To understand how the world will end, you must first understand it's beginning, says Del Tackett.
Christians often throw around biblical books like Daniel, Revelation and Ezekiel as holding the secrets to the end times, but Tackett says it is Genesis that can truly open up a believer's eyes. In Is Genesis History, re-releasing in theaters for one night on Feb. 22, host Tackett, the former president of the Focus on the Family Institute, explores the details of the foundations of the earth and how Satan has twisted truth to deceive generations.
"[Peter tells us] there will come a time where there will be scoffers, where the promise of His coming escapes their notice," Tackett says. "But this takes us back to creation and the created world. [God] formed the world and destroyed the world, and people willfully unnoticed this. The Greek word here implies they were capable of noticing but it willfully escaped their notice. And God will one day again destroy it all with fire, which lays out a very high view of the metanarrative of God, creation, the fall of man, the judgment and flood, and the way to restore all things. He will destroy all things and then restore all things, and when we lose that understanding, we find ourselves in a position of scoffing historically at what God said He did."
When Is Genesis History? first released last year, theaters sold out showings across the country, and Fathom events ranked it as the No. 1 inspirational film for 2017. For 2018, Fathom decided to re-release the documentary and increase the 750 theaters showing it to 850.
The film returns to the big screen at a time when even Christian circles are turning away from biblical accounts of creation and embracing a theistic evolution.
"As a culture, society and people begin to openly declare that there is no God, then we have to by necessity reject the record of God's account, we have to reject the notion He has spoken to us, and in that kind of context, man is then left to determine his own right and wrong, and what always ends up happening is might makes right," Tackett says.
Understanding Genesis is critical to understanding how the world should work in both basic morals and overarching societal guidance.
"This has been seen in nation-states in the past that [might makes right] will always lead to oppression, lead to atrocities, eventually lead to destruction of that culture. When a people turn away from God, people will weep eventually, and that extends to our understanding of social order," Tackett says. "When that happens we have no basis, have no divine understanding of God's design for the state, of God's design for marriage, family, business, and how it's supposed to be carried out, no design for community. What happens, then, to male and female? We are racing rapidly towards a total cluelessness when it comes to the notion of male and female."
Tackett's personal history influences his role as film host. He created Focus on the Family's The Truth Project, a nationwide project to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Christ. He served more than 20 years in the U.S. Air Force and was appointed by President George H.W. Bush as the director of technical planning for the National Security Council.
His secular accreditation provide proof to unbelievers that the film's claims are accurate. The sought-after speaker stands on truth when he argues the first book of the Bible gives the answers to questions humans have asked for millennia and can be verified through science.
"If you look at the history of the people who have taken the accounts in the Bible and at some point made the declaration that it was historically inaccurate," Tackett says. "In many cases, all of these accusations were found to be faulty. For a long time, for example, there was the position that there was never a King David, nor were there Jews in Egypt, nor did they migrate from Egypt into modern the Palestinian era. Archaeological evidence later uncovered that the Bible got this correct. Want to look at historical record associated with Jesus, His miracles, death, resurrection? The historical account was attacked, held to be a nonvalid/mystical analogy. There has been a tendency for people to try to take the historical record and turn it into something else, either inaccurate history or genre analogy or myth or poetry. The history of those attempts has in almost all cases that I know of—especially archaeological—the Bible gets history correct, and it gets history right on origins, as well.
"The most important things to understand is who we are," Tackett says. "It's very easy to get caught up in scientific paradigm that attempts to tell us about our origins, that our origins are through a mindless random process of evolution that has produced us by chance. This creates a fundamental platform for who we are as human beings, telling us we're no different than any other element in the universe around us. A dog is a pig is a rat is a boy. There is nothing about the human race that has meaning or purpose beyond existing. It drives humanity toward a narcissistic kind of life where we basically are after pleasure, comfort, 'all about me.' It's a very self-centered thing. ... That critical understanding of who we are, the Genesis account tells us we are a special creation by God. In the context of our existence on earth, it provides an understanding of right, wrong, good evil, hope in midst of fallen world. These are extremely critical aspects of understanding our origins, or we fall."
Is Genesis History? will be in 850 theaters nationwide on Thursday, Feb. 22. Click here for more information.
Jessilyn Justice @jessilynjustice is the director of online news for Charisma.
