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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 17 November 2025

Western culture is, Dr. Os Guinness says, at a tipping point, or what he calls a “civilizational moment” and how respond will determine if our civilization continues or declines and falls.

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #234 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Contemporary culture seems bent upon embracing ideas, attitudes, values, and practices that earlier cultures considered lacking in common sense.

This goes right to worldview. You see, religion is not just another feature of culture. Religion determines our culture. Scholar Henry Van Til once said, “Culture is lived religion” or “religion externalized.” What you believe about God, life, and truth determines how you evaluate and what ideas, attitudes, values, and practices you embrace, thus how you live and create culture.

The prime reason contemporary culture pursues its pell-mell race toward decline is that the current cultural zeitgeist, or “spirit of the age,” jettisoned the idea of moral absolutes for moral relativism.

People say, there is no truth, apparently without the self-awareness to understand they are attempting to declare, what, a truth. People say, live your truth versus live the truth. There’s a big difference.

Western culture and civilization is at a tipping point, what Christian apologist and cultural commentator, Dr. Os Guinness, now in his eighties, calls a “civilizational moment,” a period when culture loses touch with its original purpose and dynamism.

“Guinness identifies the root of the issue: people don’t hold to truth because they fail to hold to the Truth—that is, Jesus Christ, from whom all truth flows.”

Dr. Guinness is the featured presence and narrator of a new film, “Truth Rising.”

The film is produced by Focus on the Family in partnership with the Colson Center. “Truth Rising examines the decline of Western civilization, addressing contemporary societal issues, and underscores the hope found in Christ, encouraging you to step into your God-given calling to be a catalyst for renewal.”

I was privileged to attend a private showing of this film at Cornerstone University where the university president, Dr. Gerson Mareno-Raino, joined Colson Center president John Stonestreet presenting the film.

The film asked whether decline in the West is inevitable. “Historian and philosopher Will Durant, author of the epic eleven-volume series The Story of Civilization, famously said, “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.” Civilizations, historically speaking, do rise and fall. Our museums and history books are full of legends and artifacts from once-dominant civilizations that are now reduced to ruins. These all were, at some point, detached from the ideals, institutions, and activities that gave them life and led them to flourish. Now, they are no more.” Can Western civilization survive, or is it already in decline heading toward fall?

The film features Jack Phillips, a Denver baker who faced legal challenges due to his refusal to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, Chloe Cole who relates that her attempt to transition from a biological female to male was a tragic mistake, also Katy Faust, the founder and president of the child-advocacy group Them Before Us talks about being targeted by ideological opponents and how she decided to stand up against them, and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounting her flight from Somalia and fundamentalist Islam, and how she eventually became a Christian and an outspoken advocate for women.

Today, identity politics radicalism is working to dismantle every value that made it possible for the West to flourish in the first place. Our institutional structures have been profoundly weakened in just the past fifty years. Every institution, as the film presents it, has nearly collapsed, compromised by stupidity and ideology. If you wonder what may be coming for the United States, just look at some of the countries in Europe which Somalian-now naturalized American cultural commentator Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, “look more like Mogadishu,” by which she does not mean race but lawless chaos. In the West, the gravity of the moment is severe, and it is quite literally, later than we think. Guinness believes we are faced with a choice: renewal, replacement, or decline, and for now, decline is in the lead.

Guinness notes in the film and in his recent books that the British (1688-1689) and American (1765-1783) revolutions were rooted in the Bible, understood human nature, and thus established governments based upon separation of powers and checks and balances, all to advance human freedom. But the French revolution (1789-1799) was utopian, anti-religious, anti-Christian and thus given to violence and manipulation. Contemporary Western and American culture can renew its commitment to the ideals of its founding or can continue to pursue values more akin to the unfettered licentiousness of the French Revolution. If we do the latter, we are on a slippery slope to chaos then tyranny.

The film noted that American culture and really all of Western civilization are beset by Marxism, sexual revolution of the 1960s, and Islamism. These are our greatest challenges today because none of these ideologies believe in truth, and therefore not only cannot sustain freedom but will work against it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali noted that the Marxism we deal with today is a kind of “cultural communism,” constantly propagating the narrative of oppressor vs oppressed, and white males are the ultimate monster.

One of the sad things about this is that even a cursory review of history provides overwhelming evidence that these ideologies are corrupt, they fail, they only maintain power through coercion and eventually killing. One commentator said the only way woke Marxism can make any sense is that it must decontextualize from history.

But today the West has been so badly beaten and bruised by the Marxist long march through the institutions, the so-called progressives or leftists in politics, and their sycophants in the media, that many people simply do not know history, do not know that in the West people have always mattered and that this is not true elsewhere, so the West is losing confidence in itself.

The West is weakened spiritually. So now the average citizen is terrified to tell the truth, if he or she even knows what the truth is. This is the magnitude of the crisis.

But ideas have consequences. No God, people say? Then no truth. Or, we hear, “It may be true for you but not true for me.” 

No truth? Then there is no morality, science, education, law or order or justice or mercy, aesthetics=beauty or art, trust, purpose or vision or aspiration or meaning or achievement, respect for life or individual dignity, civility, freedom. There is only division, confusion, lawlessness, chaos, insecurity. Post-Truth culture – possibly a new Dark Age. This is America 2025.

But we are not defeated, or at least we should not feel that we are. Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer said, “there are no little people,” by which he meant that everyone matters, everyone is given life and the opportunity to live as unto the Lord, everyone is able to speak truth. This is our opportunity and responsibility.

Today we are experiencing a war on reason and reality. At every turn we are bombarded with messages of untruth, lies from the Father of Lies, Satan himself. We are in spiritual warfare, a spiritual desert, and people are thirsty for the truth.

We know this when we see the revivals taking place on university campuses. We know this when we read of youth who we thought were spiritually gone to a far country never to return but liked the prodigal son are now seeking spiritual authenticity. We see a spiritually bankrupt and empty culture that does not know how to deal with political violence and yet is searching for meaning.

Scripture says, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth” (Eph. 6:13-14).

I highly recommend this film, “Truth Rising,” which is available free on YouTube. It is a somber look at reality, but it is not without hope for we are not without hope.

The film is call to action, yours and mine, at this civilizational moment in our culture.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025  

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 10 November 2025

I speak often about a rapidly changing world, and we’re seeing it daily in the United States, most recently in what many of us consider a positive direction, but will this continue?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #233 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Some rather dramatic social and political changes have taken place in the past few months.

“Many Christians—myself included—shared a sense that in 2016 the barbarians were at the gates. Christianity was being pressured in the public square in new and alarming ways. Same-sex marriage became the law of the land in a blink, and bakers and florists who conscientiously objected to participating in those weddings went to court to guarantee that. So did nuns who didn’t want to buy birth control. The first bathroom laws and accompanying culture wars were just beginning.”

But now, there is a renewed hope.

WOKE anti-racism policies, seminars, and programs are being set aside by corporations that are now free to act with less fear of legal repercussions, free to discontinue woke initiatives that lost them money. Go woke; go broke, is not without basis in reality. Woke programs are also ending in the military.

DEI or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are being jettisoned by colleges and universities, in no small measure due to pressure from the Department of Education in Washington, DC, but also because the public has begun to realize these programs are based on favored ethnic, racial, or gender status rather than meritocracy.

Transgender ideology or what some have understandably called “trans insanity” is finally backpedaling and on the way out as the public is finally being heard and schools, athletic organizations like the NCAA, communities, government, the military, and corporations return to nature’s binary common sense. “The Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3…that the Trump administration can require transgender people to display their biological birth sex on passports…Beginning in 2021, the Biden administration's State Department allowed applicants to self-select the sex marker that matched their gender identity of X, not their biological sex.”

Government climate change mandates are on their way out as the public realizes these initiatives were more about the power and ideological interests of globalist elites than about genuine concern for the environment. Even Bill Gates, one of the loudest voices for these bogus ideas, has seen the writing on the wall and announced populations are not actually in danger, human beings are not really the source of minimal climate changes, and calling for a shift from “doomsday” views of climate change to concern for human suffering.

Now even the insufferable Greta Thunberg is getting the message. “Having gone stratospheric at the age of 15 with a simple appeal to ‘listen to the science,’ Thunberg, now 19, is being driven by a different message: Listen to the most vulnerable — and help them build the fair future they demand.’ She is shifting her focus toward social advocacy.”

America’s porous southern border, which is to say open border under the Biden Administration, has been closed, is properly policed, and is secure. “Unlawful crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025 plummeted to the lowest annual level since the early 1970s.” “Regardless of the true number of illegal immigrants, (who entered under the Biden Administration) it’s almost certainly higher than the 11–12 million number commonly cited, but not by as much as 20 million.”

“So far, ICE has successfully deported 400,000 illegal immigrations. Meanwhile, 1.6 million illegals have voluntary left the country.” For all the media flak aimed at the Trump Administration, “President Obama oversaw a total of approximately 5.3 million removals and returns during his eight years in office, with around 3.1 million being formal removals (deportations with legal consequences for reentry). His administration earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief” due to high deportation numbers.”

Let me say for clarity. The problem has not been legal immigration of those who truly wish to become American citizens pursuing the freedom and opportunity but mass illegal immigration of individuals who come for handouts or criminal purposes.

None of these changes, or hopefully trends, mean the issue in question has disappeared or that there are still not thousands, in some cases perhaps millions, of people who support the left-leaning social trends that had been in full force during the Biden Administration. Some schools and universities are still defiantly promoting forms of woke or DEI initiatives, in some places renaming the programs. Transgenderism still has its ideological advocates who may never change their views. Cities like Chicago or Los Angeles feature self-important mayors who order their law enforcement not to assist ICE in its lawful federal efforts to arrest and deport first the worst of illegal immigrants.

I admit that during COVID and through the end of the Biden Administration, I was more than a little concerned about the direction American culture was rapidly moving. I still wonder if some of these trends have reached a point of no return, in part because we may have lost an entire generation if not two to conscientiously taught left-leaning, anti-American values in public schools. These youth are now young adults. Their worldviews are not unchangeable but are largely formed.

“The Left's long march through our institutions has created a system where many accept progressive and socialist dogma as an inarguable fact, all because their professors told them it was so, and the media, who were indoctrinated by those same professors, keep saying the same things.”

“After (several) months of the good things…, there was hope that maybe, just maybe, some people were being converted, some hearts were being changed,

some Americans were starting to see the difference between the ‘right’ and the ‘left,’ between good and evil, starting to see cause and effect.” But the recent foolish election of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City, along with the election of an Attorney General in Virginia who’d earlier posted tweets wishing the death of his political opponent and harm to his children, well, this makes one pause and think, we haven’t changed much.

“The economics of Marxism, the cause and effect of immoral promiscuity, the hatred and violence of Leftism are clearly, and often, written in the pages of history. So, we have no excuse. ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,’ God wrote through the prophet Hosea some 2700 years ago. History certainly does sometimes repeat itself, or at least, often contains interesting parallels. Laws—scientific or moral—cannot be violated without (eventual) devastating consequences.

As I mentioned a moment ago, about two generations ago, we turned the education system over to the Left. And we are witnessing the results today. We taught our children Darwinian naturalism instead of divine creation, and our children were smart enough to figure out the implications of that. If the Bible isn’t true, if there were no Adam and Eve, if there was no flood of Noah (even Jesus mentioned Noah as a true, historical person); if all of those Bible tales are just legends and not ‘history’ and ‘science,’ then that means the God of Judeo-Christianity is not the ‘God’ of the universe. ‘Science’ proves it. Jesus was a fake or a liar or a lunatic.

So young people fled churches in droves and began to look for something else to believe in and live for. And there is no agreement yet on what that should be, and there never will be, for why is one human’s opinion on the universe any better than any others? Why should I believe you? I’ll create my own ‘god,’ thank you very much. And that is basically what people have done. ‘Every man does that which is right in his own eyes.’ People have created their own ‘god,’ in their own image, who will allow them to do whatever they want to do. There isn’t one God in America anymore; there are almost 350 million.”

“That kind of division and confusion can only lead to the chaos we are seeing in the country now…No, there are not 350 million gods; there is still only One.

And He has established certain moral laws which are ‘causes’ that also have ‘effects.’ Violating those moral laws will eventually lead to catastrophic results.

America is finding that out now, and will continue to do so as long as so many of her people reject those moral laws for ones, they create themselves.”

Yet there is hope for more, continued positive social change, beginning for example with the spiritual revivals we are witnessing across the country in public universities and those that are taking place in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. It’s a phenomenon that means something. We’re just not yet sure what it may mean in terms of lasting impact upon the culture.

Pray these movements of the Spirit will continue. Pray God will give American leaders wisdom and a desire to please God. Pray God will extend his mercy upon the United States, not because we are more special than any other country or people, but because in God’s eyes all human beings matter and freedom of the soul and body matter. 

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025  

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 03 November 2025

Mass shootings are rare but all too commonplace. While this sounds contradictory, it is true, so why are there more mass shootings now than say, fifty years ago?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #232 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Mass shootings are now a regular if periodic event in contemporary life. For some perspective, it’s interesting to note right at the top that “mass shootings make up only 1% of all gun violence in America. 60% of gun deaths are suicide and 37% are homicide — including the 1% of mass shootings.

“Suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths.” The remaining 3% of gun deaths include law enforcement involved shootings, unintentional shootings, and those that were undetermined.

But mass shootings get our attention, in part for the body count and in part for the fact that much of the carnage seems aimed at innocent, unsuspecting people, so for good reason we get the idea this could happen to anybody, to us, to ours. What do we know about mass shootings?

Most definitions describe a mass shooting as an event where there are four or more people shot or killed in a 24-hour period and not involving gang violence or terrorism.

• The U.S. accounts for 31% of the world’s mass shootings, despite making up only 4-5% of the global population.”
• U.S. mass shooters are "overwhelmingly (98%) male”—"around 34 years old.”
• 55% of mass shooters are White, 21.3% Black, 9.1% Hispanic, 5.4% Asian.
• Workplaces are the site of 28% of mass shootings, followed by schools at 22%., about 4.3% in places of worship.
• Rifles, or as media like to repeat, “AR-15 assault rifles,” are not the primary weapon of mass shooters. (The "AR," by the way, stands for ArmaLite Rifle, not "assault rifle.")
• Handguns are used in 73% with rifles used in 33% of mass shootings.

“While 73% of all mass shootings occur in developed countries, why are so many incidents reported in the US?

A now familiar list of variables includes, “the nation’s high civilian gun ownership, cultural factors like individualism and fame-seeking, sensationalized media coverage, and gaps in mental health care and law enforcement.”

“Most mass shooters target places they know well—schools, workplaces, or other familiar settings—because they have a personal connection and personal grievance. More than a third of mass shooters have histories of domestic abuse rooted in issues like anger, masculine entitlement, and a desire for control. Many mass shooters have experienced traumatic childhoods, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, parental drug use and incarceration, and domestic violence.”

The mass shooters are not typically transgender, but a few high profile shooters have identified as “transgender” or “gender fluid,” for example,  Aberdeen, MD (2018), Perry, Iowa (2024), Highlands Ranch (2019) and Colorado Springs (2022) Colorado, Nashville (2023), Minneapolis (2025). As yet, evidence is inconclusive in part because key perpetrator characteristics are hidden from media or buried in police investigations or non-investigations.

There are a number of contributing factors. Social and cultural aspects of US culture: despair, anger, and resentment. Extremist websites and groups can provide a sense of community and belonging that many shooters lack. This sense of belonging and welcome may be more important to the shooter than any kind of ideology.

Mass shootings can be considered a form of suicide. Few mass shooters have a realistic plan, if any plan at all, for escape following a shooting. 

Much of the debate about mass shootings revolves around two perspectives:  human evil is the root cause vs. guns are the root cause. But it is easy to make the case that availability of guns creates opportunities for violence, but the issue is complex. For one thing, guns have always been part of American society, always available, and for a long time considered essential equipment for every household, yet mass shootings did not occur.

Research by criminologist Grant Duwe indicates that “prior to 1965, there (were) relatively few mass public shootings in the United States.”

Consider this:  in the US one mass shooting occurred in the 1950s, in the 1960s six, in the 1970s thirteen, in the 1980s thirty, in the 1990s forty-two. “From 2000 to 2013, there were 53 mass public shootings in the United States.”

So, mass shootings have been surging up for the last fifty years. “Familicides are by far the most common form of mass murder, making up nearly 45% of all mass killings since 1976. Familicides most often involve a male head of the household killing his partner (i.e., spouse, ex‐spouse, fiancée), their children, relatives, or some combination of these. Felony‐related massacres are the second most common type of mass murder. These incidents typically involve a small group of young men who commit mass murder during a robbery”

So, what has changed since the 1950s, if it’s not the availability of guns?

One major and obvious change is that American culture began to jettison its engagement with religion, specifically the moral codes of Christianity like “Thou shalt not kill’ (Ex. 20). Mass murderers are not church-goers and typically do not have strong family or community relationships. They are loners.

Dennis Prager of Prager U adds that another change since the 1950s is a drop in the number of marriages. Married men are not all what they should be, but marriage does create outlets for male energy and interest. Typically, marriage, even difficult ones, mature us. Mass murderers are generally not married.

Male role models have declined—partly via absent fathers—or male role models have been systematically denigrated by entertainment and societal elites, so boys have fewer real men, mature men to emulate. Some sources claim that as many as 72% of adolescent murderers and 70% of long-term prison inmates come from fatherless homes. Another study found that 85% of youth in prison come from fatherless homes.

Running for the presidency in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.” He also famously stated, "What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child—it's the courage to raise one."

Then there is another factor that may play a larger role in mass shootings than we’ve so far been able to determine. Youth are taught that America is untrustworthy, indeed it is despicable, a colonizer, an oppressor. Their country is not worth their respect and in fact is a convenient source for blaming all their problems.

So young men and women grow up without religion and without country and without meaning. They are rootless and angry for reasons they do not understand. Boys who should be becoming men remain immature and develop hateful outlets for their aggression. Girls who should be becoming women remain immature and develop online addiction, depression, and at times unhealthy relationships with men who aren’t what they should be.

Of course, not all these youth turn into mass shooters. But it only takes one young man whose circumstances are especially dire, whose grievances are peculiarly intense, whose contacts are particularly toxic, whose sense of victimhood is unusually high, and whose killer opportunities are terribly present and easy to access.

Every gun in America could somehow be eliminated, but we’d still have mass killings. Maybe not with as high of body counts, but the evil in human hearts is still there and Satan is still working to spread confusion, sickness, death, and havoc in the world.

What America needs is what we’ve always needed. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025  

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 27 October 2025

The Ark Encounter, a life-size replication of the biblical Noah’s Ark, is a wonder to behold.

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #231 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

The Ark Encounter, located on 800 beautiful rolling and wooded acres just off I-75 in Williamstown, Kentucky, opened in 2016, is truly impressive.

This Noah’s ark replication is the brainchild and work of prolific Australian Christian author and speaker, Ken Ham, who with two others founded Answers in Genesis and then developed the Creation Museum, opened in 2007 in nearby Petersburg, KY. According to Wikipedia’s snarky description, Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis “advocates young Earth creationism on the basis of its literal, historical-grammatical interpretation of the Book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole. Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, it rejects the results of scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative and instead supports pseudoscientific creation science. The organization sees evolution as incompatible with the Bible and believes anything other than the young Earth view is a compromise on the principle of biblical inerrancy.” In other words, the people who wrote this piece for Wikipedia go with the evolutionary, old earth, i.e., billions of years, anti-Creation evolutionary theory that has dominated the sciences since not long after Charles Darwin published his Origin of the Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).

Ken Ham has authored more than 30 books and has been an evidence-based proponent of a literal Bible, young earth, i.e., 6,000-10,000 years, and Creationism his entire career. The Ark Encounter is a direct expression and representation of a literal interpretation of the Bible.

The Ark replication is over 100 feet high at the top of the bow fin, like a ten-story building, 85 feet wide, and 510 feet long, compared for example to the Statue of Liberty lying down at 306 feet or a Boeing 747 at 250 feet.

The ark replication features a ground floor and three upper decks, supported throughout by enormous 65’ by as much as 36” diameter logs. Each wooden “rib” framing the hold of the ark weighs 25,000 pounds and utilizes 1,200 pounds of bolts, so to put it mildly, the ark you’ll find in Kentucky is huge.

An opening video in the Welcome Center explains how the project came together, including Amish men who’d built large wooden barns and later oversaw the ark’s construction. The massive pillars are Englemann spruce, the squared timbers throughout are Douglas fir, the exterior is radiata pine from New Zealand, and the flooring is bamboo. This ark consists of 3.1 million board feet of lumber, making it the largest free-standing timber-frame structure in the world.

In the process of designing the ark, when Answers in Genesis could not determine how something was done, like water and food storage, ventilation, or waste removal, they developed plausible systems based upon current knowledge of ancient technology, systems that work and might have been used. Ken Ham and company do not assert “it must have been done this way” but offer a reasonable presentation, demonstrating how indeed sufficient material supplies, animal areas, and a survivable environment were crafted inside the ark. Another plausible idea they suggest, not mature but young or baby animals were taken on the ark. They require smaller living space, eat less, sleep more, and are easier to care for.

A large section on one of the decks is devoted to responding to the common question, “How could Noah fit all the animals on the ark?” The answer is, one, only land-dependent animals—not fish or sea creatures—were brought on the ark, and two, only animals representing animal “kinds,” not every species, were brought on the ark.

An animal “kind” referenced in Scripture refers to a group of animals that were originally created to reproduce within their own group — essentially, animals that can breed and produce offspring. The word “kind” comes from the Hebrew word min (מִין) in Genesis, where God created living creatures “according to their kinds.”

Creationists interpret “kinds” as broader categories than modern biological species. For example, all domestic cats, lions, tigers, and leopards belong to the same “cat kind.” All dogs, wolves, coyotes, and foxes are considered part of the “dog kind.”

The idea is that within each “kind,” animals can diversify or adapt over time (what is called “microevolution”), but they do not evolve into new kinds (which is rejected as “macroevolution”). An “animal kind” is, therefore, a biblical term roughly equivalent to a “created family group” of animals that share a common ancestry and can interbreed.

Much of modern biology views all life as related through common descent over long evolutionary timescales, classifying organisms by shared evolutionary ancestry. Creationism views each “kind” as an original created group that has diversified since creation, for example, through adaptation after the Flood, but without crossing boundaries into new “kinds.” So, while some contemporary scientists might trace all mammals back to common ancestors millions of years ago, creationists would say that each “kind,” e.g., cat kind, horse kind, dog kind, was separately created and has only diversified within that kind since then.

Each kind possesses the DNA to diversify through breeding, thus while only two of the dog kind were on the ark, today there are wolves, coyotes, dingoes, foxes, and some 375 recognized breeds of domestic dogs. Noah did not need to bring every species, just representatives of each kind. The dimensions of Noah’s ark could, therefore, realistically carry all necessary animal kinds — often estimated at 1,400–1,600 “kinds” rather than millions of species.

In Genesis 7:2–3, God instructs Noah to “take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also…” Clean animals were those suitable for sacrifice and later for food. Unclean animals were not used for sacrifice and, later in Mosaic law (Lev. 11, Deut. 14), not eaten. Noah brought extra pairs of clean animals so that he could offer sacrifices after the flood (Genesis 8:20), and so that the clean kinds would have more individuals available to reproduce afterward.

At the Ark Encounter, the clean/unclean distinction is used to:

• Emphasize obedience to God’s commands (as Noah followed them precisely).
• Show that sacrifice and atonement — key biblical themes — existed long before Moses’ Law.
• Demonstrate that God provided for post-Flood worship and renewal, symbolized by clean animals used for offerings (Genesis 8:20).

Together with Scripture’s indication God commanded Noah to take more of certain clean animals, this animal kinds approach means an estimated 6,744 animals lodged on Noah’s ark.

Considerable signage is posted throughout the ark explaining things like dinosaurs, ancient man, Ice Age, the decline of human culture prior to the flood, fossils and flood geology, the history and authenticity of the Bible (sponsored by Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC), the many flood legends found in various cultures around the world, God’s rainbow covenant, the Gospel, and more. A few videos are also presented with seating, telling various Noah-related stories, some animatronic figures are set in displays, like Noah sitting in his workshop and “answering” questions about how he accomplished this monumental task.

The cafe next door is very good, featuring many life-size taxidermy animals from the present day. The Ark Encounter now also offers a zoo, zip lines, and a few other activities. A large new welcome center is being constructed that will house an old Jerusalem display. The current welcome center is booked throughout the year with Christian concerts and conferences.

This was my wife’s and my second visit. Considering what it took with modern equipment today to build this ark and contemplating how Noah and his sons built the original is truly mind-boggling. Whether the Ark Encounter got it all correct did not bother me. What I appreciated is what, based upon the Word of God, they did get correct, building a life-size ark. This presentation is not “schlock,” not cheap, so-called “blind faith” stuff but well researched and presented sophisticated Christian worldview re science.

People understandably spend a lot of time and money to travel to Israel, or on a 7 churches tour in Turkey, including the incredible excavated Ephesus. We’ve been blessed with these experiences, so I get that. But this one is in your backyard, so I highly recommend you make the trip to northern Kentucky and experience The Ark Encounter for yourself.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025    

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 20 October 2025

On the cusp of a special birthday, America is in polarizing turmoil, so is our future one of pessimism or optimism?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #230 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Dr. Os Guinness has long been one of my favorite Christian philosophers and cultural commentators, and his latest book America Agonistes: America’s 250^th and the Restoration of a Nation in Conflict with Itself and Its Past (2025), did not disappoint.

First, let’s deal with the title. “Agonistes” means “a person engaged in a struggle” or “a person enduring an inner struggle.” Perhaps Dr. Guinness drew this word from the poem, “Samson Agonistes,” a tragic drama by John Milton that appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regained in 1671? In any event, Dr. Guinness’s writings are noteworthy for their expansive vocabulary.

It reminds me of a time early in our marriage when my wife, Sarah, gave me a gift of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All Four Novels/All Fifty-Six Adventures. I had begun reading these stories and eventually read them all. This was back before the internet or cell phones, and I remember reading his stories with a large dictionary nearby, for he invariably used words I had never encountered. I can’t think of another author who comes close, except maybe Dr. Os Guinness.

Dr. Guinness’s book is the second in a quartet of books he plans focusing upon the United States of America’s challenges. The first book was Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds (2024) examined “the crisis of Western civilization with a wide-angle lens,” while America Agonistes “is a closer look at the intense and self-destructive conflicts now playing out in the world’s lead society…the American people, blinded and convulsed with self-destructive forces in open conflict with themselves and their past.”

Guinness is optimistic, but he’s a realist too. He sees the best and greatest of America’s persona and achievements, even as he acknowledges its failures even from the beginning remarkable generation of Founders like no other.

America did not achieve its expansive freedom and blessings of opportunity and well-being because of a given race, ethnic group, or even the country’s abundant natural beauty and resources. America became the leading nation in the free world because of its intentions and ideals, it’s belief that humanity was created in God’s image, that God bestowed our human rights, that individual life and liberty were sacrosanct because of this, not because of government, power, nationality, social class, or riches.

Guinness is worried that Americans, including the current presidential administration, do not really know what made America great in the first place, so the question becomes, will America work to return to and restore its founding ideals? The jury is out.  This is our civilizational moment.

Dr. Guinness said, “Yet the heart of America's crisis lies deeper still. If America had become great primarily through economic and military means, then a successful restoration of the economy and the military might be enough to make America great again. But that is not how it happened. "Man does not live by bread alone" is the reminder of both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4).” “Humanity has always been more than the "economic Man," and the "new American man" (and woman) of the era of the American Revolution was certainly much more. Neither economic prosperity nor national security are ends in themselves. Unless they serve a higher human end, they will only generate animosity against themselves, as the troubling trend towards socialism shows currently. But if, as the history of America's founding surely shows, the secret of America's freedom and greatness was spiritual, moral, cultural, and constitutional in character too, then the crisis must be addressed accordingly. It requires a much deeper analysis, taking such essential elements into account. Unless that happens, America's crisis will only be exacerbated. America will fight the crisis using weapons of power without principle, which will only transform the Republic into the very character of the enemy it fights. In setting out to fight what Americans see as monsters they will either risk failure or indeed become monsters in the process. In truth, the success or failure of the movement to Make America Great Again will pivot on its success or failure in recognizing and restoring what made America great in the first place— the politics and culture of covenantal freedom that lies at the heart of the American Republic. The decisive issue for America today is the restoration of the American Republic and of citizenship, and the vision of freedom that this means.”

Did you hear that? Restoration of commitment and culture to the founding ideals is the only way to assure an America that is great in the future.

Again, Guinness observes, “To have defeated the Left-leaning Democrat Party in the election is one thing. To overcome the Left and its full arsenal of cultural Marxism across the board and restore a nationwide commitment to the first principles of the American experiment is quite another, though not yet attempted.

But to restore the great majority of Americans to be citizens capable of playing their role as fully responsible and participating partners and stakeholders in republican freedom is the supreme challenge in making America great again.”

So, for Dr. Guinness, what will make a golden age possible “requires profound renewal of the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship among all Americans of every persuasion.”

The Founders ingeniously recognized that for freedom to work, it needed both a government with a built-in system of checks and balances, and a citizenry who possessed civic virtue, the inner moral character that sustains liberty. Citizens with civic virtue place the common good above their private interests, exercise self-restraint, and possess moral integrity and public spirit. This is what Dr. Guinness believes is now largely lost to American culture and which must be systematically rebuilt for America to survive and thrive as a truly free nation.

Guinness notes what Americans no longer understand; that is, “as the first great modern nation, the United States never was linked by natural racial, ethnic, or linguistic ties as most other nations were…America was diverse almost from the beginning, and thus America was, and is, a nation by intention and by ideas.” E pluribus unum.

Because civic education or even American history are no longer taught in public schools, many within Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, do not understand how or why America became a free country, nor what it takes to sustain this rare and precious experience called freedom. This makes many of them easy dupes for Marxist Critical Race Theory or radical multiculturalism or morally relative postmodernism or any of a number of leftist ideas.

Who would have predicted that the front-runner for Mayor of New York City is an on-record antisemitic, Democratic Socialist, who talks constantly about affordable living, by which he means hand out more freebies paid by someone’s taxes?

In his book, Dr. Guinness notes that, “rightly understood, the freedom of the American Republic is a vision of freedom like no other. It stands as the world's most powerful alternative to the authoritarian forces in the world.”

To address the American agonistes, Guinness believes “every American is responsible for the American Republic, and the condition of the American Republic is the health of the relationships of American citizens at large. Like the Hebrew Republic, the American Republic should always be cherished with the strength of liberty, loyalty, and love. Nationalism can be idolatry and truly dangerous and should always be watched and guarded against. But patriotism as love of one's homeland is natural and good. Indeed, the American Republic will only last so long as its citizens love their homeland, understand how their nation works, and support it with their whole hearts, even when they must criticize the nation's shortcomings in challenging it to live up to its ideals.”

Guinness says, “I will argue strongly for the necessity and possibility of renewal, and therefore for hope, but Americans should take seriously the possibility of decline.” A sobering thought.

“Spiritual and moral disobedience always lead to physical or cultural disorder, dislocation, and displacement…America, having broken its founding covenant, now finds itself on the verge of losing— perhaps forever —the distinctive freedom that was its American birthright. Yet according to the…Jewish and Christian understanding, Decline need not lead to Fall because Exile can lead to Return”

From my perspective, Dr. Os Guinness, now in his 80s, is one of our best Christian cultural critics. I highly recommend this book.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025    

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/ or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.