Stone the Preacher

We made 5,000 of these special tracts for our Memorial Weekend evangelistic endeavor; perhaps you will want to print a few thousand yourself and stamp your church’s name in it. Click here to download and print them.

THE FRONT

THE BACK

This is what they say:

ON THIS MEMORIAL DAY, you may know someone who has died in the service of our country. Many lives have been lost to secure the freedoms we currently enjoy as Americans. This holiday weekend, as you have barbeques with friends and family, as you relax and rest on this long weekend, please remember the price someone paid for you to live free. And, remember also that life is short. (more…)

I just read this on Facebook from my frozen friend in Canada, Paul Latour, of The Word Street Journal:

Heading out to hand out tracts with a few others at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in Ottawa. Please pray for us as the present temperature with the windchill is -19 Celsius or -2.2F. In other words, it’s really cold outside. But I think of those who will die under torture today in some other countries due to their undeniable faith in the same Christ we will proclaim today on the streets. Suddenly, the temperature doesn’t really matter.

I responded with this comment:

Paul, my brother, our evangelism team will pray for you today. It’s 7:30 AM in California. Please pray for us, too, as we go to our Hermosa Beach St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It may Reach 70° today, but with the windchill factor it may only be about 65°. Brrrrrrrrr. I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt with my shorts.

Perhaps this is why Charles Spurgeon called evangelism an “irksome task.”

This is the incredible story of Mitsuo Fuchida, lead pilot of the December 7, 1941, raid on Pearl Harbor. Fuchida was the one who shouted the war cry, “Tora, Tora, Tora!”

Mitsuo Fuchida fought the United States throughout WWII and was intimately involved in the planning and leadership of the Japanese war effort as flight commander and later as a senior operations officer.

After the war, Fuchida was a defeated warrior in occupied Japan, farming to meet the needs of his family. He was also the only one to return to Japan after the bombing.

In 1950, Fuchida miraculously came to know Jesus Christ as Savior through a tract handed to him while exiting a train in Tokyo. The tract was entitled, “I Was a Prisoner of Japan,” written by Jacob DeShazer (read it here)who was one of the famous Doolittle Raiders. DeShazer trusted Christ as his Savior while held captive by Japan for 40 months. DeShazer went to Japan in 1948 as a missionary and preached to the nation who held him captive.

Fuchida faithfully served Jesus Christ as an evangelist until his death in 1976. “From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha” is Fuchida’s testimony of salvation. Here it is in his own words:

I must admit I was more excited than usual as I awoke that morning at 3:00 a.m., Hawaii time, four days past my thirty-ninth birthday. Our six aircraft carriers were positioned 230 miles north of Oahu Island. As general commander of the air squadron, I made last-minute checks on the intelligence information reports in the operations room before going to warm up my single-engine, three-seater “97-type” plane used for level bombing and torpedo flying.

The sunrise in the east was magnificent above the white clouds as I led 360 planes towards Hawaii at an altitude of 3,000 meters. I knew my objective: to surprise and cripple the American naval force in the Pacific. But I fretted about being thwarted should some of the U.S. battleships not be there. I gave no thought of the possibility of this attack breaking open a mortal confrontation with the United States. I was only concerned about making a military success.  (more…)

I’ve been handing out tracts regularly for over six years so I can sometimes forget how terrifying this exercise can be to those who are newly introduced to this highly effective method of sharing the Gospel.

In every evangelism class I teach, the homework is to hand out one tract a day for the duration of the class. I have them do this so that they may possibly develop this habit for life after graduation.

Ricardo is a new student in our class who describes himself as being rather shy. He attended the Long Beach Veterans Parade with the evangelism team over the weekend. This was his first parade and his first evangelism outing. Watch what happened as he handed out his Giant Money tract to a parade-goer:

We started him out with a “beginner’s stack” of 250 Giant Money tracts. We also filled a fanny pack with our Teddy Trillion tracts. By the end of the parade he was almost completely out of his Gospel literature.

How do you feel about Gospel tracts? Do you think they are effective? Are you personally afraid to hand them out?

A spokesman for the American Tract Society said that 53% of all who come to Christ worldwide come through the use of printed Gospel literature.

Did you know that George Whitefield, the great preacher of the Great Awakening, was saved by a Gospel tract? After reading it he wrote, “God showed me I must be born-again or be damned.”

The great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, was also saved by reading a tract.

God even used a Gospel tract as the tool that led Greg Koukl, founder of Stand to Reason, to Christ. He has stated that “some brave soul” put it in the bottom of his grocery bag while checking out.

So why should you use Gospel tracts? Because God uses them.

“When preaching and private talk are not available, you need to have a tract read… Get good striking tracts or none at all. But a touching Gospel tract may be the seed of eternal life. Therefore, do not go out without your tracts.” — Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)