Battle Log
Saturday 22 March 2008
Posted 28 March 2008, 11:46 PM by Josh Williamson. PermalinkMy body was aching all over as I awoke today, and every part of me
screamed that I needed a rest. Instantly I began to think up excuses in
regards to why I could have the night off from witnessing. But I am
bound to preach the gospel of Christ, so I began to prepare for the
nights outreach.
The city seemed fairly quiet when I arrived at
7:30pm, and I thought maybe it would be a nice and calm night. Yet,
every time I think that it always goes the other way. We rallied in
King George Square, and as we waited for more team members to arrive,
we saw a large group of people with Bibles.
This
was not surprising since many churches come out witnessing at Easter
time, most of them don’t do it at any other time, but only at Easter or
Christmas. As they prayed it soon became apparent that they were a
Pentecostal group, and before we could engage any of them they had
walked off. There outreach for the night was to have a man dressed up
as Jesus and a couple of Roman soldiers walking through the Queens
Street Mall. As they beat the man carrying the cross people would call
out scripture passages.
They walked right by us while we were
setting up for the night, so Ryan quickly took advantage of the
situation and began to preach. He spoke on the cross of Christ and why
He had to come and die. This then led into explaining the depth of sin
and human depravity.
A crowd formed quickly and began to
heckle, Ryan held his own for about twenty minutes, and then tagged me
in. I begun to engage hecklers, at this stage I had five hecklers, so I
started to try and bring some order to the chaos. One of the hecklers
was an atheist, another a Buddhist, another was a Hindu. The Hindu man
was very vocal and kept yelling questions at me, but he would not let
me answer. So I asked him in front of the crowd “Will you let me
answer?” His reply “NO!” Then he started accusing me of not answering
his question. The crowd soon became annoyed at him and started yelling
for him to let me answer the question. After awhile of him not letting
me answer his question I moved on to deal with Atheism.
While I was dealing with some proofs for the evidence of God, and man
and a woman pushed to the front of the crowd. The woman grabbed my hand
and tried to place it on a ‘red’ area of her body, I kept pulling up my
hand and she stated that she respects what I was doing. She then asked
some questions in regards to God. While I was answering a man of Indian
descent walked in an grabbed her, and then tried to twist her arm
behind her back. I called on him to let go, and to cease assaulting
her, he refused, but he soon realised that I was not going to let the
issue drop. He eventually let go, and I refused to answer any of his
questions since it is not right for a man to assault a woman.
The
crowd kept on calling out questions so I did my best to answer their
questions, then entered Mr. Walking Dawkins, who when he heckled would
quote Richard Dawkins and then walk around the crowd mocking
Christians. I think it was clear to the crowd that his questions had
not basis, and it wasn’t hard to respond. Eventually he left and the
crowd continued to call out questions. The time was now about 11:30pm
and I had been up for over two hours, so I began to bring it to a wrap
up. It was then that two young ladies approached and began to ask
questions in regards to salvation. I began by explaining our need of a
Saviour. It was then that Mr.
Buddhist from the start of the night began to advance at me yelling. He
got so close that I thought he was going to hit me, so I asked him to
step back, he refused so I asked one of the team to go get the police.
After he yelled for a bit he backed away, and I was then able to
expound on the grace of God to the two young ladies. The females were
cut up and began to cry as they heard about Christ coming down from
Heaven to save sinners.
It was about midnight when I stood
down, and I nearly fell over from exhaustion, but praise God many
people got to hear the gospel!!!
To God be the Glory
View previous Brisbane (QLD) report (15 March 2008)
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.