Preparing our Youth for the Battlefield with Mike Riddle

[00:00:00] Thanks for being here today. My name is Kevin Conover. You’re on Educate for Life uh radio. We are broadcast down

[00:00:07] here on K Praise 12:10 a.m. in Southern California, all over San Diego County. We’re on FM106.1 in North County. And of

[00:00:14] course, we’re all over the internet, uh on podcasts, and also on YouTube. And

[00:00:20] today, um we’re talking about something. You know, school has just recently started up again and uh students all

[00:00:26] over the place are having conversations uh bumping into different people’s views about big questions. Where did we come

[00:00:33] from? Where are we going? What’s the purpose of life? I know back when I was in high school, uh there were so many

[00:00:39] different views and I was really questioning what in the world am I supposed to believe? Does what does what

[00:00:45] I believe stand up to scrutiny? Uh why do other people believe things that I don’t believe? And so all our kids are

[00:00:52] facing these sorts of questions um in the public schools and regardless of where you’re at, the culture, the

[00:00:58] internet has promoted ideas uh that are contrary to the scriptures. Uh there’s an increase in skepticism uh because of

[00:01:05] the e access to skeptics questions all over the internet. So, um, you’ve got

[00:01:12] kids as young as junior high bringing up, uh, you know, arguments that they’re pulling off of the internet, off of

[00:01:18] social media, Tik Tok or Instagram or whatever it may be. And they are then

[00:01:24] sharing those ideas. And so, all the more important that we equip our young people to be able to dialogue about the

[00:01:30] tough questions about God, the Bible, the evidence for the resurrection, and um, everything in between. And to help

[00:01:37] us with that, I have a guest today uh who’s been doing this for 40 years now. His name is Mike Riddle and uh he

[00:01:44] actually grew up in a non-Christian home. Today he’s the president of create the creation training initiative,

[00:01:49] creationtraining.org. He’s an education specialist. He’s an international speaker and uh he’s been

[00:01:55] doing this for a long time. He’s he’s been a speaker for Answers in Genesis. He actually holds a degree in mathematics and a graduate degree in

[00:02:01] education. He’s been involved, like I said, with creation ministry for more than 40 years. And prior to this, he was

[00:02:07] actually a captain in the US Marines and a national champion in track and field. Mike, thanks a lot for being here with

[00:02:13] us. Well, thank you, Kevin. What I what I just heard you say is that I’m very old. [Laughter]

[00:02:19] No, that’s not how we phrase it. You’re you’re very experienced. Yeah. Okay.

[00:02:26] Thank you. Yeah. And if you and and for those of our listeners, if you are um you know listening on online or whatever the case

[00:02:33] on a podcast, we do have slides up that Mike Riddle is going to be sharing with us. So you may want to check out YouTube

[00:02:40] if you want more information or if you’re wondering, hey, what are they talking about? Um you can see this on actually on YouTube. So uh Mike, uh take

[00:02:48] it away. What do you got for us? Why is your focus on youth as opposed to for example adults?

[00:02:54] Well, we we do focus on both because we need the adults to be teaching the youth

[00:02:59] and we need to get both equipped. We got to get the adults equipped so we can get more youth trained. As ministry, we can

[00:03:05] only do so much. Answers in Genesis can do so much. But if we do what the Bible says, make disciples, especially in the

[00:03:13] teaching field, then we replicate ourselves all over the all over the country and around the world. We’ve

[00:03:18] reached more youth by training more adults to be able to teach on these

[00:03:24] subjects. And that’s where we’re weak right now is having pastors who can teach about it, youth leaders, and just

[00:03:31] parents who are the number one teacher in child’s life. We we haven’t taken time to help them out enough to do this.

[00:03:38] So, I titled this equipping youth for the battlefield. Now, I want to keep it as positive as possible because there’s

[00:03:44] a lot of solutions out there. And I want to show you one that I think is going to work. But some of my background

[00:03:50] experience, I’ve spoken in over 500 churches in this country and to over 16,000 youth. Then I listen to what

[00:03:56] they’re having to say, the questions they’re asking and where they’re deficient. So, I’m bringing all that

[00:04:02] together. In other words, I didn’t invent anything. As we say in computers, I just pirated all this information and

[00:04:08] put it together. So, I want to talk about those things. I’d like to start with what I call some statistics, some

[00:04:15] stats here, just kind of set the background why we’re doing this. And one

[00:04:20] of those is over 60% of our youth are leaving the church before they finish

[00:04:26] school and they’re not returning now. That is a catastrophic amount. We’re

[00:04:32] talking youth, they’ve been in Sunday school for 12 years, Christian schools. they’re leaving the church. In other

[00:04:39] words, something is not right there. Something is missing in the church and

[00:04:44] in the home. Then here’s another statistic and I use a lot of groups like

[00:04:50] the Barner Group, the Pew Research and Lifeway Research and a lot of different ones and

[00:04:55] check what each one has to say and overall is about 80% of our youth have doubts about the Bible. Now, that’s not

[00:05:02] necessarily a bad thing to have doubts about the Bible, but this is epidemic also. 80% are having doubts. And when

[00:05:09] you ask them what they have doubts about, these are things we should be teaching in the church. They should be

[00:05:14] learning them at home and in schools, such as how do you fit dinosaurs in the Bible? Why did God create Satan if he

[00:05:22] knew it was going to happen? Was it really a worldwide flood? Who did Cain marry? Those type of questions they’re

[00:05:29] not getting trained in. just basic biblical apologetics and evangelism is

[00:05:35] missing from our youth groups. Another statistic,

[00:05:41] over 80, 85% of our Christian youth attend secular education schools. That

[00:05:49] is huge. And I’m going to show a little bit what they’re being taught. And it’s not Bible. It’s very anti-Bible what

[00:05:56] they’re being taught. And this has to be countered. We just can’t back sit back and say, “Oh, that’s okay.” No, it’s not

[00:06:03] okay. We’ve got to do something about this. And here’s another statistic. The

[00:06:08] number of youth with a biblical worldview is getting less and less with each generation. I’m going to give the

[00:06:14] stats from the last four generation. 10% of the youth had a biblical worldview.

[00:06:19] The next generation 7%, the next generation 6%, and the generation we’re

[00:06:24] on now is between 3 and 4% have a biblical worldview. What those statistics tell us is this

[00:06:31] very simple. What we’re doing is not working. We’ve got to change what we’re

[00:06:38] doing and get serious about this. So that’s the way you read charts like this. Why is it going down? We’ve

[00:06:45] introduced all these new ideas into our churches, brought all this music in there, and made it seeker friendly. It

[00:06:52] is not working. We’re trying to reinvent the church, folks. The church is God’s church, Jesus

[00:06:59] Christ. Let’s stick with his word and good, solid doctrinal teaching. That’s

[00:07:04] the kind of things that will work. And here’s another just terrible

[00:07:09] statistic. Less than 12% of our youth leaders have a biblical worldview. And

[00:07:15] they are teaching our youth, we’ve got a serious issue with that these statistics

[00:07:20] here. We’ve got a problem. What we’re doing is not working that well. bringing

[00:07:26] in more games, more loud music, uh, with, when I say loud music, with no

[00:07:32] doctrine in it or no gospel in it is not what’s going to help these youth out.

[00:07:38] And those are the things we want to focus on. Now, to put this in picture format, I like pictures. Some people use

[00:07:43] the left side of their brain, some people use the right side, some people just don’t use it. And we’ve met those people, too. But some people like

[00:07:50] graphics. And here’s a graphic that shows here’s what’s happening. We’ve got a picture of the church in the middle.

[00:07:55] Then we have all these cracks in there. Relatism, the critical race theory, evolutionism. Then you also have the

[00:08:02] LGBT community, the gender identity, climate change, COVID, abortion. All these things are attacking our churches.

[00:08:10] And they’re all going after our youth. And they’ve made it very plain. Some of

[00:08:15] these groups, they want our youth. That means we’ve got to get to the

[00:08:20] battlefield. We’ve got to prepare our youth for the battlefield because 85% of them are at least on the battlefield

[00:08:27] when they go to the school system. Every day they’re being bombarded with anti-biblical worldview information.

[00:08:35] So something has to change here. Especially when we look at when we look at the churches, youth leaders who don’t

[00:08:41] have a biblical worldview. How in the world can they argue against these especially the whole abortion issue?

[00:08:47] It’s epidemic. the number of murders that are going on in the woman’s womb today. Can we train our youth both the

[00:08:54] biblical and scientific answers how to talk about that so they can evangelize their peers? This is what we’re looking

[00:09:01] at. So situation, we’re surrounded, we’re outnumbered, we’re out financed,

[00:09:07] and we’re out educated. And let’s make it even better. There’s compromise and surrender within the church ranks.

[00:09:14] What an advantage we have. You know, in the night United States Marine Corps, one of the things we’re trained at, when

[00:09:20] you’re surrounded and outnumbered, you have two things you know for sure. You know where your enemy is, and you can

[00:09:25] attack in any direction. We can do the same thing on the spiritual battlefield.

[00:09:31] We’ve got to advance everywhere we look. There’s opportunities to witness.

[00:09:36] So, what we need is good, strong leaders who are bold and courageous. We need to

[00:09:42] equip many, many educators. That includes parents. We got to bring them in because they have their children most

[00:09:48] of the time. So we need to educate our parents of the parents out there how to answer these questions and that side’s

[00:09:55] kind of being ignored a lot. We talk about the the parents are the number one educators but who’s trained the parents

[00:10:04] and we need to look at that issue also. So here’s the situation. What we need I

[00:10:10] like strategy and planning and tactics. What is needed is a plan that can be

[00:10:15] translated into action on the part of Christian educators,

[00:10:20] Christian parents, and pastors. So, we need a plan and we’re going to come up

[00:10:26] with that plan. I’m going to give a four-part plan for equipping the next generation.

[00:10:32] Four part plan. Number one for this. This sounds

[00:10:37] interesting. Part one. We’ve already got this implemented, so we’re okay here. I call them awareness seminars and resources.

[00:10:45] We’ve got groups like Creation Training Initiative, which is our training group. We we do awareness seminars and we go

[00:10:51] out and do these one-hour talks, but we also have groups like Answers in Genesis. They do this all over the

[00:10:57] world. They’re a large group. They’ve been doing this for a long time. They go out and do all these seminars and gives

[00:11:02] the awareness that yes, we do have answers. Then we have the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, Texas. They

[00:11:10] do seminars and both answers and Genesis and the Institute of Creation Research have many many resources out there. So

[00:11:17] this is one pass that we’re we’re on top of. Then we have many local creation

[00:11:22] groups all over the country that are doing a wonderful job bringing speakers in providing resources. So part one

[00:11:30] we’ve been doing for a long time but we need to go much much further than that.

[00:11:36] Much further. That brings in part two.

[00:11:41] This I call the application level training. This is a part where churches

[00:11:46] are almost completely failing us. This is the the awareness seminars don’t go

[00:11:52] to this level, but this is the level we have to get to application level training. In other words, one of the

[00:11:59] things I do a lot of teacher training. We have a whole course on just teacher training. One day course and we have a three-day course that trains how to

[00:12:05] speak and teach. But in the one-day course, we have a whole chapter on educational methods. How to educate for

[00:12:12] success. And the some of the research I’ve done, I look at Sunday school programs around

[00:12:19] country, cities, and I concluded that there are very very

[00:12:24] few teachers in Sunday school. Think why these churches, all these

[00:12:30] Sunday school programs, aren’t they teaching? No, they’re not. What they are doing is giving information.

[00:12:37] See in the Bible the Hebrew word for teach and learn is the same root word lama. And in other words, teach and

[00:12:44] learn are the same thing. Other words, if your students cannot do anything with the information you have given, then you

[00:12:50] have not taught them anything. What you have done is given them information. The Bible tells us we got to go much

[00:12:57] further. I get a lot of my tactics and love and how I train. Guess from what

[00:13:02] book I get most of that from starts with a B called the Bible. How did Jesus

[00:13:08] teach? And we don’t follow that model in our churches. We follow the model of

[00:13:14] just giving information and then we have no idea if any learning ever took place.

[00:13:20] We got to get the application level train. And that’s what we do at creation training initiative CTI. We offer

[00:13:26] training courses that help people retain the information and we show them how to use it in our one-day classes.

[00:13:33] So, here’s the key question you have to ask. Anytime you teach any course, Sunday school, whether it’s a formal

[00:13:39] classroom, any course you’re teaching, before you start that course, you must

[00:13:44] ask and answer this question. What do you want your students to know and be

[00:13:50] able to do with the information at the end of this course? If you don’t do that, you’re cheating your students. You

[00:13:58] need to let them know what do they need to be able to do with this information and it’s got to be achievable,

[00:14:04] attainable, and done within the time. So, every teacher should be asking this

[00:14:09] kind of question. What it’s called in educational terms, it’s your terminal or end objective. What’s the whole purpose

[00:14:16] of this course? Is it just to go out and give information and then let everybody go? That’s not teaching. That’s

[00:14:22] information giving. So part of this strategy is we’ve got to produce people who can use the information, especially

[00:14:30] our youth. So here’s some here’s an example of the courses we teach. I’m

[00:14:35] going to do a little advertisement here. We have a creation based training course. These are one that’s a one-day

[00:14:42] course 8:30 to 5:30. It covers and it’s for teens and above. We actually have

[00:14:47] teens in there. We’ve had a lot of we’ve done this course many times all over the country. It covers things like what is a

[00:14:53] biblical worldview? What’s the standard for a biblical worldview? Um it’s a if you want to know what what it is on our

[00:15:00] website creationtraining.org homepage. Scroll down a little bit. You’ll see a button there a nice little graph. It

[00:15:06] says what is a biblical worldview standard? Click on that. It’ll automatically download PDF. It it

[00:15:13] doesn’t say look through biblical worldview classes. That’s not a definition. That’s not a standard. That opens up the heretics because they think

[00:15:19] they’re looking through a biblical worldview. A biblical worldview must be based on

[00:15:25] biblical doctrines. That’s how you write a definition there. And that we put 19

[00:15:30] biblical doctrines in there that clearly distinguish a biblical worldview standard from everything else in the

[00:15:36] universe. So there’d be no ambiguity in there whatsoever. Now, we didn’t do this by ourselves. We went around the country

[00:15:44] and talked to other pastors, too. What is a biblical worldview? How did we distinguish it from everything else? So

[00:15:50] there’ll be no compromise or ambiguity in there. So we have our basic creation training covers the creation evolution

[00:15:57] issue covers the six days of creation theological issues with this with old ages. What about the fossil record? What

[00:16:05] about the flood? And then we just show that evolution cannot be true because

[00:16:10] they can’t even get a single biological cell together. And so we go through a

[00:16:16] lot of that. Then we have our advanced apologetics training which goes in what we call the presuppositional apologetics

[00:16:22] approach. How to use the Bible as your main tool for defeating people who are

[00:16:29] non-believers. So we answer some of the tough questions in there such as how can

[00:16:34] you call God good when he allows bad things to happen? We show how to answer

[00:16:39] that question, how to put the other side on the defense and then make them

[00:16:44] accountable for what they believe. Then we have a course, I just taught this one about two weeks ago, dynamics of

[00:16:51] Christian education. Then we talk about who our competition is and how they’re winning the education

[00:16:57] awards over Christians. We talk about speaking skills. We talk about teaching

[00:17:03] skills in there and how to set up a winning Sunday school program.

[00:17:08] Then one we’re going to do in in several weeks in the state of Washington, we’ve done this several places, is apologetics

[00:17:15] for the 21st century. That covers the entire woke agenda, the

[00:17:20] LGBT community, um, great reset, the climate change, big

[00:17:27] pharma, an AI, and all of those. covers all those issues and trains you how to

[00:17:32] approach those and talk to people. We have a three-day communication and teaching skills course. If anybody wants

[00:17:38] to learn how to speak and teach better, we have this course. We only put allow eight people in that course because

[00:17:44] there’s a lot of workshop time. It’s a lot of workshop where you get up and practice and we coach all the way

[00:17:49] through. Then every year we do something called a Christian educators conference down in Dallas at the Institute for

[00:17:55] Creation Research. We open this up to about 80 people from around the country for three and a half days. We train you

[00:18:01] on all these different subjects. Then a new one we’re looking at doing, we haven’t, we’re just on the planning

[00:18:08] phase of this right now. This is for youth in high school. College prep apologetics. We want to arm our high

[00:18:16] school students with apologetics and evangelism before they go off to college. Four and a half days of solid

[00:18:23] application level training. Notice we will produce doers of the word in there. Not only will they hear it, but they get

[00:18:29] to practice it. We challenge them with these different questions and how they can respond, how they can be witnesses

[00:18:35] to their peers. That’s a big one. That’ll be the first one we do next July. We’re looking at

[00:18:40] the first one there. Then another course we’re planning, we haven’t done this one yet, evangelism training course, which

[00:18:46] is a combination of evangelism and a little bit of apologetics in there. I mean, you’re out evangelizing. What are

[00:18:53] some of the most popular challenges you’re going to get hit with? And one of those is how do you fit dinosaurs into

[00:18:59] the Bible? So, we show you how to do that in evangelist.

[00:19:04] And we go through the whole gospel, how you can use the gospel, and even start up conversations with people. So, those

[00:19:10] are the things we’re doing at creation training initiative. We’re do going to the application level trainable training

[00:19:16] level. We do high school students and teens all the way up to adults.

[00:19:22] Yeah. So, Mike, I really love what I love what you’re doing. Um I think this is phenomenal and very needed. Uh one of

[00:19:28] the things that um you said, you said, you know, you’re not really teaching if you’re just disseminating information.

[00:19:34] And so, um, can you break that down a little bit further for our, you know, we we have people who are listening who,

[00:19:41] um, are involved in ministry. They’re involved in youth ministry. They’re involved in, uh, teaching maybe a Sunday

[00:19:46] school class. Um, explain further what it means to actually

[00:19:52] um, teach, not just disseminate information. What does that look like on a on a practical basis?

[00:19:58] Good. Thank you for that question. There’s there’s several phases we go through. One is how do you write

[00:20:04] exercises, written exercises for success? That’s something foreign to most people. What I’m going to tell you

[00:20:10] now are things you do not learn in your education colleges. You won’t learn these things. You learn a lot of memo.

[00:20:17] Then there’s some good things that go on there too, very good things, but you won’t learn these things. Uh, one of the

[00:20:22] things we learned how to do disguise forms of repetition in there for success. We have one thing called level

[00:20:29] one and level two testing. A level one exercise is really not so

[00:20:34] much a test, but it is in one sense because it’s geared for success. What we do is we put the after we cover maybe a

[00:20:40] chapter, we have an exercise. It can have anywhere from three, maybe 10, 12 questions on it. What we do is we put

[00:20:47] hints on there. We give you the challenge. Then we might put the first two, three or four letters of the answer

[00:20:53] in there. So if you listen, you’ll get it right. In other words, we training

[00:20:59] for success. Just like I’ve coached track and field with many times, people around the country, ran track and field,

[00:21:06] but we coach for success. We don’t coach for failure. We always concentrate on doing things correctly. If something’s

[00:21:13] not right, we go back and work with it until you do get it right. Other words, part of track and field and other sports

[00:21:18] is, especially gymnastics, you’re going to do this one piece a hundred times till you know how to do it correctly.

[00:21:25] That’s part of some of the training. And we do that in there. So called level one test is geared for nothing but success.

[00:21:32] So now they’ve heard the information. Most of the time people will get 90 to 100% on. That’s the goal. You want that.

[00:21:39] So they do that. Now they have a study sheet that has all the correct answers on and they’ve actually written it down

[00:21:45] versus just heard it. A level two test is when you get to the real test. Well,

[00:21:51] our goal is to get them to be able to succeed and know this information. We don’t want to hide it. We don’t want

[00:21:56] them guessing at it. We want them to know it. That’s the purpose of biblical education. Not like the world does. Some

[00:22:02] of you going to get A’s, B’s, and C’s and D’s. No, we want everybody with A’s and B’s. That’s all we want. We want the

[00:22:09] success in biblical training, not the way the world does it. So the level two tests, they do the real test. But here’s

[00:22:16] another thing. We actually brought this in our my group at Microsoft invented this. And because what we saw at

[00:22:22] Microsoft and I trained all the software engineers, they were under tremendous stress because I saw before I got there,

[00:22:28] they were going through these two and three and four day classes just nothing but information giving. They’re expected

[00:22:33] to remember all this. No, they couldn’t. Tremendous stress happening out there.

[00:22:39] So we did and we spent over over a year studying this. How do you give a lot of information, make it seem like it’s a

[00:22:46] short period of time, and have them retain it? And we came up with a process called the timed checkpoint. It’s not a

[00:22:54] test, but it is a closed note, closed book, timed exercise.

[00:23:01] And generally, when we get done, only about 20% of the people in the class will have finished it. If you know it

[00:23:07] real well, you’ll finish it. And that’s okay. In other words, you usually have anywhere from two to four minutes answer

[00:23:12] these questions. They’re never true false and they’re never multiple choice

[00:23:17] because that doesn’t tell me whether they really know it. It’s always fill in a blank or write a sentence or two and

[00:23:24] usually last like say two to four minutes. So you don’t have a lot of wasted time in there. If they know it,

[00:23:30] they’ll finish it. If they’re not, it’s going to be hard. But when you finish, when you everybody’s done and you say

[00:23:36] you got a three and maybe you have a three minute one, three minutes are up. You must stop. You don’t you’re not

[00:23:42] being generous by giving them more time. That’s not the purpose of this. 3 minutes are up, time is up. That’s it. I

[00:23:47] always carry a stopwatch with me. Being a taskmaster, it’s done. It’s over

[00:23:53] everything. Now, what you do is everybody keeps their own paper and you go over this. If they did not get the

[00:24:00] correct answer, they will write the correct answer in. So, we’re seeing how much do they really remember, but they

[00:24:07] will always end up with the correct information. That’s training. We’re not

[00:24:12] trying to trick anybody. What we’re doing is educating for success. Then you go another chapter or two, you do

[00:24:19] another type checkpoint. And what you do is you have some new questions from the new information, but one or two

[00:24:25] questions from the previous ones, which are the most important things in this course you want them to remember. By the

[00:24:31] time they get to the written test, guess where it is? They’ve got it memorized in their heads. Not only they know the

[00:24:37] information, they can talk about it. This is educating for success. And these

[00:24:42] are the things we show in our education classes. How do you do this? Or let’s

[00:24:47] stop doing the way the world does it. Let’s get to application level training and let’s educate for success. So these

[00:24:55] are the things we train. If anybody wants one of these courses, we travel all over the country and do these courses.

[00:25:01] Now that brings us to part three. Thank you. Anytime you have a question, feel free to jump in there. Part three.

[00:25:08] Simple. Get our students out of the indoctrination centers called public schools. Wait a minute. If we get all

[00:25:16] our Christian youth out of the public education system, where are they going to go?

[00:25:21] People don’t answer that question. Get them out. Well, that’s fine, but where are they going to go to get their education? We don’t have the

[00:25:27] infrastructure out there to take care of all these youth. So, that brings us to number four.

[00:25:35] Remember, over 85% of our youth are receiving an education that teaches this. This is about 85%. Again, the

[00:25:41] Bible’s mostly myth or a fiction. Is that being combed in our churches? Not really.

[00:25:48] Evolution is a fact. That’s being taught. It’s not thought as a theory. It’s thought as a fact. Abortion is

[00:25:54] healthc care and a woman’s right. That’s what they’re hearing. Climate change is a fact. And if something isn’t done now,

[00:26:01] the world will come to an end. They’re being taught that. It’s totally

[00:26:07] false. Absolutely false. That whole issue we’re taught we’ve got to get less

[00:26:12] carbon footprint. We got to get rid of our CO2 in the atmosphere. How in the world can people buy into that? CO2,

[00:26:20] carbon dioxide is plant food. We need more of that. But yet, they have convinced the world to get rid of it.

[00:26:26] That’s called depopulation. Get rid of the plants, people starve to death. We need more CO2.

[00:26:32] We’re being taught a man become a woman and vice versa. That is scientifically impossible. It’s only feelings. And

[00:26:38] feelings can be really wrong. So, they’re being taught that. They’re trying Marxism is the preferred form of

[00:26:45] government over a constitutional republic. Most of our youth don’t even know what kind of nation we live in. No,

[00:26:51] we don’t live in a democracy. We don’t want a democracy. We have a constitutional republic. So they’re

[00:26:57] they’re saying we need Marxism, communism. Then we’re being taught America is an

[00:27:03] evil nation. They’re degrading our founding fathers and many of the people went before us and changing our whole

[00:27:09] history with the 1619 project. all of those that’s the kind of education they’re receiving. If this is

[00:27:16] not combed in the churches and in the homes in the Christian schools, we will

[00:27:23] continue to lose over 60% of our youth. That’s an epidemic right there.

[00:27:29] What do we do? Yeah. This is absolutely you know what’s interesting that you that you bring that up because you know the Christian school

[00:27:36] I teach at um a lot of the the parents our school has grown since co has grown

[00:27:42] from under a thousand to now um I believe we just passed 1,800

[00:27:47] um because excellent parents are fleeing the public schools but like you’re saying not everybody has

[00:27:53] that opportunity not everybody has the resources to be able to do that and not not everybody even has uh that available

[00:28:01] to them because there are there are not a lot of Christian schools have closed. And so, um, a lot of people don’t even

[00:28:08] have that option even if they wanted to. Um, and of course, you know, a big part of what I’ve been

[00:28:14] doing is advocating homeschooling as well and trying to encourage people in that direction also. Um,

[00:28:20] but, uh, yeah. So, part four here. Let’s check it out. Here’s part four. See, the big biggest

[00:28:25] mission field is not some other country. The biggest mission field is our own backyard called the next generation and

[00:28:31] it’s being ignored. We need to start financing this. So number one, we need

[00:28:37] something called church unity. That is a foreign concept in our churches today.

[00:28:43] They have unity within their little pulpit area there. No, we need churches

[00:28:48] to come together. There’s enough churches in each community that believe the gospel. And

[00:28:54] there’s enough churches where you’re going to find pastors that might have a biblical worldview. We can come

[00:28:59] together. Might differences and other little things, but we need to have the biblical worldview and stand on the

[00:29:04] gospel of Jesus Christ. We can come together. Why? Because what we need to

[00:29:09] do is figure out how are we going to train this next generation. These churches need to come together and they

[00:29:15] need to start funding Christian schools. They need to start funding homeschool co-ops. They need to

[00:29:23] start having a center to train teachers how to educate for success. This is the way it’s going to happen. We need a

[00:29:29] place where all this is going to happen. You said your school has grown, but you got to find teachers. And usually in

[00:29:35] Christian schools, they don’t get paid all the big money in there. So, we need the churches to come together, start

[00:29:42] putting some of their mission money into the Christian schools, and change the homeschool co-ops a little bit. Yes,

[00:29:49] they’re good things, but why don’t we get more professional with these homeschool co-ops and start getting

[00:29:55] trained teachers in there and even paying these teachers a little bit? What a concept to get good teachers in there

[00:30:02] in some of these subject, paying them a little bit. This can be done if the churches decided they wanted to do

[00:30:09] something about it and I hope they will because right now they’re ignoring it.

[00:30:15] Most of the churches are they have to come together because it’s hard for one church to fund a Christian school. It h

[00:30:21] it does a lot, but it’s hard. We need more Christian schools, more homeschool

[00:30:26] co-ops where we can actually fund some of the teachers and start building our own Christian community education

[00:30:32] system. Get our youth out of the public indoctrination centers. That’s a must.

[00:30:38] But we have to have a place for them to go and we need welltrained teachers. And

[00:30:44] that’s the mission of our whole ministry is second Timothy 2:2 to train others

[00:30:49] how to teach also. We can train you on the education skills, the methodologies,

[00:30:56] how to do measurement techniques, all of that, how to educate for success, but we need the teachers who have the

[00:31:01] background in mathematics and geography and English and all those to help with the the subject matter there. We can do

[00:31:09] the teacher training and help with that and even build more teachers who become master teachers who train other

[00:31:15] teachers. That’s an interesting concept called disciplehip.

[00:31:22] Yeah. And that’s that’s uh been something that in a lot of ways has been lacking for a long time.

[00:31:27] And uh I I absolutely 100% that’s something God has put heavy on my heart

[00:31:33] also is uh to to raise up more disciples and to focus more heavily on

[00:31:38] disciplehip. That’s our four-part approach to this. We have step one already going and

[00:31:45] that’s great all over the country, but we got to go to the next step where they can become doers of the word, actually use the information and become strong

[00:31:53] evangelists within their own communities. Other words, we can train our Christian students, high school and

[00:31:58] junior highs, how to witness to their peers. They can do that. They’re allowed to do that.

[00:32:03] Yeah. So, we can do that. So, we need to protect them is what we need to do. We’re not protecting them enough right

[00:32:09] now. That’s why so many are leaving the church. Yeah. So, for those of you listening,

[00:32:15] um, uh, creationtraining.org is a fantastic place to go to, um, to get the

[00:32:20] resources you need to begin to do a better job of disciplehip. Uh my guest today is Mike Riddle. And um so how can

[00:32:28] people get involved with creation training if they’re interested in having somebody um if like yourself come and

[00:32:35] speak to them or they want to take uh up this opportunity? What is the best way for them to do that?

[00:32:40] Okay, they can go to our website creationtraining.org or they can email us at

[00:32:46] info@creationtraining.org. And again we travel all over the

[00:32:53] country. We have several adjunct teachers that work with us. We travel all over the country doing these

[00:32:58] classes. And you know one of the benefits of doing this, we get to see

[00:33:04] the remnant out there that’s doing the right thing. There’s churches all over this country, small churches, medium

[00:33:10] churches that are actually bold and fighting the good fight. So we get to see, we get encouraged by what we’re

[00:33:15] seeing out there. But then again, for every good church you find, there’s eight or nine or 10 churches that do not

[00:33:21] want to touch these subjects. They’re afraid. But God has his

[00:33:26] once a young person is trained or let’s say a teacher is trained or um you know lay people are trained, they go through

[00:33:33] the training. Do you have advice as to is there a next step? Is that okay? It’s

[00:33:39] now time you know is if a kid is um you know been trained

[00:33:45] what do you suggest they do next and they’re like I want to get involved in making a difference. I want to be

[00:33:50] involved in, you know, impacting the world now that I’ve been trained and I feel equipped. Uh, is that just a matter

[00:33:57] of um, you know, in your everyday life, your sports team or your job or whatever, or do you have a

[00:34:03] recommendation for what happens next for these people that want to be involved? Well, the number one thing is we’re

[00:34:08] going to build help build that confidence in these in these youth so they can actually the number one thing they can do is start evangelizing their

[00:34:14] peers. That’s number one right there. And some of them um we think are going

[00:34:20] to be good enough. They One of the things I believe is our youth group in Sunday school should actually be mixed

[00:34:26] in with the adults because they’re are young adults too, aren’t they? They can be in there and they can start making a difference in there too. And

[00:34:33] the teachers when we train adults, they should be in there teaching some of these Sunday school programs. They can

[00:34:39] be in the home school and they we need people in the home school co-ops that

[00:34:45] could grow to be something very big. What it is a co-op is more of an informal

[00:34:50] school, but we can turn it into a little bit more formal by paying some of the teachers and getting well-trained

[00:34:57] teachers in there versus somebody who just has head knowledge and doesn’t know how to present information.

[00:35:03] Those are things different. But for youth, they can uh and their youth groups. There’s a lot of youth groups up

[00:35:09] there. And while they go to the start attending their youth group meetings on Wednesdays, they can make a difference

[00:35:15] with the rest of them. They can show this is how we share the gospel. In other words, they’ll probably be ahead

[00:35:21] of the youth leader in many cases. Yeah. They can start they can start

[00:35:26] sharing information that maybe the youth minister is not aware of regarding, you know, like you said, how dinosaurs fit

[00:35:32] in the Bible. Yes, there’s a lot of really interesting information in that regard or you know the significance of a six day creation

[00:35:38] and why it’s important. Um, a lot of the things that aren’t discussed um generally are like you said a lot of

[00:35:44] youth youth pastors just are not aware of. Yes, there are some good ones out there still. I want to give them credit.

[00:35:50] There’s some good ones out there but most of them haven’t been trained on any of this information. That’s part of the

[00:35:56] fault of the seminaries and Christian universities. But we can get our youth and the biggest thing is those remember

[00:36:01] 85% are going to public schools. What a witness field they have there. Show them

[00:36:06] how to have the subject brought up when they’re not in the classroom but outside and in between classes, lunchtime, how

[00:36:14] to talk to their peers about certain things and show that what they’re learning.

[00:36:19] Go ahead. You you said that um you know as much as is possible we want to get take the kids

[00:36:24] out of um secular education. Yes. Did you um are you saying that once this

[00:36:30] training takes place that you you feel um they they’re equipped to be able to

[00:36:35] have these discussions within the public school classroom or would you say to a parent, hey, you still should probably

[00:36:42] look at trying to find an alternative to the secular classroom? I would say, well, we want to get them

[00:36:47] out regardless because they’re constantly been bombarded with satanic information. You don’t send people

[00:36:53] there. We shouldn’t be sacrificing our youth on that battlefield. get them out regardless of how much they know. But if

[00:36:59] they can’t get them out, let’s make sure they can stand firm. That’s one number one thing because they’re being broken

[00:37:05] down after 10 12 years in school. But we want them to be able to stand firm, know they can trust the Bible because

[00:37:12] remember 85% over 80% have doubts about the Bible. We want to break that down so

[00:37:17] when they hear this information day after day after day, they know it’s not true. And right now,

[00:37:24] many of them don’t. they’re in doubt. So, yeah, because it’s not gonna happen overnight. You get them out of public schools.

[00:37:31] So, from your experience, um what are some of the big doubts that kids are wrestling with? Um you know, at the

[00:37:39] forefront of their mind in the culture today, what is it that um parents and

[00:37:45] teachers, Christian parents and Christian teachers and so forth should be aware of are some of the real big

[00:37:50] issues that are causing young people to stumble in their faith? Uh, a big one that’s been going on for a long time

[00:37:56] that hasn’t been really addressed much is the creation evolution issue. They’re losing their doubt that the Bible is

[00:38:02] really true there. So, not being taught a whole lot there. Maybe God used evolution

[00:38:08] or things like that. Or maybe the whole first chapter, first several chapters of

[00:38:14] Genesis is just fiction. It’s not meant to be taken this way. The gap there, the days there, all this compromise that’s

[00:38:21] in the churches today. So that’s never you think that that’s a would you say that that’s a that’s one of the most

[00:38:27] important places to start with kids is to delve into that issue. I’m sure many parents aren’t prepared to be have those

[00:38:33] discussions. Um they’re they’re not equipped to be able to do that also. But

[00:38:38] but you think that’s where the parents should start digging in and really um understanding for themselves the issues

[00:38:44] and why it’s important and and the key points to discuss with your kids. Right. And here’s one of the things we

[00:38:50] train on. You don’t have to be a scientist to do this. There’s certain foundational questions and areas in

[00:38:56] other words to take control of the conversation such as where did the matter come from to create the universe.

[00:39:02] We show you how to do that one. And we can show Junior Hires how to do that one. You don’t have to be a scientist.

[00:39:07] How did life originate? They have no answer for that. The evolutionist. Where did dinosaurs come from? They have no

[00:39:12] answer for that one either. Those are three big ones. Uh then we show them a couple more. What we do is go after the

[00:39:19] foundational issues in all of evolution. So you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know everything about

[00:39:25] biology because all Darwin evolution is founded upon the assumption that life

[00:39:30] originated by itself. And we know that can’t happen. So that tears apart the

[00:39:36] whole foundation of Darwinian evolution. He’s got all his ideas but nothing to build it on. Where did the dinosaurs

[00:39:42] come from? I’ve been museums all over the world. Where are the transitions? They’re nowhere. They have a few

[00:39:47] pictures drawn in textbooks, but you don’t find transitions. And I had um I had Carl Werner on not too

[00:39:55] long ago. I don’t know if you know his name, but yes. Um what he shared about the fraud in the

[00:40:02] missing links was amazing. um and uh how he was able to travel around and and

[00:40:08] interview these people who who are actually pro- evolutionary theory, but they

[00:40:14] actually disclosed a lot of the fraudulent activity that was going on in

[00:40:19] the promotion of missing links. I was that was uh pretty amazing. Yes. And we show this whole thing that

[00:40:25] they are without a foundation for the biological change they need because they talk about this thing called natural

[00:40:30] selection. I show we do things called critical thinking questions. How to turn the whole situation around but the other

[00:40:38] person on the defense and see if they have answers. And that’s part of the strategy. Something Jesus did quite a

[00:40:43] bit of look in the book of Romans. Paul asked I think it was like 57 questions in the book of Romans Paul asked. So

[00:40:51] that’s the tactic we lose how use how to turn it around and put them on the

[00:40:56] defense. And one of the things we do that with is natural selection. What is it and how does it work? They’re not

[00:41:02] sure, but they always come up, well, the environmental stresses. Well, wait a minute. I didn’t know the environment

[00:41:07] had brains. Rocks and wind have no brains. Is we show it has to be

[00:41:13] pre-builtin information. The information already has to be there.

[00:41:18] In other words, it’s God-given information. It’s not the environment that does anything. We get exposed to

[00:41:23] the environment, but it can’t do anything to us. We just experience it. like a hill when you’re running up the

[00:41:29] hill. The hill doesn’t do anything. You just it’s just there. It has no brains.

[00:41:34] So, we get them. We show that there’s no mechanism because mutations don’t add anything new. All they do is subtract or

[00:41:41] mess things up. So, what we show is no matter what transitional fossil they come up with, it cannot be evolution.

[00:41:49] It has to only be variety within kind because there’s no mechanism for that biological change they need. So it’s

[00:41:55] learning how to go after the foundations and that’s what we train people on how to ask the critical thinking skills

[00:42:01] question has it ever been observed you make any assumptions how do you know it’s true

[00:42:08] and is there any um discussion do you Mike do you also discuss things like different religions and those sorts of

[00:42:14] questions too yes we do we we show you that again you don’t need to know whole lot about the

[00:42:21] other religion we can train people in a week how to be witnesses, especially like Mormonism, things like that. Uh

[00:42:28] there’s there there’s usually two questions I like to ask some the different cults. Number one, do you

[00:42:33] believe the Bible? I know a lot of them say no or some will say to an extent. We just needed to add

[00:42:40] to it. Then the next most important question you’re going to ask, you’re going to do this in a tactical way here.

[00:42:47] In in your religion, can you help me out? How do I get to heaven? How do I

[00:42:52] get salvation? Then if you would, I’d like to tell you what I know about what

[00:42:58] the Bible teaches on that. So what you’re doing is getting to the heart of the issue. Most important thing you can

[00:43:03] do. It’s not beating them up on what they believe, what they don’t believe. It’s getting to the gospel. So you

[00:43:09] listen to what their answer is on how they get salvation. You know what? Every one of them has what? Works based.

[00:43:16] Then you’ve asked permission. They’ve granted it for you to give. Guess what? the gospel message and it starts in

[00:43:24] Genesis 1:1. That’s we’re training people because they don’t a lot of people don’t understand what sin is. So

[00:43:29] we need to be that that fine. God’s creation was perfect. God gave one rule. We Adam need disobeyed. They disobeyed

[00:43:36] God. That’s what we call sin. Now everything is corrupted. Everybody has a sin nature. All have sin.

[00:43:42] And everybody is is guilty of sin now. But you know what God did? He sent and

[00:43:47] we go to right to the heart of the gospel. gave his only begotten son and you know what he said this is a free

[00:43:53] gift through Jesus Christ alone but it’s a they need to hear it’s a free gift because these other cults and things are

[00:44:00] under tremendous pressure to live up to their workspace religion Christianity says no it’s a free gift

[00:44:06] that’s the most important thing they need to hear not about you believe you can become a god or you have to keep

[00:44:12] this rule or that rule they may know more than you about that but if we know

[00:44:17] we can give them the gospel that’s our job as witnesses to give the gospel. It

[00:44:22] doesn’t matter if they don’t accept it then. It took me seven years after hearing it to accept it. I’m called a slow learner there. But it took me seven

[00:44:29] years. Only one person witnessed to me. Only time I heard the gospel was seven years later I got on my knees. Our job

[00:44:36] is to give the good news of the gospel. But we have to know how to give that man for what it is.

[00:44:42] And that’s what we teach in part of evangelism. Amen. Well, uh, Mike, thank you so much for

[00:44:48] everything you’re doing. If you’re listening, uh, my guest is Mike Riddle with Creation Training Initiative, creationing.org.

[00:44:55] If you’re interested in learning more about what he’s doing or inviting Mike and his team, um, to come give a

[00:45:02] training at your church or even at your Christian school or with your teachers or whatever the case, um, it’s a

[00:45:08] wonderful opportunity. You can reach him at info@creationtraining.org as well as the website. And um Mike, I

[00:45:15] just want to thank you so much for uh taking the time to share with us what you’re doing and and uh I just pray that

[00:45:20] God continues to bless your ministry. Thank you, Kevin. God bless you, too. Absolutely. And we will be uh back on

[00:45:28] the air u next week. We’ve got uh more amazing um we’ve got a a professor of

[00:45:36] astronomy coming up talking about all kinds of Christians uh astronomers who

[00:45:42] who believe in God and draw the truth of the word from looking at creation and

[00:45:47] space and these sorts of things. That’s coming up. I also have another guest coming on the show um pretty soon. We’re

[00:45:53] we’re actually going to have a discussion with some youth, some youth that do believe and some youth that do not believe. and we’re going to have a

[00:45:59] discussion on the air answering some of the questions and just uh getting a real

[00:46:05] um you know firsthand experience of hearing how this current generation

[00:46:10] thinks and what they’re wrestling with. So I hope you’ll be able to join us with some of these upcoming shows educateforlife.orglive

[00:46:17] if you want to check that out as well as there’s all kinds of resources on my website as well that you can use for

[00:46:22] your family and to raise up confident Christians. So, thanks for being here with us and I look forward to being with

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