Impact Stories
“You had me convinced an hour ago”
James, Ivan, & Zac talked with me for almost 2 hours and right at the end, I got a serious surprise.
I stopped them and asked them the usual afterlife question. James shared that he is an agnostic and doesn’t believe there is any soul or afterlife, though he did say that he was open to ideas. Ivan and Zac both said that they believe in heaven and hell, and hold a Christian worldview, though when I asked them some basic gospel questions, their answers were well off. Ivan is from Russia and has a Christian mum and atheist dad while Zac has a protestant upbringing. Both also said they firmly believed in God but only appealed to personal experiences as why they believe. I asked them for objective evidence for God that might convince James and they didn’t really have any. I offered to make an argument for God’s existence to see if I could give them a strong reason and then made an argument from design. They all agreed that this was a very strong argument. I then swung into how we know the Bible is true and shared how fulfilled prophesies show the Bible is supernaturally authored.
I then moved towards the gospel and asked them to explain what the Bible says about the afterlife. Ivan argued it was about being good, but then Zac stepped in and corrected him that it’s about relationship with Jesus, but then also stated he didn’t believe at all in hell. The reality of hell became my entry point to share the gospel, first working through the law and talking about God’s justice, and then sharing how the death of Jesus pays the penalty for our sin. I was able to challenge all three of them pretty hard about whether they believe and particularly challenged the two “Christians” to examine themselves carefully as their earlier answers had me concerned. Ivan and Zac moved the conversation towards some deeper theological issues and I spent some time answering their questions, and at this point James, who had been very vocal in the earlier part of the chat, became very quiet. As we finished up and I gave tracts and shook their hands, he made a statement that astonished me. “Yeah, you had me convinced an hour ago.” He shared how he now wanted to read the Bible and find a church. In around 90 minutes, he had shifted from being an open minded materialist to someone who wanted to read the Bible for himself and find a church!
– Andrew W