Operation 513: Brisbane - St. Patrick's Day

[Willo]

Saturday, 14th March, 2009

It was a with some nervousness that I made my way to Brisbane city tonight, after last weeks confrontation with members of the Brisbane City Council I was wondering what would happen this week. Also, it was the night for all the St. Patrick Day parties, and for us that means the second hardest and second most violent night on the streets.

As I walked through the Queen Street Mall I was surrounded by a sea of green and many people were already stumbling around drunk. I looked at my watch and saw it was only 7:15pm. The night was young, yet people were already drinking in sin like water, or in their case like booze.

We met as per usual on the far side of King George Square for a time of Bible reading and team prayer. Then after that we spent some time in fellowship.

As 9pm rolled around we were in the Queen Street Mall setting up for the night, tonight we did hit one major crisis, and that was that we actually ran out of all Bibles, New Testaments and Gospels of John?s, but this was a great problem, as anyone who wants one must be witnessed to one to one first.

The first preacher up for the night was Kevin Bessent, he started off by talking about ?RIP - Where Will You Go?? Not long into his preaching a crowd had gathered, so he engaged them with the question of his sermon. Also circling at this time was our ?friendly? neighbourhood atheist, who was turned rather mean and nasty of late. Alex, was throwing his comments in, but Kev avoided them and stuck to the Gospel. Alex yelled a little louder, again nothing in reply from Kevin. So in the end Alex just simply walked off, but returned a few minutes later with two atheist friends in support.

One of the atheists flew off the handle as soon as he came within ear-shot of Kevin. He ran into the group and started to yell obscenities, this is always a sign of a man who has no argument. If they have to fall back onto abuse then you can rest assured that they have nothing of substance to add to the discussion. This one atheist was becoming rather hostile, and members of the team thought he would become violent. So I circled in near him, and waited till he started to yell, then I direct challenged his question. He turned from yelling at Kevin to yelling at me. This freed up Kev to continue to preach the gospel to the crowd.

The man continued to yell at me until I stuck my hand out and said, ?My name is Josh, what?s yours?? He was shocked but it calmed him down. He shook my hand and we continued our discussion in a civil tone. The man was hurt in the past by religion, and he was looking for anyway in which he could get the gospel derailed. Within minutes of the discussion starting he had backslid to an agnostic, and a few minutes later he believed in God. Now, we had a foundation to work with in order to make Christ known. So for the next forty or so minutes I shared the gospel with him and answered his questions. In the end he took an in-depth gospel tract, and as he left he thanked me for taking the time to talk to him. One less atheist in the world, and one more person who heard the good news of Jesus Christ.

During this time I was impressed to see so many people in the team out witnessing and handing out tracts. Every time I turned around there was one of the Operation 513 team witnessing to someone. It was so encouraging to see the Gospel marching forth. Even though the atheists had come into stop it, the Gospel cannot and will not be stopped until such time as God says ?Game Over!?

Andrew Hsu was the next preacher up for the night. He did a good job as usual, while he was preaching he had a bunch of drunk Irish hecklers come in and start to make threats of physical violence. One of them shoved Andrew, and then started to say that he would take the stool Andrew was standing on and then smash his head in. I considered the threats as credible, so I got one of the team members to go and get the police. The police arrived and issued move on orders to the drunk Irish. They all left, one of them still breathing threats.

Toward the end of the night, Ryan got up the preach. He tried to engage Alex and his atheist cohort but they don?t really like to take on someone who actually can show from logic, philosophy etc. that there is a God. Ryan made known the truth of Scripture, and presented the Gospel to any who would stop to listen.

Alex was being his normal self, and was becoming rather angry and screaming abuse. Rick challenged him on this. Alex just ignored him, but about thirty minutes later, he stormed up to Rick pointed out him and started screaming at him. Once again it shows a man who?s arguments lack substance. In my view, I think Alex is much like Germany in 1944 - 45, in that they knew they were beaten, but they held on fighting out of pride, because they are too stubborn to surrender. Alex is the same, he is out of arguments, and he knows that God is real, but he loves his sin too much to surrender.

I would ask all of those reading, right now to stop and pray for the conversion of Alex. May God grant him repentance and faith.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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

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