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Dr. Terry Mortensen

Terry grew up in a church-going family in Minnesota, USA, but didn’t come to know Christ as his Lord and Savior until the end of his first year in college. He received a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Divinity degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, and a PhD in history of geology from Coventry University in England. After graduation from the university in 1975, he served for 26 years as a missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ, mostly in Eastern Europe (both before and after the fall of communism). He has been lecturing on creation and evolution since 1978. In 2001, Dr. Mortenson became a speaker, writer, and researcher for Answers in Genesis. He has spoken on creation and evolution in schools, churches, universities (both secular and Christian), and seminaries in 38 countries and has also participated in seven formal debates with evolutionary PhD scientists in four countries (Canada, Albania, Bulgaria, and America). He is the author of numerous popular-level and technical articles on the historical, theological/biblical, and scientific aspects of the origins controversy. A shortened version of his PhD thesis is The Great Turning Point: The Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geology—Before Darwin (2004), which explains how the idea of millions of years took control of geology in the early 19th century and how and why most Christians so quickly accepted that idea and tried to fit millions of years into Genesis 1. He also co-edited and contributed to the 14-author, scholarly collection of essays called Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth (2008), which defends the literal truth of Genesis 1–11 biblically and historically. That book has been translated into Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish. He also edited and contributed to the scholarly, 16-author book Searching for Adam: Genesis and the Truth about Man’s Origin (2016), which biblically, theologically, historically and scientifically defends the literal truth of Genesis about human origins. He has been an active member of the Evangelical Theological Society for over 25 years and for 12 years (2008-2019) was the co-chair for the steering committee of the Creation Study Group at the annual meeting of the ETS. From 2008 to 2023 along with two PhD geologists and an Old Testament scholar, he helped organize and lead an annual 8-day raft trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon for over 350 invited seminary and Christian university professors, apologists, key pastors, and other Christian leaders from 29 countries. These by-invitation-only trips included young-earth creationists, old-earth creationists, and men who were undecided about the age of the earth. The men were exposed to biblical, historical, and geological evidence that confirms the literal history in Genesis 1–11, especially regarding Noah’s Flood and the age of the earth. He and his wife, Margie, have been married since 1976 and have 8 grown children and 24 grandchildren (two are already in heaven). He and Margie live in northern Kentucky close to AiG’s world famous Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.