Doubling Down

"I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me... Guard through the Holy Spirit the good deposit entrusted to you... What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men and women, who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 1:12, 14; 2:2).

Would you rather be given a million dollars today, or a penny today and double the number of pennies each day thereafter for a month?

1^st day: 1 penny

2^nd day: 2 pennies

3^rd day: 4 pennies

4^th day: 8 pennies

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I’ve never hit the long ball when it comes to math, but it's fairly easy even for me to to come up with the answer: To double something 30 times, you can either multiply 2*2*2... thirty times, or you can write it as 2^30 (two raised to the thirtieth power) and plug it into your calculator. Or you can ask Siri as I did. The result is a really big number: $1,073,741,824!

It's a no-brainer: take the pennies.

In like manner, would you rather be an evangelist with an audience of thousands today, or entrust the gospel to one person today who entrusts it to another tomorrow, who entrusts it to another the next day, who entrusts it to another…  Assuming an unbroken sequence, you would, in one month, evangelize (proclaim the gospel) to the population of the entire Western Hemisphere, give or take a few!

I’m assuming, of course, that the chain will be unbroken and everyone will do his or her part every day to pass the good news on and that’s a gratuitous assumption. And surely some math maven will find other flaws in my argument. But I’m just sayin’: one winsome Christian man or woman, filled with the love of Jesus, faithfully and prayerfully giving his or her faith away… Well, you just can’t imagine what the consequences would be.  

David Roper

7.8.19