Friday Night Notes

rain... rain... go away...


It was another shortened night of street evangelism. A mountain of work kept me in the lab 'till 8:30pm, so by the time I made it to the market, it was near 9pm. Add to this another freak, heavy rainfall (there's been a high number of those this summer), and I probably only put in an hour and a half of actual evangelism.

Despite having our customary night of evangelism cut in half, we presented the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to hundreds of souls. Both pastor Tim and I handed out a good number of Bible tracts, we both had a number of one-on-one conversations with sinners, and countless souls read our Bible signs. Pastor Tim was really pumped-up tonight too. We just finished a week of revival meetings at our home church, and they were a real blessing to him (they were a blessing to me as well, but I had to work all week, so I have to admit that my batteries were quite low by 9 o'clock tonight).

Moments after we started our night of street preaching, Pastor Tim was approached by a man who wanted to know more about creationism (he suggested the man check out http://www.icr.org/). While the two men discussed the Truth of Creationism, I spent some time teaching the doctrine of the Trinity to three Muslims. One of the Muslims seemed quite interested in what I had to say, but another kept cutting me off, doing his best to belittle the teachings of the Bible. The Lord use what I was said as He sees fit.

A little while after this, a man noticed the John 3:36 sign I was holding from across the street. He walked over to my side of the street to comment on my sign, and if memory serves, this is more or less how the conversation went:

"So, what you're saying is that if I don't believe in the Son, then I'm going to Hell?" the man asked pointedly.

"Well, I'm not saying anything, you read what God said, my friend," I replied.

"That's pretty intense for a Friday night, don't you think?" the man continued. "I mean people here are just out to have a good time, and they don't want to be told they are going to Hell just because they don't believe what you believe."

"The Word of God is quite intense, there you quite right," I said. "So intense were the words of Jesus, that wicked men murdered him in order to silence him."

The man then walked away, not wanting to hear anything more from me. The Lord have mercy on him.

Sadly, our night of evangelism wasn't all civil conversations and tract distribution; there was plenty of mockery and scorn. One man slapped one of my tracts from my hand. There were plenty of vile blasphemies against God and I couldn't keep track of the number of times I heard people taking the Lord's Name in vain. I sincerely doubt any of these mockers/blasphemers knew anything about Matthew 12:36-37:

"But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."

The Lord have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and harden whom he will harden.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism