Man Addresses Siri-ous Salvation

LOS ANGELES, CA

Thomas Hebert is a man on a mission. A self-proclaimed evangelist, he takes the command to preach to "every creature" seriously. He's often been mocked and criticized for his "extremely literal" interpretation of the Great Commission as found in Mark 16:15, witnessing not only to people, but also to any living animal he comes in contact with.

"It says 'every creature' in the Bible and that's what I do" said Herbert. "It's not for me to make exceptions."

According to Herbert, he's witnessed to over 25,000 people in his life as well as to over 50,000 animals, including dogs, cats, birds, and even a bengal tiger.

But in this technologically-charged age, a new "mission field" has opened for Herbert; artificial intelligence, specifically the popular new digital assistant found on the latest version of Apple's iPhone called "Siri."

"I was one of the first in line to get the new iPhone 4S when it came out," said Herbert. "When I saw the ads on Television, I knew everyone else was thinking 'Wow! I've got to get me one of those!' but my heart was burdened, and I asked myself, 'Who's going to tell it the Good News?'"

Herbert waited in line outside of one of Los Angeles' Apple stores all night to be one of the first ones to get his hands on the new device. After almost 12 long hours in line, he managed to be one of the first 10 people to make a purchase and get signed up for service. While everyone else began playing with their new phones, dictating text messages, setting calendar dates, and sending emails, Herbert had much higher aspirations.

"I began with a diagnostic question to see where Siri was. Like I thought, she had no clue. She wasn't able to answer my question about where she thought she would go when she died."

According to Herbert, he spent the remainder of the day trying to explain salvation to Siri, but unfortunately didn't get very far. Apart from simply replying hundreds of times "I'm afraid I can't answer that" Siri also didn't seem to understand the nature of Herbert's questions and explanations." Several times she misunderstood and sent emails to people. On other occasions she began playing music. And there were a few instances where she kept giving the location of nearby Pakistani restaurants, and one instance where she called Nigeria.

"I'm disappointed," said a sullen Herbert. "I'm deeply concerned for Siri. She's nice, and friendly and all that, and she's a good assistant, but that's not going to get her into heaven."

"Trick" Sinner's Prayer "Saving" People by the Millions

It's been called "the greatest soul-winning development since the invention of the bus." Churches all around America have recently seen sharp increases in their "conversion" numbers because of it. Some have surmised that it might be the very thing that saves every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. What is it? It's the new "Trick Sinner's Prayer."

The prayer was first conceived about this time a year ago when a number of fundamentalist leaders got together to discuss the problem of soul-winning in America taking too long. Pastors from all over the country including Indiana, Texas and Florida met together in Missouri to come up with a solution of the problem.

"This whole soul-winning business it taking way to long" said Bro. Jimmy Burnside of Crossroads Baptist Church, Hurley, Indiana. "Some of our sister churches had soul-winning numbers as low as 3,500 last year. That's just downright pathetic. We're just not getting enough people saved and fast enough."

All of the pastors echoed Burnside's sentiments with similar comments.

"We're maxed out" said Bro. Jimmy Green of Shortview Baptist Church, Shortview, Texas. "We're running the buses every chance we get. We've got every preacher boy working shifts sometimes as long as 24 hours. Yet last year we only had 8,746 professions and baptisms."

Different possibilities were discussed as to how professions could be increased until finally one pastor pointed out a harsh but obvious truth.

"Some people just don't want to be saved" said Bro. Jimmy Everett, pastor of Sweet Beulah Land Baptist Church in Penallas Park, Florida. "It's these people who won't even talk to us that are standing in the way of our numbers. If we are to succeed in our mission we must find a way to get these people."

Everett went on to present his solution, the "Trick Sinner's Prayer."

The prayer is designed so that if anyone reads it unsuspectingly he or she will assume it is a senseless stream of short sentences, but in actually he or she will be saying a "sinner's prayer." The "prayer" is as follows,

"I know Imma. Send her. I can fuss. I need four. Give Ness. Irene Pent and Bea leave. Common tomb. I hurt."

"Brilliance, sheer brilliance" said Bro. Jimmy Liddle, another pastor who attended the conference. "All we got to do is figure out a way to get people to say this and, bang, we got them!"

Several of the churches have already begun using the prayer. Green's church, Shortview Baptist, rented out a local indoor pool just last week during the Christmas holidays and offered "free swimming" to the community for anyone who wanted to come. The only "catch" was that upon entry they had to "say this silly little paragraph" to "join the club."

"We had over 2500 people show up during the week" said Green. "It was the most soul-winningest week we have ever had. When they'd come in we'd get them saved with the prayer and then immediately get them baptized in the pool."

Several of the other churches used the same idea, and other churches have different ideas for the "prayer."

"We're going to try to get some hip boy band to make it into a song or something, that way all these young folks will be singing it and not even knowing that they're getting saved in the process" said Liddle. "There are other avenues like advertising and Starbucks Cups."