Friday, July 16, 2004
March 25th Leighton Buzzard . By the cross. A young man listened to me preaching and then questioned my about my beliefs. He told me he was a member of a Baptist church in Aylesbury. He told me he thought evolutionism was a Satanic doctrine and that the devil invented modern versions of the Bible. He believed the Rapture was imminent, and would be followed by the tribulation period and then would come the millennial reign of Christ. There seemed to be just one problem that made me think he had never been converted. He was a man of unclean lips.
March 29th Luton. Town Centre. Rodney was anxious to shake my hand and could not wait until I had finished preaching. After 45 minutes conversation with him, I concluded that we had little in common. His conversion story, when pressed for it, came out of a vision when he was ill, and he had to make up his mind whether or not Christianity was true. He wanted to talk about Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of Christ which he had just seen. I told him it was a wicked blasphemous film, produced to promote popery. It is not a faithful Biblical work, because it promotes Mary and relies on the visions of two R.C. nuns.
Rodney thought it would be useful in bringing souls to Christ. There is as yet no evidence of this. God has given us the gospel of Christ to preach and this is what brings souls to Christ. This film makes gospel preaching all the more difficult.
“How can you judge a thing you have never experienced for yourself?” asks Rodney. The devil rubs his hands with glee at this. This is the worldling’s excuse for all his excesses. “God gives the believer spiritual discernment”, we reply. I have never experienced the gambling den, drugs, nor brothels and much else beside, thank God. “Did you watch the programme about the film on channel 4?” says Rodney. I have a very simple answer to this one. I am a Christian THEREFORE I have no TV. I have never owned one in my life.
I believe any person watching this film will come away with a mind that much more polluted. That alleged Evangelical Churches are block booking cinemas (as they have in Luton) so that their members may watch it, tells us clearly that Christendom is all but totally apostate. Many of my brethren will no doubt watch it on DVD in due course. They have long since rejected the Bible anyway, in favour of some perversion. 2 Thess. 3: 6 must be borne in mind.
March 31st Luton. Town Centre. The Muslims had a stall facing me today. A local TV crew was interviewing them. I thought the gospel might make a good background to their documentary or whatever and so I preached. This had a nil impact on all concerned. Maybe, thought I, they will want to interview me when they have finished across the street. What a silly thought! A messenger of the cross in Luton is of no significance whatsoever.
April 16th L.T.C. While I was preaching three black men arrived and set up a table about five yards in front of me. On it they spread some books, wooden idols, and some very mysterious looking bottles. They also had a “Ghetto Blaster” so they knew they wouldn’t get much trouble from me. One of them was displaying the words “Ancient Egyptian Order” on his jacket. They didn’t look very Egyptian. I thought they were West Indian.
But passers-by were no more impressed with their gospel than they were with mine. They turned the “RAP” up but it made no difference. It all made a very busy afternoon because on my left I had Arriva giving away bus tickets, and on my right was the man with the pirated mobile phone cases.
My foul-mouthed blaspheming friend came by and stopped for a moment, as he always does, to hurl insults and death threats at me.
Then a lady passes by and whispers “God bless you”. Next an Asian woman asks, “have you considered Islam?” There is only one answer to this: I have Christ. What need I more? She didn’t wait to hear that she needed Christ.
There can be no greater privilege and honour for a believer than to stand in a public place and witness to the saving grace of a merciful and long-suffering God. I say again that this does not demand gift or ability. It is simply a matter of obedience. ....and love towards the lost and perishing for whom Christ died.
Apri 23rd L.T.C. Today is St. George’s Day, and the town is full of patriots and anglophiles. They are all sporting their St George “T” shirts, and a crowd of them have started their tribal chanting, reminiscent of darkest Africa. I have thought (quite seriously) . that one may have to lay down one’s life for the sake of the gospel. Today is a good day to become a martyr so I begin preaching to these who are sometimes referred to as “lager louts”. They seemed oblivious of my presence, but eventually one sidled up to me and at a suitable moment thrust a piece of paper into my hand. It was an invitation to watch a play titled “This thing called Jesus” that some Pentecostal group was putting on.
This is the best that modern evangelicalism can produce. It is further evidence to me that Christendom is utterly apostate.
April 27th Hitchin Market Square. A heckler arrived today. He looked unkempt and had a beer bottle in his hand. He sat on the bench in front of me, announcing to all that there was no God. Later, he blamed God for not saving his marriage. He demanded to know from me (obviously assuming me to be God’s agent) why God had not done this. “Maybe God expected you to do that yourself”, was the reply.
When I finished preaching I went and sat next to him. I was about to speak to him when a man approached and began to upbraid him for heckling and told him he had better listen to what he was told. Whether the man was a believer or not, I thought his intrusion was a satanic interruption, and had he stayed a few seconds longer he would have discovered my thoughts. My friend took no notice of him.
This poor man was fighting heroin addiction and had a drink problem. He told me he was searching for peace and had been along to a Pentecostal church but hadn’t been able to get hold of what they had. The man was seeking!
It struck me that I would have no problem persuading this man to make a “profession of faith” here in the square. It struck me also that I might thereby make him all the more a child of hell. He listened while I explained to him what he had to do to be saved. He took a little gospel pack. But he made no move immediately to trust in Christ, and I never pressed him to do so there and then. He was reminded of the urgency to get saved. He said he had listened to me in the past ( I didn’t recall ever seeing him before) and he hoped he would see me again. His name is Shaun. Pray for him.
May 1974 Luton Town Centre. In this month I preached alone in the street for the first time. I had done a fair amount of open air preaching in the past, but never alone.
I had just taken up a teaching post near to the town centre and I thought I would spend my lunch break preaching. I stood outside Woolworth’s and preached for about twenty minutes before returning to school. It was then that I discovered I had made a bad mistake ― I opened the class register, attempted to call the first name, and found I had lost my voice; totally. I did not regain it for several hours and had to write instructions to the class on the board. I think they had already determined that I was somewhat potty, and this clinched it.
A young girl in that class got saved several years later when from a passing bus she witnessed me being pelted with eggs in the open air. She told me when I met her later that the incident made her think about what I had taught her in the classroom concerning God’s way of salvation.
March 29th Luton. Town Centre. Rodney was anxious to shake my hand and could not wait until I had finished preaching. After 45 minutes conversation with him, I concluded that we had little in common. His conversion story, when pressed for it, came out of a vision when he was ill, and he had to make up his mind whether or not Christianity was true. He wanted to talk about Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of Christ which he had just seen. I told him it was a wicked blasphemous film, produced to promote popery. It is not a faithful Biblical work, because it promotes Mary and relies on the visions of two R.C. nuns.
Rodney thought it would be useful in bringing souls to Christ. There is as yet no evidence of this. God has given us the gospel of Christ to preach and this is what brings souls to Christ. This film makes gospel preaching all the more difficult.
“How can you judge a thing you have never experienced for yourself?” asks Rodney. The devil rubs his hands with glee at this. This is the worldling’s excuse for all his excesses. “God gives the believer spiritual discernment”, we reply. I have never experienced the gambling den, drugs, nor brothels and much else beside, thank God. “Did you watch the programme about the film on channel 4?” says Rodney. I have a very simple answer to this one. I am a Christian THEREFORE I have no TV. I have never owned one in my life.
I believe any person watching this film will come away with a mind that much more polluted. That alleged Evangelical Churches are block booking cinemas (as they have in Luton) so that their members may watch it, tells us clearly that Christendom is all but totally apostate. Many of my brethren will no doubt watch it on DVD in due course. They have long since rejected the Bible anyway, in favour of some perversion. 2 Thess. 3: 6 must be borne in mind.
March 31st Luton. Town Centre. The Muslims had a stall facing me today. A local TV crew was interviewing them. I thought the gospel might make a good background to their documentary or whatever and so I preached. This had a nil impact on all concerned. Maybe, thought I, they will want to interview me when they have finished across the street. What a silly thought! A messenger of the cross in Luton is of no significance whatsoever.
April 16th L.T.C. While I was preaching three black men arrived and set up a table about five yards in front of me. On it they spread some books, wooden idols, and some very mysterious looking bottles. They also had a “Ghetto Blaster” so they knew they wouldn’t get much trouble from me. One of them was displaying the words “Ancient Egyptian Order” on his jacket. They didn’t look very Egyptian. I thought they were West Indian.
But passers-by were no more impressed with their gospel than they were with mine. They turned the “RAP” up but it made no difference. It all made a very busy afternoon because on my left I had Arriva giving away bus tickets, and on my right was the man with the pirated mobile phone cases.
My foul-mouthed blaspheming friend came by and stopped for a moment, as he always does, to hurl insults and death threats at me.
Then a lady passes by and whispers “God bless you”. Next an Asian woman asks, “have you considered Islam?” There is only one answer to this: I have Christ. What need I more? She didn’t wait to hear that she needed Christ.
There can be no greater privilege and honour for a believer than to stand in a public place and witness to the saving grace of a merciful and long-suffering God. I say again that this does not demand gift or ability. It is simply a matter of obedience. ....and love towards the lost and perishing for whom Christ died.
Apri 23rd L.T.C. Today is St. George’s Day, and the town is full of patriots and anglophiles. They are all sporting their St George “T” shirts, and a crowd of them have started their tribal chanting, reminiscent of darkest Africa. I have thought (quite seriously) . that one may have to lay down one’s life for the sake of the gospel. Today is a good day to become a martyr so I begin preaching to these who are sometimes referred to as “lager louts”. They seemed oblivious of my presence, but eventually one sidled up to me and at a suitable moment thrust a piece of paper into my hand. It was an invitation to watch a play titled “This thing called Jesus” that some Pentecostal group was putting on.
This is the best that modern evangelicalism can produce. It is further evidence to me that Christendom is utterly apostate.
April 27th Hitchin Market Square. A heckler arrived today. He looked unkempt and had a beer bottle in his hand. He sat on the bench in front of me, announcing to all that there was no God. Later, he blamed God for not saving his marriage. He demanded to know from me (obviously assuming me to be God’s agent) why God had not done this. “Maybe God expected you to do that yourself”, was the reply.
When I finished preaching I went and sat next to him. I was about to speak to him when a man approached and began to upbraid him for heckling and told him he had better listen to what he was told. Whether the man was a believer or not, I thought his intrusion was a satanic interruption, and had he stayed a few seconds longer he would have discovered my thoughts. My friend took no notice of him.
This poor man was fighting heroin addiction and had a drink problem. He told me he was searching for peace and had been along to a Pentecostal church but hadn’t been able to get hold of what they had. The man was seeking!
It struck me that I would have no problem persuading this man to make a “profession of faith” here in the square. It struck me also that I might thereby make him all the more a child of hell. He listened while I explained to him what he had to do to be saved. He took a little gospel pack. But he made no move immediately to trust in Christ, and I never pressed him to do so there and then. He was reminded of the urgency to get saved. He said he had listened to me in the past ( I didn’t recall ever seeing him before) and he hoped he would see me again. His name is Shaun. Pray for him.
May 1974 Luton Town Centre. In this month I preached alone in the street for the first time. I had done a fair amount of open air preaching in the past, but never alone.
I had just taken up a teaching post near to the town centre and I thought I would spend my lunch break preaching. I stood outside Woolworth’s and preached for about twenty minutes before returning to school. It was then that I discovered I had made a bad mistake ― I opened the class register, attempted to call the first name, and found I had lost my voice; totally. I did not regain it for several hours and had to write instructions to the class on the board. I think they had already determined that I was somewhat potty, and this clinched it.
A young girl in that class got saved several years later when from a passing bus she witnessed me being pelted with eggs in the open air. She told me when I met her later that the incident made her think about what I had taught her in the classroom concerning God’s way of salvation.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Preaching in Aylesbury
