“What we’re saying is not going to be antagonistic to your friends,” Ham said. “It will be challenging but not antagonistic. The most made comment after coming out is ‘I’m going home to bring my non-Christian friends.’ ”

Interestingly, sharing the gospel message has met with little resistance from secular critics.

“At one period, I was doing 80 interviews in 10 days, and some in the secular press asked me, ‘In a nutshell, what is this place all about?’ I told them we’re teaching people that Bible history is true, therefore Christianity based on that history is true, and what we’re about is seeing people saved and won to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the secular press said, ‘That is refreshing, because a lot of times in America people are doing things and hiding it in a way.’ ”

Nothing is hidden at the Creation Museum, including stern warnings to the church that treating the Bible as “soft” history is like pouring water onto a slippery slope.

“You can love the Lord, be an on-fire Christian and I will not question your Christianity and whether you’re going to heaven,” Ham said. “But what have you done to the next generation when you’ve told them they don’t have to believe this book? When you compromise in one generation, you notice it more in the next, and that door gets opened further and further.”

He points to England as a country that dismissed a literal interpretation of the Bible ... “and England is destroyed from a Christian perspective.”

Whatever they’re teaching, crowds are showing up to hear it and see it. Initial hopes were that the museum would attract 250,000 visitors a year, but that estimate would seem to be way low considering attendance is more than halfway there in less than three months, creating something of a nice problem.

“Our operating costs are now higher than we expected, because so many people are coming,” Looy said, adding that part of the popularity is that while the museum does not beat people over the head with its beliefs, neither does it shrink from its core message.

“We present some of the evolutionary arguments, but then we refute them,” he said. “We’ve had skeptics come through and try to engage us in conversation. Some are mocking, but on the whole they’re respectful.”

Looy put the museum’s message in its proper perspective.

“We don’t want people to leave here and just say, ‘I’ve given up evolution and now I’m a creationist.’ In terms of eternity what does that accomplish? Nothing. We want them to accept the fact that Christ is our creator and he’s our savior. So we want them to leave here without excuse.”