Operation 513: God Brings in the Crowd!

[Willo]

Saturday, 9 August, 2008

I had been in bed all week with a bad dose of the flu, so I had decided that I shouldn?t preach tonight, unless I inflame my sickness. As I drove into the city, I was hit constantly with the feeling of illness and also with head-spins, but the thought of being able to hit the streets of Brisbane was one that encouraged me to keep on going.

The night was cold, and it was surprising that we had such a small team gather for prayer and bible reading. At this stage there was only three of us present, so we were bracing for the fact that it may be a very busy night for us.

After spending time in fellowship we made our way up to our preaching spot, on the journey we ran into the Barnard family and also Peter. So our numbers swelled. We were then joined by a few more team members in the mall.

It was good to see everyone in position, from the preacher to those handing out tracts, and even our regular agnostic heckler Alex.

Ralph was the first preacher up for the night, and he did a bit of preaching, he preached the Word of God, and dealt with hecklers for about fifteen minutes, then tagged me into take over. I had to preach, even though I knew it would be unwise for me physically to preach, I had the preachers itch so I had to get up.

I started by engaging Alex over the creation of the world. He had stated earlier on that he only accepted empirical evidence, yet he didn?t have any empirical evidence for his version of how the world came about. Once we pointed that out to him he decided to make some argument to prove how old the earth was (this still wasn?t empiric evidence), but the problem with much of his argument was the fact that it was all built on a presupposition.

We debated over the topic of how only God is eternal, and how the universe is not. This then led into the biblical discussion of how God one day will send Jesus Christ back to earth to judge humanity for all their sins.

By now a good size crowd had gathered, and other hecklers had entered into the discussion. We covered a wide variety of topics from ?How we got the Bible? to ?Does God exist.? It was a good open air, and many people got to hear the gospel. God has been gracious once again in bringing a crowd in for His glory!

After preaching for about an hour I started to notice that my voice was getting weak due to the flu that I had. So I tagged Ryan in to continue to debate the atheists. By the time I stood down, there wasn?t much I could do as I had some really bad head spins. While I was trying to get over my illness I was approached by a man who had ?advanced? past Christianity. It was his position that once one grows in spirituality you realise that Christianity is merely a step on the path to knowing the great all wise spirit.

He stated that the best way to be connected to the spirit was by loving and not judging anyone. This was an interesting thought, so I started to ask the man to explain, and he quickly passed judgment on Christianity. This then led to a discussion about how inconsistent his worldview is. The man after a while became rather angry at me, and once again proved how ?unloving? he was. It was hard to witness to this man, as every time I presented the gospel to him started to wall up and wouldn?t listen.

The rest of the night was spent dealing with one to ones, while Ryan preached. Overall it was a great night.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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

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