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Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b]Saturday, 10 February, 2007[/b]

Driving into Brisbane city tonight I noticed that coming in from the west was a big black cloud mass, in this inky blackness there was bright flashes of lighting every now and then. Upon seeing this I thought “Great, a storm is coming”. But as we have weathered storms before and not been destroyed by them we decided to keep on with the outreach.

Just after 7pm the heavens opened up and down came the rain, nice big heavy drops. This sent us scrambling for cover. The rain storm lasted only a short time but there was still thick cloud cover so we kept an eye on the weather as we had team prayer. Due to the rain we only had a small team of about ten people this week, but that is more than enough to reach out to the lost.

At 9pm we made our way to the Queen street mall, because of the rain the mall was fairly quiet. So we set up our stuff at the normal location. The first preacher for the night was Andrew Hsu. He started off and his preaching sounded like it was stuck in second gear, but then a heckler opened up on him, the heckler yelled - “Stop preaching the word of man, but preach the pure Word of God!”. It was then as if a fire hit Andrew, he started to fire up and preach the gospel hard. He was fired up preaching when a young bloke from America stopped to listen to the preaching. Andrew did a call out and pointed to the young man and started to ask him questions. The young man replied that he knew all about Christianity since he was a religion minor and also a Lutheran. The conversation then turned a little theological as the young American tried to pull Andrew done the rabbit trail of theology. It soon became clear that this man was pelagian in theology. Now this was going to be an interesting confrontation since Andrew is reformed in theology. But Hsuy held his ground and didn’t go to far down the theological road, even though the young American named Alex was throwing out doctrines like - Original sin, election, limited atonement.

After awhile Hsuy got another heckler so American Alex came over and spoke to me. We discussed theology a bit, we had a lot in common since we were both studying all this kind of stuff at college. So that gave me a way in. He admitted himself that he was doing to well in his Christian walk, and even to the point of confessing that he was a fornicator. Since he was staying here in Australia for a semester of study we hooked him up with a local church, and were even able to give him a bible. He then had to leave since he had to catch a bus, but said he would be back next week to talk more. Please keep Alex in prayer.

After this I got stuck in a conversation with a man named Mark, who was a self professing - backslidden, unrepentant Christian, but was also an angel… He tried to tell me that he had come to me to give me fresh revelation from Jesus. Which I promptly rejected. He didn’t like that, so I started to show him from the scripture that he wasn’t saved, and that he needed repent. He maintained that he was living in a lifestyle of sin yet was saved. All because some Christian told him that he cannot lose salvation. Now I agree with Perseverance of the Saints, but the problem was this man wasn’t saved in the first place.

I took him to 1 John 3:4-9 (ESV):
[i]Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.[/i]

I then followed up with Matthew 7:21-23. He just said “I need to repent”, I thought finally we are getting through to him, but then he said “Lets pray to Jesus to get fresh revelation on the matter!” The man had been sold a lie that God’s word was no sufficient and that he was saved. A product of the modern Pentecostal movement, which he admitted to being apart of.

We wrapped the night up not long after this - Please keep Alex, Mark, and all the rest of the lost in prayer.

[b]Sunday, 11 February, 2007[/b]

After a powerful sermon at church I headed down the Gold Coast to meet up with the Gold Coast evangelism team. I ended up being late due to the massive traffic jam that held me up, so I called ahead and told the guys to start without me. When I finally got there I found the team locked in one to one’s and also handing out tracts. But as of yet none had open aired. It looked like a quiet day on the beach front. So we weren’t
expecting much.

David Gee was the first man up to preach. He did a decent job but didn’t get much of a response. A few people stopped, but none heckled so he called them to repent of sinning against the Holy God. Right after that Josh Mitchell jumped up to preach, by this stage things were starting to buzz. More people started to hand around, he preached on the fallen condition of man and the greatness of God in saving man. He had a couple of
hecklers but nothing to intense. He preached for about 30 minutes then stood down.

It then came to my turn to preach, I jumped up and preached on the “Dirty Word Syndrome” - Which was that at parties we can talk about anything except for one dirty word: DEATH. A small crowd gathered, I then did a call out and started to question a guy named Steve. While I was preaching these guys kept throwing balls at me trying to distract the preaching. One of them stood in front of me and kept throwing it, so I started to catch it and continue to preach. So here I was playing catch with a heckler while questioning another. The crowd started to build as an angry orthodox man entered the fray. He came up yelling that “God loves everyone no matter what!” I took him to the scriptures that said that God didn’t love everyone, but rather he hated some (Psalm 5:5 and Romans 9).

It then blew up, others entered in yelling. By this stage the crowd was getting really big. At some times I had over ten hecklers at once yelling at me. But the crowd was growing to well over 200 people. So I kept bringing it back to the cross. Which is where they didn’t want it to go. They wanted to argue trivial things. But I wanted to argue who God was. During this time a TV crew from a network station arrived and they started to film me and hecklers as we debated. This just helped to build the crowd bigger. A lot of professing Christians decided to have a go at me as well. I listened to what they said then asked “Can you show me from scripture, where I have said something wrong?”

After an hour of preaching / debating I wrapped it up with a pointing away from myself, and a pointing to Christ, calling on the people to forget what I said, but rather go to the scriptures to see if what I said was true. Afterwards a lot of people came up and asked for tracts, and even some of the professing Christians came back and admitted they were wrong. I was then informed that the police had attended the open air meeting, but left
after awhile. Praise God for His Faithfulness!

[i]Soli Deo Gloria![/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/2/12 15:41Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 17 February, 2007 [/b]

After a week at bible college I was feeling a bit pumped about the idea of getting out on
the street to do some witnessing. I had already received a call from a brother who lives in
another state, he had called to inform me that he was in Brisbane, and wanted to catch up
in order to do some witnessing. I was glad to have him come along.

We all met at our normal time in King George Square, and then after a time of group
prayer and bible reading we made our way up to the preaching point in the Queen street
mall. As I was walking up the mall I noticed this man sitting on a seat who looked
familiar. So I walked up a bit further so I could get a good look at him, and to my surprise
it was a brother from New Zealand. I didn’t even know he was in town, but he knew
where we preached on Saturday nights so he decided to hang around in a hope of meeting
up with us.

Kevin arrived shortly after with the flip chart, so we set it up with a sign showing “Free
Good Person Test”. As we were setting this up a small group of young people approached
and announced that they wanted to have a go at this test. Since I was the one standing
there I decided to take them through the test. Within minutes of starting I had other
people who had since stopped starting to heckle me. Now this was a new experience since
I have never been heckled while dealing with a one to one. So as the heckling increased I
slowly stepped back and then up on to the soap box, none of the crowd seemed to notice
this movement so I started to lift up my voice. By this stage a crowd had gathered and we
hadn’t even begun to preach. It’s amazing to see God be faithful, we spent time in prayer
asking Him to draw a crowd for His Glory, and that’s exactly what He did, He drew the
crowd without an effort of ours.

After about ten minutes the initial hecklers finally realised that I was now on a soap box,
and speaking rather loudly, so they asked me to get down and talk to them quietly. I
continued to preach and that’s when a heckler named Josh started in on me. This guy
made no sense whatsoever but he was a decent heckler. He was yelling random things,
and that encouraged others to heckle. So I kept bringing it back to the cross of Christ and
how one day we would all have to give account of every sin we have committed to a Holy
God. They kept asking questions, so I endeavoured to answer the questions, I think when
it comes to open air preaching that we have to spend some time answering and reasoning
with people when they have questions concerning the Faith.

While I was preaching I started to notice that a lot of the crowd was there the week
previous. Including the young man who had set a bible on fire. It was good to see these
guys back, even though they had a hatred for God and the gospel, yet they were under the
sound of the Scriptures again. The young man that set the bible ablaze the week prior
again asked for a bible. I refused to give him one since he fully intended to burn it.

About this time I noticed that there was a lot of fire in the crowd. People were starting
fires by burning tracts. At one point I had a bit of a blaze going at my feet, then I looked
up and saw that someone had given the bible burner a gospel of John. Not to anyone’s
surprise he grabbed out a lighter and set it aflame. That was the turning point of the open
air preaching. The heckler named Josh and an atheist lady then turned on the bible burner,
they started to rip into him telling him to get some respect. It seemed as if we had won the
respect of the hostile crowd. The bible burner didn’t do much after that I think he was
scared of the crowd.

But the night didn’t end there while I was still preaching this young man who was polite
and softly spoken came up and asked me a few questions. I did my best to answer his
questions. He wanted to know about aliens etc. Then his attitude started to change, he
started to scream things like “I am an anarchist! Death to Authority!” I pointed out to him
that if it wasn’t for the law of the land some people would probably do him harm. Again
Josh the heckler came to my aide and started to blast the anarchist. This was turning out
to be interesting.

While they were off arguing with each other another female entered in and said “Jesus
was a Jew, so if He is true then we should be all Jewish!” The crowd at this stage erupted
in support for this lady. I pointed out that her statement lacked logic, then said: “In
Australia, officially the Queen of England is the Sovereign Head of State, now since she
is English, then shouldn’t we all be English? That is what your logic would suggest.” At
this she didn’t respond but her husband announced that she had been ‘shut down’. The
crowd was still there and growing so again we took people back to the cross of Christ.

I noticed that a lot of people that were there had been present from start to finish. I began
to wrap it up and no one moved. I closed down the open air and people were still present.
But then it was great to see the team swing into action and start grabbing people for
personal witnessing encounters.

As I stepped down a Hindu man and a Hare Krishna approached me. They had a lot of
questions in regard to Christianity and the Bible. So I answered them with the scripture,
the Hare Krishna stated: “Tonight I heard a very convincing argument that shook my
foundation, I need to know more about Christianity since there is something there.” The
Hindu agreed with him. The Hindu man had a Bible but the Hare Krishna didn’t, he then
asked if I could give him one - I was more than happy to give him the Word of God.
Please keep both of these guys in prayer.

I had been preaching for an hour, and as it turned out that was the only preach for the
night, since the personal witnessing encounters continued from that crowd til it was time
to finish for the night.

As we were packing up Kristian asked me for a bible, since he was talking to a young
Muslim man, who wanted to learn more about Christ and asked for a bible. Again we
were happy to give him a copy of the scriptures. Also keep this man in prayer.

Things are really starting to stir in Brisbane, the same people are coming back each week.
Their aggression is growing - yet more seed is being planted.

Praise God for His Faithfulness!

[i] So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but
it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent
it. [/i] - Isaiah 55:11 (ESV)

[i] Soli Deo Gloria! [/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/2/19 8:28Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 24 February, 2007 [/b]

Tonight looked like we were only going to have three people coming out for outreach.
Which wasn’t to good, but even though we were few in number yet we continued to share
the gospel. We met in King George Square at 7:30pm for a time of prayer, and then bible
reading. By the time we finished there was still only three of us, but then within minutes
reinforcements arrived.

We spent a short time in fellowship before heading up to the mall to preach. At 9pm we
set up in the Queen street, and the crowd looked like it would be a rowdy mob. As we
were about to start preaching we noticed a group of Maori had set up opposite to us and
they started singing and busking. So instead of David Gee preaching first, I decided to go
since I have a louder voice, as I started to preach they stopped and listened.

A small crowd began to gather as I spoke about how we are all being followed by a
stalker named ‘death’. Before I even finished the analogy I had a heckler, which was a
sign of things to come. The heckler asked a few simply questions, and as I answered him
another heckler came in, I referred to this heckler as “dancing boy” since ever time he
spoke he hopped around like a rap dancer. This guy had one of the most foul mouth I
have ever heard. Nearly every second word was something that shouldn’t be repeated. Yet
this guy hated what we were saying, but he couldn’t leave. He stopped heckling and now
just yelled random things. During his rants another heckler arrived, this guy and his
friends were throwing questions out that were good questions. The crowd continued to
grow. I spent a lot of time debating and reasoning with the hecklers, and where possible I
was trying to answer their questions.

Then ‘dancing boy’ decided to get violent, he grabbed the video camera off the tripod,
and I thought he was about to smash it. David Gee moved in to confront him, while Dave
was dealing with ‘dancing boy’, I continued to preach, most of the hecklers ignored what
was going on and kept asking questions. Dave later told me that during this time ‘dancing
boy’ was claiming to be an undercover cop, and that he had now impounded our camera.
Dave asked to see his badge, which he couldn’t produce (I wonder why?), so Dave got the
camera back and the guy then decided to take swings at David’s head, Dave just stood
there and watched the heckler. The heckler soon lost his nerve and left.

The hecklers were firing by now, and questions were coming thick and fast, topics ranged
from: Islam, Hinduism, Satanism, Atheism, Evolution, Incest, Sex, The Bible,
Paedophilia, Religion etc.

The questions were answered via the Word of God, which the hecklers didn’t like, they
demanded that I stop quoting the bible since they don’t believe in it. I pointed out to them
that it doesn’t matter what they believe, since their belief will not change the fact that the
Bible is the very Word of God!

Towards the end my last heckler was a Muslim man, who wanted to tell me that Islam is a
religion of peace. So I quoted the Quran to him about how it says to kill. He wouldn’t
answer those questions, but he began to realise that the crowd was about to turn on him so
he left. I wrapped up the open air then and exhorted the people to open their bibles and
look to Jesus Christ, The Author and Finisher of the Faith!

A lot of the crowd was their from start to finish, when we started open air preaching I was
told not to preach longer that ten minutes since no one would stand and listen, yet tonight
people stood and listened for 75 minutes.

The group then broke off into one to one roles, which was great since now people were
hearing the gospel being personalised to them. During this time we met a fair few
Christians, we were able to encourage them in the faith. Three of them were familiar with
Way of the Master so they hung out with us and witnessed, the others wanted to learn
more about witnessing.

The Muslim heckler now came back and he wanted to talk to me, so I stepped aside and
spoke to him. He wasn’t to happy that Islam got a bad reputation in my sermon, he was
especially angry that I said that Muslims weren’t good people. I pointed out to him that I
also stated that those who claim to be Christian aren’t good people either. Again we
crossed swords over Christianity versus Islam, he left saying “You are preaching hate”.
All I did was quote the Quran and then compare it to the Holy Bible…

A lot of the people being spoken to were under conviction during this one to one time,
and two of them asked for Bibles. One young man who had just moved here from New
Zealand was under heavy conviction and was eager to read the Word of God. Then
another middle age lady was also under conviction she wanted a Bible as well. Praise God
for all that He is doing, the demand for bibles over the past weeks has gone up massively.

Mark Bedford, and David Gee then preached and some of the same crowd that was there
for the first open air came back to listen again. God is really starting to stir things up in
Brisbane city. From what it looks like Brisbane is becoming a new “Mars Hill”.

[i] Soli Deo Gloria![/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/2/26 0:31Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 3 March, 2007 [/b]

After battling our way through the traffic going into the city we finally made it to King
George square. When we arrived we had a few minutes of fellowship before we started to
pray for the night.

We spent a bit of time praying that God would be Glorified through the evangelistic
Outreach, then we had a corporate bible reading through the book of Galatians.

When 9pm we rolled around we made our way into the mall, it looked like it was going to
be a quiet night. As we were setting up this bloke approached and asked what we were
doing, so I got to take him through the law. You could see this guy get convicted, and he
was concerned about his eternity. But then he had to make a quick excuse and he took off
(But later in the night he was back).

Kevin Bessent was the first preacher up, he jumped up and started to declare the Word of
the Lord. While he was preaching I was talking to a guy in back play who was fairly
much just spilling his heart. So all I could do was stand back and listen.

While I didn’t get to watch Kevin preach, I later was told that he did extremely well. He
normally preaches on average for around twenty minutes. But tonight he was still firing
after 45 minutes!

After this David Gee opened up, I was still dealing with the same guy in back play, so I
am thankful that the others picked up the baton, and continued to preach the Word. Dave
opened fire and had a lot of hecklers, he just went to each one and they all got slammed
with the gospel many times.

During this time a evolutionary scientist came to heckle. His drunk girlfriend started to
rip into Dave while he was preaching. So I got to have a bit of a discussion with him. He
made statements that couldn’t be backed up and when pressed for evidence to support his
claim, he would back off. He then started to push the big bang theory, so we examined it -
he then it probably couldn’t happen. But his heart was made up, he didn’t want to
acknowledge that God was real. His girlfriend then came over and ripped into me, but she
was drunk. So a few big words like ‘evolution’ made her walk away saying “I don’t
understand”. I got to have a good conversation with her boyfriend before she dragged him
away.

By this time Dave was wrapping up his open air when we the best of the American
evangelicalism entered into the fray (notice sarcasm!). This American guy started to
preach to the hecklers that Dave was dealing with. But the problem was he was confusing
the hecklers. So I took over from Dave, and started to deal with a heckler, and I told one
young lady that I was warning her to flee from the wrath to come. This stirred up the
American because he then said: “NO! That preacher is wrong. You have no choice to flee
from the Wrath - YOU ARE GOING TO HELL!” This then fired the heckler up so I had
to explain the whole reasoning to hell. By this stage another heckler was going after the
American.

While this was all going on, a young bloke who was with the American walked over to
Dan and started to talk to him. Dan then tried to give a tract to a girl but she refused. So
he stung her with the gospel while she was standing there. She then walked away, but a
few moments later returned. Then the second American said “I knew you couldn’t resist
me” and then wolf whistled at her. Dan was not happy, here was this professing Christian
now lusting after someone we should be witnessing to.

After the Americans left I had to blokes from a local mega church decide they were going
to blast us, over our witnessing. So we let them rant for a bit and then we opened the
Bible to defend what we were doing, by the end they were convinced of what we were
doing. We gave them a couple of copies of Hells Best Kept Secret, so hopefully it will get
into the mega church.

[i]Soli Deo Gloria![/I]

[b] Saturday, 10 March, 2007 [/b]

The mall seemed fairly quiet when we arrived tonight, and part of me thought that to be
great, since that meant it would be an easier night. While I do love the busy nights,
sometimes it is great to have not many people around as it gives me a chance to rest a bit,
and also to focus in on one or two people.

When we got to King George Square the team started to pray, and while they were
praying a bloke named Chris who we met late last year came up to us. He had made a
profession of faith, but time had made it clear that he was indeed a false convert. While
everyone was praying Andrew Hsu and I dealt with him. He kept sidetracking it and
pointing to others instead of examining himself. After about 45 minutes of reasoning with
him, he seemed to finally understand it, but said that he could not repent. It all seemed to
be coming back to his love of having friends, and also his pride.

When at 9pm we got up to the Queen street mall, I was the first preacher for the night. So
I started off by preaching on the ‘Dirty Word Syndrome”, and that dirty word is death. I
spoke about how we can talk about anything at parties, but you never talk about topics
like death.

A couple of people stopped to have a listen so I did a call out, but it was very quiet. Then
bike boy stopped. Now ‘bike boy’ was perfect according to his own profession, and he
claimed to be greater than Jesus Christ, yet he was a Christian (So he claimed!)

I took him through about how going to McDonalds doesn’t make you a hamburger, any
more than going to church would make you a Christian. He seemed not to be getting it, so
I pointed to his bike, and said “Just because you ride a bike, does it make you a bike?”
His reply “Yes, I am a bike…” I quickly realised that this was going no where fast, and I
began to see that it was a waste of time trying to reason with a unreasonable man.

Then another heckler entered into the fray, this heckler was foul mouthed and wanted to
argue over the bible, even though he didn’t seem to understand the bible, or even
understand the evolutionary theory that he was presenting. He hung around for some time,
even though his mates were trying to pull him away. He kept asking questions, and he
kept trying to prove the scripture wrong.

Throughout all this we had a guy who we nicknamed ‘cheese burger boy’ since he was
dancing around with a burger yelling “hail the cheese burger’. He was a handful, and
because he was drunk you couldn’t even reason with him. So I kept palming him off to
other members of the team who took care of him. But ‘cheese burger boy’ got the gospel
many times, since he decided to hang out with us for the rest of the night.

Andrew Hsu preached next, and it was plain to see that it was very quiet since very few
people actually stopped tonight. Which is some way is great, since it shows the
Sovereignty of God. It shows that it isn’t us who draws the crowd but God Himself who
gathers the people in to hear the gospel!

[i] Soli Deo Gloria! [/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/3/12 16:55Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 17 March, 2007 [/b]

St. Patrick’s day - The Irish were out in force. Most of them had been on the booze all day so we kind of knew it would be an exciting night…

We arrived at King George Square at just before 7:30pm from there we spent some time in prayer. After praying as a team we did a corporate bible reading, tonight we read from 1 Timothy.

When 9pm rolled around we made our way up to the Queen street mall, Andrew Hsu was the first preacher up and he preached for a short time. He stopped himself saying he was feeling flat and that he shouldn’t be preaching tonight. Which I highly commend. I personally believe if we haven’t anything to say when it comes time to preaching we should remain silent.

During this time between preachers a lot of one to one witnessing was happening. After a while it came time for me to preach. So I started off on the trust stalker analogy. A small crowd gathered and I had one Scottish heckler who wanted to mock God. So I used him as my sounding board to preach the gospel. He was a great heckler, he would ask questions and then let you answer. During this time the crowd began to grow, and then a spitfire of a woman came roaring out of the crowd screaming at me. She was fuming with anger. She loudly declared that she was a Christian and that she disagreed with what we were saying. She then started to scream about how it is wrong to judge people, and that is exactly what we are doing. I tried to point out to her that I hadn’t actually judged, but rather just asked some questions and then quote the bible. But she would have none of it. She was out for blood and clearly she was going to have a go at me…

As the woman continued to scream “You shall not judge” I asked her if she thought I was wrong for saying what I said, she replied with “You are very wrong, and its unchristian” so then I turned on her and point out that she had just passed judgment on me. I pointed out that she was indeed a hypocrite. In one breathe she screams ‘Don’t judge’ but in the next she passes judgement.

Well that set her off again, this time her homosexual son decided to have a go as well. But this time the attack from both of them changed from ‘Don’t Judge’ to - “Many roads to God”. By this time a large crowd had stopped. So I turned my bible to John 14:6 and showed the crowd that there is only one way to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. Well the woman who was screaming didn’t like that, so she started to yell even more. At this point I asked her straight “Who is right? Jesus or you?” She wouldn’t answer that question. So her next attack came “Well your bible is different to ours” so I asked what bible would she like me to read from, her reply was “Whatever is right for you” so I did read from the translation that was right for me. The crowd didn’t seem to be supporting her, but rather they were jeering every time she contradicted herself.

She eventually left and then another heckler jumped up. He was more open, even though he came looking to make a bit of fun of the gospel, by the end of sharing the full counsel of God he was under conviction. His mates tried to drag him away but he refused and stayed to hear about how he can be forgiven of his sins.

Then things got exciting. After I stepped down from preaching a few people from the crowd came up to ask questions. So I was answering their questions but then a rowdy man came in swearing and abusing the people. The man turned and verbally abused a group of young ladies, so I told him that isn’t how he should speak to females. Well he wanted to fight after that. But to my surprise a big Irish man stepped up and told the other bloke to step down.

From there it went to a fight in which the Irish man dropped the other bloke with one punch. We held the Irish guy back and told him it wasn’t worth it. The police finally came and said that the guy that got dropped deserved it, and then let everyone continue.

After this Kevin got up to preach, and some of those who were present for my preaching hung around to listen again. Then during the preaching an aboriginal woman decided to walk up and punch one of the hecklers. So again there was another fight we had to break up.

The heckler that got hit come up and spoke to us afterwards, he wasn’t hurt more stunned that someone would do that.

But through it all the Gospel got proclaimed!

[i] Soli Deo Gloria! [/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/3/19 3:54Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 24 March, 2007 [/b]

After a long day of study and writing a sermon I finally made it to King George Square just before 7:30pm. The city looked a little slow tonight so I wasn’t expecting much. But who can tell what will happen when it comes to street evangelism.

When 9pm rolled around we went up to the top of the Queen street mall, although we didn’t start preaching for about another 30 minutes because we had to wait for a camera to arrive. So til then we just did one to ones and tract work.

During this time there was a lot of personal witnessing encounters happening. There seemed to be a general openness of people wanting to hear the gospel. Which was a nice change from the normal ones that want to argue.

The camera finally arrived so we hooked Andrew Hsu up and he took the first preach. He wasn’t long into his message when a heckler appeared. This heckler was a vocal bloke who wanted to disprove the preacher. As Hsuy dealt with him a crowd started to build. During this time I also noticed that on the outskirts of the crowd a lot of one to ones were occurring.

Behind the preacher, David Gee had a couple of atheists in a conversation. Then the atheists decided to voice his opinions so he jumped up on a seat and started “I AM ATHEIST!” After that he was beyond reason. Dave kept plugging away at him but he was hard hearted.

Also during this time the others had one to ones occurring. I guess one to one isn’t the right term since there always seemed to be a group of people listening to the gospel. Since I was on photo duty I was running around taking happy snaps of everything that was going on.

Andrew preached for near on an hour then stood down. But some of the crowd remained, so everyone jumped back into one to one mode. For the next 30 + minutes there was just one to ones occurring. During this time one of the hecklers that came up to speak to us got arrested for trying to start a fight with someone else. So the night started to become interesting. Then as they slowly disappeared it came time for David Gee to preach.

David got up and within a few minutes he had a couple of hecklers. One of them decided it was time to drop his pants and flash Dave. First time he did he went running around screaming. Dave warned him that if he continues the police would probably arrest him, but the man didn’t listen. The next thing I noticed was three guys surrounding the guy with no pants. They were all in plain clothes, then as one they spun the bloke around and restrained him. It was all running smooth and it looked very impressive until one of the officers dropped his handcuffs. But they had the bloke restrained so he couldn’t go anywhere.

One of the police officers then turned to Dave and told him to keep preaching. So that’s exactly what Dave did. The pant-less heckler then started to yell out “I’m sorry, please forgive me David.” As the cops took the man away, Blake ran up grabbed an in-depth tract then went running after the pant-less man in cuffs. When he got the man he said to him that he has something for him, and put a tract in his pocket. All the man could say was ‘Thank You’.

Then as one heckler was forcibly removed another two arrived. They wanted to argue evolution, and also Adam and Eve. Dave dealt with them for awhile then tagged me in. So I started in on what they believed, and tried to work out why they believed it.

They couldn’t defend their position but they weren’t prepared to admit that they could be wrong. So I went about to disprove some of their view points. But every time I went to use the bible they would get mad and tell me not to quote it. By now the three plain clothes police officers were back. Two of them were talking to Andrew about getting a copy of our video, then one of the hecklers then started to undo his pants in a threat to flash me. So I warned him that behind him was three plain clothe police officers that would arrest him if he did that.

He didn’t believe me until he finally turned around and saw them all standing there looking at him. He quickly decided not to go through with the flash. But he persisted in arguing. At one point when the police left he came rushing up really close to me, so I said loudly “Sir, please step back”, he didn’t so I said it again, then I saw as did the heckler the three police officers just appear again.

After a bit of reasoning with them they were still hard hearted so all I could do was sting them with the very bible, which they hated. By this time it was well past midnight, so I wrapped up and then the one to ones started again!

Praise God for a Fruitful Evening!

[i] Soli Deo Gloria! [/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/3/26 5:05Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 31 March, 2007 [/b]

Tonight we had a surprise visitor, Owen from Toowoomba came down for the night of witnessing, which was great. Its always encouraging to work with him. He has such a passion to reach out to the lost.

While we prayed as a team sounds of hymns filled King George Square, there was a time of praise and worship occurring at the Presbyterian church above the square. I personally found this encouraging.

When 9pm rolled around we were up the top of the Queen street mall, and within minutes the battle began. I looked up to see one of the guys locked in conversation with Pear, who claims to be one of the two prophets of the book of Revelation. So I walked across cause I know this guy can get very hostile. As soon as I showed up Pear got really mad. He was banging on to a friend of his about how I denied him as a prophet. So I reminded him of the biblical mandate of a prophet always being 100% correct, otherwise the scripture says they should die. He agreed with me, so then I reminded him of his false prophecy he made last year. Then the abuse started to roll thick and fast. His friend was interested in hearing what the Bible said, so I showed him. Pear then started to yell at me that I was a ‘Fool’. So I pointed out Matthew 5 where Jesus said whoever says that is in danger of hell fire. This made Pear go off raving, but his friend agreed that the Bible was right.

During this time a bunch of girls had come up and asked Owen if they could have one of the Aussie Big Money tracts, of course he gave them all one and then went through the gospel with them. Now this crowd drew another crowd, so Glenda went across and started witnessing to them. What a great start to the night, people were coming up asking to be ‘witnessed’ to…

When all group witnessing had finished I got wired up to preach. Just before I got up I heard yelling. Pear was back, this time he was shaking in anger. It was about this time it clicked that it was going to be a rough night. As Pear yelled a crowd gathered, and I wasn’t even standing on the preaching stool yet. So I backed up onto it and let Pear yell. He was screaming that he wasn’t going to reveal a true prophecy to me since I doubted that he is a prophet. He then screamed that I wasn’t his brother (Finally something we agree on). As soon as Pear took a breath I jumped in and started to quote the scripture where it talks about many false prophets arising and seeking to deceive people. That didn’t help Pears blood pressure. He again entered into the screaming match, even to the point of walking right up in front of me and started to point and scream “REPENT!!” This was great for crowd growth, but bad for crowd control. A angry heckler always has the ‘gift’ of attracting another angry heckler. Again I went after Pear for being a false prophet, this time a couple of more hecklers jumped and started to argue against God and Christianity.

One of these hecklers climbed up next to me and started to yell in my ear, he then started to unbuckle his belt in order to flash himself. I warned him that the police had arrested a man last week for doing the same thing. That didn’t stop him, but had the opposite effect. He dropped his pants and then hugged me…

This of course made the crowd burst into cheers, then one show man turned into two showmen. This one guy came running up in front of me and started to scream “YEAH!” No matter what was said he would yell “YEAH!” Now while this was frustrating it also played in our favour. Mr. Pant Less and Mr. YEAH then saw Pear and ran up and did the same thing to him. Pear didn’t like that and left fairly quick screaming the whole way that he was a prophet.

Mr. Pant Less then climbed back up next to me and started yelling, Mr. Yeah got bored and left. But the pant less man then became increasingly violent as we spoke about God and judgment. He jumped down screaming and walked up to our flip chart, and then with one nice right hook he hit the flip chart. He hit with such force that the leg of the stand it was on snapped off.

By this time there were more hecklers than you could poke a stick at. All screaming at once, by far one of most the hostile nights I have seen. They had questions so I said I would answer their questions in turn. They were all about disproving Christianity so I believed it was right to answer their questions so that they couldn’t say “See! Christians can’t answer!” and then believe the bible is without power. But one continuing trend kept coming out - The Roman Catholic Church… No matter what you said they would fall back on to Romanism. I truly believe that the Roman Church has a lot to answer to on the day of judgment. They have such a hatred for God, and a massive hardening of the hearts of many.

Then I noticed this one guy listening very carefully so I turned to him and started to address him. Every time a heckler would interrupt I would tell them to be quiet and wait their turn. This guy was from Holland and very open, so I walked through the full gospel with him. He appeared to be really convicted.

That was the only rest of the evening because as soon as he left the hecklers opened up again. One man came running through the crowd and stood up to me, he was so close I could smell his breath. He then started to scream about paedophile priests and how he was abused when he was 12. So I started in on those who do such things, I pointed out that they would be hell for what they did, and that they aren’t Christians. The guy was still fuming, and didn’t like it. So I asked him why he would want to spend eternity next to those who do such things. He said he wouldn’t, but then I pointed out that because of his sin, God would be forced to send him to hell as well. Well that set him off more, he started screaming that he hadn’t sinned. I truly believed I was about to get punched, but some guy came out of the crowd and grabbed him and then told him to walk away. To which the man complied. I have no idea who that other guy was, but I am glad he was there.

Then a heckler climbed up behind me and I noticed he was up to something, but I wasn’t prepared to waste my time on him. So I kept on dealing with the hecklers to the front. Then I noticed Andrew Hsu come running through the crowd and jump up on the seat next to me. He had spotted the heckler pull down the his pants and pull out his “manhood” and was preparing to urinate on me. The heckler took off when Hsuy showed up.

While this was happening another heckler had grabbed a pile of big money tracts and started a fire in between me and the crowd. Which in some ways was good since it kept the hecklers back. The night was getting fairly interesting…

Then another group of hecklers stepped up. One of them was smart and polite. He kept the other hecklers in line for me. But this guy was studying the way I answered others and then tried to use the same tactic back on me. He was a good heckler, and it would have been nice just to have him on his own, since he had some good questions.

About this time Mr. Positive showed up, now he wasn’t happy that I was preaching a negative message. Instead he said I should be preaching about positive things. I pointed out that his message of positive attitudes towards others ceased when he sinned against them. He still maintained that he was indeed positive.

When I started to preach on how Christ can set a sinner free if they repent, again Mr. Positive stepped up and said that was negative. So I turned and gave him a stiff rebuke, I said, “You are saying that Jesus Christ who can deliver us from sin is a negative thing? You are saying that Christ is doing something that is negative? Sir, this shows that you indeed do not know Him, but rather it shows that you are full of darkness and of your father the devil.” He stopped being Mr. Positive after that and became Mr. Negative… A couple of the team got him and shared the gospel with him again and pointed out that sin is negative.

By this stage I had been up engaged in battle for two hours non stop, so I stepped down. The rest of the team then went on witnessing as normal.

From the very start of the night there was no control, and it was a battle from beginning to end. I have never seen it that hostile in Brisbane before…

[i] Soli Deo Gloria![/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/4/2 3:01Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Friday, 7 April, 2007 [/b]

The start of a big weekend! A few of the troops met at my place early in the morning to prepare for the drive up to Toowoomba (about 2hr trip). There was a kind of excitement at the prospect of going up to witness at the Australian Gospel Music Festival, even though we kind of knew that it wasn’t going to be a gospel music event.

We arrived in Toowoomba at 10am and we met up with Owen, we then walked down to Queens Park to do a bit of witnessing. While we were still getting ready a Senior Sergeant from the Queensland Police approached us and asked what we were up to, we explained to him and he left. But this was a bit of a shake up since he was the same police officer who had shut us down last year for outreach.

The team started to hand out tracts in a public park and shortly after starting a bloke that I knew from Sydney came up to say “G’day”, but what he said after that shocked me, he claimed to be from ‘Way of the Master - Toowoomba’ but sadly there is no such organisation. They had a stall within in the festival that was present for the purpose of handing out tracts and ministering to those at the concert. I checked out the stall and noticed that they were displaying the ‘Way of the Master Australia’ training material and logo. So I decided to give John Legg from WOTMA a call to see if he knew what was going on. Needless to say he didn’t know about it, nor was he impressed with the whole concept of someone building a ministry from another established ministry. And I do tend to agree that if any organisation tries to ride the coat tails of a successful ministry then chances are they aren’t called by God to the ministry, if they were then they would be building not upon another mans foundation.

While I did support the idea of handing out tracts, I couldn’t support the whole advertising themselves as an organisation that did not exist. So sadly this set of a political confrontation that lasted for most the day.

But in between all of this the team was still witnessing in a public park. Then I noticed that security from the Australian Gospel Music Festival (AGMF) were watching us, they then approached us and told us to stop witnessing and handing out tracts. We refused so they then called the organisers of AGMF. The bosses arrived and they informed us that we could not witness there since it was their property for this weekend. The only problem with that theory is that Toowoomba council had said that we could do that there. But AGMF officials wouldn’t listen and even stated that they didn’t care what anyone else said they were not allowing us to hand out tracts. After trying to reason with them they went and called the Police on us. The police arrived and asked us to move on, so we complied even though we had permission to be there. From what we were told we were allowed to talk to people in a public park, but not stop people. We could talk to anyone who was sitting down or standing still but we weren’t allowed to give them anything.

Some of the guys that we know who were attending AGMF gave us their AGMF 2007 guide, in which was written that handing out of any religious material was banned by the organisers. Which makes you wonder why a professing Christian event bans the gospel being handed out? Maybe it is true that the correct name of the event is “The Australian Godless Music Festival”.

Never the less we continued to witness. Desma and Andrew went off into the main part of town to get some interviews and from what I was told they go some really good interviews with some ‘Christian’ BMX riders. But from what I can gather they weren’t truly saved.

That evening we had planned to go and do a letter box drop around Toowoomba with our ‘Big Australian Money’ tract, but God saw fit to open up the heavens and allow it to rain on this drought stricken city. During this time Owen and his wife were so kind to open up their house to us so that we might rest before the main event late that night.

We planned to tract and preach as everyone left the event. So we waited outside on public property, every exit was covered and no one could get past without being offered a tract.

Not long before the event finished two mounted police officers rode past, we greeted them and it was then that I noticed that the Sergeant was in fact a man who had debated us openly in Brisbane. He has a hatred for the things of God and for those who follow him. I knew at this point the night was going to be rough.

When 11pm rolled around we started to tract everyone, as people ran across the road they were greeted with tracts. We then got informed of a good preaching spot of public property down near one of the main exits. So we headed down there to preach. Owen was the first man up and preached about how many follow Christ yet don’t do what He commands.

Then it was my turn and I started in from Matthew 7:21-23, I spoke about how it was said that for this event they ship in extra prostitutes from other cities to cope with the demand. Then slammed the professing Christians for causing the name of Christ to be blasphemed. A few people stopped to listen and a few hecklers yelled out “We are saved by grace” which I quickly agreed with, but they were pushing ‘saved by grace now sin all you want’.

After I preached Anna Gee started to preach, again a crowd gathered and as she was finished up the mounted police arrived it turned out that AGMF had called them again. The Sergeant then called Anna over since he wanted to talk to her. Anna asked me to come as a witness, so I went with her to the police officer. Now the officer was not happy at that and became very mad and started to yell at me. He said I was obstructing him in his duty and threatened to arrest him. Even though I was only there as a witness. He then pulled out his torch and put it on his shoulder and approached me yelling.

He then returned to Anna and took her aside to a not very well lit area to speak to her. This was completely inappropriate since it was a single woman refused a witness being intimidated by a police sergeant. David Gee arrived and he too was threatened with arrest for being a witness to his wife. We couldn’t approach so all we could do was pray.

David got a camera and started to take pictures of the situation, an AGMF security guard then ordered Dave to stop taking pictures and to delete all pictures that he had taken. Dave stopped with the pictures but refused to delete the ones he had. AGMF was showing its true colours of being apostate.

The police officer continued to ask questions of Anna that shouldn’t be asked including the colour of certain apparel under the shirt she was wearing. A legal student was with us and he said by law all Anna had to give was: Name, and Contact details. But the Sergeant wouldn’t allow that and said that he would arrest Anna if she didn’t answer all questions.

After about 30 minutes the police let Anna go with no charge, but never once did they tell her what she did wrong. The whole event left Anna shook so as a team we decided to lodge a formal complaint at the station against the Sergeant.

At the station we spoke to the duty sergeant who informed us that Anna was allowed a witness, but when he found out that she was refused one, he closed ranks and said that she wasn’t allowed. The duty sergeant wasn’t interested in doing anything so we got the name of the sergeant involved and also the address to forward a formal complaint.

It was generally a sickening day. We saw a ‘Christian’ event ban Christians from witnessing. We saw ‘Christian’ aerobics in which the participants blasphemed the name of God. We heard “Christian” rappers sing about ‘Catholic priests, breasts and mother of God’. The event is surely godless and not Christian in any sense of the word. Sure they give lip service but their hearts are far from the Living God.

[b] Saturday, 8 April, 2007 [/b]

After pulling a 23hr day yesterday I was very tired for the outreach tonight. We met as normal in King George Square and then proceeded to head over to the mall to preach. Personally I was thankful that Josh Mitchell and Kevin Bessent was able to make it since I was too exhausted to preach.

They took care of the preaching and it turned out to be a lively night. Josh was the first man up and he had a lot of the same hecklers that I had the week before, but there was a marked difference among them. We had earned their respect so they did as we asked, although some of the other hecklers weren’t to friendly.

One heckler kept wanting to fight Josh, so I stepped in front and told him to take his hands of the preacher, so then the guy wanted to fight me. I refused to fight him but he was looking for a fight. Then Irish Andrew showed up! He was the bloke from Saint Patrick’s day who knocked out one of the hecklers for bad mouthing us. It turns out that ‘punchie’ was a friend of his, so he was able to back him off.

The preaching went for some time, and then Kevin got up to preach. It was a good run with a lot of people hearing the gospel. And a lot of one to ones were taking place. I got to talk to one young guy who broke my heart. He had grown up in the church and knew the message, but didn’t believe it. I explained to him the full gospel and he admitted that he was going to hell. But then said “I don’t care I reject Christ”. That hurt the most, I felt like grabbing the guy and shaking some sense into him. But I can’t do that, all I can do is rest in the promise that God will draw men to Himself, and never lose them.

Josh Mitchell was again up preaching at this stage, this guy is a pocket rocket! He keeps on preaching even though it was late. After he preached for awhile we packed up and began to leave. Then we noticed that ‘punchie’ was mucking around with a friend of his when he got pushed into a tourist who was walking past. They immediately grabbed each other and started making threats. Kyosti from the team was stuck in the middle and tried to break it up. Andrew and I saw what was happening so we went down to assist, but just as we got there ‘punchie’ threw a solid punch and split open the tourists head, blood was now everywhere. As ‘punchie’ went back for a second swing I was able to spin him around and get in the middle. The police then arrived and took statements from everyone. They then took ‘punchie’ away to lock up for the night.

What an eventful evening!

[b] Sunday, 9 April, 2007 [/b]

We headed down the Gold Coast today for an outreach. I haven’t been with this team for some time, but since I had a weekend off I decided it would be good to go see how the old team was going.

It turned out that I was the first preacher up, and as God would have the only preacher for the day. I preached on how heroes sometimes die laying down their lives to save someone, and from their I swung into how Christ died to saved all that would come to Him.

A crowd gathered and I had a few hecklers, but by far the best one was Jeremy. He was a great heckler and a bit of an entertainer. He had questions and he was prepared to be challenged on what he believed. All the time God used him to build a bigger crowd. I preached for about an hour and at the end most of the crowd took tracts. Then the heavens opened and the rain poured down. This made everyone run off the beach and straight past us, so again a lot of tracts went out.

Praise God for a Awesome Day!
[b] Monday, 10 April, 2007 [/b]

By today my body was hurting all over, and to be honest I could have done without today’s outreach. This was my fourth city in four days, and it was starting to take it’s toll. I felt ill and really wanted just to stay in bed and sleep.

I arrived at Redlands at 9am, we were planning on witnessing at a big free Christian event. But we had been refused passes to witness so we were going in and trying not to get caught.

As soon as we walked in we got greeted by a volunteer at the event who had actually been out on the streets with us in the past. This was encouraging to know that there was another person here witnessing (except he was allowed to).

We scouted out the area and as we were walking I noticed security had detained a person from a church for handing out literature without permission, I turned to Rodney (volunteer), and said that’s what they will do to us soon. He said that he could probably hook us up with some permits to witness, he then took off and returned a few minutes later to say that we would get permission to witness only if we used ‘Way of the Master’, we quickly agreed. This was really awesome God had opened a door for us to stand and witness wherever in the Redlands show ground.

Desma and I went off to do some interviews and it was then that one of the ‘Christian’ BMX riders from Toowoomba came up to her to thank her for witnessing to them. He had been giving it a lot of thought and was continuing to think about it! God was working on this guys heart.

After a time of interviews Rodney again came up to me and informed me that he had arranged an interview by a local radio station at the festival for us. So I went across and was able to talk about the gospel live on air. The interviewer asked a lot of questions about witnessing, so I kept pointing him to the cross and how God alone is the Sovereign one in salvation. He then asked me what I thought about the event and all the gospel preaching. I couldn’t lie to him so I said that it concerned me since they were all preaching a different message, and that they had left the Bible behind in the their preaching. This seemed to shock the interviewer since after that the interview was over.

We continued to witness, and then I got informed that the radio boss wanted to talk to us. My first thought was that we were in trouble, but he was excited to see people witnessing, he then invited us to come and be on his radio show in June to talk about the ministry and what we do and how people can get involved! ALL GLORY TO GOD!!
But that wasn’t the best part of the day. After all the excitement died down and the day drew to the close we decided to do one more interview. This time with a security guard named Tim. Now Tim was a professing Christian that got ‘saved’ at a large youth event. But as we spoke it became clear that he wasn’t saved, and he even admitted that himself. This guy was hungry for the truth and he was hanging on every word.

As Tim realised his sin, he also realised the great mercy that God shows towards him in extending grace to him. Then while we were still recording the interview for Way of the Master radio Tim repented. It was such an awesome and humbling thing to see this young man go from deception to the light.

He then said afterwards; “Thank you for talking to me, I never fully understood this, but now its clear. Thanks for not sugar coating it!”

All I can say is TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

What a perfect end to a long weekend!

[i] Soli Deo Gloria! [/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/4/9 10:19Profile
Willo
Member



Joined: 2004/9/21
Posts: 355
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

 Re:

[b] Saturday, 14 April, 2007 [/b]

Well another great day to come out and share the gospel of Christ. I must admit I was excited at the prospect of coming out and preaching. The day had been a good one, I got to spend it with just myself and God. So it was from that time of being with Him that the excitement flowed.

I arrived in King George Square at 7:30pm and a couple of the team was already present, so after a quick chat we started praying at around 7:50pm. The time of prayer I thought was one of the best I have ever experienced as a team in prayer. We had one new person join us for the night, so we made sure that we partnered her up with an experienced street soldier.

When 9pm rolled around we headed up to the normal preaching spot. On the way in I noticed that Pear the false prophet was sitting right where we preach, and even now as we approached the preaching point Pear was floating about. He was waiting for us, so it looked like yet again we would be engaged in combat against this false prophet who keeps prophesying falsely in the name of our God.
Andrew Hsu was the first man up and as he began to preach I noticed two young females approach. At first I thought they were holding hands but as they came in close I saw that they had handcuffed themselves together, and it was kind of like you knew these two were there to heckle.

Hsuy preached on for a time, and sure enough those two females opened up on the topic of homosexuality. While Andrew was dealing with them this young Asian guy stopped and tried to ask a question, but Hsuy didn’t hear him and kept on dealing with the lesbian couple. So I made my way next to him and asked if I could help, this guy had studied some arguments against Christianity and decided that he was going to test them out on us.

The main thrust of his argument was “How can we know that the Bible is correct?” I did my best to answer him from a basic apologetically position, he seemed to understand it, and said “You have put up a good defence.” So then I asked him if he could explain to me where he got his knowledge of right and wrong from. He started off by stating that it came from his parents. So I challenged him asking “If that is true then every person should have a different standard of morality”. He paused and thought about it. So I asked him if his conscience told him if it was wrong to; lie, steal, lust, hate, and disobey parents. He said that his conscience informed him that these were bad things to do. So from there I targeted in on how God has written His law upon our hearts (Romans 2:15).

Before I could go any further with that thought, a woman to our right started to heckle me, saying “You cannot base an argument upon that fact, since in some primitive tribes, theft is fine, and so is murder”. She was making the case that there was no universal morality. I answered her by saying, “A thief doesn’t mind stealing from others, but if someone steals from him, all of a sudden he see’s that as wrong. A murderer may not have a problem with killing other people, but he doesn’t like the idea of people trying to kill him”. From there I pointed out that they did indeed know right from wrong, but because of sin they loved doing what was evil.

She then started to argue that no one could impose any form of standard of right and wrong upon any other person. So I told her to try that with a police officer next time she gets pulled over for speeding. Try telling the officer that he can’t enforce the law upon her. At that point she stated that was a different argument, and that it had nothing to do with morality.

So I asked her, if under any circumstance was rape ever right. She danced around the question but eventually stated that it could indeed be right for someone who believes its right. She also believed that in that circumstance the rapist shouldn’t be punished. So I posed to her another question, “Is child molestation every justified”. She refused to answer and went off on a tangent about no universal truth. But I kept bring her back to this question. During this time Andrew was still preaching and the lesbian hecklers were making out, much to the delight of the crowd.

But the post modern relative truth woman whom I was speaking to was still trying to justify her beliefs. Eventually she conceded that child molestation was justified in some cases to some people. It was at this point I started to open up on her, pointing out that he conscience was seared (1 Tim. 4:2) and that the reason she felt she need to justify these evil actions is because she was corrupt (Eph. 4:22) and that the reason she wanted to argue against morality was because she loved her sin, and hated God (John 3:19), at that point she walked away saying “There is no God!” While she fled from talking, she went and stood and listened to the preacher for awhile. Her nephew came up to me and told me that he went to church, and thanked us for taking on his auntie. We gave him a tract, and hopefully the auntie will end up reading it.

Andrew finished preaching not long after this, the crowd was a wild one, and it was growing in hostility. So we let the crowd disperse and then it was my turn to start preaching. My text that I preached from was Revelation 6:14-17: “The Wrath of God upon a Sinful Humanity!”

As soon as I started preaching Pear started to scream threats again. He was calling out about how we would die for opposing him as a prophet. I ignored him for some time as I was dealing with a young man who seemed to be open to the gospel. But eventually Pear got to much, so I asked the young man to excuse me. I then turned and looked at Pear and let rip with the Word of God. He seemed to quiet down after that, and the crowd grew as they wondered why this man was a false prophet.

While I was dealing with the guy who was open two females came up and started to curse and abuse me. They screamed that we shouldn’t tell people what to do, yet they failed to realise that they were telling me what to do. So I pointed that out to them, they blew up with anger as the truth hit them. The crowd was quickly turning against these two females. One of them asked for a tract, and I refused to give it to her. Because I truly believe she would have destroyed it. These two females didn’t like that, so they lunged at me, and started to try to rip my shirt. Andrew saw what was happening and pushed them back, but they wouldn’t budge. Eventually we were able to get them off me, but they were fuming, and the crowd was now against them.

The two females then went and spoke to a bloke who had a tract, he refused to give it to them, so one of them grabbed his arm and took a bite out of his arm. The man dropped the tract because of the pain. The girls grabbed it and ran.
Not long after this the crowd was still producing hecklers, when I finally got a good heckler. He was a young man from London, UK. He wanted to discuss evolution, so we debated that for awhile, and I kept bringing it back to judgment. He wanted to know where the fossils came from so I took him through the account of the Noahic flood.

I was happy to discuss evolution with him since the crowd was listening, and many of them were blinded by that demonic lie. So we reasoned with him, and in the end he just up and left. But now I had other hecklers, some of them were just hurling insults, but others had decent questions. So I wrapped it up and told the crowd that if they had questions to come and speak to me.

While I was doing a question and answer session, some of the team were dealing with a bunch of ‘Christians’ from a mega church, they had taken exception to the preaching and wanted it to stop. They wanted to see numbers and church growth, not the gospel of Christ.

The question and answer time was quite intense, the first question was about homosexuality. The woman asking it was a lesbian and she didn’t like the fact that God saw her sexual perversion as sin. But after reasoning with her she took a tract and left. The other questions were a few silly ones about the bible which were quickly dealt with.

Over all it was an intense night, each week it seems to be increasing in hostility. But God be praised!

[i] Soli Deo Gloria! [/i]

www.xanga.com/Josh_Williamson


_________________
Josh Williamson

 2007/4/16 8:11Profile
SeanHobson
Member



Joined: 2005/12/9
Posts: 150
Cleveland, OH

 Re:

You are [i]seriously[/i] on the front lines. It's one thing to speak to sinners from a high raised pulpit in a position of authority, and then what your doing being right next to them withthin arms reach!

Read George Whitfields and John Wesleys Journals--then compare yours to theirs and see the similarties. Even the same spirit and fruit. God bless your ministry. It may not get mass replies but it is needful. :-)


_________________
Sean Hobson

 2007/4/16 19:23Profile





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