John talks to Eric and Paul about the questions that he gets asked most often.

the following program is made possible by the friends and partners of God quest ministries from the C. T. N. Studio in Pensacola florida. This is Creation today where we believe the bible is literally true and scientifically accurate From the very beginning. We’re not ashamed to say so I’m one of your hosts, eric Donovan and I’m paul taylor and we’re here every episode to answer questions on the bible and on science to cover things to do with Creation today and why it matters to you. If you have questions, send them into questions at Creation today, we are pleased this episode to have dr Charles Jackson joining us. Thanks for being here from Creation Truth Foundation and his college ministry. We’re looking forward to talking to you about the work you guys do. Well, thanks so much for joining us today as we are joined by dr Charles Jackson from Croatian Truth Foundation. If you have questions, please send them into questions at Creation today dot org. Of course, we’re also on twitter. We twit tweet creation today, That’s right. And facebook facebook dot com slash creation today, Dr Jackson, thanks so much for being here with us. It’s great to be here and your home state right now is Oklahoma Oklahoma and I was gonna say insanity but I’m just kidding where you get we’re traveling and speaking to college students and dealing with college students all the time. I’m surprised. It isn’t insanity. How does that go? Tell us about the work you do with college students. Well, I’m the director of college ministries at Creation Truth Foundation based in noble Oklahoma. It’s about 30 miles south of Oklahoma city. And uh before that for the past almost three years I’ve worked there Before that I was independent industry. So all told since I went into full time ministry for it’s been eight years and traveling all around the country and also in Venezuela and Peru uh talking to college professors and college students. I’ve even been invited to four college atheist clubs. Love those. Yeah, those are a lot of fun. They always come anyway to my presentations that it’s always got to be some campus ministry group that invites me on and then I get sort of the scoop from the college students of what it’s like now on the college campus trying to be a born again christian and uh, and keep your testimony while you’re in college, which is sometimes even hard at christian colleges Now you and paul taylor have something common. You both taught high school biology and he of course did it within government schools over in the UK. Um, and you’ve got to go through that as well. Right? Sure. I taught biology, Earth science, General science, geography and Chemistry. All the sciences. Pretty yeah, on the high school and junior high level and then on the, on the college level and I was a professor of education and trained teachers how to teach science after teaching biology and chemistry on the college level, awesome. Very cool. You guys do have a lot in common. This is really neat apart from me and my, my special ISMs, Physics and biology came down lower and the accident. You guys definitely, that’s not uncommon either. But okay, tell us what’s going on in college ministries around the country today because what I’d really like to get into is we got college about to start and here we got another year about to start and we have people contact us all the time saying, what do I say? What do I do? What advice do you have for me? So we’re continually trying to make materials available. So if you can think what is, what exactly is happening on the college campuses today, what can the students do? Let’s, let’s start that discussion. Let’s head down that road. A lot of high schoolers asked me that and homeschooling moms asked me that about their, their kids are about to go to college and I think the number one important thing is to find the other christians not to church folks. The real christians destroying their differences there. They’re gonna hang with you and be with you and do the napoleon dynamite, watch your back and stuff. You know, they’re gonna take care of one another and care for one another. You have to be in in tight close fellowship, especially if you’re gonna be a biology major, if you’re gonna be in a major that’s particularly hostile to christian beliefs, especially if there’s, there’s usually one professor on a campus who is known for being, uh, the lead guy on being hostile and it’s in, in every department has one, you can be in an english class. one of the things that shocks me is, and it doesn’t matter, it could be history or government or, or english or biology or physics that students will tell me the first day of class, the first day of class and I’ve heard this for eight years now, a teacher will often say how many people here believe in God and then they’ll ask for a show of hands. Sometimes they’ll say if you still do by the time we’re done with this class, I have not done my job. Now, what if a christian professor said, how many of you here? I don’t believe in jesus or don’t believe in God? And if you said by the end of this class, you know, they’ll say also how many believe in creation, they’ll say how many believe the Bible, they’ll say various things like you don’t belong in this class, or or by the end of this 17 weeks, you won’t believe in God. They will make that statement and the Christian students are, well, of course this is their freshman, they’re newbies. They, they’re, they’re in there, they’re, they’re tender, they’re young and they’re vulnerable and impressionable and they’re not sure they’re away from home for the first time and this guy throws them a loop or this lady throws them a loop like that, I’ve had students tell me they just got up and walked out of a class because of how awful a teacher was. I don’t mind saying, I don’t know if you guys would say this, I don’t mind saying that any professor that does that and uses his intellectual or his teacher positions who bully the students is a coward. I’ll tell you that right to your face to step on down. It’s wrong for them to be doing this. Now, this is why christians really need to understand why they believe what they believe and that’s what you go around teaching him is how do you defend your faith? Well, most christians know a little bit about, you know, genesis a little bit about science, a little bit about the logic and reason and ration to these things. I did meet a young lady uh in, in a college campus in Alabama just yesterday who said that she was raised in a church where all they told her was uh, you know, evolution was wrong and that was it. And no one, no one said anything else to her about why, you know why. And then when she got into college, her biology professor is a professing christian who believes in evolution says, well that was how God did it and gave out a logical presentation said some why stuff. And she went, well, I guess it makes sense, it makes sense. And so what what was very nice for me was after I spoke to her group, she said well now now I understand all they need eric is just a little teeny bit, mostly they need confidence in quietness and confidence shall be your strength as God said to Joshua. You know just be strong and courageous. That’s all. And all the days of my life no man will be able to stand before the most students don’t need to know as much as I need to know in order to debate college professors. Uh they need to know enough to talk to their classmates, your average person in the church who loves the Lord and loves loves the word only needs to know enough to talk to their friend at the grocery store and they they think well you’ve got to study and know so much know a little bit, a little bit of knowledge used in the wisdom of God is what they need. How far do you think that christian parents sending their Children to colleges are aware of the sorts of pressures that that the Children may be getting in these type of lectures. Almost zero awareness that they sometimes have an overblown thing. You know that the professor is going to take the whole class, two C x rated movies as a class project. They’re scared to death of all the horrible things they imagine but the actual truth threat is so much more subversive, so much more intimidation, So much more indoctrination. It’s not education at all. If they are educating, they’d be training people how to think, not what to think or what they think. And they’re just so anxious to download their particular way of everything into the students and they’ll do this in a very forceful, even vicious way. If the student resist the indoctrination, parents aren’t totally aware, they know there’s something going on there. But the biggest problem is that you’ve got these professing christians who are professors who are college teachers and even in some of these so called christian schools, you’ve got wolves in sheep’s clothing. I’m telling you, they are teaching the students, we came from worms, worms turned into fish and the fish turned into monkeys, the monkeys turned into us. And that was that was God’s wonderful way. He’s so creative. But then then you’ve got to open genesis and try and square that with the bible doesn’t. But the person who is their teacher at a christian college, maybe an ordained minister and their denomination may be carrying a bible and talks about jesus very fondly, but it is a false teacher and there’s a there’s an aspect of authority and what they have to say that’s going to to be misleading some, isn’t it? And I mean, the example that you gave before you were fortunately able to put some influence into that young lady’s life. But I think would would would you say that there are going to be many cases where Children of christian parents are being taken Well we’re going to have to think about thought. I’ll develop that thought after this break. Yeah, that’s a good thing. Mhm, mm hmm, mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, mm hmm. Welcome back. You’re watching Creation today with me paul taylor and eric Hoven and our special guest dr Charles Jackson from Creation Truth Foundation. And I wasn’t timing my question as well very well before the break, what I was trying to ask was we were talking about a young lady who had been misled by her professor who was a professing christian but who had talked about evolution how you could believe evolution, God had done it that way. And what I wanted to know is are you finding that there are many young people who have got under your radar, if you like. That many young people are going to college meeting this sort of thing from professing christians and are therefore drifting away from the faith. They’re more than being drifted away. There’s a current that is created under them that pulls them away from the faith and you know, I suppose that you could be saved to go to Heaven. I’m not a theologian and still believe in evolution. I imagine there will be that you find out you’re wrong. But I know one thing for sure and I’ve seen it because I’ve been there myself as an early believer once when you start, when you put a question mark after any of these verses that don’t have on there already or aren’t something where the bible says, this is a mystery. You put a question mark after any blatant statement the bible makes like in six days the Lord God created heaven and Earth and all that’s in them. Uh, if you put a question mark after that kind of thing, instantly you have a quantum drop in the joy and the power of the christian walk, all of the gifts of God in you. You can feel it. It’s like somebody pulled the plug on your own battery now and a low battery at that. Now, what are the practical steps that students can take because we’re gonna have students watching this program that are going, hey here I am going to college, what do I do? What can I get involved in? What are my avenues to bring truth in? Do I do I just be quiet and learn the information and not say anything. Do I speak up? How do I know if I’m ready? I mean all these questions are going through their mind. Um, let’s tackle some of these 123, here’s a couple of practical things that you can do on those levels. What are some uh, I mean, you do have to find the, the christian groups and and it doesn’t matter sometimes on campuses, they’re just, there might be one that’s that’s really on fire for the Lord. You got to be in good fellowship as I mentioned before. But the answer to the question of how do I know when to challenge, when to just be quiet? I prayed for two years in my work on the college campuses for an answer from God for that. And the reason it took so long for me to get the answer was I did not want this answer. It was the most difficult and frightening and unnerving of all the answers is actually the truth. So I mean students could just skip all that two years of sweating it out and just go to it and here it is. Um, just when God’s spirit is aggressive, you be aggressive when God’s spirit is entreating, ub entreating when God’s spirit is challenging you be challenging. You know when you, when you know when to be quiet and when a word fiddly spoken is when it’s time in a word spoken in due season. The bible talks about this takes the wisdom of God. But luckily luckily you don’t have to have a high I. Q. Or a bunch of degrees to have the wisdom of God. James 15 says, does any man like wisdom let him ask of God and proverbs personifies wisdom guys as a woman, a beautiful woman saying, come in, you know the, I’ve mingled my wines were ready. The the pillars of my house are building, come in all you simple and learn wisdom, wisdom is free wisdom of free and this really irks some professors when I say this, but a genius with degrees can be a fool and every mentally retarded person can speak with the wisdom of God and be wise. I have seen both and uh and wisdom is better than intelligent. Well, here’s what I want to make sure and this is this is great truth. Here’s what I want to make sure students don’t do because some students are going to go into their professor and they’re going to be really trying to be. Well, let me back up to something you said, you said we need to have confidence because we we do have the truth and it is nice to have that confidence, but then we need to recognize what the what Peter said when he said defend your faith with gentleness and respect with meekness and fear and I just, I want to encourage them to allow the holy spirit to speak just as you’re saying, don’t go in there like a know it all. Yes, we know they are wrong. Yes, we know God’s word is right. But if you go in there with this attitude of I am unteachable, I know more than you do. That’s not gonna open any doors for you, is it? No. And and the teachers are only teaching what they taught were taught by their teachers who they trusted also. And one problem in the christian school is that the parents send the kid to this school and say trust these teachers, their their fellow believers and that also throws the weight in there as you were saying of the authority, but it really is rough, jesus said, don’t think what you do, you think not what you have to say when you’re brought before the rulers and Magistrates in the synagogues and he said just he said, but the Holy Spirit will teach you what you ought to say in that hour. And so it really is the spirit of God and that’s the only jesus always knew when to say you pit of vipers or or you’re not far from the kingdom of heaven or go and sin no more or okay sell all you have and come with me. He knew with everyone, the woman at the, well the woman caught in adultery, he knew what to say and and I think it’s because he listened to Holy Spirit, that’s the only explanation. So you do have to know, but you can’t win somebody of christ by being a royal pain in the neck and being the most, the most annoying student in the classroom does not make points. Okay, so point number one would be uh listen to the Holy Spirit, okay, next practical step on how to get involved on the college campuses, what to do with some campuses actually have a creation club or an origins club of some kind of, a lot of campuses have various, all the names of christian groups that you can imagine, some of them are independent and are not national groups, but it’s good to get into one that you know, that’s got a bunch of on fire christians really, really, really believe that there are people as the Muslims call us, people of the book, they really are people of the book, people of the Lord and then with the, with the coals being close to each other and your fire is hot and you have the fellowship and you’re not, you’re not panicking as a lone wolf on the campus, but rather you’re in a flock of sheep. Uh this herd instinct in, in the Lord under the guidance of the Holy Spirit can really help you to have the confidence to chill, calm, chill out, don’t get too panicky if everything is happening up and down your dorm, all of the total immorality that and they’re all trying to invite you in because they think you’re cool, you’re a new student, all that. Um, and just no know your place and do learn, do study, do be prepared, but be prepared when there’s an open moment. Teachers look for something called a teachable moment and a student can look for a moment and they can tell some teachers are jerks and some teachers who are very much atheists, very much evolutionist, some of those are actually honorable good teachers and some of them enjoy discussion. Well, that’s interesting and opening it up for discussion in the classroom is obviously a great thing to do. Okay, so uh, be humble. Let the holy Spirit lead you get involved with clubs that are already around already available. Um, then study a little, you got to know some knowledge, you gotta have a bible knowledge, creation science, knowledge, certainly knowledge in the subject. They could invite people like yourself to come who travel paul myself. There’s there are well over 100 people that talk and teach on creation just in America. So chances of somebody being close to you Is actually really good of somebody that could come in and help help that as a catalyst. And I’m finding that the unbelievers come to those meetings at Iowa state, the atheist club canceled their meeting and all 30 of them came to my meeting, listen for an hour and then had three hours of question and answer, which was pretty interesting. Well, I look forward to continuing this conversation. We’ll do that right after this solid scientific fact and a conservative Biblical worldview come together in this informative and entertaining answer to the age old controversy of rocks, fossils and dinosaurs. While it’s not the message we hear on the discovery channel, the human fossil record is strongly supportive of creation, secular science assumes evolution to be true. Yet without proof written in a non technical way rocks fossils and dinosaurs, lets the human fossils themselves tell the real story. To order this book, Go to Creation store dot org. Everyone’s asking questions about our economic crisis and God gave us the answers. Got Economics, the new buzzword and resource boldly proclaims yes, God almighty does have something to say about the Almighty dollar mike Huckabee called God Economics brilliant. This truth project type curriculum includes 6 30 minute lessons on DVD ipad app or group study guides offering solutions in a fun fact filled journey. Got Economics teaches a biblical worldview on liberty. Generosity and free market capitalism visit God ergonomics dot com Today welcome back to Creation today where we’re discussing what goes on on the college campuses, where with dr Charles Jackson and of course paul taylor talking about some of these things that take place on the campus, how can students get involved? What can they do to make a difference? How do they defend their faith in the word of God? In a system that is designed to tear this apart? What is it that they can do? So right now we’ve got a couple of practical steps and some people really jump over that first practical steps that you really hit and I’m glad you hit that. It is going by the leading of the holy spirit. Uh it is surrounding yourself with other christians, people that are really christians, not just people that go to church people that really believe what this book says and obey it. Um getting involved with ministries that are already designed their on campus. And then number three is what we were just talking about. Number four, I guess now, um, is inviting somebody to come help inviting someone to come speak like yourself and they can do that by getting a hold of Creation Truth Foundation, right? At Creation Truth dot com. And so that’d be a great place for them to get in touch. I know you work with dr thomas Sharpe, tell us real quick about that. And then I want to get right back into this uh, the practical stuff that students can do. Well, Doctor you like your boss? Oh yeah, he’s uh he’s not quite old enough to be my father, but I think of as his big brother. Okay. And he’s definitely a good leader. I’ve often said if if General Patton got the love of jesus in his heart, he would be dr Sharpe. Yeah, Dr Sharps a commanding authority and got the love of God in his heart. And he taught high school also for five years, High school biology as we did. And uh and so he knows the science and all of that. He’s been doing the ministry for 22 years now, worked out of his home, much like your dad did for so long. And uh then got offices in, in the nearby town, only about a mile from his house and that’s where I’ve been working now. Oh yes, yes. Okay. So and you guys are working on some pretty big things. I I mean I remember talking to Dr Sharp’s son about the museum you guys are putting together in Dallas texas. I mean that’s already, people can go see what you’ve already done right now from my understanding and you got more that you’re working on, is that correct? Oh yes. The museum has as all museums are always a work in progress. There’s always never done. That’s for sure. Never done. But we do have two large rooms set up and the phone has got an Alberta sore in it and we got the bookstore open and I was surprised they had this Jurassic park like music playing in the rooms. I when I when I was open for the youth for the Nation’s rally, the rallies that were there this summer at christ the nation’s, I spoke to three of those rallies of over 1000 teenagers every time. And it was and they were able to go through the tour. The museum’s brand news. They didn’t have it worked into the program integrated so much yet. But most of the youth pastors did elect during the free time to take the kids in there and next year is going to be part of the standard program. Of course my presentation to them on Tuesday mornings was to give them a little bit about the world view the bible and introduce the museum to them and the resources that were there? That is, it’s going to be quite a good here we’re seeing. That is what I love. We’re seeing more Creation museums, more opportunities. People being outspoken of course, ken ham’s museum in in Kentucky, incredible. Uh, this one Now this one is that if people want to go visit, it’s at christ for the nations and it’s on their campus there, correct. It’s right in the campus. They already had a large floor space ready and dr Sharpe had has uh 40 full sized dinosaur specimens. They’re they’re museum grade replicas. And uh, we have a number of those in there. Some of them are are so large. We we weren’t able to use them in our traveling speech speech is like the, the mosasaur, full length mosasaur. And uh and it’s really, really good display. I am curious if that Alberta’s or is it from Canada? Uh, they didn’t name it that because it was from Alberta Canada. It was, it’s kind of like a small t rex. That is incredible. Well, we appreciate. Obviously the work that you guys are doing over there and I can’t wait for people to see this truth more. Okay. Oh, by the way, dr Sharpe wrote a great book called rocks, fossils and dinosaurs if you want to get a hold of that paul. Do you know of a good place. They can get that. I think that they could probably get that from creation store dot org Creation store dot org. I’ve heard of that place from what I hear. It’s a great place to go buy stuff. So creation story dot org is a great place to get rocks, fossils and dinosaurs from thomas Sharpe. You were saying, instead of getting all the books on it, this is the one book you can get that will tell you all you need to know. Well, it’s it’s recently been written. It’s very new and it’s not all that long. It’s really gotten essential stuff. It’s kind of what any, anybody who’s, who’s a bible believer who wants to go a little deeper than just reading an article you can learn. It’s got all the essential stuff. People would want an easy to understand language. Uh, I edited it for science content. We have an eighth grade science teacher who edited also for readability to try and make it so that your general audiences can understand it. And it’s basically a good primer for the topic of fossils and dinosaurs. Creation and genesis. Now it doesn’t get into things like astronomy and how the universe Big Bang theory problems and that sort of thing. It’s just what it says, rocks and fossils of various kinds and dinosaurs and how they relate to the bible, which seems to be what people are interested in. There’s a lot of questions about that is there are a lot of questions about and of course people often come up with with fossils and so on and I want to know about them. And of course it’s it’s one of the arguments, again, that’s thrown against people, isn’t it? It’s one of the, you know, you you must get frequent strange emails as we do saying things like, well, dinosaur fossils have just been found and they’ve been carbon dated to be 65 million years old, you know, and you wonder where to start with so many, so many one. The email, there’s not a single evolutionist uses exactly carbon 14 because it won’t work on things that old, even if it did work. And the problem is the problem I find among christians and unbelievers is they’ve they’ve they’ve lent credence to these urban myths like that. There’s all these missing link fossils that show how people came from monkeys and whenever I am in a debate or a locked horns during question answer period with someone in the audience who’s trying to push that on the audience. I said, well, if there’s somebody can you name one and they won’t do it because now they’ll try, they might do it if they don’t know enough, they’ll name something like australopithecus africanus. Uh, but if they do know a lot about the subject, they will do anything but give you a name because they know every one of them got something about it that disqualifies it from actually being the missing link, even the ardipithecus. But yeah, there’s so much science we could get into. Yeah, I mean it’s amazing. And one of the other aspects of this is that quite often you’ll get an email and I’m sure you get similar ones from uh students who says that there are christian and they’ve had this sort of thing thrown out and they say help, what do we do about it? I’m losing my faith over this and you know, do you get that sort of thing? People bothered about how to answer these these questions. Yes, yes, I get those all the time in person and on facebook now and an email where they’ll be asking, what what do I do? This threw me for a loop. And here during question answer period when I’m with groups, I always ask them, have you have you have you seen anything on television or or Reddit International Geographic or teacher said that really threw you for a loop. That’s the question we want to deal with. It’s usually easy. Well if people have questions for you, where can they go to get in touch with you? All Creation truth dot com and you can email you there, They can email me there. They can also go to g Charles Jackson on facebook, that’s g Charles Jackson also, Creation Truth has a facebook page, awesome. Well that is our show today. If you have questions you can send them in to answer on the show questions at Creation today dot org. Of course, you can join us on twitter at Creation today and facebook facebook dot com slash creation today. We’ll tune in every episode to see whether we’ve answered your questions and the programs are archived at Creation today dot org. This has been a production of God Quest Ministers.