Rapture Tracts
For nearly thirty years I have been distributing Gospel tracts and other Christian literature in a variety of ways. Fact is, I feel it is a lot like a major league baseball player who is constantly working on his swing. The more time he spends in the batting cage, the better his swing, the more hits he gets and the higher his salary rises.
Over the years my swing has definitely gotten better and I am getting more solid hits. But I don’t get any pay raises. I do note a slight increase in my monthly Social Security check but I also note how they raise my Medicare premiums, which usually wipes out any pay raise I get.
So what does this have to do with those left behind in the end-times tribulation period? Well, put a little more pine tar on your bat and I’ll tell you.
All of those tracts and literature you handed out and all the seeds you planted with your witnessing doesn’t go for naught. It doesn’t all get thrown away. Some are saved while others are passed on to others. They fit nicely in a left behind box. Others will be found in homes, cars, as bookmarks, etc., by left behinders searching for answers, survival gear and supplies.
Jesus tells us how some of your seeds fall by the wayside and amongst the thorns and weeds. But other seed falls on fertile soil and brings forth a good harvest (Matthew 13: 3-23).
I learned this early on in prison ministry work when I printed a monthly newsletter and mailed it to over 100 inmates on my regular list. Some would write me back and tell how they passed on my letters to other inmates. Sometimes 8 or 10 additional inmates would read the letter.
Here are a couple of true experiences I had “on the outside” with tracts.
I went to a gun show at the Boone County Fairgrounds near Columbia, Missouri, several years ago, and after I had seen all I wanted to see, and bought all I was going to buy, I left the show for the parking lot. But I stopped on the sidewalk outside the exhibition arena to pass out tracts, which was part of my “plan.” I gave a tract to one person who visited with me for a few minutes. He seemed sincere enough. He left and headed for the parking lot. He walked about 50 feet down the sidewalk when I turned to watch him pitch the tract into the grass along the sidewalk and then proceed onto his parked car.
A short time later I looked back at the lot and observed a young couple heading for the show. They spotted the discarded tract and stopped to pick it up and examine its contents. The lady then put the tract in her purse and they proceeded down the sidewalk towards the show.
They spied me handing out tracts and stopped and started a conversation with me. I recognized that they were new Christians, thus were curious about many things. They asked me for a few extra tracts to hand out to their friends and family members. And then they proceeded on to the gun show.
Another experience involved my favorite tract of all time. It is a million dollar bill wannabe put out by Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort at Living Waters ministry (www.livingwaters.com). It looks like real money (except that the U.S. Government does not print and issue a million dollar bill), but on the back is a printed Gospel message. I personally have distributed over 28,000 of this particular tract, mainly because of the impressive response I have gotten over the years. “If it works, don’t fix it.”
Even from non-believers – as I remember the Secret Service raiding Living Waters ministry and threatening to arrest them all for counterfeiting U.S. currency. The Secret Service evidently didn’t know you can’t counterfeit something that doesn’t exist?
But I panicked anyway and got off a rush order for 7,000 million-dollar bills. But after the Secret Service came to their senses, it was all settled, and Living Waters still produces that tract plus hundreds of others to this day.
Anyway, I stopped at the local Pizza Hut for their lunch buffet. I go to eating establishments where a waiter or waitress actually waits tables. That gives me another opportunity to pass out tracts. My usual tract “policy” at eating establishments is to leave a Chick tract mini-booklet entitled “This Was Your Life” (www.chick.com), and between its 2” x 3½” pages I insert a “FREE TICKET” tract (www.gospeltractsociety.org) along with a million-dollar bill. On top of the million I usually leave a couple of real bucks. (I’m a cheap tipper!)
A month or so later I was back at the Pizza Hut; but, as is my “policy,” I sit in a different section so I might get a different waitress. The waitress I had the first time spied me in another section and hurried over in an excited way. She told me she put the million dollar bill on her home refrigerator door (stuck on with one of those little magnets) but someone swiped it, and she was wondering if I could give her another. So I gave her a dozen copies.
Soon Satan, the antichrist and the False Prophet will take complete command of earth when they are given free rein after we are raptured. So we need to leave behind good solid Biblical truths so the Holy Spirit can guide those left behind in an upward direction.
My guess is that the False Prophet will confiscate and destroy all Bibles, tracts, Bible study guides, etc., and replace them with their own literature. In churches the pew Bibles will be gone and will probably be replaced with something like black leather bible-like books that read “THE TRUTHS OF EARTH” in sparkling shiny gold print on the cover. Talk about phony counterfeiting!
All churches and religions will be combined into a one-world religion that will probably be a combination of Satanism, new age and secular humanism. I don’t expect the False Prophet to spend much time trying to change Islam, Buddha, Hindu, etc., since they and others don’t believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior; so they have already decided where they’ll spend eternity.
Satan was the smartest angel of all, so expect the new religious literature to be very appealing and convincing.
I can actually imagine a Muslim standing on a street corner and actually smiling at people as he hands out propaganda tracts and explains “the new gospel.” The people who are physically unfit or too old to serve in his gestapo will do this kind of service for the antichrist. People that don’t know any better will fall for these street preachers and their tracts.
Your left-behind box is an excellent way to leave the Holy Spirit behind for left behinders to find. They don’t take up much space. But you can do more than that. Leaving behind Gospel tracts is just another way for you to obey the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 16-20; Acts 1: 1-11). There are so many good tracts out there that you should have no problem picking out some good ones.
But we really have to be careful as to what we leave behind so as not to assist Satan in the slightest way in his plan for destruction of God’s creation. A sobering example happened to me after I submitted my 4th edition of this series to Rapture Ready.
A lady sent me several heated email responses to my columns. Her first simply said, “Are you still here?” to which I replied, “Yes, I’m still here FOR THE TIME BEING” as I detected a secular humanist enemy was in the house! This very angry woman continued to rip me apart for my “erroneous beliefs” and then asked me if I had ever read the book “The Third Testament?” I replied “no” and she informed me it was on Google; so I checked it out (I didn’t buy that rag. I just read what Google and some of the reviewers said).
I replied to her that I wasn’t interested in that book as Google classified it as a “fiction novel.” She responded that “The Third Testament” corrected ALL THE ERRORS in the Bible. So I quit corresponding with her. No sense in feeding the alligators!
Different people get their inspirations in different ways. I can remember country star Willie Nelson saying in a TV interview that there was nothing wrong with smoking pot because it was organic.”
The same holds true here. We have the two Testaments of the Bible which are completely true, because they are inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. Then we have a fiction novel written by some nutty college professor who could be getting his inspiration from the same place Willie gets his.
This stuff is everywhere and it will be left behind, too. Don’t look for the False Prophet to be burning any copies of “The Third Testament” any time soon. That is why we need to flood the countryside with THE GOOD NEWS.
The following will be a short list of some of the ways I distribute tracts and my thinking on why I used certain methods. Bear in mind, I have been confined to a wheelchair for three years and had to give up driving a car. But it made my 15-year-old grandson happy as he can now wow all the girls at his high school when he pulls up in his classy 2005 Buick 4-door sedan! He ought to jump with joy as my first car was a 1946 all black Ford flathead. At that time I thought I was the new official Batman of Liberty, MO.
A sure way to get “millions” into the right hands is the books and magazine racks in stores. As you leaf through the pages of books and magazines you MIGHT buy, leave a million bucks between the pages; but don’t let it stick out like a bookmark where it can be discovered by a clerk or at the checkout line. I sure would have liked to have been able to get inside Playboy, but they were sealed in clear plastic. I sure wish I had come across “The Third Testament” sooner. Man, would I have ever loaded them up!
Public libraries are also a good place. Go to the New Age sections plus those on satanic worship. And all the dirty books are open game.
Public restrooms are a good place as are clothing departments, where a million will slip easily into pants and shirt pockets of clothes still on the rack. I would hit the toy departments for older kids who, when they get home, are old enough to shout out “Hey mommy! Look what I found!” And the self-service gas stations offer a pump hose latch where you hang up the nozzle hose. A million bucks fits in there nicely.
Grocery store beer cooler isles were also on my list of victims. The hand-holes on cases, 12-packs and six-pack cartons are just the right size to slip a million in between the cans and bottles, but out of sight; so when they get home and decide to pop a cold one, low and behold! There lies a million dollars.
During winter and the rainy season, you need to do tract distribution indoors more. One way for me was being lucky enough to have three very athletic kids who played all sports and achieved numerous post-season honors. At all-day basketball tournaments where different schools were scheduled to play early in the morning to late at night, the grandstands were seating the fans from different towns for the entire tourney. And the custodians don’t sweep up until after the final game.
I’d watch as many games as possible while leaving fresh tracts after each game in the bleachers. The restrooms and concession stands also had a constant turnover of people, so that was a good place to spread the printed Word.
Each town in my area has parades and annual celebrations that draw large crowds and many participants. The little town I’m near (population 1,100) holds the annual Santa Fe Trail Days that celebrates the beginning of five pioneer trails westward, including the Santa Fe Trail. It is also the birthplace and childhood home of frontiersman Kit Carson and country music star, Sara Evans. So the crowd is big with many events over the two days, including a parade, talent contests, baby contest, crafts displays, beer garden, street dance, bed races, etc.; so I usually went through a lot of tracts to a lot of different people.
The same thing holds true for a small college town (population 3,000) eleven miles up the road from me where the college holds their annual “band day” during the school year that draws high school and junior high bands from all over the state. They compete in street competition, field competition and individual and team awards, so a lot of family and students are present all day. The marching bands are continuous up and down the city blocks of town. The fast food businesses do a big business; and again, I go through a lot of tracts all day long.
Other events that draw big crowds are the tractor pulls, homecomings, steam engine shows, heritage days, etc. Nearly all areas of the country have assortments of similar activities that draw large crowds of people and participants where many are would-be left behinders.
Chick Publications catalogs several hundred different mini comic book tracts. For example, I use their “Room 310” tract when I am at one of my many visits to hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices. It features two grown men with cancer in the same hospital room. One is a believer and the other isn’t. I leave this tract in waiting rooms, examination rooms, at check-in desks, etc.; and I don’t care who finds them (doctors, nurses, technicians, office staff, patients, visitors, delivery drivers, etc.). One tech approached me and asked for a second Room 310 tract as she had a sister who needed to read it.
I used to take off for a day driving around from small town to small town, dropping millions out of my driver’s side window. Don’t do it on windy or rainy days as the wind blows them away and the rain ruins them. Here in Missouri we have a saying: “If you don’t like our weather, be patient and wait 15 minutes when it will surely change.”
I especially concentrated on walkways such as the entrances and exits to stores. The crosswalks on city streets at stop lights work well if you drop a million in an area where people walk. You are probably wasting them if you drop them where people don’t walk. Cars drive too fast for the drivers to see them where there is little or no foot traffic.
Schools where students walk back and forth to school plus the parking lots and entrances to fast food places, convenience stores, etc., where they hang out after school are good spots to plant seed.
There’s a lot of foot traffic at post offices and court houses. Many businesses have public bulletin boards where the public can hang flyers for their coming events, yard sales, etc. Just right for the larger tracts.
For some of the larger tracts, I would stick about a half inch of two-sided sticky tape on the back. These tracts would easily stick on a door or window in a couple of seconds. I used these at the Interstates’ roadside parks’ rest rooms and phone booths. After I “hung paper” I would walk out to where travelers would park to stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, etc. It was a good place to start a conversation about our Lord after handing them a tract.
Always try to leave the million bills face up if you can. People spot money quickly. This is hard to do when you drop them out of a car window. You have a 50/50 chance the bill will land money side up instead of message side up.
One time I was driving away from a small-town school. As I drove down a street, there were four young boys walking in the street. I passed them and dropped a million out the window. I quickly looked in my rearview mirror as I drove off to see all four of them wrestling on the ground over the bill.
Another time I was dropping bills at a local Wal-Mart parking lot. As I drove down a row of cars I met five young women (I’d guess mid-20’s) walking from the store towards their parked car. As I met them face-on I dropped a bill out the window, drove on by them and then looked in my rearview mirror. I heard a loud scream and noticed one woman (the one screaming) holding the bill with both hands and about 3 inches from her nose and eyes. The other four women were jumping up and down like cheerleaders at the big game, while the woman with the bill continued to scream. They all turned to look at my car driving off. I gave them all a big smile and a bigger wave as I drove off to the next row of cars.
When I was driving I used to carry several of those $1.00 Bibles with some tracts and a million dollar bill sticking out like a bookmark. I would have a couple of real $1.00 bills on top of the million so it would be easily seen by the homeless persons standing along Interstate exits and entrances with their cardboard “work for food” signs. I’d pull up to them and hand them the Bible. Sometimes instead of dollar bills I would substitute a $2 or $3 fast-food gift certificate, as I felt that many of them would just use the money to buy dope or booze.
Also along the Interstate highways are large truck stops with special parking areas for the 18-wheelers to park side-by-side in a row. The drivers would walk into the nearby café or convenience store, so I’d walk the row of trucks placing a million near each truck front-end near the driver’s side door.
Malls are a great place with the many shops and stores plus food courts, public restrooms, lounge and rest areas, etc. Big parking lots, too. Waiting rooms at medical clinics, auto repair shops, etc., usually have a lounge area where you can wait your turn. They usually have a stack of magazines or a rack for those to pass the time while waiting.
One time at the eye clinic, I slipped a copy of the New Testament in their magazine rack. A Muslim patient saw me do it and went to the rack and picked it out. He then came to where I was sitting and asked me if he could have it. I said “yes” and promptly replaced it with another New Testament in the rack.
Since I don’t walk or drive anymore, I had to curtail some methods. In the days when I walked through a parking lot, you had better not have left a window rolled down on your car. And bank parking lots are effective in that a person walking out of the bank would find a million dollars by the driver’s side door of his car.
One method I’ve used for the past 30 years is when I pay bills by mail; I insert a Chick booklet, a FREE TICKET and a million bucks with my billing statement and my check, and mail it. In the small town where I live, I only do this about once or so a year when I pay the water bill, as I know they only have one person stripping the incoming mail. But bills like Visa, MasterCard, etc., where the payment goes through a large staff for incoming mail, I do it every month as I’m sure I will get a different staff person to process my payment each time.
I never have believed that giving someone a tract would instantly convert their thinking and send them directly to heaven. I considered it as planting seed like in the parable of the sower. The Bible tells us that one man plants while another man reaps. Don’t get too discouraged over rejections. It’s all a part of what comes with witnessing. I’ve found that the times I would get a little discouraged from lack of success, God would come through with a joyful success to get me back on track.
In prison ministry, if I wrote 100 inmates and only one came to the Lord, I considered it a success. Naturally I would rather all 100 came to the Lord, but the angels in heaven still rejoice loudly when one new soul is saved.
The Chick tracts come in 140 different foreign languages plus extremely large selections in English, Spanish and Hebrew. I try to help two ministries overseas, one in India and the other in Thailand, and ship them tracts in their native tongues. Chick pays my overseas shipping. I send 500 “This Was Your Life” tracts in Telugu (India) and five different languages to Thailand.
They have specialty tracts in English and Spanish. For example I give out Halloween tracts that explain how it is Satan’s holiday; so when the Trick or Treaters ring our doorbell, we put the candy along with a Halloween tract in their goodie bags. Kids like to read comics.
You can contact them for a free catalog (www.chick.com).
These are a few suggestions I am offering in case you might decide to take up a tract ministry, or if you are presently handing out tracts but could use some new ideas. If any of you would like free samples of the tracts I mentioned in this article, contact me and give me a mailing address to where I can mail them.
Do I have any regrets? Yes, I sure do. I wish I had gotten a pilot’s license and had access to a light plane so I could fly around from town to town and shower the skies with MILLION DOLLAR BILLS!
Dick Ainsworth
PO Box 156
New Franklin, MO 65274