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Why Won't They Listen? A Radical New Approach to Evangelism

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In his book, "Why won't they listen," Ken Ham offers a "radical" new approach to evangelism in today's world. His primary objective is to convince his readers that simply telling people about Jesus is not enough. He emphasizes the fact that today's culture does not have the foundational belief in the Bible like our nation once had. He compares today's culture with the Greeks in Acts 17. Thus, our nation was once like the Jews in Acts 2 who once had a fundamental understanding of the Word of God. As a result, Mr. Ham attempts to persuade us to bring the nation "back to Genesis" so that we can present the Gospel message.

Although "Why won't they listen" is a great book, I don't think that Mr. Ham really needed to write it. I say this because his other book, "The Lie: Evolution" basically has the same message. In fact, I would highly recommend "The Lie: Evolution" over "Why don't they listen." The only difference between the two is that "Why won't they listen" focuses more on evangelism, while "The Lie: Evolution" is more about how evolution has affected our culture.

I am saddened by reviewers who criticise authors like Mr. Ham. They feel that creationists are misleading, or turning people away from the Gospel, simply because Mr. Ham's view contradicts what a lot of scientists believe. Critics usually say, "Go read a science textbook to find out the truth on origins," or go talk to a "real" scientist when dealing with science(Rather than reading what God's word says). Its as these critics are telling us that we should conform to the ideas of man before we go to the Bible. Or in other words, Man, not God's word, has the first say in regards to how we should view the world. When critics allege, "The Bible is not a Science Textbook!" what they are really telling us that the Bible's history and science in Genesis can't be trusted. And thank goodness that the Bible is not a science textbook, because science textbooks change every year. I thank God for ministries like Answers in Genesis(whom Mr. Ham is affiliated with), who consistently emphasize that we should build all of our thinking on the word of God, rather than the fallible ideas of man. So, who are you going to believe, evolutionists, who say that Man evolved from ape-like creatures over millions of years, or Jesus, the creator(Col. 1:15-17)who says that Adam and Eve were created "In the Beginning."(Matt. 19:4), not billions of years after the beginning!

In his book, "Why won't they listen," Ken Ham offers a "radical" new approach to evangelism in today's world. His primary objective is to convince his readers that simply telling people about Jesus is not enough. He emphasizes the fact that today's culture does not have the foundational belief in the Bible like our nation once had. He compares today's culture with the Greeks in Acts 17. Thus, our nation was once like the Jews in Acts 2 who once had a fundamental understanding of the Word of God. As a result, Mr. Ham attempts to persuade us to bring the nation "back to Genesis" so that we can present the Gospel message.

Although "Why won't they listen" is a great book, I don't think that Mr. Ham really needed to write it. I say this because his other book, "The Lie: Evolution" basically has the same message. In fact, I would highly recommend "The Lie: Evolution" over "Why don't they listen." The only difference between the two is that "Why won't they listen" focuses more on evangelism, while "The Lie: Evolution" is more about how evolution has affected our culture.

I am saddened by reviewers who criticise authors like Mr. Ham. They feel that creationists are misleading, or turning people away from the Gospel, simply because Mr. Ham's view contradicts what a lot of scientists believe. Critics usually say, "Go read a science textbook to find out the truth on origins," or go talk to a "real" scientist when dealing with science(Rather than reading what God's word says). Its as these critics are telling us that we should conform to the ideas of man before we go to the Bible. Or in other words, Man, not God's word, has the first say in regards to how we should view the world. When critics allege, "The Bible is not a Science Textbook!" what they are really telling us that the Bible's history and science in Genesis can't be trusted. And thank goodness that the Bible is not a science textbook, because science textbooks change every year. I thank God for ministries like Answers in Genesis(whom Mr. Ham is affiliated with), who consistently emphasize that we should build all of our thinking on the word of God, rather than the fallible ideas of man. So, who are you going to believe, evolutionists, who say that Man evolved from ape-like creatures over millions of years, or Jesus, the creator(Col. 1:15-17)who says that Adam and Eve were created "In the Beginning."(Matt. 19:4), not billions of years after the beginning!

In this book, Ken Ham looks at the problem of why the Christian church in Western countries seems to be having a decreasing impact on the culture and fewer converts. His answer: the culture around us doesn't have the same set of Christian assumptions that they formerly held. Without the foundational concepts of sin, the fall, and others, they will not see the need for the Gospel. He discusses I Corinthians 1:23 to illustrate the differences in the previous culture and the current one in places such as Australia, England, and the United States.

Being a leader in the Answers in Genesis ministry, his focus is primarily on the shift in cultural thinking on origins from God creating the world in 6 literal days to evolution over millions of years. This book it not a direct attack on evolution as are other books of his (and the Answers in Genesis ministry), but rather showing the implications of the cultural shift when a society accepts evolutionary belief over literal 6-day creation and how this impacts evangelistic efforts. Ham states that for most non-Christians he meets, evolution has undermined their faith in Genesis, and consequently the entire Bible. He then talks about different categories of people based on their thinking and what methods would be effective in evangelizing them. Throughout, he presents testimonies of those affected by the type of evangelism he is advocating.

In this book I found clear explanations, good arguments, practical application, and a focus on the theme without lots of side-trails. Thus, I readily give this book five stars.

This is a book directed to Christians, and I recommend it to all of us as it has implications for how we think, evangelize, and worship. This book could be used as a basis for a small group study with a little effort by the leader.

This book essentially deals with the fundamental differences between the two main religions that compete for the hearts and minds of the west - humanism and Christianity.

It takes an interesting view of the influence of humanism and in particular the evolutionary mindset it has spawned and its side affects on society.

I highly recommend this book to any Christian. In particular those who have had to deal with questions while witnessing centred around Genesis and Evolution.

Not a science book (so no Evolution vs. Creationism pros and cons list) but more a theological work looking at the problems with the modern, western, Christian Church.

Anyone opening a book by Ken Ham must be prepared themselves to begin thinking. "Why Won't They Listen?" provides yet another marvelous study challenging the stupidity gagging the world of academia.

In this excellent expansion of earlier works devoted to expounding the infallible, inerrant, divinely inspired account of God's creation in Genesis, Ham exposes the world's growing acceptance of lies as science, and then follows up with scientific reality revealing the ignorance to which the world clings.

Lacking any empirical support for their religiously-based academics, evolutionists may be observed continuing down the path on the broad way leading to the destruction "...of those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved." {I Thessalonians 2:10, The New King James.}

Delving into various disciplines such as biology, history, archaeology and more, Ham demonstrates the foolishness of men that has confounded the wise in Christendom as to "Why They Won't Listen."

Excellent prospects are unfolded by the author of future efforts to publicize all things discovered that some might be saved.

One of many delightful tidbits chronicled is the evolutionary paleontologist's recent discovery of dinosaur bones in Montana which contain blood cells. This evidence neatly destroys the possibility of millions of years of evolution while pointing clearly to a young earth of a few thousand. And of course noted are the Indian cave paintings described by evolutionists of the brontosaurus. Problematically, the Indian artwork is only hundreds of years old.

Australia's 'Honest Abe' has set himself on the noble course to return Holy Writ to it's original place of honor as the Divine Authority, the very Word of God.

His ministry also offers a treasure trove of books, dvd's, tapes and other source materials, available through his web site. The entertaining Mr. Ham also supplies personal appearances where he ably displays many of the aspects of his decades of work to lighten this dark planet.

Those burned by other creation ministries that offer overpriced snippets of creation perspectives will be 'wowed' at Ham's jam-packed, runaway freight train delivery, forever captured on DVD to prove the Australian is unquestionably one of the fastest minds in the human race. That performance can be found in, "Genesis The Key To Reclaiming the Culture."

All of this because Mr. Ham recognizes the Divine Authority of God's Word.

TL Farley,
bibleraptureprophecy.com
author,

When Now Becomes Too Late {If you believe Genesis and the Resurrection -- The imminence of the Rapture -- Jesus elopes with His Bride.} Available in print, ebook, and on Kindle.

"Why Won't They Listen? - A Radical New Approach to Evangelism" (originally titled "Creation Evangelism") allows Ken Ham - the Pied Piper of preposterous presuppositionalism, amateur-hour apologetics, and dementia-driven dogma - to reach for the umpteenth time into his fully fallacious fundamentalist bag o' fables and formulaic faith-based folly. His reprehensible evangelical ejacula enshrine an impoverished worldview that sacralizes stupidity, celebrates a communion of credulousness, and places the creation of the universe some 2,500 years after the Sumerians and Babylonians learned to brew beer.

Gerrymandered genealogies, crackpot cosmologies, and dinosaurian deceit only highlight the absurdities in Genesis that bibliolatrous sycophants (such as Ham) routinely embrace even as they claim infallibility and inerrancy - qualities they denounce and deride in Popes - based on nothing more than the supposed possession of a magic booth that is a magic book because it claims to be a magic book. As Sam Harris notes:

"We live in an age in which most people believe that mere words - Jesus, Allah, Ram - can mean the difference between eternal torment and bliss everlasting. Considering the stakes here, it is not surprising that many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons. How can any person presume to know that this is the way the universe works? Because it says so in our holy books. How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because the books themselves say so. Epistemological black holes of this sort are fast draining the light from our world."

Among the dim-bulb deceptions in "Why Won't They Listen?" is the claim that red blood cells were found in a late Cretaceous T. rex (in Orwellian Ham-speak a 'missionary lizard') fossil some 70 million years old. Ham immediately declares victory over the non-existent yet necessary - for fund raising purposes anyway - evil secular humanist and Darwinist conspiracy and declares his cretinous creationist timeline of 6,500 years triumphant.

Next time, Ken, read the primary literature - Schweitzer, Mary H., Mark Marshall, Keith Carron, D. Scott Bohle, Scott C. Busse, Ernst V. Arnold, Darlene Barnard, J. R. Horner, and Jean R. Starkey, 1997a. Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 94: 6291-6296 - before putting pen to paper. All the data supported the conclusion that the T. rex fossil in question contained fragments of hemoglobin molecules. "The most likely source of these proteins is the once-living cells of the dinosaur." No red blood cells, only protein fragments.

Here is the abstract on the PNAS paper authored by Schweitzer et al:

"Six independent lines of evidence point to the existence of heme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products in extracts of trabecular tissues of the large theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. These include signatures from nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance that indicate the presence of a paramagnetic compound consistent with heme. In addition, UV/visible spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography data are consistent with the Soret absorbance characteristic of this molecule. Resonance Raman profiles are also consistent with a modified heme structure. Finally when dinosaurian tissues were extracted for protein fragments and were used to immunize rats, the resulting antisera reacted positively with purified avian and mammalian hemoglobins. The most parsimonious explanation of this evidence is the presence of blood-derived hemoglobin compounds preserved in the dinosaurian tissues."

The lead author of the PNAS paper, Mary Schweitzer, per an interview in Discovery magazine, happens to be an evangelical Christian who notes that "If God is who He says He is, He doesn't need us to twist and contort scientific data. The thing that's most important to God is our faith. Therefore he's not going to allow Himself to be proven by scientific methodologies."

Creationists routinely accuse Schweitzer of collaboration, conspiracy, or worse: "It rips my guts out," she says. "These people are claiming to represent the Christ that I love. They're not doing a very good job. It's no wonder that a lot of my colleagues are atheists." She told one zealot, "You know, if the only picture of Christ I had was your attitude towards me, I'd run."

Molecular paleontology - an exciting new branch of science - has been opened up by Schweitzer's insights and research; proof that workers of any religious tradition, or none at all, can be good scientists since science is based on methodological naturalism - not the medieval demon-haunted supernatural religious conceits Ham learned on his daddy's lap.

Creationist-on-crack cultists like Ken Ham are the sworn enemies of reason and tolerance. They simply assert that evolution - and most of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, archaeology, and paleontology (among other scientific disciplines) are false. They implicitly advocate returning to a blood-soaked and savage morality where disobedient children are guilty of a capital crime, slavery enjoys a biblical warrant, sex between consenting adults results in public stoning, and genocide is ethically acceptable if their pathological deity ordains it - fully justifying Stephen Weinberg's comment that "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."

The comic book catechism (complete with cartoonish illustrations) of "creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross and consummation" pimped by Ham in "Why Won't They Listen?" is a holy wholly whole cloth creation of magical thinking that puts any Harry Potter book to shame. The corruption of history, science, reason and ethics necessary to sustain this catastrophe of harlequin hermeneutics breeds endless confusion and cynically crosses Christ with a reconstructionist (well to the right of fascism) worldview and political agenda. It consummates a cataclysm fuelled by religious fanaticism and intolerance - apologetics in the service of apocalypse.

On September 24, 2007 the Barna Group, an evangelical polling organization, released a study that found "among 16 - 29 year olds ... a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago." Shrill shills like Ken Ham are directly responsible for this happy state of affairs - in "Why Won't They Listen?" nothing worth listening to is presented!

If you enjoy the creationist comedy genre Ham's topically related The Lie: Evolution is equally silly and pointless (reviewed separately).

In this compelling book, Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham claims that the answer to many of today's problems is found in the book of Genesis. In trying to win acceptance from secular scholars, Christians have taken various compromises. Instead of defending the Word of God as true, literal history, they more or less apologize for what is contained therein. They say that the Word of God is not to be taken literally.

But, as Ham points out, in so doing, they have destroyed the whole foundation of the Bible. If there is no Genesis, there is no sin, and if there is no sin, how can there be atonement for sin? If the Bible is not to be taken as literal history, when do we begin to take it seriously? Since so many Christians have thrown away the fundamental root of Christianity, the gospel no longer makes sense to the unsaved. When someone who has been indoctrinated with the evolutionary theory is told that Jesus loves them and wants to save them from their sins, there are questions that immediately begin to surface:

If we all came from animals, what is sin? Can't we all do what we please? Where did Cain get his wife anyway? Isn't the Bible just a collection of tales? The list could go on and on.

You see, over a hundred years ago, even unsaved people understood the Biblical laws of morality. But today it's completely different. In a world that is justifying all manner of evil (abortion, homosexuality, etc.), one needs to explain how everything began in order to make any sense.

That's exactly the point of this book. Ham is trying to get us to grasp how absolutely essential it is that we are prepared to explain and defend the book of Genesis. We need to be able to back up its historical accuracy. When we can do this, we will be able to effectively show others the origin of sin. When one understands the predicament the world was in when Jesus died on the cross (i.e., they had broken God's law and were in need of atonement), the whole plan of salvation beings to make sense. This is what Ham refers to as "Creation Evangelism".

A read of this book will help the reader to better understand how to defend the first book of the Bible, as well as build an understanding of the real problem in the world today.
Highly recommended.

another awesome book. if you dont get the core of the message right. then how are you going to get any other message from The Bible right if you dont first understand the foundation?

Ken Hamm presents another amazing book for Christians everywhere regarding the mass apathy in this post-modern culture that has been desensitized by non-stop media. Ken Hamm does an excellent job and I know that you will not be disappointed with this book. Buy it, read it, cherish it, and share it.

Excellent insight as to why non-Christians turn their back on the Gospel. Suggestions for sharing your faith.

Rachel