A Visit to the Creation Museum

Diane and I enjoyed a visit to the Creation Museum last Friday. I have posted before regarding this place and you can read that post by clicking H-E-R-E. From that post you can retrieve some of the details that I will not mention here. The website for the museum itself is found H-E-R-E.

We were at the door at 10:00 a.m., the advertised opening time. Already a line had formed to purchase tickets, but at least the waiting was inside in the cool, (perhaps you can see from the ticket above that it took us 34 minutes). I was amazed all day at the size of the crowd. It is certainly encouraging to me that there were this many people interested in learning more about creation and how to give answer to the evolutionists. However, quite honestly, it was just a bit inconvenient to stand in lines all day. I am not sure if Friday is an especially busy day or if they are all about the same. There were professional security people to help us park our car and get inside. All of the personnel here were very nice and friendly.

I’ve read from one of Ken Hamm’s blogs that a big day at the museum is about 3800 and that already in their first ten weeks they have had 150,000 visitors.

My sweet wife has a slight (did I really say SLIGHT) problem with claustrophobia. As a result, we sort of took the JET tour through portions of the exhibit. Some of them were dark and confining and pretty much like being inside a cave. Nonetheless, we spent about 5 ½ hours there, counting our lunch time in “Noah’s Café.” Sometime I would like to return and take the TURTLE tour.

The entire museum is quite impressive. A multitude of facts are paraded before your eyes in various media. There are endless video monitors suspended from varying angles, armed with 1 to 3 minute video presentations. These monitors are close-captioned also, which is convenient when there are so many viewing the displays (noise from whom sometimes prevent the audio from being received completely). The flood portion of the tour is a shining point of interest and attractively constructed. How refreshing and DIFFERENT it was to be touring through such an expansive and expensive facility centered on ORIGINS and be presented with an alternative to atheistic or theistic evolution! I enjoyed it thoroughly!

The “Men in White” Theater has its own surprises for those entering in and I would certainly recommend that you enter. I’ll not go into the details, but I am confident it will be something you have not experienced before. Even with standing in line a few minutes it surely was worth the effort.

Before my visit I was advised that the Planetarium would be worth the extra $5.00. I am thankful that I accepted that advice and stood in line for it. It surely helped to give this old feeble mind a little better concept of the vast distances and sizes of outer space. I am sure there is no device known to man today to do such adequately, but this must have come the closest I’ve ever come to it so far. It was something else!

However, to me it is a source of amazement and confounds me no end how such men as the ANSWERS IN GENESIS men can be so intelligent and wise in matters relating to origins and be so foolish with regard to salvation matters. They do have a brief (less than 30 minutes) video regarding salvation at the end of the tour in their “Last Adam Theater.” Their presentation leaves off baptism as if Jesus HAD NOT connected it in His own words of Mark 16:16. We are saddened by that lack of understanding of such an easily understood statement from our Lord.

I am made to rejoice, however, as my overall impression that such a place as this exists in our land to stir the thoughts of people BACK TO THE BIBLE.

–David Lemmons

John M. Lemmons

The article below tells a little about my great great grandfather. The book, Arkansas Angels, is an interesting book. It was written by Boyd E. Morgan and published (2nd Printing) in 1967 by the College Bookstore and Press of Paragould, Arkansas. In the preface, brother Morgan writes the following…

Arkansas Angels is the story of that company of God’s messengers who planted the seed before us. The story is not intended to be a collection of obituaries–obituaries are so cold, so formal, and so final. They toiled, they walked, they traveled horseback or by train, just a few went by early autos. They laughed, they cried, and they prayed over their problems. They worked with their own hands to support themselves. Their families also worked to supplement the meager preacher’s pay when they got any. They battered down sectarian barriers to establish New Testament churches. They debated the cause. Disappointments, hardships, perils of life, hard times were legion. They meant nothing to these men whose faith in the Bible and their God who gave it was the directing force of their lives. These men were alive and active. They ceased only when the flesh failed. Their work lives. This is their story.

I am thankful for such an honorable heritage and hope to be able faithfully to carry on the great challenge and work for which my great great grandfather sacrificed so much. I have scanned the photo from the book.  –David Lemmons

JOHN M. LEMMONS
by Boyd E. Morgan

The eldest of the Arkansas Angels (messenger’s of God’s Word) of Northeast Arkansas, of whom I can find record, is Brother John M. Lemmons, who was born in Virginia in 1816. He moved with his parents to Warren County, Tennessee in 1818. He married and lived in Warren County until 1851, when he moved to Arkansas, locating first in Independence County. After one year, he moved to Randolph County.

John M. was a preacher of the Church of Christ. I know nothing of his conversion or when he first began preaching, except that for more than forty years he preached the gospel of Christ. He died in 1898 at the age of 82. In the same year he moved to Randolph County, he and his oldest sons (he was the father of seven sons and two daughters) and two or three neighbors built a log church building on Hubble Creek, one mile south of Birdell, Arkansas. In 1862, during the Civil War, this house burned, and in 1866, Brother Lemmons and others built another on Carter Creek. They retained the name ‘Hubble Creek’; however. Brother Lemmons did much to help establish the church in North Arkansas. He served as an elder as well as a preacher.

Two of his sons, Peyton and Josephus, were preachers of great ability, and were among the leading preachers of the Churches of Christ, of North Arkansas and South Missouri. There have been a number of ministers in each generation and a family of descendants of John M. Lemmons.

Brethren Reuel Lemmons and A. G. Lemmons are direct descendants of this grand pioneer preacher. The Old Hubble Creek meeting house still stands, and the Lemmons go back once a year and hold a reunion on the grounds. It is almost inaccessible. The congregation has moved out to Highway 62 and meets at Birdell. I conducted a gospel meeting (my second) with the Hubble Creek church in the old meeting house when I was 18 years old. This was August 1935.

During research, I discovered an article written by W.F. Lemmons, in memory of Brother W. H. Tomlinson who served the church as elder for more than fifty years, and who passed to his reward February 14, 1930, aged 86. The article was in the Gospel Advocate of April 10, 1930, and gives more information on this pioneer preacher of restoration days.

He (Brother Tomlinson) was baptized during the Civil War, and if my memory serves me correctly, my grandfather baptized him, and later appointed him to the eldership of the Blue Springs Church, a congregation that was established by my grandfather before the Civil War.

Since the Blue Springs Church was in Independence County, it is most likely that Brother Lemmons began it there in either 1851 or 1852 when he lived in Independence County for one year. It is evident that he returned there to preach as the above baptizing took place during the Civil War and later the appointment of Brother Tomlinson as an elder was made. Many years later the Blue Springs Church was abandoned, when part of the members established themselves at Magness and part at Newark. The church was a forerunner of the present churches now located at these two places. The article continues…

Brother Tomlinson was present when a man shot at my grandfather while he was baptizing his wife in the creek near the Blue Springs Church. It is a fact that he later baptized the man who shot at him. These were pioneer days in Northeast Arkansas. Sectarianism had blood in its eyes, as it were, and to preach the primitive gospel was the sin against the Holy Ghost with the sects.

The article further stated of Brother Tomlinson, that his plainness of speech came both by nature and by the fact that he was taught the truth by my grandfather, who always called “a spade a spade.”

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GBN at the Ryman…

My family and I enjoyed a visit to the old Ryman Auditorium in Nashville last night to hear B.J. Clarke and Jim Dearman preaching in a series called: THE TABERNACLE SERMONS TODAY. This was sort of a flashback to the time 85 years ago when N.B. Hardeman, one of the founders of Freed-Hardeman University, preached his powerful sermons to thousands in the original TABERNACLE SERMONS. We heard and participated in great singing and listened to two wonderful sermons and thoroughly enjoyed being there. The effort was put on by the overseers of the GOSPEL BROADCASTING NETWORK, a 24-7 TV network dedicated to preaching and teaching God’s Word. You can find it on the internet at: http://gbntv.org One thing UNIQUE about this network is that there is no fundraising done on the air.

Brother Winford Claiborne handed me a copy of his new book, Books, Books, and more Books, as I was walking out the door. It was good to see him again. I wished I could have heard him and all of the others speak during this meeting. The new book from brother Claiborne is a listing of many books he has read and recommends under different topics. I recommend it to you. Visit the International Gospel Hour website by clicking HERE.

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Sea Breezes

One of the serendipitous blessings of helping out in a work on foreign soil is the blessing of seeing God’s creative hand in amazing sights, sounds, and smells of different places. How refreshing it was to Diane, Susan Waller, and me to stop by here last year to take in some of the sea breezes from the Indian Ocean, on the southern coast of Java in Indonesia! This world was made BEAUTIFUL by the Almighty God for our enjoyment and pleasure, and He placed limits on it. Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? (Job 38:8).

–DRL

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A Beautiful Mt. LeConte Sunrise

It seems that my nephew, Jamie Barnes, is quite a photographer and hiker.  His photo of a sunrise at Mt. LeConte has been chosen as today’s Picture of the Day. 

He has prepared a photo-rich report of his hike (a birthday celebration getaway).  He even was privileged to snap a bear!

In the report he mentions an upcoming father/son trip to the same place in June of 2007.  They had an extra slot for that trip when it was being planned and I was asked to come along.  But for a scheduling conflict, I could have had the pleasure of seeing some of these magnificent views and testing my endurance on the mount.

Anyhow, happy birthday, Jamie!  We wish you well.

–DRL

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