Creation Museum

The Creation Museum was great! I'm glad we decided to go for the grand opening.

Joel wanted to get to the museum EARLY - we ended up getting there about an hour and fifteen minutes before it opened. There weren't very many people there - I was really starting to get nervous. It was overcast, very muggy, and rainy - not great weather.

We heard reporters asking museum employees, "So where's your crowd?" We started praying that "the crowd" would come. I told Brian since most of the people coming would be church

people they would probably show up at the last minute like they do for Sunday School - turns out I was right.

At around 9am we lined up at the doors. We ran into Joe O'Connell from Tabernacle. I had a hunch he would be there. His model of the ark is in the museum - I can't believe we forgot to get a picture of Joe standing next to it!

The crowd gradually started growing - I was then glad we had gotten there when we did.

Once inside, we were able to go through the members line where they gave us our membership cards and our tickets to the planetarium. It was nice to look behind us and see that the membership line as well as the other line were very long now.

After taking some pictures and enjoying the lobby area, our first stop was the bookstore. Lots of familiar titles on the shelves. Brian got some books for the church library.

When we came out of the bookstore, Ken Ham was in the lobby. Brian and Joel got their picture taken with him. There were lots of reporters and photographers there. (Later we heard Ken Ham say that there were reporters from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, the Al Jazeera network, and others that I can't remember.)

(Buddy Davis on the museum grounds being interviewed)

(Ken Ham in the Garden of Eden being interviewed. I don't know what media this guy was from, but he was really grilling Ken Ham.)

We then went to the planetarium. Because we were the first public audience in the planetarium, there were pictures taken and the writer of the program said a few words. He has a Ph.D. in astrophysics - he looked 20! Joel got his picture with him too.

I'm sure this man was overwhelmed when people were asking him to autograph their tickets. The enthusiasm was very catching. The planetarium show was very well done and loaded with scientific information. It did a good job showing the vastness of the universe.

We then went to the SFX theatre and saw "Men in White." This would be the only thing even close to negative that I can say about the museum. The theatre was super nice and the production was top notch - the seats vibrated and sprayed water. My only hesitation would be that it was a little on the "spoofy" side. They do say before it begins that it is intended to be funny.

After lunch in Noah's Cafe which was nice and reasonably priced, we started our tour of the museum. It was amazing. There was so much information. By then the crowds were such that we weren't able to take time to stop and read all of the information - but we were glad it was crowded!

(Levi with a dinosaur)

(Noah's ark model - Life-size man working on ark)

(Adam naming the animals - The first time Adam saw Eve. This was my favorite scene in the Garden of Eden)

The tour ended with a stop in the Last Adam theatre. There we watched a multi screen movie that presented the gospel in clear terms. An invitation was given in that the audience was told if they would like to accept Christ as their Savior there were workers just outside the door who were prepared to talk with them.

The museum was top notch - a must see. Scientific evidence of the creation was clearly shown throughout.

We did see self-proclaimed atheists both outside the museum and inside the museum. Megan said while we were in the Noah's ark section she saw a group of three men, one older and the other two college age, that had on anti-God or pro-evolution shirts.

She said the older man and one of the college guys were laughing at the exhibits and making jokes. But she said the other college guy had a thoughtful, questioning look on his face. Maybe he was reading and thinking about the truth. I hope he was.

(There were about 50 protesters outside the museum property.)

The Creation Museum was even better than I thought it would be. It was the capstone of great weekend getaway. We were blessed with much needed family time and encouraged by the boldness of the museum.