Hit and run dysangelism

This morning, when I went out to my car to drive to church for Lord’s Day services, I found this card stuck in the window frame of the driver’s side window. I pulled it out, guessing what it probably was by the graphic on the front, flipped it over and saw the fine print with bold letter phrases, and stowed it to throw away later. My eyes had landed on ‘statistics say 10 out of 10 people die.’ That was enough ‘gospel truth’ for me. Another instance of ‘hit and run dysangelism.’

You can click on the image and it will zoom large enough to read, but here’s the text that was printed on the back of the card:

The statistics say the 10 out of 10 people die. It’s true—we all have an appointment with death. A question each of us should ask is “What happens after I die?” The Bible says that God has a standard that he will judge you by on your appointed day of death. It’s called the Ten Commandments. Let’s see how you will do. Have you ever told a lie? (Including white lies and fibs). Have you ever stolen anything? (no matter what the value). The third Commandment is “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”. Have you ever used His name as a curse word to express disgust? That’s blasphemy. The seventh Commandment is “You shall not commit adultery,” but Jesus said “If you look upon a woman to lust after her you’ve already committed adultery with her in your heart”. Have you ever looked at another person with lust or sexual desire? If you said ‘yes’ to these four questions, then by your own admission, you’re a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer-at-heart, and we’ve only looked at four of the Ten Commandments. On Judgment Day, if God were to judge you by those standards, would you be innocent or guilty? Would you therefore go to Heaven or Hell? The Bible says that you would be guilty, and that means eternity in hell. Know that God, the just judge of the universe, is also rich in mercy. He sent His Son Jesus to suffer and die on the cross on your behalf to take punishment for your sins. God’s wrath came down upon Him, instead of on YOU. He paid your fine with His life’s blood. That means God can excuse your death sentence. He can allow you to live because of what Jesus did on the cross. Through His death and resurrection, God can now dismiss your case. So what must you do? You must repent—turn from your sins. Don’t just confess your sins to God: confess and forsake them. Don’t just believe in Jesus—trust in Him, like you would trust in a parachute to save you. You don’t just believe in a parachute, you put your trust into it! That’s what you must do with the savior. Then, get a Bible, read it daily and obey what you read. Please visit www.TheGoodPersonTest.net. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for reading this.

As I revved up the engine and backed out of my parking spot, my mind was flooded with thoughts. ‘I wonder if everyone got one of these cards. I didn’t see any other cars with them stuck in the windows. Maybe it was left sometime Saturday, as I did not go out after my afternoon errands. Maybe someone left these on every car, but the ones closest to mine had probably been noticed and removed by their owners already. I know the lady next door used her car this morning before I did, and had returned. She probably removed the card. I wonder if I was the only one.’ My mind ran a few circuits like this.

Then I thought, ‘Well, whoever left the card, has no idea whether I or anybody else is already a Christian. They just left them, possibly, on every car.’ This may be a style of evangelism, but it has nothing at all in common with the Bible, with Christ or His apostles. The message might be correct in terms of doctrine (I am not saying it is) but the delivery is inconsistent with the message. This is not what Christ is referring to when He says, ‘a sower went out to sow…’ (Mark 4:3). Yet people feel that they are doing service for God, witnessing for Christ, ‘confessing Him before men’ (Matthew 10:32) when they do things like this.

As I drove out onto the road and headed for church, my thoughts began to catalog the possible responses to this card, beginning with my own.

‘I am already a Christian. I belong to a church. I go to services almost every Lord’s Day. I read my bible and I pray every day. I keep an open door to welcome the stranger, my hand is open to the needy. I share my testimony in person and in writing. If they had come to my door to witness to me in person, no matter what time of day or night, if I was home, I would’ve not only opened my door but invited them in as well, and if they witnessed to me of Jesus, I would have gladly listened. I would not have let them leave my house without sharing a word of prayer. But what do they want me to do, leaving this tract?’

If I were a typical non-practicing Christian, the tract would have annoyed me, and I’d likely have thrown it away without even reading it past the first two lines. If I were an indifferent and unreligious person, my reaction would probably be the same. I would have read on, if at all, until I got the drift that these people were scripted to set me up for a fall, so they could offer me a pickup—admit you’re a sinner, so we can save you (we mean, so that Jesus can save you). If I had any experience with this kind of Christianity, I’d say to myself, ‘pretend you’re a sinner, then pretend you’re saved,’ that’s the ticket!

My mind wandered back to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was so adamant about, the ‘cheap grace’ that Christians seem to be so free in distributing. It’s true that salvation is a free gift through Jesus Christ, but the way this fact is trafficked bores the world to disgust. Yes, there are people living in the world who are ready and waiting to hear the authentic message, the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ. Many of them already know it in outline either from their upbringing or from such tactics as this card represents, but they cannot be bullied or threatened into faith. They must see faith alive and active to know it is real. And can you blame them?

O God, how foolish we are in casting Your pearls before swine! How selfish we are in sowing seed in disobedience and fantasy, so that we can feel we are doing Your work! If You had done what we are doing, Your Son would never have come among us, would never have done His work that both saves and calls us into pure fellowship with Him, commanding us to do the same. Others have claimed to speak in Your name, to speak for You, yet they did not show us Your face. They left us with what they said were Your words, and then withdrew. They did not come among us, love us to the death, and save us.

I arrived at church. Today was the 9th Sunday of Luke. The gospel reading was Luke 12:16-21.

The Lord said this parable: “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” As he said these things, he cried out: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

‘So,’ I thought to myself when I heard the gospel reading, ‘whoever left that tract on my car, without realizing it, was on the same page as the Orthodox lectionary, reminding us that death comes to all, and after death, yes, judgment.’ But I noticed that, although the message was much the same, the delivery was very different. It all had to happen this way. I had to see how important the delivery of the message is, how much it makes a difference. What does Jesus do? Does He bully or threaten us? No. He reveals the Kingdom of God to us, He discloses His Father’s mind, and then cries out, ‘He who has ears…’

We find, I think, that when we return to the Word of God, to Jesus Christ Himself, and listen to what He says in the testimony of the holy gospels, we cannot help but be at peace. No, not at peace with our sins, not at peace with ourselves as we are, but at peace with Him, who loves us enough to treat us all as if we were worthy of blessedness, who calls us ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ even before we confess Him, who tends us gently and persistently—faithfully—and seeks us out and calls us, one by one, and gathers us into the sheepfold of which He is the Shepherd, the good and only Shepherd of the sheep. We know His voice when we hear it.

As for the others, they are hirelings. They may call us but they are not shepherds, for they have no sheepfold into which to welcome us. They treat us as commodities to be rounded up and traded for their own purposes. When the wolf comes—and come he will, even from their own ranks—they run away. They throw down their implements and run. But where can they run? They have impostered the only Shepherd and Teacher of mankind. They have sold the Holy One for their thirty pieces of silver. They have bought and sold souls, not redeemed them by the Blood as they claim. Only One can do that.

So what is it we have come to? To a God whose anger and fury would incinerate us for our foul sins? To a God whose holiness prevents us from seeing His face? Is this the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Who is this Father that He speaks of in the holy gospels? Is it this God of fury who annihilates the nations? If this is the God and Father of whom Jesus says, ‘I and the Father are One,’ and ‘if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father,’ then we must be forever confounded because the apostle says, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,’ and beloved John says, ‘God is love.’

What you have come to is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire, or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm, or trumpeting thunder, or the great voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them.
Hebrews 12:18-19

What you have come to is Mount Zion and the City of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a first-born son and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God Himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with the spirits of the saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus the Mediator who brings a new covenant and a blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel’s. Make sure that you never refuse to listen when He speaks.
Hebrews 12:22-25a

We have been given possession of an unshakable Kingdom. Let us therefore hold on to the grace that we have been given and use it to worship God in the way that he finds acceptable, in reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire.
Hebrews 12:28-29

Continue to love each other like brothers and remember always to welcome strangers, for by doing this some people have entertained angels without knowing it.
Hebrews 13:1-2