Are You Ready? It’s a simple enough question. It could apply to many things. Are you ready to go to work? Are you ready to go to school? Are you ready for bed? But the ultimate question in life is are you ready to die?
Are you ready for eternity?
This tract gets to the heart of the matter. Giving the ready a chance to answer the tough question. We often use this question in transitioning conversations to the spiritual.
For a long time, I had wanted to take some pictures at a cemetery and use a picture from there on a Gospel tract. In June, my wife and I were spending the weekend in East Texas. As we drove we came across a number of small cemeteries along the highways. I kept mentioning that I wanted to stop and final did. My wife waited in the car. I walked around and snapped some pictures. I was not exactly sure which picture I would use, or what I would use it for.
Are You Ready? First Version
A month or so later, a friend suggested a tract with “Are You Ready” on it. Finally, I had the idea for the tract with the tomb stone on it! So, I picked out one of the pictures and the tract was made.
We initially printed 15,000 of the tracts. Roughly 9,000 were used for a mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club for January 2012. The remaining tracts were used for outreaches around Dallas. Thousands of them were handed out at the State Fair of Texas, McKinney Trader Days and many other venues.
Are You Ready? Second Version
This tract really makes people think. Some look at it and are scared to consider the truth that one day they will die and be buried under neath a stone like this. One of the first ones I handed out I handed the tract to a guy who worked at the mall and asked “Are You Ready?” His response was “I took care of that in the military.” It turns out when he was in the Navy, they gave him the chance to plan his own funeral including picking out the plot and the headstone. On more than one occassion, my friend who helped with the tract was mistaken for a “tomb stone salesman”. He then suggested using a different picture so maybe people would not have that same reaction. We reprinted the tract with a new picture and sent that out in the February 2012 mailing of the Bezeugen Tract Club,.
Although we have had a few occasions when people think we are talking to them about funeral arrangements, overall the tract is well received and really gets people thinking. The Are You Ready tract has become one of our favorite tracts. Although this tract has just recently reached our tract club members, we have been using it successfully for months to reach those in Dallas with the Gospel!
