Battle Log

Saturday 25 July 2009

Posted by Posted 28 July 2009, 10:57 PM by Josh Williamson. Permalink

It had been a big week and an even bigger weekend. On the Sunday I was due to preach a teaching message in the morning and an evangelistic sermon in the evening. But before any of that we had the honour of making Christ known in the streets of Brisbane. We were expecting an interesting night tonight, as we had been tipped off that the Brisbane atheists were coming in for a bit of heckling. So we prepared for that and even looked forward to the gathering storm.

I was the first preacher up for the night, as I preached some professing Christians took offence that I mentioned the words “sin” “judgment” and “wrath”, they moved on shortly afterwards and didn’t hang around the preaching. Not long into the preaching a young man began to heckle. He seemed fairly open and even though he was an atheist he was prepared to talk about issues. His arguments were very basic and I was able to do some apologetics on him and also present the gospel to him.

While I was dealing with this atheist, another one came along. This guy was King Irrational, his arguments consisted of stating that there was no mention of Jesus in any writings until 170 years after Christ died. This of course is absurd from an historical perspective. But the man wouldn’t listen, whenever I answered one of his objections he would jump to another. This commotion attracted in the Brisbane atheist group, they came in and the heckling began. The arguments were as varied as the people in the group, we had everything from textual criticism, evolution, death and suffering and alleged contradictions in the Bible. I did my best to answer all their questions and present the gospel to them.

After the open air I was able to talk to Wayne our friendly “non-heckler” heckler, he was talking about the children of Israel being lost in the desert for 40 years, and then somehow we got onto dinosaurs. I enjoy talking to Wayne as he is very decent and he will let you answer the questions he puts forward. I would ask that all our readers please at this time pray that God would grant Wayne repentance and faith in Christ.

Ryan preached later in the night and once again the atheists entered into the fray. This time they were more aggressive. During the confrontation the police stopped to observe to see what was happening, then after they left an onlooker made a ‘flame-thrower’ and put a blast of flame in the air. I stepped in then and ordered the man to put down the weapon or the police would be called. The man complied and joke about how he was only mucking around.

It was a fairly interesting night, albeit a night where the atheists came in and showed that in reality their faith is just that… faith.

View previous Brisbane (QLD) report (18 July 2009)


Brisbane

Brisbane Team (Night) (QLD)

Meets Fridays (7-10pm) & Saturdays (6-9pm) & Sundays (7:30-9:30pm) in King George Square.

Contact Ryan Hemelaar for more information.