The Mystery Man Encounter

On a bright sunny morning in 2012, my family and I were driving to Calvary Baptist Church for a “door to door” witnessing activity. The streets were easy to be driven on because it was early in the morning, about 9:00 a.m. While I was seated in the Chrysler minivan, I was frightened with fear because it was my first witnessing experience. In the 2006 minivan, I reflected on the story my middle-school Sunday school teacher, Preston Madding, told us. He marched up to a white door with a sign posted saying no soliciting, and knocked fiercely on the door. With multiple attempts knocking, the woman finally cracked the door open, peered through the crack, and asked, “What do you want?”

With his mouth quivering with fear, Preston stuttered, “I…I am conducting a survey. Do you want to participate in a survey?”

The older lady with venomous eyes gazed at him and started to cuss at him. Preston bravely bolted away.

After reminiscing about the calamitous story, I was pondering, “Will my experience witnessing be the same? Will answers come in a day or do they develop over time?”

After my family dropped my sister and me off, I went to a group of chairs where Nathan Axmann was sitting. When the students were quietly seated like they were watching the next Avengers movie in the IMAX Theater, Pastor Bowman started to explain, “Hey, the witnessing tool is the Ten Commandment survey. In this survey, you are going to ask the person(s) you are witnessing to if they would like to participate in a survey. If they say yes, then you are going to ask them if they can name all the Ten Commandments. Next, you ask them if they have broken any of the Ten Commandments. If they answer yes, then you ask them do you consider yourself a good enough person to go to heaven if you just broke one of the Ten Commandments. If they answer yes, then you should point them to James 2:10. It states ‘for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has been guilty of breaking all of it.’ However, if you have broken one of the points, God has made a path for you to be redeemed which is through Jesus Christ. That’s how you share the gospel using the Ten Commandment survey.” After he covered the Ten Commandments survey, he split the students up into six smaller groups. I was in the group that was heading to Oak Lawn community. Pastor Bowman drove Nathan Axman and me to the Oak Lawn community. The white thirteen-passenger van was an elephant on steroids. I thought we would never get there.

When we arrived, we were excited to hop out of the car. We began knocking on several doors. As time progressed, we approached this white house with huge arches above the doorway. We knocked on a door. The reasonable, mature man approached the door and slightly opened the door, creak. His head was peering out of the crack.

He asked, “Why are you here?”

“We are conducting a survey,” Nathan gracefully responded.

Intrigued by the survey, the mystery man quickly quipped, “What type of a survey are you conducting?”

“Our group is conducting a Ten Commandment Survey,” I boldly proclaimed.

After the man attempted to name the Ten Commandments, the man began telling us a little bit of his spiritual background, “I used to have a Christian worldview, but then I doubted some Christian beliefs (for example the origin of the universe). Due to hearing this skepticism of the Christian Worldview, I began my quest to find the truth. As I searched for the origin of the universe, I found quite an interesting fellow. His name is Carl Sagan, who is the man who holds the belief that the cosmos is all there will be. So now I hold fast to Carl’s Sagan idea.”

“That’s intriguing,” I responded.

“Thanks for your time,” Nathan responded. As we slowly trotted away, I presumed although the mystery man appeared wealthy with possessions, he was spiritually weak.

This encounter left me pondering, “How did God create the universe? Is Carl Sagan’s belief valid?”

Because of the mystery man’s belief and my rising questions, I was on the quest to find the origin of the universe and discover if Carl Sagan’s theory of the origin of the universe was undoubtedly popular in the scientific realm. While I was on this quest, I encountered the most intriguing item called “True-U.” True-U helped me disprove Carl Sagan’s belief and effectively helped me find that the origin of the universe was not created by chance but was created by some intelligent entity. After encountering True-U and the mature mystery man, I learned that when I am witnessing, answers will not come in a day.