Friday Night Notes

the night of the hypocrites...

Another three hours of street preaching done tonight by my pastor and I, and sadly, nothing too positive to report. I seriously struggled with my allergies tonight (the old itchy eyes and runny nose), which made preaching quite difficult, but not impossible.

Hypocrisy was the order of the night. Here are a few examples:

Hypocrite # 1:

As I was preaching the necessity of repentance and faith in Christ Jesus, a man and his family (his wife/girlfriend and a baby) walked by me. The man stopped just a few feet to my right, pulled out a business card and said:

-"Take this and give me a call, maybe I can help you."

The card read: "Jewish Family Services... Pete Cassidy... Outreach Worker."

Not seeing the relevance of him "helping me" with anything, I repeated the necessity for repentance and faith in Christ. His answer: the middle finger.

A couple of minutes later, they walk right by me again, so I seized the opportunity:

-"Some 'outreach worker' you are my friend," I began, "tell me, in what way can a man who gives the middle finger so quickly be any 'help' to me? In what way will you 'reach out' to me, sir?"

He was quite unrepentant and tried to justify his wickedness with the old "well... you started it with your preaching." Uninterested in hearing his hypocritical excuses, I continued preaching and he walked away.

Hypocrite # 2:

The two sodomites were back tonight. They mocked and insulted my pastor as he was preaching, doing their best to get in his face to disturb him. As they were doing this, they cast the following accusations towards my pastor: hateful, ignorant, intolerant.

Can you say H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y?

Hypocrite # 3:

A young man came by and spoke with me while my pastor was dealing with the sodomites. He wondered if I had received a "revelation" from God showing me that I should preach in the marketplace. You see, as far as he was concerned, I was "banging my head against the wall" preaching the Gospel in the marketplace; that is to say, I was in far too hostile territory to see any kind of fruit from our ministry.

-"God will save every one in the end, my friend, we just have to do what God reveals to each and everyone of us to do."

After listening to all this nonsense, I clarified that everything we did, as far as the street preaching was concerned, was according to the Word of God, the Bible. I took exception with his "God will save everyone" philosophy, and the strange thing, is that he was pretty agreeable with what I had to say. At that point, I realized that he was going to agree with everything I had to say, even if it was 100% contrary to his philosophy. With that realization, I put an end to our conversation; he was looking to bridge his philosophy to our Gospel preaching, and there's no way I was going to lose time listening to him try.


With all this wicked, hypocritical self-justification, I must say, our Friday night evangelism was a disappointment. On the upside though, we did distribute a good number of Bible tracts, so who knows, maybe the Lord will yet work salvation in His elect throughout the night and weekend.

Let us pray to that end.


Rand