Battle Log

Saturday, 1 March, 2008

Posted 7 March 2008, 1:58 PM by Josh Williamson. Permalink

Saturday, 1 March, 2008

The year has gone so quickly, we are now three months into the new year, and looking back to the start of the year I am amazed at the mercy and grace of God. This year has been spent advancing the glory of God through the proclamation of the gospel. It is so incredible and humbling to sit back and just watch God sovereignly intervene in the lives of those who have been touched by the life giving gospel.

We had a small team tonight, and as a result of this I was forced to call in re-enforcements. The city was abuzz with excitement and lust. The homosexual community was excited due to the night being the big yearly celebration of their abomination in Sydney, and the other deviants were excited due to the Sexpo that was being held in the Brisbane CBD.

Operation 513 - Brisbane, followed its normal routine of prayer and Bible reading, then at 9pm we set up in the   Queen Street Mall. The first preacher up for the night was Ryan.

Ryan preached on a range of topics ranging from evolution and atheism to the universality of morals. For most of the night Ryan had a good sized crowd listening. Which was quite good since Ryan preached for well over two hours.

  He did a good job in handling hecklers, and arguing everything with an eye on the cross. No matter what was presented he would answer the question and then point it back to the glorious gospel.

At around 11:30pm Ryan tagged me to deal with a young female heckler who was dressed in the typical garb of a Goth. She was asking about the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome) and the early church. So we did a bit of church history and I explained how the Christians earned respect by caring for others, then we had to move forward in history to deal with the Crusades.

I built the case that a true Christian will be a follower of Christ, and since a follower does as his master says, then a true Christian is one who keeps the words of Christ. The hecklers agreed to this, so then I pointed out that Christ commanded us to love our enemies, and not to go about killing people in the name of God. We then concluded that the Crusades were a religious war, and not a Christian war.

This then opened up onto the topic of salvation, so I was able to expound the mercy of God, and Sovereignty of God.  I explained to the crowd that salvation belongs to the Lord, and He alone is the one who has mercy. Then I built that our good works will never earn out way into heaven. The crowd was receptive, and people took tracts after the open air.

While we were short staffed for the night, it was still good to see God’s name being glorified by the preaching of His Word!

Soli Deo Gloria!