Whoever said that you would never use math again after High School? Arithmetic is at the very center of culture and human history. Without math, there would not have been an industrial age, problems would not have been solved, and we would still be living in the stone age. Our entire world is built on mathematics, symmetry, and shouts from mountaintops that the entirety of nature was designed by our Creator — God.
People are very visual. They like graphs, charts, any way to quickly look at a lot of data in one picture is the best way to persuade someone with rational thought. Math shows us colorations between subjects, track data, and energizes the mind to think about things in a different way. One way to do this in our evangelism is to give them a visual “gut-check” and use what every person has on their cellphone — a calculator.
How many sins they’ve potentially committed
Many people don’t understand the seriousness of their sin and that it is no big deal. They go through life and forget how much it offends a holy God, not only because they feel like their sin isn’t that bad or doesn’t hurt anyone, but that they can’t understand how much they have sinned in their life.
If I come in contact with a person that thinks his or her sin is no big deal, I would ask, “So how many times do you think you sin a day?” They may shrug off like they don’t know. So, I would get out my phone calculator and do some math.
I ask, “How old are you?”
“20.”
“Ok, now let’s say you commit only three sins a day. That’s pretty good, even for most religious people. I’ll even knock off the first 8 years of your life, just because you may or may not have known it was bad.” They shrug and agree newborns have no idea what they are doing. “So that means you have sinned at least 13,140 times your entire life! That number could be even more. What should God do with you now?”
20 – 8 = 12 years of sin.
Total number of sins = 3 x (12 x 365 days per year)
That equals to roughly 13,140 times you have broken God’s Law. So, how would a human court of law punish a person who broke the law 13,140 times? Not only that, but let’s say we compound this logic further to a person who is 50 years old. The sins he would rack up would be almost 46,000 times! What do you think would be a fair punnishment for your crimes? If man’s law is unjust and flawed, what about the Judge of all, Who just and good? What should He do with you? Using math to help us visualize our sin in this way shows the seriousness of it.
How many weekends you have left
The average lifespan for an American man is upwards of 76 years old. You can use a calculator to figure out how many weekends a person has left if they were to die at 76 years old. Why weekends? Because most people here in the United States lives for the weekend. If we calculated the number of days a person has, it would be so extremely large I think it would do more to lull them back to sleep. But in terms of weekends, it is manageable and gives a greater impact.
If you are…
- 20 years old today – you have about 2900 weekends left.
- 30 years old today – you have about 2400 weekends left.
- 40 years old today – you have about 1900 weekends left.
- 50 years old today – you have about 1350 weekends left.
- 60 years old today – you have about 800 weekends left.
- 70 years old today – you have about 312 weekends left.
- Older than 70? Don’t buy any green bananas. You may not get to eat them.
How large a graveyard for aborted babies
In July of 2022, I wrote an article in which I used this method, called: What If Everyone in Honolulu DIED? In it, I took Planned Parenthood abortion statistics and compared the number of abortions with the population of major cities in the United States in 2020. I estimated that more children died by abortion at the hands of Planned Parenthood in 2020 than the entire living population of Honolulu, Hawaii!
But in this article, I went a step further and calculated how large a graveyard and mausoleum would have to be in order to house the bodies.
If we buried each child aborted in 2020 by Planned Parenthood in a 3 ft by 2 ft grave side by side (which is a very conservative estimate) the graveyard would measure 2,129,226 square feet. This is equal to over 44 football fields side by side!!! If we erected a mausoleum for all the babies murdered by Planned Parenthood in 2020 alone…it would be the size of the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium which is 2.3 million square feet.
https://pensandwrenches.com/2022/07/15/abortion-cities/
Think about that the next time you go to a pro NFL football game.
How I came up with the numbers is:
Graveyard Total Square Feet = Number of babies x (length ft x width ft)
Mausoleum Total Square Feet = Number of babies x (length ft x width ft x height ft)
You can compare these numbers to anything tangible or real, even comparing them to the holocaust of World War II. Even comparing it to the city in which they are currently residing in. If the town in which they live is small, you could do math to calculate how many of their city it would take to house the bodies.
Giving people this type of persepective really hits home for many people. When I’ve shared this information with them, some get mad, but most become solemn when we compare something astronomical to something they can see and experience on a daliy basis. It makes it real for them.
Parlor tricks that are used to share the gospel
As I was searching for other ways to share the gospel using a calculator, I stumbled upon this blog post entitled, How To Share the Gospel Using Simple Math, and thought it was a neat way to present the gospel. Instead of recreating what was already done, just go to the above link and even watch the video. I have never heard of Evangelize Cincinnati, but friends of mine have worked closely with them and assure me they are brothers and sisters in Christ. I encourage you to check them out as they have many ideas how to strike up conversations with strangers.
Calculating the weight of the Joseph Smith’s Mormon gold plates
I was very blessed to have been a part of the short-term mission trips to Utah, specifically during the Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant, in Manti, Utah. It was an amazing time talking with and sharing the gospel to the Mormon people who traveled there for the event. It was also a fantastic opportunity to get together evangelists from all over the country to worship the One True Living God, and win souls for His kingdom.
One of those evangelists, Bill McKeever of Mormon Research Ministry, had a unique way of sharing the gospel to Latter-day Saints (LDS), which was featured in the book, Sharing the Good News With Mormons: Practical Strategies to Get the Conversation Started. Watch the following video as McKeever challenges the LDS to pick up 200 lbs. of gold and put it under their arms to carry them away to prove that 14-year-old Joseph Smith couldn’t possibly do it. He not only uses math to calculate the weight of the plates, but builds a replica of them that he drags behind him in a wagon.
How do you use math to share the gospel?
What about you? How do you use a calculator to share the gospel? Give us a small lesson in the comments below. We would love to know.
Pens & Wrenches 
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