Battle Log

Page 237

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It’d been a few weeks since I was last out on the streets witnessing. With all that had been going on in my last job I just found my time was severely limited. However, today that all changed, I once again was able to head into the city centre of Canberra to proclaim the Gospel.

I arrived in the city at just after 9am and met up with Ben. We had a short time of prayer and fellowship before heading off to begin telling people about Jesus. The morning was fine, and the sun was putting out some warmth, so we went and stood near the bus stop and began to hand out tracts to those who were making their way to work. 

Since people were scarce during this time Ben and I split up so that we could cover more ground and witness to more people. As I stood by the bus stop handing out tracts I noticed this one lady watching me. When she saw that I had noticed her she cam over asking what I was handing out. When I informed her it was a Gospel tract she said, “Oh! You’re a Christian, I’m a Christian also.” Sadly, I have found that in the nine years I’ve been involved in evangelism that someone claiming to be a Christian can sometimes mean very little, so I asked this lady (her name is Rosemary) how she became a Christian. She smiled and said, “Became a Christian? I’ve always been one, I was born a Christian.” 

Rosemary like many other Australians believed herself to be saved because she was born into a “Christian” nation. Yet, as we look at the Scripture we see that our national and cultural heritage does nothing to merit salvation. In Philippians 3:4-8, the Apostle Paul states that if there was any merit in his heritage or works then he’d have been saved. But then he goes on to say that he had forsake trusting in those things in order to gain Christ. Salvation is not by heritage, tribe or nation. You cannot be born a Christian, that is why Jesus says in John 3:7, “Ye must be born again.” 

I tried to explain to Rosemary that her salvation is not based on who she is, or what she has done, but that salvation is dependent upon God. From there she began to talk about how she was a good person, and that must mean something. Once again I had to point out that her good works are as filthy rages (Isaiah 64:6) and that only the work of Jesus can save sinners. After hearing the Gospel Rosemary left, taking a tract saying she’d think more about what I said. Please remember to pray for her. 

After Rosemary left I continued to hand out the “Stop” tracts to those who were crossing the road from the bus station. As I offered one Asian man a tract, he stopped, and said, “Is this religious?” I replied by stating that it was about the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done for sinners. This man stood there reading the tract, and then said, “I’m a Buddhist, I don’t believe this.” From there the conversation was off and running. It turns out that this man is named Wai, and he is from mainland China. Until last year Wai had been the product of atheistic communism, he believed that all religion was evil, but then he met some Buddhists who lived moral lives. He concluded that they must be right, since the Buddhists were “good people”, with that logic he converted to Buddhism, and moved to Australia. 

Wai told me that he was a good person at heart, and that one day he’d come back as something better in this life. So I asked him, “When you die, who will judge your deeds to determine what you come back as?” Wai looked at me blankly, and said, “I don’t know.” From there I was able to tell Him of the only true God, and how that God had given us a moral law. We walked through the commandments and Wai began to see that he wasn’t a good person, and that God would be forced to judge him. 

When Wai realised the depth of his depravity, I told him the good news, that God had done the only thing possible to forgive sinners, and that was to die as their substitute. It turns out that Wai had never heard the message of Jesus, he’d never heard the Gospel. So on the streets of Canberra at around 10am in the morning Wai got to hear the good news concerning Jesus for the very first time. 

Our conversation finished with Wai wanting to learn more, so I gave him a tract, and a Gospel of John. Please pray that God would save Wai. 

Around this time Ben had returned from handing out tracts and talking to people. He’d had a few good conversations, including one with a former trainee Roman Catholic priest, who is now into new-age atheism. 

After sharing what we’d both encountered so far that morning we headed back into the centre of Garema Place, and there we began to declare the Scriptures aloud. People by this stage of the morning we starting to do their shopping and enjoy the sunshine, so we thought it was a good time to read God’s Word. 

Ben began by reading out Psalm 103. As he read a few people stopped to listen, and then moved on. When he finished reading I stood up and began to read out John 3. As I was reading I noticed again that a few people stopped to listen to the Scripture. 

During my reading a man named Tim walked by, stopped, listened, and then went to Ben to ask more questions. Ben was able to share with him the good news about Jesus.

God was blessing the reading of His Word! After Ben finished witnessing to Tim we thought it’d be good to read a larger chunk of Scripture, so we decided to read all of 1 John. 

Ben began by reading 1 John 1, and then he handed it over to me for me to finish the book. As we read we noticed that people were stopping and listening. Some were even sitting down to listen, others were standing drinking their coffee while listening to God’s Word be read. There were a wide variety of people listening, from men in suits to teenagers in street clothes. Different nationalities and cultures were present also, all listening to God’s Word. 

Some stayed for a chapter or two, others stayed for the whole thing. God was blessing the reading of His Scripture. 

Now from a pragmatic position we’d done everything wrong. We are constantly told in evangelism that we shouldn’t open air preach, and if we do, then we shouldn’t use our Bible as that may turn people off, but if we do use our Bible make sure it’s anything but the Authorised Version (KJV).

Well, we broke all those pragmatic rules. We open-air preached, we used Bibles and we read from the Authorised Version. Yet, as we did so you could hear people saying “Oh, he’s reading from the Bible.” The language of the Authorised Version seemed to be helping us, as when people heard the “Ye”, “Thou” etc, they knew it was the Scripture, and not some other book.

After reading seven chapters of the Bible we decided to start open-air preaching. Ben went first and he did a wonderful job in lifting the Saviour high, and laying the sinner low. While he was preaching two workmen walked path laughing and mocking the Gospel. Ben on seeing this addressed them and pointing out Christ died for sinners (including mockers), they fell silent as they walked away. 

Around 11:30am, it was my turn to preach. It’d been awhile since I have open-air preached so I sent out a tweet requesting prayer from my brothers and sisters in Christ. As I thought about what to preach I thought I should address the question of “If there is a God, why doesn’t He do something about evil?” This question is very common to those who would seek to reject Christianity. 

I began preaching by stating the question, and then I went on to read Genesis 6:5-8, pointing out that God does deal with evil, but the problem is, we are the evil ones. A good size crowd gathered as I preached, and there were no hecklers. You can listen to the audio of my open-air below. 

After I finished preaching I was approached by young lady who had been listening to the whole message. Her name was Oonah (Irish background). She disagreed with what I said, and found the concept of surrendering and being a slave to God as repulsive. I explained to her that I was happily a slave to my master the Lord Jesus, and then pointed out that she was a slave also, a slave to sin. 

The moment we started to deal with the absolutes of morality Oonah showed her postmodern mindset. Nothing became right, and nothing became wrong. All morality and truth was subjective. All I could do was keep replying “This is what God says.” Ultimately the reason she disagreed with the Gospel is because she loves her sin, and she doesn’t want to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is the only reason she’d reject Jesus. 

After a few minutes of talking to her she said she had to leave, however, she did take a Gospel of John and the book by John Blanchard, “Ultimate Questions”. Please pray for Oonah, may God reveal that He is a kind master, and that He is absolute truth. 

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Audio of the Open-Air:

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After long discussions with the council and deliberations by them we have been banned from witnessing in the Elizabeth Street Mall on threat of arrest if we persist. As I wrote previously we are looking for advice currently on options for challenging this ruling and what the implications for a court challenge are. Please be in prayer for us and all Christians in Hobart as the government here is becoming increasingly belligerent in its opposition to public expressions of Christianity.

This Friday I obtained a permit for witnessing in Franklin Square, a small park bracketed by the two major roads through town. It was a rainy day and quite cold so I was expecting to have little success with conversations but I hoped that I would be able to hand out some tracts to the people in the bus station. With many faithful Christians appealing to God I was also hoping that God would act to exceed what I thought would naturally tend to happen.

On arriving I decided rapidly that preaching would be out of the question for the day, the only audience I would have is the local seagulls and pigeons. As they have no need for a saviour I went to the bus station and handed out tracts and tried to speak to my fellow dying men and women of Hobart. For the following two hours I had a constant stream of people who took tracts and one or two short conversations with people in the bus station. A couple of Christians from my church stopped to say hello and encourage me in the work, this is always a great lift to my spirits.

At the end of the time I bumped into two friends who also identified themselves as Christians. We had an encouraging talk and I urged the young man in particular to consider carefully the particulars of our faith and make sure that he was walking faithfully with the Lord.

There were encouragements today but I am hopeful form more people to hear the gospel and for there to be an opportunity to speak to more people and possibly gather a crowd to preach the gospel to them. God willing we will be able to build this area into a Speakers Corner that people come to to hear the preaching much like in London.

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It was a wet and windy Friday afternoon as Adam, Andrew, Paul and I gathered to share the eternal gospel with the lost of Hobart in the Elizabeth street mall. I was expecting that there would be opposition today from the Hobart City Council just as there had for the previous six months. I was not disappointed on that count and even the Hobart police force became involved in attempting to prevent us preaching the good news.

Previously we have been harassed by the council who informed us that we need a permit to preach and hand out tracts in the mall and we were breaking the by laws. I investigated this thoroughly and the only relevant law that could be construed this way was one forbidding political meetings in the mall. There are several laws relating to religious activity in car parks around the city, but as the mall does not count as a car park I disregarded these laws. In spite of this the council persists in pointing to their conditions of use document which explicitly forbids preaching, one to one witnessing and tracting in the mall, the conditions of use document then points back to the by laws as a basis for the restrictions. This circular reasoning is used regularly to restrict freedom of religion in Hobart.

We began the day with handing out tracts and talking with people in various places in the mall. I always rejoice to see tracts in the hands of people and often seeing them reading or showing them to friends.

I found a convenient place to preach from behind a wind break which thankfully also acted as a sounding board and allowed me to project my voice down the mall. I began to preach using the recent budget and other financial concerns globally. From this regular concern for most people I turned to what God’s word says on the matter, in particular the comments in Mt 6 on money and the other common modern preoccupation - worry. The Bible is plain on this count, greed is only another form of idolatry and worry is distrust of God at best and practical atheism at worst. We are commanded to worship God only and when we refuse to do this we become guilty. Judgement/Gospel/Appeal

Adam preached for first time – death and certainty of judgement and need of the gospel.

Council officers approached Adam when preaching – need a permit. Referred to me, tried discussion but not interested, they called the police. Left saying we were God-botherers

Police arrived after Adam finished and we were talking and handing out tracts. Told complaint had been made and we were breaking the bylaws. Also told were breaking the public disorder laws by preaching/making noise/offending people. Discussed laws and police became very antsy and upset with this and I was told to become a police officer if I wanted to know the law so much.

Clarification sought at the Police station, inspector informed us that the same things apply

• Council by laws should be upheld

• We were breaching public order laws – contradictory

• We were not being discriminated against as it applied to all “not just you”

We are seeking legal information and political approaches to resolve this matter quickly

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Operation 513 Olympic Outreach Video Blog - (Day 6)

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Operation 513 Olympic Outreach Video Blog - (Day 5)

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Operation 513 Olympic Outreach Video Blog - (Day 4)

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Operation 513 Olympic Outreach Video Blog - (Day 3)

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Operation 513 Olympic Outreach Video Blog - (Day 2)

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Operation 513 Olympic Outreach Video Blog - (Day 1)

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From Rob Hughes, London team leader, currently on mission with JeremiahCry Ministries in Glasgow, Scotland:

Yesterday was a real blessing witnessing with the team. It's truly wonderful to labour with so many faithful men of God in the proclamation of God's Word. 

Here are some of the great conversations I had...

I spoke with a chap (David) who beats himself up over the wrong he has done in the past, and so he labours to "fix" the past through many good deeds. This is ultimately a self-righteous pursuit to justify oneself in the eyes of God. 

I explained to him that forgiveness found in Christ sets us free. We are saved and transformed, the evidence of which is seen by the good deeds we perform. When we receive salvation our desires change. The born again man wants to perform deeds "...in keeping with repentance." It doesn't mean he never sins, however the new desires born in him propel him to exalt the Lord with his life. 

R.C. Sproul explains it like this: 

"We are covered in an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is not our own, but under that covering we are still inclined to break the law of God. Justification declares us righteous, it does not make us sinless. 

We are granted citizenship in God’s kingdom based only on the righteousness of Christ, but good works are not an optional part of the Christian life. In fact, believers must do good, not to secure justification but to evidence their justification."

There is great freedom found in Christ. We do not live under a heavy burden with regards to living a godly life. As new born believers we do not live godly lives in order to receive favour with God, rather we live godly lives out of gratitude and praise to God because we have already received favour with Him. 

This is why we read in Galatians 5:1: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

I explained this as best I could to David. He did listen and appeared to get what I was saying, although it seemed that he was more concerned with earning favour with God, instead of humbly receiving the grace that God offers. He left with a tract and a New Testament. Do pray for him. 

Together with others on the team, I also spoke with two young men who had grown up Catholic. They appeared quite nominal and were very open to hear the gospel. As we shared with them it definitely appeared that the light came on. They really seemed excited to understand and know why the Son of God lived as a man and why He died on a cross for the sin of the world. 

~ Jesus lived a sinless, perfect life, in order to be the perfection we can't be, and then He died on a cross to pay the penalty for the sins we have committed. As a result of what Jesus has done, when a man repents and trusts in Him, God treats that man as if he lived Christ's life, and He treats Christ as if He lived that man's life. 

Amazing. 

It was a blessed day indeed. Do pray for all those who heard the gospel. 

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