Joe Bob Briggs tells you where evangelists go wrong

I hate cutting to the serious bit, but that’s how the quoting game works: Joe Bob’s Guide to World Evangelism | Wittenburg Door

we’ve got that pesky little scripture known to jungle-dwelling missionaries throughout the world as “The Great Commission.” I speak, of course, of Mark 16, verse 15. If you will please read it, Don Pardo, por favor . . .

“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

This is the verse that accounts for your Billy Grahams. Of course, it wasn’t that big a stretch for Billy, because he started out as a Fuller Brush salesman. He was ready to sell something.

But this is also the scripture that accounts for your doorbell-ringing Jehovah’s Witnesses, your screaming televangelists in rural North Carolina, your white-shoed tent revival specialists, your Times Square rave-masters, and every girl who ever fluttered her eyes and said, “Joe Bob, I really like you, but I think I need to witness to you about Jesus Christ.”

Now you should go read the whole thing if you love Joe Bob as much as I do, but if you’re lazy, here’s the point:

Consulting the original Greek, please note that the sentence in Mark 16:15 is in the “aorist” tense. We don’t really have this tense in English, so that’s why the King James translators wrote it down the way they did, in the imperative tense. But a better translation, for this more passive tense, would be “As ye go into all the world, preach the gospel into every creature.”

Kinda changes the whole deal, doesn’t it? As you move through your world, whatever that is, wherever that is, whoever comes into your path, reveal the gospel that lives inside you. Reveal Christ, not through words, but in your life.

I never thought one of the finest exegetes I would read would be the best friend the drive-in has ever known.