Today, in the parking lot of Home Depot, I saw a man pull into a parking space, and his window was down so I heard a fragment of the loud radio show he was listening to: a Christian radio show preaching salvation. The man dashed from his car to run into Home Depot, and I wasn’t going to wait around for him to return so I could give him a tract and a card, so I quickly placed a “What is Salvation?” tract and a Going To Jesus card on his door. When I went back to my car, he reappeared from the store. (He was quicker than I had expected.) I was going to go speak with him, but he was in a rush. I noticed him glance at the tract, as he got into his car, then drove away quickly. As I drove by his parking space, the tract and the card were on the ground.
My heart was crushed.
Oh well.
Here was a guy who was listening to a Xn station, but apparently the title of the tract didn’t make him the least bit curious.
How strange! I was probably expecting too much. People—even so-called religious people—are not what they seem.
So, I picked it up off the ground and will continue to look for another opportunity, as always.
Brad
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A couple of things.
First, it is going to take much more than our telling people the truth for them to “get it”. God Himself will have to do something before the truth is ever even going to be an issue. I believe those things that Sandy said the lord spoke to her because He has made me feel those same things: What He has shown us is not for everybody, and we are not going to save the world.
Secondly, to own a Bible is required in order to be a good Christian; to know what it says and to understand it is not. Over the years, I have had orders from many Christians for gospel tracts that they have not read, nor would ever read. For them, I have returned their money and asked them plead read the tract(s) they were ordering, and if they still wanted them, I would send them the tracts. To this day, I have never heard from a single such Christian. I knew they were ordering those tract only because they had religious-sounding titles and that they would pass those tracts on to others without ever reading them, and I did not want them to do that. One case in point that comes to mind is the Baptist woman who wrote in desperation a few years ago for a bunch of our materials because she was appointed a Sunday school teacher, and she said she didn’t know enough about the Bible to teach. I could not in good conscience send her the tracts she ordered (“Salvation”, “The new Birth”, etc.), knowing that if and when she read them, especially if she waited and read them for the first time in her Sunday School class, she would be embarrassed, if not angered, by what she read. I wrote her a kind letter, with one copy of each of the tracts she wanted, along with her money, and asked her to read them first, and if she still wanted them for her class, I would send them. She never wrote again.
Your story of the man who was listening to the Christian radio program reminded me of these incidences. It was not what he was hearing, but simply that he was hearing, that satisfied him. Just as it is not what is actually in the Bible, but simply owning a Bible, and possibly even carrying it around sometimes, that satisfies very many Christians. You may have interrupted his satisfaction with something real; then again, it may have been that God didn’t want that man to know what you know.
So, I would not call that a trivial incident, at least not altogether. It is an event worth considering.
Thanks for letting me know about it.
jdc