Friday Night Notes

the pope is an antichrist!!!

We got a good shot of winter the last couple of days, with two solid days of snow as you can clearly see in the above picture. I thought the snowed-over roads would discourage many people from coming downtown... I thought Pastor Tim and I would be pretty lonely in the marketplace, but there were a fair number of souls walking the streets of the market tonight. We handed out a number of Gospel tracts and had a few one-on-one conversations. A better night of evangelism than I anticipated.

In my first half-hour of preaching, a young lady stood across the street, listening intently to my words. After a few minutes she came over with some questions about my evangelism and about the exact nature of the faith I was proclaiming. She was quite honest with me, telling me that she had no faith, but found people of faith interesting. I was able to give a short Gospel message to her and a friend who joined her moments later. She truly appreciated my words, and her friend concluded that I was: "the sanest preacher she ever spoke to!"

After completing our first hour of evangelism, the temperature starting dropping and the wind began to be a factor. The good preacher and I alternated warming ourselves in a nearby parking garage while the other carried on with the Gospel work. I prayed that the Lord would keep those who would harm us or our Bible signs away... the marketplace can be a dangerous place when unbelievers see that the preacher is alone. One man spat on our 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 sign and another tried to rip my Romans 6:23 sign from my hands, but I held on tight. A few short minutes after, the same man tried to do the same to Pastor Tim but even at well over 60 years of age, his grip is as good (if not better) than mine! Other than those three incidents, the rest of the night went pretty well.

During my round of preaching, a Muslim man came by to challenge me. It was pretty funny. He had all his anti-Christian arguments ready to go... he figured he was going to show me... poor soul, he left pretty confused. His problem was that in his mind, Christians were synonymous with Romanism. You should have seen his face when I said: "The pope is an antichrist! He is a really, really evil man!" All his "anti-Christian" arguments were actually "anti-Romanism" arguments, and when I pointed that out to him, and continued to point to the Bible as my sole authority for faith and practice, he was speechless. He walked away one confused man.

In our last hour of evangelism, Pastor Tim and I both dealt with a homeless man who had read one of our Bible tracts. He said that God would never judge or condemn him, no matter what! He said nothing could change his mind on that and quickly walked away, perceiving that Pastor Tim and I had an opposing point of view to present. We watched him go back to his panhandling, to his misery, and barring future grace, his condemnation. A sad sight.

Moments before leaving the market I had a quick word with a young mocker who pridefully exclaimed: "God's a fake!" I told him that he would regret those words on the judgment day. He stood in front of me, surprised that I had responded to his folly. I couldn't believe how effeminate he looked. I don't think he was a homosexual, but the Justin Bieber hair, the little cigarillo between his fingers, and his general disposition was, well, feminine. Kind of disturbing. His friends encouraged him to just walk away, which he eventually did after dishing out a bit more mockery. The Lord have mercy on his soul.

And that pretty much sums up our night of evangelism. I thank the Lord my God for His protection on us, and that we were able to preach the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ on yet another Friday night.

God bless you, dear readers. Have a blessed and safe weekend.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism