CLIMBING "THE ROMAN ROAD"

     I’ve been a Christian for going on 48 years, and my passion has always been evangelism. I want others, especially family members, to know the wonderful love of Jesus that I have felt these many years. It’s also why I started the “Soulwinnersr.us” website doing evangelistic videos.

     In my many years of being a Christian, I have come across numerous evangelistic tracts—although to be honest, I have only used them a very few times. I guess honesty is the best policy—although it makes me sort of ashamed that I haven’t witnessed more than I have, given my passion for lost souls.

    I practice witnessing a couple of times per week, given what 1 Peter 3:15 says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” I want to be persistent in that way—just like the widow with the unjust judge—who never stopped asking for justice. I want to never stop asking God for opportunities to witness—and I want to be ready for the inevitable time/s that He gives them to me.

     I’ve tried many gospel tracts at one time or another. Some told stories of famous people, perhaps sports stars, who gave their hearts to Christ—and encouraged the readers to do the same. Some had cartoons with the gospel message in them to draw in the younger reader. Some had colorful pictures of nature or people talking to one another. Some included stern warnings to the readers on how to avoid hell. I had a whole drawer full of gospel tracts.

     My mind always went a little “boggle-woggle”, as my wife sometimes says, trying to remember the gist of each tract, and trying to discern which one to use for a specific encounter with a specific person. So I decided to develop my own Gospel tract.

     In 2014 I found “The Roman Road” image on the internet, so I developed a tract based on that image. It made sense to me to make a tract that had the theme of ‘climbing’ The Roman Road. I made several iterations of the tract in the ensuing years. I made it for personal use, so only me and a dear elderly couple in my church used them.

     In 2019 I retired from about 29 years of mental health work, and I again began thinking about The Roman Road Image. I didn’t want to use the image in the tract on a wider basis without permission from the owner of the rights to the image. So, I researched and found that “The Tract League” was the owner who had commissioned the painting of the image for their own Roman Road tract.

     I went to The Tract League website and found an email link to contact them about using the image. To my surprise, The Tract League wrote the following response:

“Arlen: Thanks for your inquiry. You are welcome to use that image and any/all parts of that tract. By the end of next year, our Roman road tract will no longer be available as we are closing operations in the US.”

     You can imagine how excited I was to get blanket permission to use the image in any way that I felt the Lord leading me. I know many other wonderful gospel tracts out there are effective in sharing the gospel, and I had many of them in my drawer. But last year I bit the bullet and threw them out and focused only on The Roman Road tract I created.

     Why did I do that? It has nothing to do with the fact that I thought the tracts were bad or poorly made. They in fact were wonderful. But, I’m a concrete thinker, and if I am to share the gospel with others it needs to make explicit sense to me. And, The Roman Road tract that I created does just that for me.

      So, I plan to share a post, or two, or three focusing on The Roman Road tract that I created, and why I think it’s a logical way of sharing the gospel with others. I ask you to give your opinion about what you use, and what you think of using the Climbing ‘The Roman Road’  theme to share with the lost.