Friday Night Notes

weary soldiers soldiering on...

All and all, it's been a "bleh" kind of week for me... which probably explains why going on preaching tonight was something less than appealing. Yet, what I lacked in motivation, I made up with commitment, and made my way downtown with pastor Tim, Bible signs firmly in hand.

The market was full of activity tonight; the streets were crammed with thousands of people. There some sort of "Blue's Festival" going on in my city this week, so part of the marketplace was cornered off for a live performance. It was... well... it was loud. Oh, and ungodly too. Loud and ungodly. No wonder thousands of people came down to the market tonight.

While it was disheartening to see so many taking in the ungodly spectacle, it was a great opportunity to preach to so many people. We were literally around the corner from where the concert was and there was a steady stream of sinners who both saw our Bible signs and heard the preaching of the Gospel. The Lord use His Word as He sees fit.

There was plenty of mockery and scorn, but to be honest, I was expecting things to be worst than they were. Usually, big crowds means big trouble. Not so tonight, thankfully. We gave out a fair number of Bible tracts, and had a couple of one-on-one conversations; nothing too promising though.

Brother Alex, a fellow street evangelist, came by to say "hi". It's always good to see a friendly face when labouring in "vanity fair". I thank the Lord for Alex. He is the only one from his church who consistently and faithfully goes out for evangelism. He's not a pastor, he's a young man who has realized that the Great Commission is for everyone, and is doing something about it. The Lord bless him and give his tract distribution ministry great success.

Shortly after brother Alex left for home, a man came by and wished to engage me in a conversation on the so-called "Gnostic epistles" and the legitimacy of the Canon. He started... then he asked me what I thought... I answered... then he said "okay", and walked away. I think he thought he was going to "wow" me with his basic knowledge of church history; poor soul, he walked away looking a bit deflated.

Another man mockingly asked me if I had had "any bites" tonight. I laughed and said: "I am a fisher of men." The man just looked puzzled at my answer. Seconds after he left, Simon Peter's words came to mind:

"Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing..." (Luke 5:5)

Sigh.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism

Friday Night Notes

whole lot of preaching this week...

That poor Bible sign in the above picture... it had a rough night. Two or three times it was kicked to the ground by sin-hardened souls who felt the need to express their hatred of the Gospel. It's a tough crowd we preach to every Friday.

It rained for much of the day, and even part of the evening, so up until 9pm, both pastor Tim and I thought our regular night of street preaching was lost; but the weather cleared up so we made our way to the market, Bible signs in hand, and we preached the Gospel of Jesus for about two hours. The market wasn't terribly busy, but we still shared the Gospel with hundreds of sinners. We didn't hand out too many Bible tracts though, and our audience was quite unreceptive to our preaching... and that's putting it mildly.

I did speak with a woman who appreciated what we were doing. She seemed to know the Bible fairly well, but it was clear that she had been deceived by the ecumenical movement. She spoke much of the need for denominations to come together, so I made my position clear. I explained to her, using Nehemiah as an example, that getting together with God's enemies and/or those who cleave to errors isn't the Biblical Unity; rather, it is the mixing of clean and unclean (and that mixture always yields uncleanness). She took my rebuke rather well. She even took one of our tracts and said she'd try to visit our church sometime. I really hope she does.

I also had a fairly long conversation with a man who claimed to have both been a Baptist and a "Jehovah's Witness". He expressed, in no uncertain terms, that he had little time for our evangelism. He was going to speak to me because he figured "my heart was in the right place", and he figured he was going to educate me in the Truth. It should be noted here that the man reeked of alcohol. He went on and on, giving me "Jehovah's Witness" apologetics, claiming that my Gospel was a perversion.

"If you died right now, where would you spend eternity?" I asked, disregarding all his nonsense.

At first, the man ignored my question, and continued with the JW sales pitch, making sure to add, at very regular intervals: "you don't know the truth... I'll teach you!" When I pressed him a second, third and fourth time with my question, he finally answered:

"I'm dead, 'cause I've fallen away."

"No," I replied. "You're not "dead" because you've fallen away from WatchTower-ism, you're dead because God never saved you, and to this night, you are rebelling against God's commandments."

"If you knew the truth," the man replied angrily, "you wouldn't be standing here with this placard, you'd be..."

"Drinking booze in that bar with you?" I replied.

Having touched his obvious hypocrisy, the man just walked away. The Holy Spirit reprove this poor man for his sin.

After these two conversations, all pastor Tim and I got was cursings and threats. The horrible blasphemies that were uttered were also truly grievous. After our two hours of evangelism, I wanted to literally run out of the market.

What a vile place we labour in.


That's the notes for tonight.

Dear readers, have a good weekend and a blessed Lord's Day.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism

Rand's " To Don't " List

just have to get this off my chest...


1- Don't think that watching/listening to Paul Washer sermons makes you a real "hot" Christian. There's a verse somewhere about being a doer, and not a hearer only.

2- If you are not actively and faithfully committed to evangelism, don't look down or criticize an evangelist; and that, even if you see a genuine fault. You'll just look like an idiot.

3- Don't start a blog with the words "Bible", "Christianity", "Holiness", "Truth", or "God" in the title if you are going to use much of your webspace commenting on Hollywood movies and/or carnal political issues.

4- Don't worship at the e-church. It isn't real.

5- Don't claim that it isn't God's will for your life to do something that you don't want to do; 'cause that's just stupid.

6- Don't make popes out of men like Ray Comfort, James White, John Piper, John MacArthur, or Charles Spurgeon. I'm pretty sure none of them would want to be idolized in any way, and the time and energy you put on following these men, you are not focusing on following God.

7- Don't quote Matthew 7:1 if you don't know Matthew 7:16-20 by heart.

8- Don't draw any spiritual comfort from academic or professional success or your position in any ministry/church. Plenty of pastors/deacons/bishops/elders/priests/successful leaders will one day be cast to the Lake of Fire.

9- Don't play (TV, sports, social event... etc) when there is a service at your local church, or some other ministry you could be helping out with. God is never pleased with vanity or laziness.

10- Don't think for one moment that you have attained. Don't believe for one second that you're a "spiritual somebody". I assure you, you're not.


Rand

Labels: Fundamentalism

Canada Day Street Preaching

what an exhausting day...

I'm sooooo tired right now... so forgive me, dear readers, if this post isn't too coherent. My family and I made our way to pastor Tim's house at 9am this morning, where we prayed that the Lord would bless our traditional day of evangelism on Canada Day (for my American readership, July 1st is our "4th of July"). My wife and my eldest son joined pastor Tim and I as we made our way downtown with Bible signs and Gospel tracts (my two younger ones remained with pastor Tim's wife).

We set our Bible signs up near a mall where there is always tons of traffic and pastor Tim and I began to preach the Gospel while my wife and my son distributed some tracts. A "mall cop" came by two or three times in an attempt to get rid of us, but we knew we were on public property, so despite his threatenings, we stood our ground. Never ceases to amaze me how crazy the Gospel drives some people. The Lord have mercy on his lost soul.

We were able to preach the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ until lunch time in this extremely busy area of downtown, handing out a fair number of Gospel literature. By 12pm though, the noise level downtown was so high, hardly anyone could hear our preaching, even with the use of an amplifier. So pastor Tim and I decided to split up. One of us would go preaching at our usual preaching spot (seen in the image above), while the other would continue giving our Bible tracts where the massive crowds were; we decided to trade spots every hour.

My wife, being 8 months pregnant, had had her fill of street evangelism at noon, so she made her way back to pastor Tim's place with my son. A short time after they left I had an interesting conversation with a man from the Czech Republic named Joe. Joe knew his Bible pretty well and he was absolutely appalled by the wickedness of the city. He said 50 years ago, the only place you would have found the kind of filth that surrounded us, was in the darkest, most heathen of backward tribes. I agreed.

I'm not sure if Joe was truly born-again, or if he was just religious. I tried to find out by asking, but he was evasive (not a good sign). The Lord be merciful to him.

I spoke to a lot of professing Christians today, but most aggravated me to no end. The bulk of them were out playing with and like the world, and then brought complaints over our evangelistic method:

"Don't you think you're turning people off?" one said.

"Well I'm a youth pastor, and I don't believe you should be convicting people by telling them they are going to go to hell lest they repent," another claimed. "That's the Holy Spirit's job, not yours."

"People are different today, we're more sophisticated, you can't go around like Paul and Peter and preach fire and brimstone," yet another said.

I can't be too hard on them, I once thought as they did. They believe such garbage because from day one, they have been taught this garbage by men who should have been spending less time preaching, and more time reading God's Word. Still, I have to admit, that by the end of the day, I really didn't want to meet another such Christian.

My wife and kids dropped by in the middle of the afternoon to say goodbye, as they were going back home. My eldest then asked me if he could stay to help. I have to say that I'm not a big fan of having my family around in my evangelistic efforts. Violence is always a possibility, and the last thing I want, is to put my children in any jeopardy. On top of that, I know all too well that my countrymen are vile enough to curse, blaspheme and even mock my eight year old son... and that's something I knew I would have a real hard time dealing with.

I therefore wanted to say "no", but I said "yes". I felt it was important for my son to see what his daddy does every Friday, and understand how unpopular his father's faith is. I basically wanted him to see and understand for himself what it was to be with the Lord Jesus Christ in a wicked and perverse world. I think the poor lad got quite an education. One woman walked by him and pointing at me, said:

"Don't believe him! He's crazy!"

Despite the persecution, my son stayed by my side, unfazed by the folly around him. A few Christians came by and encouraged us both, and that put a smile on both our faces.

We saw lots of people we knew during our time of evangelism. We had a short conversation with Brother Chris of the Open-Air Campaigners, Brother Henry of the Gideons, Brother Pascal and his wife Jenny were both out with their baby girl, handing out WOTM tracts, and near the end of the day, we had a small chat with Collin, who has visited our church on a number of occasions. I also had a chance to talk to a couple of teens that were once part of our Sunday School classes. Sadly, both left God behind... the Lord have mercy.

After nearly eight hours of street evangelism, pastor Tim and I called it a day and had a short time of prayer at his house. We thanked the Lord for the safety He gave us, the tracts that were handed out, the conversations that we had, and my son's interest in helping us out.

To God be the glory.


Rand

Labels: Evangelism

Friday Night Notes

preaching to the deaf and blind...

It's been an exceeding long day. A particularly long work week, a 10-hour work day, and then 2.5 hours of street preaching makes for a very tired Rand.

I was half-an-hour late tonight (due to work), so I caught up with pastor Tim who had already started preaching in the marketplace. Not a whole lot to report tonight. We were, for the most part, mocked or simply ignored; much to our chagrin. The good news is that we weren't seriously threatened tonight, and we were able to preach the Gospel without hindrance.

The only conversation I had tonight was with a lost soul named... get this... Emmanuel. Well, Emmanuel wasn't doing to well. He claimed that he was born-again, having the Holy Spirit in him, but he also claimed that drug use was helping him worship God. Oh dear. I explained that there was no way he could be a slave to drugs and the bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ at the same time. The lost soul then said:

"But I pray to God all the time, that if I were doing something wrong, He'd tell me right away!"

"Yes, Emmanuel," I said, "and God has answered your prayer! He sent a street preacher tonight to tell you that you are doing something wrong, and that you need to repent!"

Emmanuel didn't argue against my statement at all. Deep down, he knew he was and is in deep spiritual trouble. Despite this realization, Emmanuel left me as spiritually dead as when he first walked up to me. The Lord be merciful unto him.

This lost sinner was but one drop in the sea of lost souls we preached to tonight. Thousands heard and consequently rejected the Gospel of Life, preferring vain and wicked paths that has never, nor can ever satisfy. Spiritual blindness and deafness is the order of the day in Canada. I sometimes feel like I got Isaiah's ministry:

"And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed." (Isaiah 6:9-10)

No point whining about the situation, God knows what He's doing and His will is being fulfilled in me, as in the lost. Glory to His Name.

One bright moment came as pastor Tim and I walked back home: a young lady walked by us, and after reading one of our Bible signs, said:

"Wow! God bless you guys!"

The Lord bless her for her kindness.


I'm going to bed now... I need the rest.

God bless you all, dear readers.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism

So Clear, No One Gets It!

oh dear... oh dear... oh dear...


This nonsense was on Yahoo! news:

In a recent Q&A with Asharq alawsat, MacFarquhar, who speaks Arabic, grew up in Libya and worked in the Middle East for 13 years, talks about his book: "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday."

"There are all kinds of people in the Arab world who feel that their region is out of step with the rest of the world when it comes to basic civic, human and political rights," he says. "When they look at the history of the region, with its rich history of scientific and artistic achievement, they wonder what went wrong. Where are the Arab Microsofts? Where are the Arab Apple computers?"

The answer is so simple... it's seems crazy to me that the author hasn't (or won't) figure it out.

It starts with an "I", and ends with a "SLAM".


Rand

Labels: Stupid

No Notes

Lord-willing, be back next week...

Poor health has kept me from going to work at my secular job, today. It also kept me from doing my customary Friday evangelistic work.

Hope to be back at it next week.

Take care,

Rand