifty percent compared to five years ago! We are confident though that our God is not hit by recession. Remember the Canadian student John had helped so much with his fossil talk. John continued the account of their conversation as follows:

“I then shared with him that I had been very concerned about where our funding for so much student ministry was coming from, as around 50 percent of all meetings over January, February and March had been scheduled for university or high school students. Book sales and donor sources - students are not! ‘Lord provide and encourage us we are right where you want us to be’ had been my prayer as well as ‘and show me what to share at each location’. Just that day I had received advice that a $10,000 gift had arrived at our main office. What mutual encouragement we gave each other as Jesus looked on in joy. Isn’t our Jesus wonderful to do this. He is God. He is there and He is not silent.”

When The LORD sent famine on Israel because they had turned their back on Him, He provided for Elijah. Even though spring water and the bread and meat brought by ravens may not have been Elijah’s preferred diet, God was faithful to him. We can have the same confidence in The LORD, even if we find life more difficult than we are used to. Israel at that time was ruled by Ahab, a king who thought he could ignore God’s standards. Today, the majority of politicians and the public in general refuse to give their Creator the honour due to His name. Most schools train children to live as if He is irrelevant to their lives. In the last fifty years we have seen the removal of one Biblical landmark after another, and the majority of Christians have failed to warn of the dangers. Hosea found that he could not keep quiet at such a time and warned, “The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark; I will pour out my wrath on them like water.” (5:10). As we have said before, the second half of Romans 1 details the course every nation will follow when it rejects the authority of the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Many of you will be aware that Britain is now in a serious phase of The LORD’s judgement - perhaps close to the end of it - as we see politicians of all parties working towards redefining marriage. This is another example of them seeking to “cast away Their cords from us”. (Ps. 2:3)

This latest move is folly on the politicians’ part. They do not seem to understand that no matter how many laws they pass, they cannot make homosexual or lesbian practice equal with marriage, because it is impossible for such relationships to parent children naturally. The reason why this issue has risen up the agenda is almost certainly because it is seen as a way of further undermining Christian influence in Western nations. Remember that the Church did not invent heterosexual marriage - it existed long before the Church was founded. It is part of The LORD’s order from creation and this is why most societies around the world retain it, whether they are Christian or not. It is also why experience shows that the family units arising from this foundation are the best for every society.

Even evolutionists cannot escape the importance of family, if they are prepared to face up to the implications of their own world view. They believe that organisms discovered over millions of years that heterosexual reproduction gave them survival advantages over all other methods of preserving their species. While they argue that this was a random process, they cannot avoid the implications of their beliefs - the dominance of heterosexual reproduction amongst animals and plants, as well as in humans, means it is the favoured means of producing offspring and therefore it must be the better option. The very “nature” they so strongly argue in support of loudly proclaims to them that sexual activity between two men or two women is naturally a reproductive dead end. Therefore, the implications of evolutionary logic are that such activities can never contribute to the survival of any species in the fight to be the fittest. For more discussion on these matters see our DVD, “Are You Born Homosexual? - What Does The Bible Say?” [here]

For many decades now Christians have failed to raise their voices in public on a variety of topics to align themselves with our Creator’s best. We would encourage you to make your convictions known to all at this time. Writing to your MP could be a vital contribution to making them think carefully about how they vote. We also encourage you to respond directly to the Government’s consultation. Two petitions against the proposals have been drawn up. Just in case you haven’t heard of them, you can find details at www.c4m.org.uk and www.realmarriage.org.uk - they have a slight difference in emphasis, but please prayerfully consider signing one or both.

Administrative changes

We know many of you are looking forward to the next and final part of our Darwin on the Rocks DVD series, which was delayed by the 2011 Queensland floods. John aims for it to be available this year, though we do not have a specific date yet. However, we have recently released a new title, “The Amazing Design of Life” in which Dr Ed Neeland, Professor of Synthetic Chemistry at the University of British Columbia, is interviewed by John Mackay on the creation of life. Dr Ed does a wonderful job demolishing evolutionists’ arguments and showing how only the Creator Christ could make life in the brilliant manner it needs to be able to work. Suitable for mid-teens to adult, this DVD is now available in the UK. We encourage you to make use of it and share it with students and teachers. Ed’s professional background in synthesizing molecules and trying to make organic things work, gives him a marvellous perspective on just how clever you have to be to create “life”.

Some more good news for our supporters is that we have decided to reduce the cost of our DVDs in the UK, recognising that Christians too are affected by the economic downturn and hoping that this reduction will help you build up your own resources and provide you with more materials to share with non-Christians. From April therefore, the basic price of our DVDs will be £11 including postage. Details of the new prices and discounts for quantity are on the order form available on this page.

We have also had to consider other changes, mainly in response to the Post Office increases in price for both postage and PO Box rental. At the time of writing it has been widely reported that Ofcom has agreed to Royal Mail raising the cost of second class postage to 55p, although no official announcement has been made. This would make it prohibitively expensive to continue to send everyone a postal newsletter. From April, the annual cost of a PO Box will be £170 plus VAT. In the light of these things we have decided:

A) Starting with our next UK Update, we look to send out as many copies as possible by email.
B) From the end of this year we will no longer maintain our PO Box address.

We will continue to send postal newsletter to people who do not have access to email. Please note: our UK Update will be distributed via a different list to our regular eNews and ePrayer mailings. These are administered by the Australian office. So even if you already receive either of these, we will still need to make sure we have your email address for the UK Update. Could you therefore please read and respond to the enclosed leaflet as quickly as possible, whether or not you have access to email.

You will also find here an advert for Sylvia Baker's excellent book, Bone of Contention. When John was last here we were offered the remaining copies of the Third Edition at an incredibly low price. During his tour we sold around 2,000 copies with prices ranging from £1 for a single copy right down to 50p for twenty or more copies. We have around 200 copies left and these are available on a first come first served basis. Prices are enclosed - please do phone and reserve your copies before sending payment. Please remember too to use the address below to write to us from now on.

Thank you again for your ongoing support of our work. Please do keep praying for John Mackay and the whole Creation research team.

Randall Hardy

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This page last edited April 2012.
© Randall Hardy, 2012