Numerous surveys suggest that the millennial generation is quite willing to reject the Bible and Christian faith. In the past, it was seen as a roadmap for life. Now, if it is considered at all, is often seen as merely a book of suggestions. Ken Ham’s latest book. Ready to Return, documents this secular trend and provides recommendations on how to reverse this trend.

The book is the third book in a trilogy. The first book, Already Gone, showed how many young people have already checked out from Christianity while still in middle school. The second book, Already Compromised, documented how many Christian schools have compromised on the Christian faith. This book focuses on those young people who have views at odds with biblical truth.

They found that 30 percent of church-attending millennials believe that there are other books (such as the Qur’an) that are inspired by God. Two-thirds (65%) believe that you will go to heaven if you are a good person. And a third (35%) of them believe that Bible contains errors.

When Ken Ham was on my radio program, we also discussed how these incorrect views about the Bible and salvation also translated into false views about various social issues. For example, half (50%) of all millennials would never speak out against same sex marriage. Nearly a third (30%) believe that abortion should remain legal in most instances.

It should be obvious from these percentages that parents and churches have not done enough to train Christian young people for the secular world. Half (50%) of the church-attending millennials who were surveyed said they were not taught to defend their faith in Sunday school. We need to equip young people. They need to know what the Bible teaches, and they need to know how to defend what the Bible teaches to a secular world that is either hostile or indifferent to biblical truth.

Ken Ham’s new book is a reminder that we need to equip the next generation so that they know what they believe and why they believe it.

When a cold-case detective decides to use his analytical skills to evaluate the Bible or the evidence for God, it can be a fascinating journey. In his previous book, Cold Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace applied time-tested investigative tools and techniques to evaluate the claims of the gospels. This time his book, God’s Crime Scene, applies those same techniques to examine the universe as a crime scene.

He invites the reader to sit on a jury as he makes a compelling case for God’s existence. He sifts through the clues and develops a profile of the suspect. That would be an uncaused, intelligent designer who is all-powerful, non-spatial and non-material. Eight chapters investigate various clues while building a profile.

Some of the important questions raised and answered are: Did the universe have a beginning? Is the universe really fine-tuned for life? What about the origin of life? What about consciousness and free will? And how can we explain the existence of God if evil is in the world?

Key to his investigation is the question of whether we have enough evidence inside the room or whether we need to go outside the room. If a person is found dead in a room, can we explain it inside the room? There is a suicide note. The gun belonged to the victim. There was no forced entry. But you must look outside the room if there are muddy footprints, foreign fingerprints, and DNA that does not belong to the victim.

When we investigate the universe, can we explain it “inside the room” or do we need to go “outside the room” to find a cause of the universe? Can we explain what looks like design “inside the room” or do we need a designer? J. Warner Wallace does an outstanding job addressing these sorts of questions.

Do we have evidence for a divinely created universe? This detective makes a compelling case.

How bad is the economy? Many people believe it is still in bad shape. Others don’t see any problem. They will point to a low unemployment rate, record corporate profits, and a booming stock market.

The difference in perspective is explained in a recent column on “Why This Feels Like a Depression for Most People.” It begins with this simple observation. “Everyone has seen the pictures of the unemployed waiting in soup lines during the Great Depression. When you try to tell a propaganda believing, willfully ignorant, mainstream media watching, math challenged consumer we are in the midst of a Greater Depression, they act as if you’ve lost your mind.”

During the Great Depression, there were as many as 12 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, they are essentially invisible. “There are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen.” The 46 million on food stamps are hidden from our view.

Let’s look at it another way. There are 251 million Americans of working age and only 149 million are employed. That means that only 59 percent of Americans of working-age actually work. That is a much lower percentage than it was during the Great Depression.

The author concludes that for “the average American family, the US economy has been in recession since 2000, with the Greater Depression arriving in 2008.” Although the working age population has grown by 40 million since 2000, only 12 million jobs were added during that time. Most of those new jobs are in the government-controlled health, education, social services sectors. Millions of good paying manufacturing jobs disappeared during that same time period. That’s why this feels like a depression to so many people.

The fastest growing religious group of our time is the group of young people who check “none” or “none of the above” on religious survey questions. Social scientists therefore refer to them as “the nones.” A few years ago, I did some commentaries about the “nones” but wanted to revisit this topic because we now have more survey statistics that illustrate their growth.

From the 1930s to the 1990s, the percentage of “nones” in America was less than 8 percent. By 2012, the percentage had grown to 20 percent and is still increasing. Even more dramatic has been the increase in the percentage of “nones” among the millennial generation, especially the group called emerging adults (18-29 year olds).

The Pew Religious Landscape survey estimated that about 35 percent of these emerging adults could be identified as “nones.” When you add in everyone who does not identify as either Protestant or Catholic (in other words, adding in Islam and Hinduism) the percentage of emerging adults who do not identify as Christian increased to 43 percent of the population. If this growth continues, we will see over half of American emerging adults will not identify as Christians by 2020.

Some commentators have suggested that perhaps some of the “nones” are actually Christians who simply don’t want to identify with a particular religious tradition. If you look at the surveys, it is difficult to justify that suggestion. If you separate out the “nones” and see if they hold orthodox beliefs (believe in God, believe the Bible is the inspired word of God) and also attend church at least once a month, you find that only 1 out of a hundred emerging adults could be identified as a practicing Christian.

The challenge we face today is how to reach a generation that is quickly becoming post-Christian. These young people embrace a secular view not so much because they are rejecting religion but because they rarely if ever think about religion and Christianity.

According to Jonah Goldberg, our political culture seems to be obsessed with narrative building. This is an effort by the speaker to connect the dots between a selective number of facts and statistics to prove a point.

Trial lawyers understand how important this is. Our minds look for patterns but are often blocked from seeing them because there might be contradictory facts and data. Shape the narrative into a compelling story, and the jury will arrange the facts in the way the lawyer intends for them to see it.

Politicians also understand the importance of shaping a narrative. President Obama uses this technique when he reassures Americans that they’re more likely to die in a bathtub accident than in a terror attack. He’s right, but the narrative misses the point.

Jonah Goldberg reminds us that bathtubs aren’t trying to get nuclear weapons. Bathtubs are not in the process of destabilizing the Middle East or attempting to conquer the world.

So why does President Obama build this narrative? “He wants the story of terrorism to lose its potency and recede from our politics.” That probably explains why Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that the media shouldn’t cover terrorist acts so much. It probably explains why the media and many politicians want to say any terrorist act is the work of an isolated lone wolf.

Jonah Goldberg also reminds us that certain narratives are not allowed. For example, imagine if some politician said that young black men were more likely to die in domestic accidents than at the hands of police? It is a true statement, but many people would be angry anyway. Liberals would attack that politician for minimizing the issue.

The point of all of this is to be a wise consumer of news and information, especially in this world of spinning a narrative. Reality is more complicated, and contrary information should not be eliminated merely to build a narrative.

Homosexual activists have been encouraging television producers to promote the LGBT agenda for decades. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that we will now see a transgender child on a TV sitcom.

When the television program “Modern Family” debuted seven years ago, it was obvious that the purpose was to push the LGBT agenda and gain wider acceptance of homosexuality. Now they have introduced a transgender child actor who is only 8 years old.

I do not watch this TV program so I am dependent on others (like Brent Bozell) who monitor such programs. In the first episode, the transgender boy (previously a girl) is only on the screen for a moment. But the plan is to challenge the other homosexual characters to see if they are tolerant enough. Apparently their adopted daughter calls this new playmate a “weirdo.” They even ask how they would react if their adopted daughter decided to become a transgender boy.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see where the future plotlines of “Modern Family” will go now that there is a transgender actor in the mix. Homosexual activists have tried to convince America that the gay rights struggle today is just the next step in the civil rights struggle won in the 1960s and 1970s. This TV program plans to move the struggle one step further. The transgender struggle is merely the next step in the gay rights struggle. Anyone who does not accept and affirm each of these struggles is a bigot.

Transgender stories are in the news on a regular basis. Every week or so we are confronted with a story of parents who decided to follow the lead of their child who wanted to transition from being a boy to a girl or transition from being a girl to a boy. Programs like “Modern Family” will give confirmation and encouragement to such decisions being made by children in preschool or grade school. This is what happens when transgender comes to television.

It is puzzling to hear people say that Christians are intolerant when often it is the people making those statements who demonstrate their intolerance. A case in point would be a recent free speech symposium at the University of Missouri. Sally Kohn, a highly visible liberal commentator and LGBT activist, argued that free speech advocates were afraid of multiculturalism and trying to stifle diversity.

“If they feel like they can no longer speak against positive social change, good,” she said. “They think [diversity] is dumbing down humanity, or the greatness and exceptionalism of America. I’m happy that’s under assault.” I might add that her views are typical of what you find on campus today.

Dr. Everett Piper is the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. In a recent column he pointed to these comments as an illustration of what many leaders of the progressive left believe and would like to implement not only on campus but also in society as a whole. He explains that: “They will squash dissent from any who risk pointing out their contradictions. They will sequester and even sentence any who dare ask why their emperor is wearing no clothes.” He adds: “This is not intellectual freedom, but rather ideological fascism.”

Nothing, he argues, is what it seems. “The call for inclusion is driven by exclusion. Their criticism of hate is fueled by their own hate . . . They revel in bigotry as they condemn the bigot.”

This unfortunately is the upside-down world on the university campus that is now also becoming the upside-down culture in which we live. Liberals use intolerant language to call conservatives intolerant. Secularists claim that Christians are intolerant while ignoring their own intolerance. It’s time for us to point out the inconsistency.

Civilizations that abandon God as a foundation of their society will ultimately fall into decay and decadence. They must root their rights and liberty on the bedrock of faith in God or else anarchy and nihilism are the result. Those are the powerful conclusions of the new documentary film, Torchbearer.

In it, Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson stands like an Old Testament prophet and challenges the modern, post-Christian worldview prevalent in our secular culture. He takes us through history and to important places in the world to make the case that all civilizations are bound to decay and fall. He argues that: “a civilization’s best chance of survival is to anchor itself in the God of creation.”

“From the guillotine to the gas chamber to the gulag, the story is the same” he reminds us. “When you take out God as the anchor of your civilization you open the door to tyranny. Instead of human rights you have the will to power of the ruler who makes himself the sole determinant of what is true and just.”

When he was on my radio program, he told me of what happened when he stood on Mars Hill where the Apostle Paul gave the speech in Acts 17 that introduced Christianity to the Greeks. With the camera rolling, he gave the speech he memorized to the people gathered around the filming. When he finished, some of the people from around the world who were watching began crying because of the impact of the message he repeated from Paul’s sermon to the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in the first century.

The documentary was not only filmed in Athens, but in Rome, Paris, Auschwitz, Omaha Beach, and Martin Luther King’s jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Each site gives him an opportunity to provide a lesson from history and make the case for why America must once again take its place as a “Torchbearer” in this dark world.