Perhaps you’ve heard of Penn and Teller, the comedy team that has worked in Las Vegas for years. Penn Jillette is an atheist, but he recorded a video journal a few years ago telling the story about a man who waited to speak to him after one of their shows. Penn said the man was a successful businessman and was “very sane and sincere,” and looked him right in his eyes.
The man was very complimentary of the show, and then he did a strange thing. He gave Penn a Gideon’s New Testament and inside the cover wrote a personal note and left phone numbers and an email if Penn wanted to talk to him about the message of the New Testament.
Penn said nobody had ever done that to him before. On the video he says, “If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell; and people could be going to hell; or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward; and atheists who think people shouldn’t proselytize. Just leave me alone, keep your religion to yourself.
How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize them? How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible, and not tell him or her that? I mean if I believed without a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it? And that truck was bearing down on you? There’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is much MORE important than that.”
There you have it: a confirmed atheist telling us that if we believe heaven and hell exist, and if we believe there is eternal life, and we DON’T tell others, then it shows we must really hate them.
Do you hate anyone? Of course you don’t.
Then why haven’t you told them to get out of the way of the truck? Why haven’t we told them that Jesus is the only way, the only truth and the only way to life? Repentance, faith and trust in Jesus Christ is the only way to escape certain destruction in hell so we’ve got to tell people.
The Bible teaches that it is the love of Christ that constrains us to urge people to be reconciled to God. The Great Commandment Jesus gave was to love God with all of your being and to love your neighbor as yourself. If you truly believe and obey the Great Commandment, then you’ll be practicing the Great Commission.
Matthew 28:19-20: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
(From a sermon by David Dykes, Sharing the Miracle of Salvation.)
Jack Ward is the pastor of Tomahawk Missionary Baptist Church.