Saturday 01-23-10

Tom had a WOTM Crash Course that I helped with in the afternoon, and we had nine people there. Half of them came out on the street afterwards, so that was good.
We got there a little earlier than usual and set up near the post office. We prayed and started passing out tracts.

There were a few loud homeless guys near by that seemed opposed to the Gospel message, so Richard and I went over to talk to them a bit. Two of them ran off, but the other stayed and argued, claiming he was a Satanist and didn't believe the Bible. So I asked him where he learned about Satan, since he's mentioned in the Bible. If you don't believe the Bible, you can't really be much of a Satanist. We couldn't really get into a serious conversation with him, though. These guys came and went throughout the evening, so at least they heard the Gospel being preached.

Richard stopped a group of teens to go through the good person test, and one of them came over to me with a couple of his friends because he wanted to be given the test as well. It turned out that they weren't as good as they thought they were, but they heard the Gospel and went on their way.

Tom did some trivia questions to get a crowd a couple of times, and ran a few people through the test. I preached a little and then did trivia as well, and we had a good variety of responses for the new people to see what they could expect when talking with people and sharing the Gospel.

I talked with a guy that was standing near by. He had a good knowledge of the Bible, but was a bit off in his theology. He seemed to think that everyone is a Christian somehow, but could never really explain that to make any sense.

A couple of our atheists came by later with their bullhorn. They call themselves "the Resistance", but I see them as some sort of think tank of skeptics, so I just refer to them collectively as "The Skeptic Tank."
They come out to argue against the open air preaching and they used to be a much larger group, but it seems that most of them have moved on and found themselves better things to do on a Saturday night. I couldn't think a bigger waste of time than to go out and argue against something that I didn't even believe existed. And for what purpose? Apparently, they consider us to be so persuasive that they feel the need to come out out and "rescue" people from our preaching. I guess they consider the Gospel message of eternal life to be some sort of dangerous thing to society. I mean, who wants someone out preaching that we shouldn't lie, steal or commit adultery, right?

No matter, they haven't got a chance. God's Word will not return void. We do not preach by our own words, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we will continue to do so. And as long as our friendly neighborhood atheists come out to oppose us, they will hear the Word of God preached, too.
Keep them in prayer.