The Gideons

I have had an interesting series of conversations with Jeremy Brown, a banker and Gideon in our town. I should say that they are more like one conversation that we seem to keep having; we keep picking up the same thread.

The conversation is about Scripture, of course. The Gideons exist to get the Word of God into people's hands, lives, minds, and spirits. With Jeremy's permission, I share a couple of things he shared with me about some times he has passed out New Testaments.

Once, a fellow in a car saw him on a corner passing out Bibles, and he stopped the car in the middle of the road and hollered, “are those Bibles?” When Jeremy indicated they were, the man hollered that he wanted one. So Jeremey hastened to the car and ended up handing out 4, one to each person in the car.

I tell that as the inspirational piece. The rest of what I share is heart-breaking. I suspect that many of you do not understand or believe what I am about to share MEANS. The ignorance of Americans as to what Christianity is/believes is staggering. Church, you cannot stay in your shell anymore. Well, to be honest, you can. But you will find it emptier and emptier, and one day, one of you will be that last one there.

It will be easier to do nothing and hope you die before you see the terrible decline. But surely there are some of you who want to fight.

One young college student asked Jeremy and his co-worker if they knew anything about Heaven. They said they did. The student said her thrid-grade Sunday School teacher told her one thing, but a professor another. Jeremy said I will have this in common with your professor, “Read the book. The answer is in here.”

“Is the answer really in here?” she asked.

“I guarantee it is.”

Another time, a student asked, “What are you handing out?”

“New Testaments,” Jeremy said.

“Is that the book Jesus is in?”

At a recent event, Jeremy noticed a man looking at the New Testaments available. But he wasn't really making a move towards him. Jeremy engaged him and the man asked what they were giving away. “New Testaments.”

“What's that?”

“It's a part of the Bible.”

“Oh, I have heard of that.”

Friends, I was once as ignorant of the Bible and Christianity as these were. I was worse off, because a college education had convinced me that I knew more about it the fallacies, contradictions, and madness of the Bible than the Christians who had been brainwashed to believe it. I had such good and elegant reasons for my unbelief! A Gideon's Bible, Fall Semester, 1994 changed everything. I had refused or thrown them away before that.

Support the Gideons. Look into becoming one.

But more than anything: get to know some non-Christians and tell them what you believe and why. Invite them to believe it, too