Battle Log

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Once again we faced the cold, oh joys of evangelism in winter. But, we had a big team and we were ready to reach as many as possible with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My plan for the night was not to open air preach, my reasoning behind this was because for the past week I had been battling a cold. So I thought, I’ll just hand out tracts and talk to people.

The first preacher up for the night was Alex, as he preached three teenage girls began to heckle. But they were poor hecklers, they would just talk about random things, not engage the preacher and generally just be a nuisance. Alex engaged them on a one to one basis while Ryan took over the preaching.

As Ryan preached, Wayne began to heckle. As usual the arguments of Wayne were built of a false understanding of Christianity. He quite regularly tries to argue, but the problem is he doesn’t understand the reformed evangelical position.

Once Ryan finished preaching Alex got back up and preached some more. He did a good job in engaging with people and presenting Jesus Christ. One thing I love about the preaching of Alex is that he will engage in apologetics and also the gospel. This proves to be very fruitful in the open air.

After Alex finished preaching, Blake jumped up and began to thunder out the Gospel. A few people stopped to listen as for about 40 minutes he expounded on who Christ is and what He has done.

By the time he stood down, it was about 11:20pm, so John got up to preach. Wayne circled in and began to heckle. At some points it appeared as if John was about to be swamped, so I tagged in and began to engage Wayne.

Wayne was taking issue with the doctrine of original sin, so I began to explain the biblical position on human depravity, at this some hecklers who had been hanging out all night began to fire. One of them was a young man in really tight red jeans and the other was a young woman who claimed to be a nurse. The one claiming to be a nurse became very hostile and was threatening to hit me, it took a few of her friends to physically drag her away from me. Red pants continued his heckling, but couldn’t answer the gospel.

By now we were pushing midnight so I wrapped up and then engaged in one to one. The first person I spoke to was a solider, and it turns out he is a pastors son. He admitted that he was running and needed to come back to the truth. I spoke to him for some time and left him with a gospel tract.

Please pray for him.

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Soli Deo Gloria!

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A nice western breeze was blowing as we prepared for our weekly outreach. The city seemed fairly busy, which was kind of surprising since it was a fairly cold night. We met as per usual and we had a time of team prayer and bible reading. When 9pm rolled around we found ourselves setting up in the Queen Street Mall.

As I looked around at the team, I couldn’t help but notice that we were a few preachers short tonight. My mind was telling me that there was no way in which only 3 of us could preach the full three hours in the cold. But, we trusted that God would work despite the shortage of workers.

Ryan Hemelaar was the first man up for the night, and I was a bit surprised when he only preached for about 20 to 30 minutes. Normally he is much longer, but obviously God only willed for him to preach that long.

During his time of preaching he was able to deal with some interesting heckles and each time he was able to swing the questions back to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

After Ryan finished preaching it was my turn to preach. I began by dealing with the issue of death and why we die. Very quickly I had some hecklers.

One of the hecklers was a really scruffy looking man and his wife. There issue was one of murder and abortion. As they heckled they soon began to ask about if abortion was a sin or not. I answered them that it was, but they didn’t like that. For the next two hours they stood and argued over the issue of baby murder.

During this time others hecklers arose, but the main reoccurring issue was that of abortion. Eventually for some reason homosexuality arose, and the ones that heckled me on it were claiming to be gay Christians. I pointed out from the Scripture that it was impossible to be gay and saved at the same time. But they didn’t care, and they openly said they didn’t believe the Bible (more fruits of them not being Christians).

At the end of the night there were many gospel conversations going on. God had been kind in bringing in a decent size crowd for the preaching.

As I finished preaching I found myself still in conversation with the woman who had admitted to 5 abortions. She then got really hostile and was threatening to attack the team. Her husband was furious and was saying how he was going to punch me out. It was at this we called the police, the couple soon left.

Please pray for him.

View Photos

Soli Deo Gloria!

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It was another beautiful day at the Gold Coast and I was excited to be joined by Bekk, Yarran, Blake, Matt, Ryan, Dez and his wife. Also two Christian people from Norway met up with us, liked what we were doing and so stuck around for the entire outreach handing out tracts with us.

One of the conversations I had was with a man in his thirties who had no belief in God or the afterlife. His job was to put up signs. After showing him some reasons about why we can know there is a God, I knew that he wasn't open to the things of God. So I asked him whether he thought there was any ultimate meaning in life. He responded by saying, "No, we're here to just enjoy ourselves." So I asked, "For what purpose though? Those good memories you might have in your brain are simply going to disappear once you die. So living to enjoy your life is meaningless too." He answered, "I guess so, but that is alright." I said, "Is that not depressing? For just say you had the job of hanging up this one sign that no one ever saw every single day because every night it would fall down again. And that is all you did; it would take you the whole day to do it. After a number of months or even weeks of doing this one job every single day, you would be so frustrated and annoyed. For what you have been spending your days doing has had absolutely no meaning, it has had no lasting impact on anything. You would undoubtedly quit that job because it is completely meaningless. So in the same way why would you be content with knowing that no matter what you will do in this life, it has no lasting impact; it serves no purpose?" At this point I think the man understood frivolousness of his position, but for the purpose of his pride he didn't want to admit it.

After this we went to have lunch and had a great time of fellowship with one another. Once returning to our usual spot, I got up to preach. I started on Luke 12:15 - Jesus' warning against coveteousness and his statement that a person's life does not exist in the abundance of his possessions. For just in the news the past week or so, the stock markets across the world had had a massive downturn. Billions of dollars was wiped off the markets in a single day. I spoke about this and spoke about how so many people put all their trust in money for their security. So many live their lives with the main aim of trying to get more and more money. To get a bigger house. Or to get another car. Or to get a bigger share portfolio. But none of these things can stop death. And so after this I read the parable of the man who had such a great crop one year he decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, but that very night his life was taken from him. He thought he was secure; he had lots of food to eat for years to come, but he died suddenly. So I spoke about how our trust should be in God because there is a coming judgment. Then I went through the commandments to show that we're all sinners deserving of God's wrath. Then I spoke about Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the cross for the sins of those who would believe.

After I got down from the preaching block, the other Ryan got up to preach. It was his first time doing it and he did a very good job. He had a few people heckle him as well and so he was able to answer their questions. Another first time preacher was up after Ryan, and this time it was Matt. He too did an execellent job in proclaiming sin, Christ's death and resurrection, repentance and faith. And Yarran did a great job concluding the preaching for the day.

To God be the glory for another wonderful day of outreach!

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The Essex OP513 team was on Brentwood High St this Saturday, lead by Andrew Noble and accompanied by Ruth Weil. We were quite thin on the ground this week but the weather was sunny which was a big change to previous weeks, so I was hoping folks would be more comfortable to stop and chat.

Ruth and I had our first conversation with a young man named David. He classified himself as a "spiritualist" and believed all paths lead to "God". We chatted about the nature of truth, the claims of Jesus according to scripture and his accountability before God in breaking the moral law.

We also spoke to two separate groups of young boys who found the million pound notes fascinating. Even at such a young age the understanding of morality and accountability was prevalent.  One of the boys took a gospel of John and then every other boy wanted one! They even thanked us for explaining what the Bible says regarding sin, death and righteousness.

Many tracts were passed out to the public and we pray that God will bless those that read them and grant them salvation! SDG!

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The team was back out on Friday evening armed with the Word of God and the strength of the Lord. After meeting for a time of fellowship, devotions and prayer in our favourite cafe we headed into the square. Straight away we noticed that there were some festivities happening and it soon became clear that it was a celebration of Buddha’s birthday. I found this to be particularly interesting.

Andrew stood up first to preach. It’s really great to see him preaching with such boldness and confidence, and with a deep burden on his heart to see people saved. He’s still growing as a preacher but through the Lord’s help I think he’s doing a great job.

I stood up to preach next. Depending on crowd interaction I decided not to preach for too long in one sitting, but instead decided to preach a second time later on. I think this gives the rest of the team a bit more opportunity to get into one-to-one conversations. As it happened I didn’t preach for a second time, as I was engaged in a number of conversations, but I think it’s a good way to go and it’s something I will implement again next week.

During my message I spoke of the fact that there have been many great men through the years and many have accomplished great feats in the eyes of the world. People have been influenced by world leaders, particularly regarding world religions. However, they are all dead. Buddha himself is dead, but Jesus Christ is not dead. He has risen and is alive for evermore, and in Jesus Christ is there freedom from sin and death for all who trust in Him.

After I finished preaching I was pleased to see that the team was involved in conversation with people who had stopped to listen to the preaching. I managed to have a number of conversations throughout the evening.

I spoke with a man named Derek, who is from Trinidad and Tobago. He professed to be a believer so I asked him a few questions regarding his conversion. I asked him if he was saved because of something he has done or because of something God has done for him. I was hoping to hear the latter, but instead he answered with the former. This of course concerned me so I shared the Gospel with him and stressed that salvation is by grace alone and that no amount of good works can save us. I had only a brief time with him but my prayer is that the Lord will impress upon his heart the truth of the Gospel. Do pray for him.

Next I spoke with a young woman from Egypt. She expressed a religious disposition and I surmised that she was Muslim, and although I did not ask her this she told me that she was. As we were talking she mentioned that we were not very different and that Christianity and Islam are very similar. I agreed with her that there are some similarities but I also stressed that there are some fundamental differences. As an example I told her that in Islam a person can earn salvation, whereas according to the Bible it is impossible to earn salvation. This really surprised her and she said that she had never heard this before. As I began to explain to her why this is the case her friends arrived. My window of opportunity had closed, as they all had movie tickets to see a film and needed to head off. I gave them all an in-depth Gospel tract and so do pray with me that they would read it and think upon its message.

Afterwards I spoke with Mohammed, a Muslim gentleman who comes to Leicester Square often to engage in conversation with us. Barney had already been speaking with him and I also noticed that he had a friend with him. We got talking and during our conversation I had to answer a number of false claims that are often made by Muslims. One in particular concerned the notion that the Bible speaks of the coming of Mohammed, who Muslims believe to be the last prophet sent by God. The proof text given for this was Deuteronomy 18:15 which reads: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.” Here in this context Moses is talking of a future prophet, and although the identity of this prophet is not confirmed in this verse, later we read in Acts that he is aligned with the Messiah, that is, Jesus Christ (see Acts 3:22-24; 7:37). This verse is most definitely not speaking of Mohammed.

Later on I got to talk with two young men that believe in evolution. We spoke at length about natural selection and I stressed to them that natural selection is incapable of increasing or providing new information for the genome of a cell, which is what is necessary for evolution to be true. We got only so far in our conversation and as time was getting on I asked if they would like to continue the conversation through email. They agreed and so do pray that I would be able to continue to reason with them concerning the truth of God’s Word.

We all had some great opportunities and so praise the Lord for a good night.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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Tonight was a great night of ministry. Meeting at Cafe Nero before heading into the square we enjoyed a blessed time of fellowship and prayer. Barney spoke with us about the importance of standing biblically on the issue of homosexuality. There is a good reason for this.

Recently, a good friend of mine and fellow open-air preacher, Dale McAlpine, was arrested while preaching in his home town of Workington. It involved speaking about homosexuality and the charge was that he had caused harassment, alarm and distress, which falls under section 5 of the public order act. A person is guilty of this offence if he:

(a) Uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or

(b) Displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

Having spoken to Dale, clearly these charges are completely fabricated and untrue. While he was preaching from a ladder Dale did not mention the sin of homosexual practise at all. He was approached by a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO), who told him that if he said homosexual conduct was “sinful” it would be a crime. Dale correctly responded by stating to the PCSO that it is not a crime to describe homosexual practise as a “sin.” Police officers arrived later on the scene and Dale was arrested.

Dale is due to stand trial, yet we are confident that he will be found innocent of all charges. He is currently being represented by The Christian Institute. A trial date has yet to be set. You can visit www.christian.org.uk to learn of any new developments.

Barney gave us a good summary of how we ought to defend our position should any of us be pulled up by the police:

1) The Bible teaches that God loves sinners (Mark 2:17).

2)  The Bible teaches that homosexual practise is sinful (Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

3)  The Bible teaches that everyone who repents from their life of sin and turns to follow Jesus will be saved from the eternal punishment they deserve (1 Timothy 1:15-16).

After we headed into the square we quickly got ready and then Andrew stood up to preach. It was great to have him back with us after he had recently gone back to Australia to visit with his family. After preaching a solid message on the Gospel and the importance of turning to Christ, I stood up to preach.

I asked people where their hope resides. Recently the U.K. had a General Election and people are looking to a new government to bring us out of the many problems that the country is facing. But ultimately our hope needs to be in God and not man. The Bible says, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord, than to trust in man” (Psalm 118:8). During my message I was able to engage with a young man named Aiden and I took him through the good person test and into the Gospel. He seemed to listen with a keen interest.

After I had finished preaching we all got busy talking with people one-to-one and handing out Gospel tracts. I got talking with a young man named Constantine. He is from Greece and grew up Greek Orthodox. Our conversation became quite philosophical and we spent some time wrangling over the issue of morality and how we can make sense of the belief that says there is no God even though we have an absolute morality in this world. Where did this absolute morality come from and why is it that universally we know things to be wrong at a fundamental moral level if there is no ultimate standard that tells us what is right and what is wrong? We are all moral agents and so for sure there is a Moral Law Giver.

Towards the end of the evening Aiden and his friend Frank came up to me just to say thanks for my message and that it was certainly going to make them think. We gave them all some in-depth Gospel tracts and that told them to really think upon the things they had heard. Do pray for them.

Soli Deo Gloria! 

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I was running late to the city tonight. The day had been made up of a church outreach and then sermon writing. So I found myself having to arrive in the city at 9pm. As I made my way to the city I felt strangely ill and even vomited a couple of times. I dismissed it as merely being tired and I once again focused on the outreach at hand.

The team arrived in the Queen Street Mall at the same time I did and we began to get ready for a good night of outreach. Blake was the first preacher up for the night and he did a good job on expounding the truth of the Gospel.

After Blake finished preaching I decided I should get up. I began on preaching on the frailty of human life and how we aren’t assured of tomorrow. Within seconds of beginning I had one woman begin to scream abuse. She then turned and tried to pull her pants down to flash us, but her partner dragged her away. It looked like we were in for an interesting night.

Shortly after this 5 young Muslim men began to stop and heckle. They were making the standard claims that there is only one version of the Koran and that the Bible has been changed. I quickly dealt with their objections and turned to the Gospel. After I explained salvation, they began to disagree saying that Jesus was never crucified (as the Koran teaches). I challenged them on the truthfulness of the Koran and they were adamant that Jesus never died, but rather Allah made someone appear as Jesus on the cross. To which I pointed out that Allah had deceived people, they readily agreed, then I made this statement which set them off, “If Allah deceived people then, doesn’t that make Allah a deceiver and one not to be trusted? If Allah deceived people then, how do you know you aren’t being deceived now?”

At that they went off onto to dogma and refused to engage in any more discussions. But hecklers beget hecklers and more arose to the challenge. This time the heckling gallery was made up of atheists / agnostics and a woman who claimed to be a Christian from an Assembly of God church. The atheists made the same claims as usual without any backing and many of them tried to attack the Scripture, but often times they actually didn’t know the very thing they were attacking. These hecklers did however produce some of the largest crowds we have seen for some time.

For about 90 minutes I preached and engaged the hecklers, then at the end I tagged Ryan in who continued with the discussion.

Ryan went on a preached for a while, and did a good job as usual. But, I must admit I didn’t pay overly much attention to him, since by now I was feeling fairly ill again and in need of a break.

As midnight rolled around I found myself feeling very ill and then Mr. Crazy Professing Christian entered in. He had been there all night but now he was engaging the hecklers. The problem is he wasn’t being biblical or factual, but rather he was making up arguments that were easily refuted. I challenged him on it and he refused to acknowledge anything I said, just kept saying, “I can say the same to you”. Those watching concluded that he was crazy and didn’t represent Christianity.

After this I headed home for a rest and also to continue the church work. All in all it was a great night. With many hearing the Gospel. SDG!

Soli Deo Gloria!

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Today we had on the team Bekk, Yarran, Dan, Rick and Glenda, Chris and Gary, and a few others from CWMF. It was great to have such a large team again. Since we had a decent sized team we split up, some of us went to different areas of Surfers Paradise for parts of the outreach. Bekk and I went down Cavill Mall, we didn't get very far before we were in a number of conversations.

One of the conversations we had was with a guy who was still very hung over from drinking the night before. He was telling us that the woman whom he has a child with broke up with him yesterday, and so he decided to drink his sorrows away. He said that he also spent $1200 at bars last night in buying drinks for strangers in order to try and find another woman whom would have sex with him, but to no avail. I asked whether he likes the way he feels now, being hung over for drinking so much. He said no. So Bekk asked, "If you recognise that the following day you'll have a headache and be depressed after getting drunk, why do it?" He didn't know, but did say that this morning in order to not start thinking of drinking again, he went to the local casino and spent $1000 on the pokies. But admitted that he'll most likely go out drinking again tonight.

I then asked him about whether he thought he was going to Heaven. He thought so, because he said he's a stand up guy. So I went through the commandments with him, showing him that he would be guilty on the Day of Judgement. After this he said, "I believe in mother nature." I asked him what he meant by that. He said, "Well it means that I can do whatever I want because I am god." I responded, "Really? Can you prove it? I would love to see you hover into the air and then start flying around." He obviously couldn't, but kept claiming that he could do anything - he even said he could get the numbers of all the girls walking past. I was thinking in my head, how come he couldn't get any girls' numbers last night if he really can do anything. I just kept warning him that there is a day of Judgement coming, that he isn't god, and he needs to repent and trust in Jesus to be forgiven. But he wasn't interested at all in conceding that he's not god.

Another conversation I had was with a guy from Belguim who said he was an atheist. I asked him how the universe came about, since he agreed that it had a beginning and that all things that have beginnings have causes/creators for them. He resorted to saying that the universe was self-caused. That means, he thinks the universe created itself. This viewpoint is clearly illogical, for it means that the universe would have to exist before it existed in order to make itself. But if it already exists, it doesn't need to make itself. And so therefore, it didn't make itself. To put it another way, how can something exist and not exist at the same time? It's impossible, for it violates the law of non-contradiction - that A cannot be A and not-A at the same time in the same relationship. I explained this to the man and he conceded this point, agreeing that there must be an external cause to the universe. But he would not allow the possibility of God being that cause.

At this time, Yarran had began preaching on the usual preaching block. After a short while, he had two hecklers in which he was engaging. Since these hecklers were very close, causing Yarran to not speak as loud, I indicated to Yarran that he should continue talking to them in a one-2-one conversation instead of in the open air. About a minute after this, two police officers (whom I had never seen before) looked like they were coming to speak to Yarran but since he was in conversation with the two individuals who were heckling, they waited around for a few minutes before wandering off. We haven't had any hinderance from the police in a long time, possibility these officers were just new ones to the Gold Coast region that didn't know that we do this each week and that the Gold Coast council have no problems in doing what we do. We don't know for sure whether they even wanted to talk to Yarran, for it seems they had a piece of paper with mug shots of people they were looking for.

Yarran and Dan (who joined the conversation) stayed talking to these two folk for about an hour and a half, well past when the outreach usually concludes. I thank God for raising up so many keen laborers who love sharing the gospel. To God be the glory!

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Today it was just Bekk and I on the team, but not long after arriving a husband and wife who usually also hand out tracts on weekends at the coast met up with us. It's always great meet other people who have a great desire to share the great news of the gospel.

Soon after this, a local who has determined to try and engage us in conversation with him each week (so that we can't talk to others - but even in the conversation with him, he won't let us speak) arrived. He generally rails against doctors and the government. He was doing the same today, and as he was progressing in his monologue, he started swearing. So I pulled him up on that. He insisted that he didn't swear. But it was clear as day that he did. So I said, "Look if you can't even admit that you swore, I don't want to continue this conversation."  As I was walking away, this person recognised that he had lost my attention. So he made a scene, and started shouting, "I am so low! I am not worthy. Can I kiss your feet? I have sinned against almighty God" in a very sarcastic and blasphemous way. I simply ignored him because I was already in another conversation by this stage. Thankfully the man left after that. A local soon after that came up and said, "Good thing you walked away, that guy is an idiot."

After a few further conversations I decided to start preaching. I began by speaking about a tourist who had died just two days earlier when they drowned at a beach nearby. Since where we preach is right in front of the beach, stories of drownings really do bring it home that death could happen to any single one of us at any time. I then talked about sin, the cross and what someone must do to be saved. After about 30 minutes of preaching, I stepped down.

As we were walking back to the car, we got into a conversation with two teenagers. As I gave one of them a tract, he replied, "I got one of these at Schoolies last year." So I then asked him whether he thought he would go to Heaven. He said he didn't believe in Heaven or Hell, but he believed in God and that God was good. So I explained that how if God is good, He would make sure those people that do horrible atrocities would get punished one day. He agreed. So I said that that is why there must be a Hell - a place of punishment and a Heaven - a place of no punishment. He said, "Oh that makes sense".

So I went through the commandments to show him that he too was deserving of punishment because of his sins. "But if I do good things, doesn't that cover it up?" he said. I explained how justice doesn't work like that. He responded, "Then everyone will be going to Hell." I remarked that it is true every one deserves Hell, but God provided a way to be forgiven of our sins and that is by the death of Jesus. So I explained the gospel to him and told him that he needs to repent and believe to be saved. He said would seriously think about it. Please keep this guy in prayer.

We found that almost everyone was willing to take a tract today, and it was very easy to get into conversations. To God be the glory that the gospel still goes out abundantly even with few team members!

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It’s hard to believe that is has been one month since last writing. Each week I sit down with the plan to type a report but normally church and ministry work take over. I do apologise to those who have been looking forward to the weekly reports. I will try to get this done more regularly. We have received an email from Alex the Atheist saying he misses his entertainment in reading the weekly reports. Well, we have had disappointments from Alex also, as the calibre of arguments coming from him for the atheistic front keep getting weaker and weaker, most time they are just this side of the outright absurd.

As the night of the first of May rolled around, I found myself quite tired, this was due to the fact that I had been out witnessing in Banyo for the church plant I pastor for the past two days, but it was good to have a change from the suburbs to the inner city. Dave Gee came to my place and from there we carpooled in. It was great sharing a ride with another believer, since we got to chat theology and apologetics. We were even able to predict the arguments that Alex and his atheist platoon would use later that night.

After a time of prayer and Bible reading, we made out way to the Queen Street Mall. Andre was the first preacher up and he did a splendid job. While Andre was preaching a man in a New South Wales state of origin jersey came up and tried to grab the Bible out of Andre’s hand, he then went to punch Andre in the stomach. I stepped in and told the bloke to clear off or we would get the police. After this God was kind to us and brought a good size crowd in to hear the gospel, but as usual the atheists showed up and tried to railroad the whole event in order to justify their sin.

Andre preached for awhile, then Ryan took over and began to deal with the atheists. We were surprised to see that there were less members of the Brisbane atheists out tonight, which in some ways was saddening, as I wanted to ask Steve the leader, why he never emailed me about a book that disproved his position on the Christian God. He did promise he would do it, but never did. I guess he wasn’t very open minded about the whole thing. Also, I was disappointed that another of the atheists did attend, he was a “former” Christian now an atheist. Last time I spoke to him, he said Richard Dawkin’s had convinced him, but he was unable to say what argument convinced him, or what disproved Christianity. Last time I spoke to him, he took a DVD looking at the other side of the debate, he left with a promise to watch it, but I have since found out that he binned it. Another atheist who is close minded and brain washed to his position. I just find it so hypocritical that they accuse Christians of not being free thinkers, yet they won’t ever look at opposing views.

Alex was running around yelling out abuse as he normally does, this time he seemed more hostile than usual and his arguments were worse than ever. This wasn’t just our opinion by Wayne the Agnostic stated this also.

At one point while Ryan was preaching, Alex was talking to a husband and wife about how the Bible was wrong. The lady said she was a Christian and the man said he was a Hindu. Alex was arguing that the Bible teaches that the world is flat. But, when challenged to present his evidence he tried to cite some Hebrew which actually disagrees with him. But being one who never lets facts get in the way of a good myth he pressed on. When challenged again on this issue, Alex quickly changed and tried to show that Behemoth of Job 40 actually shows the Bible in error. Sadly, his argument was all wrong from the beginning, first he misquoted the reference and then misquoted the verse. When he was challenged with this and shown to be in error did he concede? Not on your life!

Alex then started saying that the word “loins” when used of Behemoth only appeared in the NIV from 1978. He then maintained that before this time, it was in no Bible. However, if you would pick up a copy of the 1611 King James Version, you would see that the word “loins” appears in Job 40:16 when referencing Behemoth.

I confronted Alex with this argument, so he did what ever good atheist does when confront with facts, he walked away claiming victory. I’m sorry, but I was always led to believe that if you say something that is proven wrong, then you aren’t the victor, but rather you are the one in error. From this point on Alex became more hostile and angry. Next time he came up to me he shoved his finger into my chest a few times (I am sure he as a lawyer knows that constitutes assault). A few of those around later expressed concern that Alex may one day fly of the handle and hit people. I hope this isn’t the case.

Ryan was still preaching at this stage, and after failing to answer my questions Alex decided to heckle Ryan again. This time he said that Ryan could not argue science since he was not trained in science at university (for the record neither was Alex). When we called him out on his hypocrisy here, Alex said, “A scientist is one that uses scientific methods.” However, with that definition he shot himself in the foot, for he just allowed Ryan to argue science as a scientist.

At this stage the long hair atheist who is normally quite vile came running in. He said that we could not talk about science since we weren’t trained in it. But at that time Alex was talking about physics (which he was never trained in). So I asked him, “If one has to be trained in something to talk about it, then what right to they have to talk about theology and science, since they aren’t trained in it?” To which he replied, “This isn’t about me, don’t twist it!” Ahh…. Good to see the doubt standard of the atheists on display.

By now things must have gotten a bit hot for them, since they refused to engage Ryan’s arguments and they all walked off to go have a beer. This in an of itself is not unusual, but they normally return later in the night more vile than before. This time however, we didn’t see them again. Which is sad, since they still haven’t answered the questions before them, and screaming abuse doesn’t count as an answer.

The rest of the night went quite well, Ryan was able to expound the Gospel of Christ, as was Blake. They did a great job of explaining how despite all our sin, God is loving and kind in to send Christ to die on the cross for His people, but they didn’t finish there, they then went on to explain that Christ arose again and if you would repent and trust in Christ, you would not perish but have eternal life.

It was a good night, with much bad heckling. Please pray for the atheists.

Soli Deo Gloria!

For more photos from each outreach, view them on our Facebook page.

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