This video shows how persecution is coming in the U.S. for those who witness to the Christian faith.  We even had an incident like this here in Colorado Springs.  After preaching at a DMV in town, the police came and told us that we could not do it.  Even at City Hall, when we preached, a police officer told us we could not do it unless we were across the street.

Many open air preachers nowadays(in the U.S.!) are always videotaping themselves to be able to defend themselves when the police come to stop them or arrest them.

Robert, one of our local seed sowers, spent last January in Jamaica preaching the gospel and witnessing to the lost.  I noticed a journal of this on a website, and thought I would share one entry they had.  For the entire journal, go to THIS LINK.  I am praying about joining Mike and Robert there next year, if they decide to go again. 

Monday, January 18, 2010:  An email from our brothers in Jamaica… please keep praying for them!!! Here is what they wrote: “We are doing very well. We think we’ve distributed nearly 9000 tracts. We claimed a place downtown Montego Bay called Sam Sharp Square as holy ground and we give tracts and do various readings from the Bible in the open air during the mornings. Sam Sharpe is a national hero who spent most of his time travelling to different estates in the area educating the slaves about Christianity and freedom. He became a Baptist preacher. We preach in the evenings and give more tracts and bibles. We are down to about 500 tracts which we hope will get us through next week. Someone told us people wouldn’t listen to us yet we know they are because people take bibles and tracts, some are broken and others ask us to pray for them for various things going on in their lives. Everyday the question of the day we get is,” what must i do to be saved?” Yesterday someone asked after his friends mouthes were stopped by the Law, “what must i do to get under the Blood?” We met a great Irish family, a pastor, his wife and three sons, Pastor Paul, Pamela and their sons Luke, John and Jason. Miss Pamela heard us preaching in the square one morning and since then they have invited us to their prayer meetings, out for dinner and for fellowship. We’ve been praying for the growth of their ministry and the people of Jamaica. We are in awe of Pastor Paul preaching and his prayers! Everyday we see the hand of God working! We serve an awesome God!  Thanks to everyone praying! Don’t quit.”

 

 

 

We had a great time of preaching at the Tea Party here in town.  Well, we did not preach AT the Tea Party, but at the main gate of the park it was held at.  So as the people came and went, we got to read scripture and preach the gospel.  Robert brought his cross and we “tag teamed” in getting up on the wall and preaching.  It was scary, fun, interesting and AWESOME!   There is nothing quite like sharing the gospel in this way.

There were a few folks that thanked us for doing this and many mockers too.  A lot of high schoolers from across the street came over and a few of them heckled us and mocked what we were doing.  The hecklers were good as it drew a few more people over.  All in all, it was a great day of glorifying the Lord in the proclamation of His Word.  There were many who heard the gospel, which is the power of God to salvation, as we preached the cross and Him crucified.  Many were convicted and mouths were stopped by speaking to their conscience through the law of God.  Many took tracts too, including the high schoolers.   

One woman walked by and yelled that no one will listen to us and no one will be saved by what we were doing.  Well, maybe not.  I did respond that the gospel is the power of God to salvation( Romans 1:16 ), not us.  But all the results are God’s job, not ours.  We have been faithful in proclaiming the gospel to many who will never go to church.  It has been said that one open air preaching session can reach more of the lost in one session than most churches do in a year.  But it is not up to us for the results.  One sows, one waters, but only God makes it grow( 1 Corinthians 3:6-8 ). 

                  Proverbs 17:15……  He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous,

   Both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.

   I have been thinking a lot about this passage lately.   How is it that God can justify the wicked(us) through faith (Romans 3:22), and still be just? 

   How can we be seen as righteous before a just and holy God?  It is clear that those who are unrighteous will not see the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9).  Being justified means that we are declared righteous.  It is a legal term that describes how a just God can declare a sinner perfectly righteous before Him.  God forgives, but also justifies.  To forgive means that someone must accept the cost of an offense.  If you were to visit a friend and break a lamp that he has at the house, he can forgive you, but that means that he must absorb the cost of a new lamp.  The cost of the offense does not disappear into the air.  Someone must bear the responsibility of paying for the offense done.  But God does more than forgive us, He DECLARES US RIGHTEOUS through faith in Him.  As believers, we are seen by God as perfect and never having any offense before Him.  Jesus Christ, who was perfect and righteous, became sin for us(2 Corinthians 5:21), so that we can become the righteousness of God.  As believers, we are seen by God as perfect before Him through the substitutional atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross, who bore our sins and took upon Himself the penalty of death that we deserved.  He satisfied the righteous and just wrath of God for our sins, and thus God can be just and the justifier in our salvation. 

God would be still good and just if He never saved anyone.  Our sin is so vile before Him that we deserve hell.  We have offended Him and who He is, by our sin.  But because of His mercy and grace, we can still be saved.  It is because of Him and not us.  It is by grace we are saved through faith, and this is not of ourselves but a gift of God, and not by works, so no one may boast(Ephesians 2:8-9).  God is holy and righteous and He hates all those who sin (Psalms 5:5).  Christ died on the cross to save you from God Himself.  His holy, righteous and just wrath was appeased(propitiation, Romans 3:25) on the cross so His righteousness and justice be displayed. This is not about us, but about Him.  It is all from Him, through Him and to Him (Romans 11:36).    As Paul says in Ephesians 1:6, “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in  the Beloved”.   Glory be to God.

Lets speak the truth in love….like we mean it!

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

I have heard it many times that living a good Christian life and sharing your testimony is a great way to evangelize.  But if this is true, then what difference would it make if you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Mormon or a Buddist?  I personally know people of all these faiths that are “good” people and have a testimony.

 I was reading Charles Spurgeons devotional this afternoon, and he refers to this…  if you live life as a Christian, you will be persecuted, not commended.

 

If you follow Christ, you shall have all the dogs of the world yelping at your heels. If you would live so as to stand the test of the last tribunal, depend upon it the world will not speak well of you. He who has the friendship of the world is an enemy to God; but if you are true and faithful to the Most High, men will resent your unflinching fidelity, since it is a testimony against their iniquities.

Spurgeon, C. H. (2006). Morning and evening : Daily readings (Complete and unabridged; New modern edition.) (December 28 PM). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Well, we had a great time visiting family in Illinois and getting up at 3AM on Friday to witness to the Black Friday shoppers.  There were incredible crowds in the hundreds at each store we went to.  Some people had been camping out in front of Best Buy for 3 days before the doors opened for Black Friday, so we had tons of opportunities to hand out tracts and preach the gospel. 

Our first stop was Kohls at 3:30am.  We handed out tracts and I preached.  The springboard used was a Christmas Quiz and I handed out $1 bills to the winners and a stuffed animal that I had bought last year after Christmas for 80% off and used it for the grand prize.  Then I asked if Santa Claus were to determine if you were “naughty or nice” based on the 10 commandments, how do you think you would do?  Everyone said..not very good.  From there the gospel was preached.  One of the employees confronted me about soliciting, and I told here that I as not selling anything, but was actually giving out money.  Then towards the end of the presentation, the store manager came as asked me to move down to the other store, so we finished up in a few more minutes and moved on.  There were some people that came up to us when we were done and thanked us for doing what we were doing.

We then moved to other stores as the morning progressed.  I did preach in front of Gordmans until my amplification pooped out.  Another place we went was Best Buy.  There were huge crowds there and tons of police, so we just handed out tracts.  The picture below was in the next morning paper and shows Connie handing out tracts to people in line at Best Buy.  Looks like many are reading the tracts too!

Ok, I listened to Paris Reidhead again last night and was floored by this message.  It has to be one of the most powerful sermons in this last century.  The link to the sermon is HERE.  The story behind the sermon is as follows.

In over fifty years of Bible teaching and preaching “Ten Shekels and a Shirt” is the only message that I feel constrained to explain how it came to be preached.

During a Bethany Fellowship Summer Conference in the mid sixties I was preparing to speak at the Tuesday morning Bible hour. Upon returning to my room after breakfast to meditate and pray about the message for that morning hour, I felt strangely impressed that I could not deliver the message that had been prepared for the session. Instead, I felt that there was some other message that was needed which I was to bring.

After prayer, the message that came to mind was one which I had begun preparation for the ministry at the church in New York City of which I was pastor at that time. My notes were not with me, but were in a file folder in my study. An empty envelope was on the desk in my room, on the back of which I wrote the scripture texts to be used and one or two ideas that came to mind. With the envelope in my Bible marking Judges, Chapter 17, and my self utterly cast upon the Lord, I went to the auditorium where between four and five hundred people waited to hear from the Lord through me.

I remember praying, “This morning I am utterly cast upon You because I am not really prepared.” In my heart I seemed to hear His response, “Well is that so bad, already” (being from New York City it was given in a idiom I would understand.)

I delivered the message and gave an invitation. Shortly the altar across the front of the auditorium was filled with broken people seeking God.

The summer conference was soon over and I returned to New York City and the ministry there.

About ten years later, one of the Bethany Fellowship staff was in Washington, D.C., where we had moved and from where we still minister. His word was, “Paris, I want to tell you that God has repeatedly used your messages, but the exact message itself was preached only that once.

A week or two later Harry Conn from Rockford, Illinois was in Washington. He invited me to have dinner with him. In the course of the meal he said, “I buy that message of yours ‘Ten Shekels and a Shirt’ by the dozen to give people. God is really using it in lives.” My response was that if you have a copy, I would like to have it sent to me so that I can find out what it is I have said. In a few days the cassette arrived.

Since I don’t have a tape player in my office, I put the tape into the Sony dictating machine on my desk and listened through the little playback on the hand-held microphone. The element of distance in terms of time, and the distorted sound through the miniature speaker, let me listen to the message with no real awareness of who was speaking. From time to time I felt like exclaiming, “That’s right! I wish I had said that!”

Then it dawned on me that it was my voice, but God was speaking through me. I realized that on a Tuesday morning during a summer conference, God had been able to get His message across because of my utter and complete helplessness. Here it is, just as the Lord gave it.

Paris Reidhead

 

     We went to Phoenix over the weekend and got to witness downtown with a group of other evangelists.  The hotel transport van dropped us off right next to a group of folks open air preaching on the streets.  We got to hand out tracts and share the gospel  with a few folks…… this is a picture of one of the guys preaching.

     We made it to the DMV again today to preach the gospel.  My turn this time.