Battle Log

Saturday 13 December 2008

Posted by Posted 24 December 2008, 1:02 AM by Josh Williamson. Permalink

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.

View previous Gold Coast (QLD) report (5 December 2008)


Gold Coast

Gold Coast Team (QLD)

Meets 7:15-10pm Friday nights at Surfers Paradise on Cavill Avenue.

Contact Ryan Hemelaar for more information.