Operation 513: 3 Reports for the Price of 1

[Willo]

Saturday, 13th December, 2008

The sun was high in the sky and the temperature was soaring. Another beautiful sunny, hot and humid Australian day. What more could we expect, it is summer and the people were out and about.

We arrived at our usual place of witnessing on the Gold Coast, and to no ones surprise Ryan was already off running around handing out tracts to people and having conversations about the gospel. Seriously, this bloke is an evangelist with way too much energy, he puts everyone else to shame!

Dave Strachan was the first preacher up for the day, he stood to preach in the blazing sun, and began to expound on who God is. Dave has written out some notes for him to preach from, so he went through those a few times. The crowd seemed a bit slow today, I would put this down to the heat. But it was good to see a few people stop to listen to the gospel.

After Dave finished preaching, it was my turn to stand up and preach. I started off by talking about Christmas, and how many people love the idea of having a day off, but they don?t stop to think about why we celebrate. This then launched into a sermon about why Jesus had to come to earth 2000 or so years ago. While I was preaching this man walked by, he had no shirt on and he was really well built. He had so many muscles that his muscles had muscles. He was a tank. This man was furious at what I was saying, so he turned to me and pointed at me. As he pointed he began to yell, ?It is because of **** people like you that other **** people don?t believe in **** God!? He then turned and began to walk off, so I challenged him, I called out after him, ?Sir, do you believe in God?? The man once again began to curse, and then affirmed his belief in deity. So I asked another question, ?Are you a Christian?? The man began to seethe in anger, he turned to me and his face was red. ?**** you! **** you! **** because of you people don?t believe!? Again, I repeated my question, ?Are you a Christian?? To this the man began to swear and say that he was a Christian. I then turned to him, and declared, ?It is not because of preachers that people aren?t Christians, it is because of hypocrites like yourself that people hate Jesus Christ. You say one thing, but your actions show you are not a Christian!? At this all the mans veins began to stand out on his neck, and his friend had to restrain him, the man yelled, ?**** YOU! I AM GOING TO PUNCH YOUR **** FACE IN!? A few people stopped to watch, so I said, ?Go ahead, punch my face in, show everyone how much of a Christian you are, show people the love of Christ as you beat down a preacher.? The man turned and stormed off. From there I began to preach on how one becomes a Christian, and how we cannot just give God lip service.

After I finished preaching I was able to have some great one to one conversations. One encounter was really good, but the problem was the man I was speaking to only spoke Farsi, so I witnessed to him via his translator. At the end of the conversation the translator declared herself to be a Muslim, and stated that Australia will belong to Islam one day.

Overall the day went quite well, many heard the gospel.


Saturday, 13th December, 2008

After a hard day on the Gold Coast, I made my way to Brisbane city. It looked like it was going to be a good night on the streets.

The team was few in number, but the passion to reach out the lost was evident. The regulars were their like Alex the Agnostic, and a few more people who seem to come out each week. It is always good to have the same people come back, it is our hope that God will save them.

Ryan was the first preacher up for the night, and he preached a bit different than he usual does. Normally Ryan has a lot of apologetics in his preaching, but this time he spent less time on apologetics and more time reasoning with people from the gospel. This was really encouraging to me, while I love to hear apologetics, I prefer to hear the gospel more. A couple of hecklers stopped and shouted a few things. Ryan engaged them and presented them with the claims of Jesus Christ.

After Ryan finished preaching, Michael got up and preached. It was his first time preaching with us. The first thing that struck me was his projection, he had great voice control and great voice projection, truly gifted in public speaking. As he preached a man approached, this man was scruffy looking and had most of his top teeth missing. He walked right up to the preacher and stopped about one foot away. With that the man began to rage in an unknown language. The man then began to rant on about people being preachers and him being a trained preacher. His heckling was vile, and his threats of physical violence were hard to ignore.

The heckler began to yell that he could defeat any preacher that we had as we couldn?t answer his questions. Michael was struggling a little so he tagged me in and I began to deal with the mans questions. His questions were very basic however this man I am convinced was full of demons, so his cursing and blasphemy came after every answer I gave.

His hatred for the gospel and for Jesus Christ was coming through loud and clear. He kept threatening physical violence, so I sent a team member off to get the police. The police officer told them it wasn?t illegal for the man to threaten us. Of course the police officer was wrong. So here we were in the middle of the Queen street mall with one of the most hostile hecklers I have ever seen. To make things more interesting another man claiming to be god began to work with demoniac one.

I pushed through their heckles and still presented the gospel, but these two hecklers were manifesting big time. So after preaching I stood down and they quickly surrounded me. The first heckler once again began to abuse me, and this time he put a lit cigarette onto my hand. I challenged him on that to which he just laughed. Again the police were sent for and again the members of the Police Beat near the Queen Street Mall failed to respond.

After awhile another preacher began, but once again the demoniac went after him, finally I had enough so I got on the phone and called the emergency number. I explained to the operator what was happening, and held the phone so she could hear the heckler. She agreed that it was a dangerous situation and the police needed to be there. While I was talking to her another heckler come running in and tried to kick Ryan. But, then help arrived finally two members of the Queensland Police showed up on scene and took away the demonic heckler.

The rest of the night was spent handing out tracts and talking to people. Even though things were hard, God still allowed His word to go forth.


Saturday, 20th December, 2008

Once again we returned to Brisbane city. There was a sense of festivity in the air as it was only a few days before Christmas. As I walked through the mall I handed out Christmas tracts. Every person took them and wished me a Merry Christmas. It is always good when people are happy about receiving tracts.

I met with Dave and Ryan, we then had a time of prayer and Bible reading. After that we headed up to the mall to begin the night of preaching. It was good to see other team members there ready to go out and make known the gospel.

With it being so close to Christmas I gave members of the team packs of Christmas tracts to hand out. These tracts came from a dear brother of mine named Tommy Bell. He is based in the US and is involved in a ministry known as Custom Tract Source, he was so kind to send me some tracts free of charge. I would encourage all our readers to order tracts from www.customtractsource.com (of course you should order tracts from Operation 513 also!)

The night went well, with people preaching and making known the gospel of Christ.

Since it was Christmas, I decided to preach from Luke 2 and the birth of Jesus Christ, in fact it wasn?t just I who preached from this passage, but the Christmas theme was something that was in all the preachers messages tonight.

I focused heavily on the fact that Christ was born as Saviour, and this of course begged the question, ?A saviour from what?. From this point I expounded the law of God and showed that we all needed Jesus to be our Saviour. A few hecklers yelled things, but there wasn?t much engaging. The crowds were smallish tonight, and I think it is due to it being the festive season.

Even though things were slow many great conversations occurred. For instance Nick was witnessing to this one young man who had stopped only to mock Christianity, Nic was so patient and kind to this man as he shared the gospel, but this man kept up his attack. Once Nick finished talking to him, I began a conversation with him. And for the next 40 minutes both Rick and I pleaded with him to be reconciled to God. This man left screaming abuse at Christ. Please pray for his conversion.

Tonight was a good night, albeit a little slow. This was my last night in Brisbane preaching for about 8 weeks, as I am heading to the United Kingdom for outreach. Please keep us in your prayers as we seek to minister the gospel to those in Britain. The teams in Australia will operate as per usual so please pray for them also.

May all of you have a very safe and Christ centred Christmas!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Full report with pictures: http://www.operation513.com

For other Operation 513 team reports visit: http://www.operation513.com/battlelog.php