Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner Lloyd and Doris Anderson, owners of the Seven Wonders Museum and Bookstore in Toutle, are shown last month with a scale model of Noah's ark and photos of Mount St. Helens erupting. |
Case for Creation
Friday, August 6, 2004 11:49 PM PDT
By Tom Paulu
Printable version
E-mail this articleTOUTLE -- With his booming voice and waving hands, Lloyd Anderson sounds and looks every bit the preacher.
Though he used to lead a church, these days, Anderson's pulpit is a meeting room in the Seven Wonders Museum and Bookstore, a tidy establishment he runs with his wife, Doris, in this town in the shadow of Mount St. Helens.
The message rings loud and clear: the rapid changes at the volcano during and after the 1980 eruption add to the body of evidence that God created the world about 6,000 years ago.
"If you believe in evolution, there's no place for God," Anderson told museum visitors last week before taking them on a guided tour of volcano sights along Spirit Lake Memorial Highway. "We believe that evolution is the greatest scientific fraud that's ever been created on the face of the Earth."
Though Anderson, 68, is a relative newcomer to the Toutle area, he's been a minister for many years. With a master's degree in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, he pastored churches in Port Angeles, Poulsbo and Lynnwood, Wash., and worked as a bookkeeper for an engineering firm.
Doris worked as a registered nurse and studied journalism.
"Lloyd's entire ministry is based on the fact we take the six days of creation literally and we believe Noah's flood was global," said Doris, 66.
The Bible "is without error in the original writing," Lloyd said.
The Andersons first came to Toutle eight years ago to visit Mount St. Helens. They had already seen a creationist video about the volcano.
"We were thinking about some kind of retirement ministry," Lloyd said. The Andersons sold their house in Seattle and moved to a home on Spirit Lake Memorial Highway. The Seven Wonders Museum and Bookstore started in a small building behind the house, which earlier this year was enlarged with a 960-square-foot room that seats 55.
They stocked shelves with some 170 books on creationism. "To our knowledge, we have more creationism titles than any other location in the Northwest," Lloyd said.
One book is about teen sexual abstinence, and a leaflet explains that dinosaurs first existed 6,000 years ago and survived on Noah's Ark along with other animals.
The Andersons support their museum through book sales and donations.
After moving to volcano country, the two of them have become avid students of Mount St. Helens eruption history and tourist sites.
They blend those with Scripture.
"I went to the Bible and I started looking up all the verses that had to do with the mountain," Lloyd said. In the King James version Isaiah 64:1 says "Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountain might flow down at thy presence, As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil...."
Such verses, Doris said, "described the mechanism of how the mountain erupted."
They also became adherents of Dr. Steven Austin, a geology PhD. from the University of Pennsylvania, who has researched Mount St. Helens. His 2003 book with John Morris, "Footprints in the Ash," is a bible of creationist views of the volcano.
The volcano is also the bedrock of the Andersons' theology.
"Dr. Austin said the eruption of Mount St. Helens was God's gift to creationists in our generation," Doris said.
"We believe God sent us the eruption of Mount St. Helens," as evidence of creationism, Lloyd explained. To soften the catastrophe, God had the mountain erupt on a Sunday, when far fewer people perished than would have on a weekday.
The Andersons' museum takes its name from seven Mount St. Helens land features that changed in a matter of hours or at most a few years. This, creationists say, disproves the theories of archaeologists, geologists, anthropologists, paleontologists and other scientists that the Earth has evolved over millions of years.
For instance, Wonder No. 2 is the two canyons in front of the Mount St. Helens crater, which were formed by mud and pyroclastic flows in a few months in 1980,
"Textbooks say the most spectacular canyon in the world, the Grand Canyon, was formed by stream erosion over a hundred million years," the Andersons write in a handout.
"Now, scientists who specialize in geological erosion believe it was formed rapidly, just like canyons at Mount St. Helens."
"We're saying Noah's flood formed the Grand Canyon and then the Colorado River flowed through it," Doris explained, not the generally held theory that the river carved out the canyon.
Of course, you won't read about creationist theories described at Forest Service visitor centers. "We'd love to see it," Lloyd said.
But volcano visitors can stop by and watch Lloyd's slide show and take a guided tour of volcano sights with him. "I'm willing to do this for 100 or one," he said. "I've spent five hours with one individual." They keep their museum open 70 hours per week.
Many visitors are home-schooled children and church groups who agree with the theology to begin with, Lloyd said, though people who believe in evolution have stopped to debate.
One recent visitor was Rachel Janzen of Happy Valley, a Portland suburb, who came with eight members of her extended family.
A stickler for detail, Lloyd said it was the 397th time he's given his presentation.
Janzen, a registered nurse, first met Lloyd when he spoke at a meeting of the Design Science Association at a Portland church.
"We're so inundated with the evolution mind set, it's good to see the other perspective," Janzen said.
If you go
The Seven Wonders Museum and Bookstore is at 4749 Spirit Lake Memorial Highway, just west of central Toutle.
It's open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. most days. Admission is free.
The bookstore has 170 titles, mostly about creationism, along with videos and DVDs. Some may be checked out.
For information, call 274-5737.
Web site: www.creationism.org/sthelens.
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