Battle Log
Saturday, 29 March, 2008
Posted 4 April 2008, 6:36 PM by Josh Williamson. Permalink
Saturday, 29 March, 2008
The
was a sense of idol worship in the air as I made my way into King
George Square, tonight was the night in which the world stopped to
worship the earth for one hour. While I fully support the idea that we
should look after the environment I think we cross a line when we start
to think that the earth runs all things. People who are ‘earth
worshippers’ are classical Romans 1, they forget that there is a
Sovereign One who holds the earth together, the one who sustains life,
the one who created all, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
As
I sat in the square waiting for the team to arrive I noticed that there
were a lot more Satanists in the area than normal. And with the city
turning their lights off I didn’t really want to be a lone Christian in
the midst of the Satanists in the dark. So I decided to put a call
through to Josh Mitchell, and leave my phone open so if anything happen
he would be able to direct the authorities. 
While I was sitting there I listened to one of the Satanists talk about
calling up the dark spirits, and how he had been having communion with
them. It was saddening to see one so deceived by the enemy. The man
failed to realise that those dark spirits whom he calls friends were
his enemies and hated him.
At around 7:30pm I was approached
by a Satanist who I had debated with and witnessed to many times. He
was friendly and started a conversation. We spoke a bit about the
gospel, and he kept re-affirming the fact that he is wanting to go to
hell because he likes pain. I wasn’t interested in getting into a long
debate with him, but rather I just kept pointing him back to the Word
of God, he stated that he did not believe the Bible, but that didn’t
worry me since in combat an enemy solider may not believe in a rifle,
but that still doesn’t stop me from shooting him. As Christians we are
called to sow seed, so I kept on sharing the Word with him and his
girlfriend. He got fired up a bit and started to make obscene comments
about God. This drew other Satanists into listen. One man walked in all
arrogant, then yelled as he saw me. He yelled “You are that preacher
from the mall!” After that he wouldn’t come near me, nor talk to me. By
now the team had arrived, so I got them praying while I continued to
witness to the group of Satanists. We all parted on good terms, and
many of them waved to us later in the evening when they saw the team.
Please keep all of them in prayer.
At 9pm we made our way to the
Queen Street Mall, and as we set up we noticed a large group of
Islanders hanging around. The Bible table seemed to be attracting them,
so we sent Ralph up to preach. It was his second open air sermon, and I
must say he has good projection of voice, and knows his Bible. There
are a few things he needs to tie down, but those small things come with
experience.
It turns out that the Islanders were all Mormons.
I was able to engage one of them in discussion at the Bible table. He
kept talking about how they support our ministry, 
I pointed out to him that he couldn’t support us, since we preach
opposite to what the Latter Day Saints teach, he informed me that we
taught and believed the same thing. This then led into an apologetic
conversation in regards to what the Mormon church teaches, and after
going through a different topics he said “You know your stuff, I am not
here to debate” after that he walked off. I noticed that other members
of the team were also locked in Mormon dialogue. It was then that I
noticed the man I just spoke to come around to Ralph and start to
heckle. Ralph asked him if he was a Christian, and the man’s reply was
to say “yeah, kinda”. Ralph pressed him for more information but the
man wouldn’t give it, but when it came out that the man was a Mormon,
he again took off.
By now I was engaged in a discussion with
three Mormons, we were looking at the doctrine of good works. They
maintained that one had to earn salvation, whereas the Bible teaches
that salvation is not of anything we have done but rather it is all of
Grace.
We spent some time going through the Scriptures showing that we cannot earn salvation, we looked at Ephesians 2:8-9:
“For
by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own
doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may
boast.” (ESV)
Then we looked at Titus 3:5:
“he saved us,
not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his
own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy
Spirit,”
We spent ages on many passages like Romans 4, Romans 5, Romans 8, Isaiah 64, Galatians 2, Titus 3, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 2.
By
the end of the run through the Bible one of the Mormons who was doing
all the talking asked if we had a note pad and pen, since he had never
seen this before and wanted to write down all the passages. We were
more than willing to give him all the details. After we built the case
for salvation being not of works, we compared it with the Book of
Mormon that states that we are saved by works. This stunned the Mormons
since they were always taught that the Book of Mormon and Bible align.
After parting ways with the Mormons, I turned around was engaged in another discussion this time with a group of
young Pentecostal men, who believed that we shouldn’t preach sin, since
they believe all men know they are guilty. Also, they pushed that we
must have signs, wonders and healings. While I am a cessationalist in
theology, I pointed out to them not the cessationalist argument, but
rather how from the Scripture those signs, wonders, and healings
followed the proclamation of the Gospel.
This debate then led
to one of the group just attacking how we preached the gospel, but he
wouldn’t present a better way to preach. He just kept saying “I don’t
agree!” We went through the Scriptures one by one, and I asked him each
time what he thought that verse meant. After about twenty minutes he
got frustrated and walked off in disgust. The others in the group
thanked us for taking the time to explain the Scripture to them.
Ryan
then got up to Open air preach, and he did a go job expounding on the
Scripture, after awhile he got a few hecklers yelling at him. One of
them turned out to be a Seventh Day Adventist who wanted to argue over
the Sabbath. The man was trying to argue from church history, and he
clearly was wrong in his statements. Ryan tagged me in to talk to the
man. So I jumped up and began to discuss the issue of the Sabbath. As
the discussion went on the crowd grew. So I kept on pressing him from
the Scripture to prove his point.
The man stated that we must
keep the whole of the Law, so I asked him if he would kill a homosexual
(Leviticus 20:13), he stated that he would not since Christ fulfilled
the Law. So I asked him, if Christ has fulfilled that law, then why do
we have to keep the Sabbath, surely He has fulfilled that one also?
The man then claimed that the New Testament taught Sabbath keeping, so
I pressed him to show me within the New Covenant where the Sabbath was
taught. He couldn’t show any Scripture, so his next argument was
“Sunday is pagan! It is the day of worshipping the sun! That proves we
shouldn’t worship then!” I asked him “Do you worship on a Saturday?”
He answered that he did, so I said “Do you know that Saturday is a
pagan day? From the worship of Saturn?” He was a bit stunned, I then
explained that these were just days in our culture so it doesn’t matter
if we worship on them, but rather we should worship everyday.
Then
I saw him, a Seventh Day Adventist ‘apologist’ who I have debated with
many times before, but when challenged this man will never reply. He
opened up by saying that I didn’t know my Bible because the New
Covenant clearly taught Sabbath keeping. I asked him to show where it
taught this. His reply was read Luke 23:54:
“It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.”
He
then said “See, Jesus rose from the dead on the Sabbath, thus we must
worship on the Sabbath.” This was the first time I have ever heard this
argument so I took a second to re-read over the passage, thinking that
I must have missed something. As one looks at the context of the
passage one quickly sees that the verse is not talking about the
resurrection, but rather it is talking about the burial. So I called
him out on the context, he quickly started to back track. As he yelled
at me the crowd kept on building, and I was starting to eyeball the
crowd to see who I could call out to engage in the Gospel proclamation.
The Seventh Day Adventist kept yelling at me that I was
following a lie, and that we must worship on the Sabbath. By now I was
getting tired of the debate, so I asked him simply “What day does the
book of Acts say the early church met together?” As soon as I said that
you could see a look in his face that revealed that he was stuck. He
answered “Everyday!” So I asked, “The book of Acts list what day it
was, do you happen to know what day that was?” He yelled out again
“Everyday!” So once again I asked him the question, this time he said
rather quietly “The first day”, then I asked “What day is that?” Before
he could respond a bunch of people in the crowd started laughing and
called out “That’s the Sunday!” The man refused to answer, so I asked
what day is the first day, he eventually said ‘Sunday’. The man then
got really angry and started to yell at me about how we must keep the
Sabbath, this was fine since it was just drawing in a bigger crowd to
hear the Gospel.
Then the worse thing that could happen occurred! Four police officers
walked through the crowd, and one of the Constables stopped and called
me and the SDA apologist to him. I quickly tagged Andrew in to preach,
and he started to preach the gospel to the crowd. The well meaning
police officer told the SDA guy to back off and walk away, since I had
every right to be there. While I appreciate what the officer did, he
without knowing killed the crowd.
Andrew then tagged me back in
and now to a much smaller crowd I explained the gospel. Many in that
crowd took an in-depth tract afterwards, and we got to have some good
one to ones.
Ryan was quickly collared by the SDA apologist,
so they engaged once again in debate. Shortly after the debate started
the man walked away angry, since he had announced that you must keep
the Sabbath to be saved, so Ryan slammed him on works based salvation,
and how the Bible says “cursed is every man who does not do all things
written in the Law”.
The rest of the night was spent handing out tracts, and talking to people.
Overall it was a great night, and many people got to hear the Gospel of Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria!