Chad Prather a Christian “comedian, musician, and armchair philosopher” who is also running for Texas Governor put out a t-shirt that reads “I miss precedented times” on the front. Having been through a global pandemic it is great to know we can that put it another way “God is on His throne”. He is Sovereign. He in in control! Yet when the world thinks of “precedented times” it is thinking of football stadiums at full capacity, not dealing with social distancing, and throwing out those masks!
With that in mind, we return to our staple September tract—Football Trivia! This year we made a new version, with new questions, that highlight both college and professional sports. Now here is a little secret about our trivia tracts. Whether it is this months football trivia, or others that we send for baseball, basketball, NASCAR, soccer, rock n roll, etc., the little secret is “the answers are all the same”. That’s right, for each of these tracts the answers are “A, B, C, B”. Maybe you are wondering why that is? Well, we want you to look like an expert so you can quiz people and see if they are as smart as they think they are. So when you ask question one of any of the trivia tracts, the answer to all of them is A. So as they guess you can be saying “yes or no” without having to look at the answer yourself on the back.
What we have found is people like to show how smart they are and will readily answer trivia questions. Not only have we used these for conversation starters at football games, but we have used them at many other places as well. One day while standing in line at the post office I asked a guy if he liked football. He said yes. So I proceeded to ask him the questions on the card. He got three out of four! Another time at the train station a guy questioned the answers on the back. I had to use my phone to look it up to show him one answer was correct and his recollection of the answer was not!
The last question is the segway to the Gospel. Ten out of ten people die. Regardless if they get none of the other questions. Even Jessie (see August 2021 letter, or check the BLOG) who claimed he would not die, eventually will. So really, even more important than knowing the answer to any of the four trivia questions, is knowing what happens when you die and more specifically how to get to Heaven through faith alone in Jesus.
Over the years I’ve had hundreds if not thousands of conversations with people about the Gospel. It amazes me still that I can run into people who have never heard the Gospel nor had their own Bible nor read the Bible. I usually take these conversations in a couple directions. First is to use the enclosed bookmark to walk them through “what the Bible says” with the ten questions and having them lookup the ten Bible verses. Second, is to encourage them to read the Gospel of John a chapter a day for 21 days. We even have a website where they can put in their email address and get daily reminders with a link to read, listen to, or watch each day. Finally, if they have a lot of wild ideas or questions I point them to our booklet “The Truth May Impact Your Opinion”.
