Throwing a rope

Ouch. This hit me hard and made me feel completely ashamed of my complacent attitude concerning sharing the gospel. It hurts harder when you are told this by an atheist. But that is precisely the reason why it hurt: When an atheist tells me that I'm hating the people I could tell the truth to, but don't - It's like getting a kick in the guts when you don't expect it. Because it is true. As he said, "If I knew that a massive lumber truck was coming close to someone, and was bearing down upon them, you can be sure I'd tackle them some. But this is much worse.." - He's right. The problem with us christians is that we don't tackle these people and help them clear out before the lumber truck hell comes and squashes them.

He said "I know there is no God" - and "Religion does a lot of bad things" - but he profoundly respected the man who was no hypocrite to his beliefs and told him exactly where he believed he was heading. Hell. "He looked me straight in the eye," "He was kind, and genuinely complimentary," "He was a good, good man."

Wow. The fact is: Christians who don't tell the nonchristians around them the truth are unloving. Hell is a real place where most of this world is heading and yet we christians, who have been given the truth, the good news, sit around and watch them go there complacently. It's like we're saying - "Sure, you can go to hell for all I care." - when we have the opportunity to share the gospel but don't.
Of course, christians make mistakes and we don't always say things when we should. We often do a huge lot for the gospel and then slow down and feel like we've done "our evangelising." We don't get everything right when it comes to telling people the gospel. That, however, does not excuse us from living our lives as a witness to others and consistently and with real concern, telling people God's truth.

Telling someone the gospel is more than "sharing the gospel" and "evangelising." Explaining the gospel is throwing a drowning man a rope and letting God pull him out of the water.