That’s Just Dangerous!

An atheist, I think it was one of the anonymous sextuplets hanging around, who said that when he goes to a hotel he flips through (reads through?) a few pages of the Bible that is in the room.

That is just plain dangerous!

Three true stories. I can’t remember the people’s names but the stories themselves are accurate.

1) There is a brilliant Rabbi from New York. By brilliant I mean, he has four Ph.D’s. One of them is in Christian Theology (“My dad taught me to know the enemy.”). At 19 he was a Rabbi and by 21 he was training other Rabbis. Of one thing he was certain, “Jesus was not the Messiah.” One day, this man had flown into Detroit for a meeting and Delta Airlines had lost his luggage. Stuck in his hotel room with none of his books, he pulled out the Bible from the drawer. As he tells it, “I turned to the book of John, which I had read countless times before, and it was as if scales of unbelief fell from my eyes. I could see it. As plain as day. Jesus IS the Messiah!” He now travels up and down the eastern sea board of the United States proclaiming to any Jew who will listen, “I’ve found the Messiah! It’s Jesus!”

2) The Gideons travel around to university campuses setting up their tables in busy student halls. They have stacks of Bibles on their tables and along the front of the table they have a huge banner saying, “FREE.” Of course students like free stuff and one day, along with several hundred other students, one guy picked up a Bible, a New Testament. He’s thinking, “Cool, something free.” As he was walking back to his room, he began thumbing through this thing, and he all of a sudden realised that it’s a Bible. “A Bible! I don’t want a Bible.” He tried to throw the Book onto the roof of a student dorm. He didn’t quite make it and the Bible went through an open third story window. Two weeks later, the Gideons were back on Campus doing follow-up. As they were standing at the table, interacting with whoever would listen a guy was walking by when his eye caught the Gideon table. “Hey, you’re those Gideon guys! I don’t know how you did it but I was sitting in my room a couple weeks ago when a Bible came flying into my room. I looked out the window and saw one of your guys walking away. I hadn’t read a Bible - ever - but I started looking through it and it was like this stuff had been written just for me. I’m a Christian. I’m saved because you threw this Bible into my room. I’m just on my way for a noon hour Bible study with Campus for Christ. I don’t know how you got it into my room without breaking a window but thanks.”

3) The woman’s name is Sandra. I can’t remember her last name. She was raised in a home in California where both parents were satanists. By the age of 12 she was well versed in the black arts. By 13 she was drinking regularly throughout the week and by 14 she was addicted to street drugs. “I realised that if I didn’t leave this life, this life was going to kill me.” She ran away and wound up in Dallas, Texas. From there she hitched to Forth Worth. There’s not a lot of ways for a 14 year old girl to support herself on the street so she did what other girls her age were doing. A series of “boyfriends” left her more disillusioned than ever. Living out of an abandoned car and nursing the bruises from a sexual assault the night before, Sandra decided to end it all. There was simply no hope for any improvement in life. As Sandra accumulated in her lap, the necessary tools for ending her life, she tilted back the front seat of the car, slouched down in the seat and closed her eyes. “I just wanted to sleep for a bit.” She let her hands dangle down to her sides and her finger tips touched something. She pulled it out and there was a New Testament. “I had no idea how that got there.” Long story shorter. Sandra, who had rejected Christianity for all of her very short life, who had in fact been taught by her parents that Christianity was evil and dangerous, began to read.

She read of God’s love for her.

She read of Jesus’ sacrifice.

She read how she could be forgiven for the very real guilt that she carried.

Today, Sandra, her husband and children live in Dallas. They attend a large Church and Sandra travels around telling women how God tracked her down to a beat up car abandoned in an empty lot just off Fort Worth’s East Lancaster district.

My point?
No one comes to Jesus unless God draws that person to Jesus (John 6:44)
It is not by our desire or effort (Romans 9:16)

You never know when the Holy Spirit will open your sin-dulled mind.

You never know when the Holy Spirit will quicken your sin-slowed thinking.

You never know when the Holy Spirit is going to come for your soul and if you want to stay an atheist, flipping through the pages of the New Testament is a very dangerous thing to do.