A well-known creationist is blasting televangelist Pat Robertson for remarks he made this week on his television broadcast, in which Robertson explicitly denied that the Bible supports a young earth.

“We don’t need enemies from without the church when we have such destructive teaching within the church,” states Ken Ham, founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, which operates a creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

Earlier this week, on Robertson’s The 700 Club, a question from a viewer was fielded to the televangelist, in which a woman named Michelle expressed concern that her husband and teenage sons were doubting the authority of the Bible.

“They tell me if the Bible is truth, then I should be able to reasonably explain the existence of dinosaurs. This is just one of many things they question,” she wrote. “How do I explain things to them that the Bible doesn’t cover? I am so afraid that they are walking away from God.”

Robertson’s reply was immediately picked up by outlets worldwide as a declaration that even Robertson doesn’t believe in a young earth.

“Look, I know people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop [James] Ussher—God bless him—wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said it all took 6,000 years. It just didn’t,” he stated.

“And you go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating, you’ve got all these things, and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas,” Robertson continued. “And so there was a time that these giant reptiles were on the earth, and it was before the time of the Bible.”

“So don’t try to cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible. That’s Bishop Ussher,” he exclaimed. “And so if you fight revealed science you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was.”

Ham and his ministry released statements following the broadcast, both on Facebook and the Answers in Genesis website.

“Not only do we have to work hard to not let our kids be led astray by the anti-God teaching of the secularists, we have to work hard to not let them be led astray by compromising church leaders like Pat Robertson,” Ham wrote. “Pat Robertson gives more fodder to our enemies.”

“Mr. Robertson is saying that we should hold the ideas and opinions of man above the very word of God itself,” concurred Dr. Tommy Mitchell in an article entitled Pat Robertson’s Word or God’s Word: Which Will You Believe?, which was posted yesterday on the Answers in Genesis website. “It is precisely this type of compromise within the church that has caused such an erosion of people’s faith in the word of God and a mass exodus of young people from the church.”

Ham noted that secularists are joyful about Robertson’s statement. He shared a comment from an atheist, who said, “I’m rooting for Pat. Pat has also admitted that sex is a force to be reckoned with. Not that I’m endorsing Pat’s position, but at least he seems able to glimpse the real world past his Bible-colored glasses. If he lives to be a hundred and twenty, I’ll put even money on his becoming an atheist.”

“Note the secularist can see that Pat Robertson is not believing the Bible on this issue,” Ham wrote. “I still shake my head at the number of church leaders who want to appease the secularists and accept their anti-God religion of millions of years and even molecules to man evolution.”

Mitchell explained that the Bible does indeed support a young earth and that the dinosaur fossil record is consistent with the Biblical timeline.

“We know that creation week lasted six ordinary days because the Bible says so,” Mitchell said. “A study of the use of the Hebrew word ‘yom’ in Genesis 1 clearly indicates that God told us He created [the universe] in six ordinary, twenty-four-hour days. So how do you put millions of years into the text where it plainly does not fit?”

“There was no ‘before the time of the Bible,’ as Robertson claims,” he continued. “Dinosaurs are land animals and were created on the sixth day of creation week along with all the other land animals and man. They lived and reproduced for hundreds of years before the flood. Then God led at least two of each kind of land animal to Noah. … After the flood, the waters receded, and the dinosaurs and the other animals got off the ark and lived on earth with man. Evidently, the dinosaurs eventually went extinct like so many other creatures have over the centuries.”

The men state that they find it sad that so many visible Christian speakers are compromising their faith in society.

“Such leaders – including Pat Robertson – have a lot to answer to the Lord for one day,” Ham lamented. “Such leaders are guilty of putting stumbling blocks in the way of kids and adults in regards to believing God’s word and the Gospel.”

Robertson is no stranger to controversy, however, as for years many have questioned both his associations with disreputable Republican candidates and his statements on a variety of societal and spiritual topics. In 2011, the televangelist came under fire for advising a man to divorce his debilitated wife, who was suffering with Alzheimer’s Disease.

“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and someone looking after her,” Robertson said. “I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship [because] you’re lonely.”

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