Battle Log

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Misuse of Mary, A beautiful book, Amazing manuscripts, and the doubtful of Sheffield.

This weekend we went to Dublin for a birthday weekend for Anna. In this city we found a few things that were a surprise and one thing in particular that was a delight for us to find by accident. It was a blessing from God to see the good things that are given to yet another city of the sons of man that is so undeserving of any good. We spent wandering around the city and visiting the various historical and interesting places to see including the museums, castle and the only bridge in Europe that is wider than it is long.

While walking through the main street I stumbled on a store that outraged me and I believe would outrage the Christian it was named after - Mary the mother of Jesus. The store claimed that Mary of Nazareth is mediatrix of all graces and so claiming salvation can be found in Jesus and in her. As I said this would have outraged this Godly woman who submitted herself to salvation through her son and her God Jesus Christ.... ALONE. This is witnessed to by her presence among the disciples before Pentecost devoting herself to prayer, which in this context would have been directed in faith to the Father and to Jesus as they awaited the Spirit (Acts 1:13-14). It is one of the great tragedies of church history that faith has been misplaced in Mary and the church of Rome has indulged in the sin of the Israelites using her as an idol.

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)

We pray that those who teach and practice this idolatry would be saved from it to a pure faith in God alone and that He would purify them by the blood of Jesus!

We also had the opportunity to view the Book of Kells while we were at Trinity College; this book is full of amazing illustrations and the most minute and intricate detail I have ever seen in an ancient book. This book was truly beautiful to behold and is a witness to the creativity of mankind. It is a great pity that in reading the history of this book we found that its purpose was to decorate an altar ("...was intended as altar furniture" was the phrase) and not to be read and treasured for the beautiful words that God has given us. While the Book of Kells was truly beautiful, it is also a sad state of affairs when the more beautiful words of God are neglected and left to stand gathering dust on an altar. This is also the state of many bibles in this land, left to gather dust on the shelves of many homes and libraries. Wake up people! There is a treasure greater than the Book of Kells on your shelves! In the words that came to Augustine we would urge you all "Take up and read, take up and read"! Do not neglect what can make you wise unto salvation.

Quite by accident we stumbled upon a great treasure when visiting the Chester Beatty Library. Within the Christian religion display that the library has we found some old manuscripts of the new testament and the description underneath them revealed them to be P45, P46 and P47! We were astounded, here were authenticated manuscripts dating from 200AD to 250AD, a less than 150 years after the writing of the originals. These manuscripts were written by people who's grandparents or great grandparents would have been alive in the time of Jesus Christ. We were amazed at the privilege God had given us by bringing us to the library unbeknownst to us, to see these ancient works that support the word He has preserved for us His children.

Along with the 5000 odd other manuscripts that are currently known, these manuscripts provide more support for the bible's unchanged nature than any other ancient book. The histories of Rome and Greece, the books of the Qu'ran and Ahadith, the biographical works of Julius Caesar and Alexander the great, all these accepted ancient writings must be thrown out as so much trash if you will not accept the bible as historically accurate. When compared to the New Testament none of the above writings (individually or even collectively) have as many manuscripts to support them and none of the manuscripts are as close to the original time of writing. Do not doubt Christian readers that you have a book that can be trusted. The translators of the bible from Koine Greek into modern languages have one main problem; the wealth and volume of the material that they have to work with, it is embarrassingly large!

The rest of our time in Dublin was enjoyable and we returned to Sheffield late on Sunday night.

Wednesday this week I went into Sheffield and spent some time witnessing in Fargate mall. While handing out tracts a couple of young Emo's stopped to talk and one of them was willing to be tested against God's standard. This young lady like me has failed to keep God's law and after a short discussion could see that there should be punishment for sin and that justice would be served one day. She feared going to hell yet wanted to leave at that point, I stopped her and shared the good news of God's intervention in history. She and her friend heard the bad and the good news of God's judgement and salvation and we pray that they would both would turn to Him in saving faith. Interestingly as I was sharing the gospel with them one of their friends spotted them from further down the mall and began to scream "No, No, No!" and came up and warned them about me. It is a re-occurring scenario now with the Emo's/Goths that certain outspoken people are trying to stop their friends hearing the gospel. We pray that these young enemies of God who so loudly proclaim their hatred of God would be saved by the sovereign work of His Spirit in their hearts.

A little while later I was able to speak with two young men and while acknowledging their crimes against the law of God they said it didn't matter because God didn't exist. At this they demanded evidence for the existence of God, in particular that I get God to appear in front of them immediately. I couldn't help but smile, odd that they thought that I (a creature of immense unworthiness) would be able to command the ruler of ALL THE UNIVERSE to come and appear like I would my pet dog! It is quite the opposite, God can and will one day call and all of us will obediently appear before Him.

While giving them some the universe full of evidences for God I warned them that one day they would have their request fulfilled but it would be a terrifying day for them unless they turn in repentance to Christ. On that day God will come in wrath-filled judgement and even the mountains and stars will melt like wax before him. We pray that these boys would not be in the crowd of those who will scream in terror for the mountains to fall on them rather than meet God face to face.

I would ask you to consider dear non-Christian reader (you know in your heart if you have submitted to Christ so examine yourself!) how short the days of grace are. Today is the day of mercy and you are offered again salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The day of mercy is passing, you do not know when you will be whisked into the eternal day where you will meet God who knows ALL your secrets and will judge you and all according to His standard. Do not fool yourself; you will never meet the perfect demands of God's law. Unless a perfect replacement has paid your price you will be condemned for your rebellion against and hatred of God. Turn in repentance and faith towards Christ Jesus while you still have time. You are not guaranteed one more second in this world and may before God before you finish reading this page. You are in danger, look to Jesus.

Oh Lord our God we pray that you would in grace and mercy look on these people who like us deserve your unceasing wrath and punishment. Save them we pray, turn them from the darkness they love to the glorious light of your presence. Bid them enter your courts and give them faith and repentance. Clothe them in the righteousness of Jesus and the indwelling Spirit to make them like our Lord. In short O God save these hard hearted ones for the sake of your Glory and to your endless praise!

 

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My body was aching all over as I awoke today, and every part of me screamed that I needed a rest. Instantly I began to think up excuses in regards to why I could have the night off from witnessing. But I am bound to preach the gospel of Christ, so I began to prepare for the nights outreach.
The city seemed fairly quiet when I arrived at 7:30pm, and I thought maybe it would be a nice and calm night. Yet, every time I think that it always goes the other way. We rallied in King George Square, and as we waited for more team members to arrive, we saw a large group of people with Bibles.

This was not surprising since many churches come out witnessing at Easter time, most of them don’t do it at any other time, but only at Easter or Christmas. As they prayed it soon became apparent that they were a Pentecostal group, and before we could engage any of them they had walked off. There outreach for the night was to have a man dressed up as Jesus and a couple of Roman soldiers walking through the Queens Street Mall. As they beat the man carrying the cross people would call out scripture passages.

They walked right by us while we were setting up for the night, so Ryan quickly took advantage of the situation and began to preach. He spoke on the cross of Christ and why He had to come and die. This then led into explaining the depth of sin and human depravity.

A crowd formed quickly and began to heckle, Ryan held his own for about twenty minutes, and then tagged me in. I begun to engage hecklers, at this stage I had five hecklers, so I started to try and bring some order to the chaos. One of the hecklers was an atheist, another a Buddhist, another was a Hindu. The Hindu man was very vocal and kept yelling questions at me, but he would not let me answer. So I asked him in front of the crowd “Will you let me answer?” His reply “NO!” Then he started accusing me of not answering his question. The crowd soon became annoyed at him and started yelling for him to let me answer the question. After awhile of him not letting me answer his question I moved on to deal with Atheism.

  While I was dealing with some proofs for the evidence of God, and man and a woman pushed to the front of the crowd. The woman grabbed my hand and tried to place it on a ‘red’ area of her body, I kept pulling up my hand and she stated that she respects what I was doing. She then asked some questions in regards to God. While I was answering a man of Indian descent walked in an grabbed her, and then tried to twist her arm behind her back. I called on him to let go, and to cease assaulting her, he refused, but he soon realised that I was not going to let the issue drop. He eventually let go, and I refused to answer any of his questions since it is not right for a man to assault a woman.

The crowd kept on calling out questions so I did my best to answer their questions, then entered Mr. Walking Dawkins, who when he heckled would quote Richard Dawkins and then walk around the crowd mocking Christians. I think it was clear to the crowd that his questions had not basis, and it wasn’t hard to respond. Eventually he left and the crowd continued to call out questions. The time was now about 11:30pm and I had been up for over two hours, so I began to bring it to a wrap up. It was then that two young ladies approached and began to ask questions in regards to salvation. I began by explaining our need of a Saviour. It was then that Mr.  Buddhist from the start of the night began to advance at me yelling. He got so close that I thought he was going to hit me, so I asked him to step back, he refused so I asked one of the team to go get the police. After he yelled for a bit he backed away, and I was then able to expound on the grace of God to the two young ladies. The females were cut up and began to cry as they heard about Christ coming down from Heaven to save sinners.

It was about midnight when I stood down, and I nearly fell over from exhaustion, but praise God many people got to hear the gospel!!!

To God be the Glory

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Date: 23.03.08 Sunday
Time: 1:30 - 4:00PM
Blog Report: Operation 513 Gold Coast City Team
Location: Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise, Cavill Ave

This report will be more of a photo report, thanks to Josh Williamson.

ALL THAT WAS DONE IN THIS REPORT, WAS ONLY BY THE GRACE OF GOD.

Team today consisted of:
Keith Rochford, Kyosti Tiovola, Chris Robson, Josh Williamson, and "Frosty" Barwick.

Muslim's dialogue with Christians



As you can see above two Muslims ladies, dialogged with me for a good ten minutes, but after taking them through the ten commandments, they both  turned on their heel. They were both very nice ladies, and it is good to see people willing to say someone else is wrong, in such a relativistic age. Some people are intolerant and will bring whatever force to bear to shutdown freedom to express yourself, these Muslims weren't like that. Please pray for their conversion.

Later on a Muslim man came up and took a tract and spent time trying to explain about Islam, and how Christianity has no right to claim the Islam is false. I spent time with him, and he took my email, to ask more questions. May God bring him back to me, if it pleases Him.

He attacked the bible, and said it had errors. I asked him to name, even one. He couldn't do it. Please pray for his conversion.

Mr Williamson was the next preacher up, and he began a short sermon, which gained the audience of a few more hearers.

Please pray for Josh's voice, as he has been preaching the past few days, and today had the taste of blood on his mouth. Josh does a great job preaching the gospel, and sometimes this is what happens with busy Christian's. I wish all our throats were as sore, because of how much we preached the gospel!

Next preacher up, was Mr Rochford the Gold Coast 2IC. He does a great job watching the team, while I preach, and I am thankful to God, that he has been sent to work with me here in the Great Commission of Christ.

Keith preached on, and God answered our prays in bringing in a small crowd to hear the gospel, and dialogue with the preacher. It was quite a pleasant afternoon, which has been a bit of a change from a few weeks ago.


Keith showed the faultiness of Evolution, and began to present professors and doctors who also disagreed with the foolishness of the evolution theory.

He preached in the gospel, and then tagged Josh Mitchell back in.

We preached on for a short time, but stepped off, since people were watching a person be brought in by the Surf Lifeguard's.

The team did a great job tracting, and young Robson was a tract machine! Please pray the people would continue to think about their sins against God, and the judgement to come.. and then of Christ's death and resurrection.

May the Lamb that was slain, receive the reward of His suffering.

If you haven't taken the good test yet, please click here.

Credits:
Images taken from Wikipedia Commons.
Photo's of Gold Coast from Josh Williamson.

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The Operation 513 Skypecast kicked off at 9pm and the people started to flow in. Within 10 minutes there was about 60 people in the room, so I started preaching the law to bring the knowledge of sin, then the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ's death on the cross.

We had a Muslim fellow who wanted to speak, so we brought him up to the talking area. He was very angry and forcifully expressed his opinion about Jesus. He even used vulgar language, so we immediately removed speaking access from him. He said he hated Jesus, but that's strange as if that man was truly a Muslim then he would know that the Qu'ran holds Jesus up to a high esteem because they believe He is a prophet of God. But I explained to the listeners why He is more than a prophet, He is actually God in flesh.

I also brought up some errors within the Qu'ran, for example, the Qu'ran says Mary is part of the trinity (Sura 5:116 - instead of the Holy Spirit). Now if the Qu'ran was truly inspired of God then it wouldn't make such a major blunder as that. Christians have never regarded Mary as part of the trinity. Another example of an error within the Qu'ran is that it says Jesus didn't actually die. But that is blatantly false as we have four historical accounts in the New Testament attesting to the contrary, plus several other historical accounts written by secular historians affirming Jesus' life and death under Pontius Pilate. Yet the Qu'ran, a book written over 600 years after Jesus' death claims He didn't die. Which viewpoint would be deemed more accurate? The primary source documents of course.

I also had a nice conversation with a different Muslim person who thought himself to be a good person. I showed him God's laws and the fact that he has broken them. He threw in the objection regarding his good works and that God should let him go based on his works. But I clearly showed him that a good judge cannot let a criminal go just because He has done good works. That is like trying to bribe the judge. I told him of the wonderful news of the Saviour and how He can be saved from the wrath that is to come by repenting and trusting Jesus alone as His Saviour.

Josh Mitchell discussed the issue of morality and where we get the knowledge of right and wrong from. Using that starting point, he directed it back to God's law and the judgment to come.

We did have some hacker issues though during the Skypecast. There was a number of times when some of our Skype clients crashed or disconnected as someone tried to stop the gospel preaching. At one time Josh Williamson's computer suddenly opened up a lot of sound files and started to play them and his mozilla browser just started to bounce all over the screen. He immediately unplugged his network cord. But Thankfully because there was three speakers, when one person had issues, another person could continue the preaching. Please pray that the preaching of the gospel will not be hindered next week.

Once recovered, Josh Williamson had a conversation with a man who lives in Melbourne on the Skypecast. Diddy (that being his username), attempted to show why Christianity is wrong because of the bad things that have been done in the name of Christianity. Josh showed him why that is not a legitimate reason for dismissing Christianity. Josh told him that the Bible says to love your neighbour, not kill him. So it the person who interpreted the Bible wrongly who is in the error, not the Bible itself. But Diddy disagreed and said that it was the Bible's fault that people had taken scripture and used it the wrong way. So Josh tried to show Diddy that that is an absurd position to hold by saying, "Diddy, I heard you were going to give me $1000." Diddy replied, "No I didn't." Josh responded, "I am misusing your words, but according to your logic you are the one in the wrong." After that Diddy became silent because he knew that his own logic was flawed. 

I finished off with the closing gospel message and a calling on all people to repent and trust in Christ alone for salvation. Please pray that God will draw people unto Himself for His glory alone.

The recording below is not the whole Skypecast as the Skype on the recording computer disconnected during the middle of it. However below is almost an hour of the Skypecast compiled of two different parts joined together.

Listen (12.7MB - 55:31)
(To download: right-click link, save target as.)

We will have another Skypecast at the same time next week - Sunday 9pm - 12am GMT+10.

To God be the glory!

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I arrived at the Redcliffe Peir entrance a little late, and found Warren there waiting and ready to witness. So we were able to pray and make our way out on to the pier.

There were a few people moving round at the time so we were able to get tracks to them, I started to walk to the lower part of the pier where the pontoons are because there were a few guys fishing there. As I got closer I noticed that two of them were reading porno's, thinking in my head which way could this go, and which kind of track can I use for these guys. Great how God work as I approached I reach for my pocket and pulled out a few Car park tracks, and said hey guys catching much, there reply "no", cool so did you get 1 of these. The 2 younger ones took a track each but the older ones reply with foul comments...... with don't want to hear your church ...... I have a feeling that he knew what I was there for. Not wanting to answer any of the questions I thought Id move on they weren't to happy.

Over the few hours we were able to track most of the people moving out there that day. With all sorts of comment from people taking them, from good to bad. Even "Christians" trying to give them back without success.

At about 3:30 the tour boat came in and Warren and I were able to track every one so there came off the boat.

It was a really nice day out today with just the right amount of cloud around.

Great to see how the Lord works in the area, as I found out that there is another Independent Baptist Church starting soon. (Praise God) and also have been able to talk to some more people about joining the preaching team.

This coming week we won't be have a meeting out there as I am taking Easter off and next week to go away, but please join us there Sunday the 30 March for 2 hours of street preaching on the Redcliffe Pier meeting at 2pm.

Dan Kent

Field Leader (Redcliffe)

 

 

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Soli Deo Gloria!

The mist and fog came down and stayed down today and so the centre of town was largely deserted with most people indoors hiding from the cold. With Paddy in tow we headed to the Peace Gardens as Fargate Mall was empty. At the bus stop at the top of the Peace Gardens there was a group of people and also a steady stream of people coming and going.

Anna stopped with Paddy and gave out tracts for a while. She had a conversation during this time with a Muslim man who was happy to talk until Anna started to speak of God's Holy law and the demands of justice. At this point he wandered off and Anna continued to hand out tracts. Please continue to be in prayer for the Muslims of Sheffield, their confidence is in the fragile straw hut of works to please God. Works will not survive the fire of God's judgement, pray that they will be drawn to the Rock of salvation in Jesus and build on that foundation with the stones of faith, repentance and good works (the proper response to salvation by faith).

I gave out tracts to the people at the bus shelter. One group that was there were from a local youth group and some of them wanted to know what the tracts were about. From this conversation I was able to present the gospel to a young man named Kevin. Kevin wanted to believe that God would just overlook his sin and let him into heaven even though Kevin knew he was guilty of breaking God's law. I showed Kevin that this wasn't what he really wanted at all. When asked if a good and merciful judge would punish a criminal that was truly sorry, Kevin said yes. He could see from this the natural corollary or follow-on, God is a good merciful and kind judge, but there will be only space for justice on the day of final Judgement. If we have broken the law of God there is no excuse for any of us and all have broken this law as Romans 3 says so clearly:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.", "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin...... For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:9-23)

We know his guilt before God and the certainty of his death and the judgement to follow Kevin was shaken and I could see he was thinking very seriously. I told him the great news of what Jesus has done to save him from certain hell, holding up the great mercy of Christ in His life and death I urged him to look to Him and be saved. We pray that God would graciously bring him to faith and repentance; that this young soul would shine as a light in this world and would then after death stand in the presence of God to glorify the name above all names forever and ever.

David Gee
Team Leader (Sheffied)
Regional Field Leader (Europe)

Soli Deo Gloria!

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Date: 16.03.08 Sunday 
Time: 1:30 - 4:00PM
Blog Report: Operation 513 Gold Coast City Team

"The wicked heart of man is as black as ink.. man cannot change his own nature, as a leopard cannot change his spots.. he needs Christ"

Young man is mocked and jeered at by 6-7 young ladies his age

Zach is a young man who was with a crowd of young ladies, took upon himself to take the good person test and was subsequently laugh to scorn by these girls. I was dismayed at such a pathetic attitude of young girls their age, but then I was reminded by the bible verse that the heart of man is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. It's no surprise a human creature would ridicule someone, when it makes them look better.

It is the contrast of me against you, I am accomplished and you are not there yet.

It is the heart of hatred, and it pulses in every human being like a rotten overture, governing the tides of human desires.

This young man was humble enough to hear the law, and we looked at what Christ did at Calvary. He didn't want to take a tract, as his pride was high from these ladies mocks.. but then God can humble the proudest sinner.

While I was sharing with our young friend Zach, another heckler interjected and wanted to take me for an intellectual ride.. after thanking Zach for graciously giving me some of his time, I turned to our new friend.

the Atheist raises his head

The new fellow fired questions at me, and his girlfriend helped him, as follows:

• If God is good, why is there so many babies being born deformed and sick?
• What evidence is there for God's existence?
• Who made God?
• If we are all guilty, doesn't that mean we are going to hell? 

The questioning came thick and fast, although they did give me the grace to respond, which is not something I get often from atheist's. I think the reason for this is that the position "There is no God", is not an intellectual position, but rather it is an offensive position.

What I mean by that is, that there is no way of "knowing" that there is no God..

"Atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I am omniscient that there is no omniscient being."

.. rather what atheists are naturally prone to do, is to attack any Theistic or Deistic positions, and try to show that they are invalid instead.. but that simply does not in and of itself.. disprove the existence of God.

By the grace of God, by the end of our encounter, these two were concerned about their fate after death, and  promised to consider it my presentation and they accepted gospel tracts.

Please pray for them.

Our old acquaintance Ash returns

Keith was given the preaching stage, and Ryan joined him, as preacher, while I moved to support the team. Very shortly Ash our old acquaintance arrived.

For those of you praying, he still loves his sin, and is making excuses for it.

With all my heart I believe that the church he attends, is inoculating him against the gospel.. and the probably do not even realise the danger they are subjecting this young man to, by their ignorance of scripture.

Ash tried to tell me that violent video games were ok, because they were not in the bible. He was also tried to distract the issue, by saying that he was angry at people who commit paedophilia against little children, and wanted to bash them.

I explained that in Genesis 6, God destroyed the world because they imaginations of men's hearts were wicked continually, and that he was immediately open to the wrath of God, because of His wilful desire to enjoy imagining killing people, and destroying the flesh of imaginary creatures on a computer screen.

Ash disagreed with me, and so I can only pray God will grant him repentance that he might recover himself out of the snare of the devil. Ash took the good test again, and as we persevered through the law, he found he was again guilty of all ten commandments. His heart is hard, but God's word is able to break the hardest rock in pieces. I trust God will not allow this young man on judgment day, to escape the wrath of His holy nature, if he attempts to tell God, he should be let into heaven. Please continue to pray for Ash. God may yet grant him repentance..

We worked through a number of issues, but ultimately he does not want to repent yet.

Are you in a band?... and what do you think of man-on-man action..

I got up and Ash headed to Ryan who was preaching, and asked him what he thought of violent video games.. I guess it must have been playing on his conscience :)

Taking Chris Robson to hand out tracts on the street, I was interrupted by a nice young lady.. who wanted to know if I was in a band? Never been asked this before.. apparently I look like someone important! hehe

The young lady was joined by three others her age, and one threw this outrageous statement at me: "what do you think of man-on-man action? because I think it's beautiful". By the grace of God, I said the question was ok to ask.. since her friends were especially shocked that she would say something like this to a preacher.

The conversation quickly turned to, "how do we know what is wrong/right".. arriving at God as being the only possible determiner of morality, which led to the law.. the girls after some work, seemed to be really concerned about their eternal fate. 

God knows only what was in their hearts. One seemed to want to leave options open to sin in future.. but God is the determiner of men's salvation, not men's hearts ;)

Old man reached by Kyosti.. who I couldn't get to for over a year!

There is this old man, that I have been trying to give tracts to every now and again, and he simply wasn't interested. God let Kyosti get a tract to him, and he had a decent chat about salvation! I was so chuffed. God answers prayers.. though sometimes it takes a long time to see them happen! :)

May God save the old fellow, and use him mightily for His glory!

Ryan Hemelaar, our faithful web developer, had the privilege of preaching, while the rain clouds started to roll in. He did a good job, and faithfully preached the gospel, even though people seemed to have left the beach and reached the dryness of the mall.

Thankyou to all the labourers who came out to serve on the Gold Coast Operation 513 Field Team, may God bless you for your faithfulness to Him and His word:

Keith Rochford
Kyosti Tiovola
Nathan Hermann
Chris Robson
Ryan Hemelaar

Author's final thoughts:

Could I possibly communicate to you, how many times the Sovereign King of Creation, the majestic Jesus of Nazareth, has impressed me, as I reflect upon His holy invasion into my human experience. Probably I wouldn't have time.

I am increasingly impressed by the providence of God, in keeping the work of evangelism alive.. even now, in this Atheistic and Roman Catholic dominated part of the world.

As a repentant believer in Jesus the Saviour, I have joyfully observed the work that Jesus is doing by His Holy Spirit, in this dark, gloomy, hateful world. I have seen Him bringing people to tears by conviction of sin, and the knowledge that he suffered terribly, dying in their place.

Till next time, have a brilliant week, and seek the face and pleasure of the King Jesus!

Ps. If you want a bit of an idea, how we preach down the Gold Coast, here is a recording (thanks to Ryan Hemelaar), from our worldwide broadcast on Sunday nights.

 

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Anyone who engages in Christian ministry would soon tell you that once you start doing something for the Kingdom of God, then the enemy will attack. This week has just been one attack after another, and the constant lies that are being told about me, and concern the m inistry are starting to wear me down. But, one has to stop and think about why these attacks? While on one hand it hurts to be attacked by those who are supposed to be your  brothers and sisters in the faith, but on the other hand I have grown deeper into God during this time. Something I have noticed is that as you dig deeper into God, then the attacks increase. Some have suggested I turn my back on the ministry and walk away, since the pain isn’t worth it, some have contended that is better for me to lay down my sword and just surrender, since I am loosing friends.

As I think about it, I have to wonder why would I surrender? Why would I give up? My King is the one who humbled Himself and came to earth in the form of a man to save His people from their sins. Why should I leave the ministry when my Master is the one who was rejected and despised by those whom He created? If He can endure all those things, then surely I can stand firm with His help! During this time I have taken great encouragement from the Scriptures, and also from the song “I’d rather have Jesus”:

All those thoughts were running through my mind as I set about preparing for the our weekly Brisbane outreach. Tonight was going to be a tough night, since it was the day of the Irish - St. Patrick’s Day. For the past two years whenever we preached on St. Paddy’s Day we always ended up with large hostile crowds. So I set about trying to rally extra troops for the nights event. Sadly, we couldn’t get any back up, so we fielded a team of around ten.

This week it was good to have Bibles, our re-stock had arrived from the USA The Brisbane team has decided to change the Bible we give away from the King James to the English Standard Version, while it is a more expensive translation, we think that it is easier to understand for the common man. Furthermore, I would contend that it is the best translation on the market today.
For the past few weeks we have been joined on the streets by Ralph, he has shown some real encouraging signs as he goes about witnessing. He appears to have a real deep passion for the lost, and also to see God glorified. So it was time for him to break the sound barrier. He was to be our first preacher for the night. He stood up and began to preach from Romans 3, and the Depravity of Man.

After about twenty minutes, Andrew Hsu was tagged in to deal with the hecklers. Andrew did a brilliant job of dealing with them apologetically, and then swinging in to the cross of Christ. The crowd continued to build during this time, which meant more hecklers for Andrew to deal with. He covered a wide range of topics, from Judaism through to Atheism.

It was around 11pm at night when I was tagged in, my first thought was to answer the questions and then disperse the crowd, since we were short staffed and there was a growing hostility from the mostly drunk crowd. The young man I began to deal with was a hard evolutionist, and was rather hostile in his defence of the position. But, I was encouraged to see him approach the subject with an openness to learn more. So I spent some time looking evolution from a scientific position and how it is a belief purely based upon faith. From here we began to look at the Christian worldview and the Bible’s statements on Creation and fall. This produced a chance to talk about the glorious grace of God. After awhile I stood down and began to speak to the young man and his friend in a one to one situation. They were both interested in talking, and they took some of the free booklets we give away which we got from Creation Ministries International.

During this time Mr. Bible Burner from the week before came back, and became rather hostile. He once again  began to threaten to burn Bibles, so again I stood my ground and told him that if he wanted to burn Bibles then he had to go through me. He stepped up and began to make threats. I pointed out to him that he has no authority over me except that which God gives him. He then started to talk about how him and his gang could all knife me to death. At this stage he put his hand quickly into his pocket, and grabbed something. Since he had just made a threat concerning a knife I decided to step back and put myself into a defensive position. He kept on advancing towards, me so I put myself side on to him, and extended my arm so he could not get near my body. During this time the threats continued, so I gave the order that Warren was to go and get the police. The young man wanted to know why I would call the cops in, so I informed him because I believed him to have a knife. He denied having one and brought his hand out of his pocket. He then began to bang his chest and make more threats.

At this point, I just told him to stop acting so tough as he has nothing to prove to me. He seemed stunned, I then began to talk about how he acts tough, yet when he goes home by himself it is then that he realises that he has no peace, for as the Scripture says the wicked have no peace. He then went onto the back foot and started to try and prove that he was at peace. I pointed out that he had no peace with God because He was still in his sins, but then I said “God loves you so much in that He sent Christ to die for you if you would believe!” He had calmed down a lot now, and began to ask questions about Dinosaurs and the Bible. This was an opening to teach from the Scriptures, so I began to explain it all to him, he listened and understood. Now his gang approached and a few of them began to mouth off at me, but he turned and told them to be quiet as him and I were talking.

Please pray for that young man, pray that God would grant him repentance.

After this we began to pack up, and as we packed up some young men approached us a began to mock the gospel. Saying that they were good, so I reached over and grabbed my Bible and beginning at Romans 3:23 began to show them that they were sinners in the sight of God. It turned out that they had a Jehovah Witness background, and they didn’t like us referring to Jesus as God. This led me to ask “What if I can show you in the Bible where God the Father calls the Son God?” They laughed and said it wasn’t there, I flipped my Bible over to Hebrews 1:8 and got them to read it. They both looked at each other and then said “How do we get around that?” Before we could go any further there gang came in and the leader began to yell at us. One of the gang members took a tract ripped it up and then spat on it. The gang laughed, so I pointed out that he just spat on and rejected the very God that gives them breath and will one day judge them. The two JW’s paid attention but the others decided it was time to leave.

Please keep all those we encountered tonight in prayer. Pray that God will change our city, and that He will receive all the Glory!

Soli Deo Gloria!

 

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Praise the Lord, the Skypecast worked from the start! In case you weren't aware, recently our weekly Skypecast have been having major technical difficulties. So usually half our time is spent trying to get it working. But tonight it worked from the get go. Praise God.

It was a rather quiet for most of the night. Although Josh Mitchell did have a pleasant conversation on air with a professing Christian. So Josh tested the man to see if you truely knew the gospel.

We had various questions come through via chat message which we addressed on air, such as, "Why is Islam a false religion?", "Where do we get our morals from?", etc. Josh Williamson and Ryan Hemelaar also discussed various topics such as, "How do we know that is a God?", "Does evolution disprove the Bible?", "What is the gospel?", etc.

At about 45 minutes remaining, the flood gates were opened and people started to flow in to the Skypecast. At one point we had about 60 people in the room at the same time. This was perfect timing as Josh Mitchell was almost about to start preaching the in-depth final closing gospel message. The recording below is that message:

Listen (6.9MB - 30:01)
(To download: right-click link, save target as.)

We will have another Skypecast at the same time next week - Sunday 9pm - 12am GMT+10.

To God be the glory!

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Darwinism Undermined - Large Crowds Hear the Gospel

Date: 09.03.08 Sunday
Time: 2:00-4:30PM
Blog Report: Operation 513 Gold Coast City Team

Team Members:
Keith Rochford
Ryan Hemelaar (our cherished hardworking webmaster)
Nathan (our new friend and labourer in Christ)

Special Credit: This report was taken from Keith Rocheford, as Josh was absent from the field, due to his wife's serious but temporary sickness on Sunday. Big Thankyou to Keith, who faithfully held the line for the gospel in Surfers Paradise on Sunday. May God bless Him for his labour, for Christ's name's sake.

Preachers: Keith Rochford / Ryan Hemelaar:

'For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables' 2Tim 4:3-4.

Today Ryan opened up the preaching and drew a good sized crowd within a few minute's he had some hecklers straight away who were asking "If God made the world, who made God?' this is a classic category mistake question, it is like asking   'what is the smell of blue?' only finite things require a cause, infinite things do not require a first cause, Ryan answered the crowds questions and then delivered a gospel message.

As   I jumped up to preach some of Ryan's previous hecklers returned to ask more question's we covered the validity of the Bible, why christianity   is the right religion among all the man made efforts and then things started getting very interesting, a   Catholic started asking if we need to keep the   Sabbath? Which is a strange question from them as you would expect that from a seventh day adventist, I countered the question by quoting Romans 14:5-10 and Col 2:16 we are not to let others judge us regarding Sabbaths/days of worship, he got very angry and said I am quoting the Bible out of context as Paul was only speaking to the Jews, I reminded him that Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles and he left. This gave a great opportunity to preach on the false gospel of the Catholic church i.e Justification by work's infused grace, treasury of merit and idol worship and allowed me to close with the true gospel. Any other gospel preached is 'Anathema' (accursed, eternally condemned) Gal 1:8-9

Ryan jumped up for his second bout of preaching and after about 45mins he wrapped up and had to leave as he was speaking at Church , this left Nato and myself, Nato continued on tracting duty and I stepped up to preach again, things really started to happen here, I instantly had a few excellent hecklers one claiming to be a Physicist another a relativist   and finally a new ager, I debated and undermined the theory of evolution based on its own claim as a theory and as agreed by the Physicist Phil its lack of evidence biologically and in the fossil record I then quoted a few world renowned evolutionary scientists that agree they have no evidence but except evolution on faith.

The relativist Craig was one of the best hecklers I have ever had, he was calm, asked great questions and most importantly was willing to listen to reasonable plausible and logical argument's by the end of our discussion he agreed there is right and wrong and that absolutes exist, more importantly his whole attitude changed when the Law and grace were preached, he became quite emotional, please pray for Craig as he has been through some difficult times recently and really needs God to grant repentance and faith.

My new age heckler Troy was quite amusing, when asked if he had ever lied? He said 'yes', but would not admit that made him a liar, he was very happy for anyone else to be labeled one though, I just kept thinking of what the Bible tells us in Proverbs 'all the ways of a man are pure in his own eye's but the Lord weighs the spirits' Prov 16:2 We can kid others and ourselves about what is right and wrong, but our God given conscience will not tell us what we want to hear, it bears witness to the Truth of God's Law.

After around 1 hour of preaching I wrapped up with a gospel message and covered freedom from slavery to Sin through Christ, there was a large crowd present to hear all that was preached so please pray for everyone present.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Keith Rochford
Second in Command
Gold Coast Team 
Operation513.com

 

 

 

 

 

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