By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A commercial by a Christian group that invites Super Bowl viewers to look up John 3:16 was mistakenly aired just before the fourth quarter of last night’s game, even though Fox Sports had rejected the ad, saying it contained too much “religious doctrine.”
The Christian Post is reporting that the creators of the ad, Fixed Point Foundation, wanted to use the enormous platform of the Super Bowl to launch what it calls “the most important message the world has ever heard.” So they created an ad that features a group of friends who are watching a football game in a living room. The camera focuses on a defensive player who has “John 3:16” written in his eye black. The viewers question what it means, with one of them offering to look it up for them on his cell phone. The commercial concludes with “LookUp316.com: A Message of Hope.”
Apparently, plenty of people took to the bait because there was so much traffic to the site during the next hour that it was difficult to load the web page.
“The LookUp316.com website hit totals are soaring …,” tweeted Larry Taunton, executive director of Fixed Point Foundation, an organization that sponsors that combats atheism by staging debates between atheists and Christians at universities around the world.
Even though the commercial contains no preaching, it was originally rejected by Fox Sports for containing too much “religious doctrine” and for being too offensive.
But the makers of the ad don’t agree.
“Few people have the chance to say something truly meaningful. And, more often than not, that opportunity is wasted,” says the FixedPoint Foundation website. “Even our biggest media and cultural event, the Super Bowl, is chock full of million-dollar clutter. Massive amounts of money are spent talking about trivial things – like beer and potato chips. What if you used that opportunity to do something great?”
They decided to do just that, and in what can only be called a “God-incidence,” many viewers got an unexpected dose of good news along with the game last night:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
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