Bible Tracts and the Biblical South

I stand with Paul Washer when he states that one of the saddest places on earth is the biblical south. Where everyone has just enough religion to send them straight Hell. Just enough to sooth a religious conscience... Most of the church goers that I've met are good people according to the world's standards. But in watching their lives, you'd find that you'd never know they were Christian at all unless you saw them at their respective churches on Sunday. Many of them, (especially the larger college campus churches) preach a power point theological message about a Jesus they don't know, in order to escape a Hell they may or may not believe in. You hear nothing about Holiness, judgment, repentance, or prophecy. Nothing about turning from your sin.

This is part of the reason that I no longer attend Sunday gatherings. I even got into it with an evangelical Southern Baptist today at work. (I'm a security guard at a very small SSA office) This man walks in and starts talking about the return of the Lord (the rapture) and passing out tracts. He seemed a bit annoyed at me when I professed to be a Christian after he confronted me. Even more so when I asked him simple questions about the gospel tracts he was handing out. These tracts reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ to four easy steps to salvation. He was all about the sinner's prayer... but when I point out that it isn't biblical, all of a sudden I'm told that Satan has filled my head with lies and I need to rebuke and resist the enemy.

He continues to speak about how sorry he feels for the Christians being persecuted on the mission fields... and I stated how I feel sorry for the church here in America. Now he's telling me how he can see how the Lord is dealing with me by the way I'm fighting with him. By this time I'm not even listening anymore as he continues to go on about salvation. It's not as if he'll let anyone else get a word in anyway. On another note, he knew for sure that there would be a rapture in 35 years... God told him so. I reminded him about what the Scriptures say about the return of the Lord.

Matthew 24
36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

He agreed... but still insisted that it would be in 35 years. Now I notice a young couple behind him silently laughing. They understood the contradiction I was getting at. Even when I asked him about the Scriptures on the gospel tracts he was handing out... he didn't even know what Scriptures were on those tracts. His response was simply to read the tracts and follow the steps. The man had his son with him (whom he pointed out). He looked to be in his late teens to early twenties... he also looked visibly furious. I could tell that he wished his father would just sit down and stop talking.

I had a few words to say to the people in the lobby area after he left. Suffice to say that I believe that man to be a small example of a massive problem in the biblical south. All he did was push everyone in the lobby away from God. He wasn't interested in having any kind of dialog or discussion at all... just flapping his gums, wagging his tongue, and pointing his finger. When I realized this I just stopped talking and let him go on. That's about all you can do with people like him I guess. Just stay out of their way and pray for them... that is, unless the Lord leads you to do otherwise. As you can probably guess, religious zealots like that who refuse correction and insist upon spewing their nonsense all over the place really make me angry. But the Lord warned me about getting into confrontations with them.