Battle Log

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Sunday, 30 December, 2007

Posted 5 January 2008, 9:57 AM by Josh Mitchell. Permalink

Preacher forced to knees, and marched off by QLD Police

Wow what a day. It was raining on the Gold Coast and the surf was in turmoil. Waves, rips, loads of sand being thrown up in the waves. Gale force winds were approaching and the water was the highest on the beach, it had been for a long time. Considering it was wet weather, the beach front, because of its unusual nature, was bringing heaps of people out to watch. Which made our preaching job easier.

I jumped up to preach first, and had a few breif discussions with some interesting people. One family man accussed christians of being paedofiles, to which I responded that Christ taught: Mat 18:6  But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

He also made the claim there was no God, but could not support his claim. I responded with proof of the existence of God. One lady who came into the crowd after this came in, and told me to be quiet. Saying I had shouldn't tell people what to think. Which I though (privately), was both hypocritical and an attempt to take away the civil freedoms we have in this great nation of Australia to speak freely in a public space.

The Australian Constitution in Chapter Five, Section 116 says: "Commonwealth not to legislate in respect of religion.The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth." {Emphasis mine}

I love that phrase "Dieu et - mon droit", french for "God, and my right"

I stepped down, and Ryan Hemelaar got up to preach. He preached for a good bit, but the rain was coming down hard, and I could see no observers except Josh Williamson. So Ryan jumped up and I sent the team to cover, and to move to Phase Two of wet weather Evangelism.

Leaving bags with one man, Ryan and I took off to hand tracts out down the mall, and as soon as it was dry, we headed back to the preaching spot. The other boys were already bringing our bags, which was fantastic. We decided to stay, even if it rained this time.

Josh Williamson was first up this time, and he also did a fine job preaching. After he finished his sermon on humanities absolute end: death. He passed the baton to me, to preach the gospel in. I always love preaching with Josh Williamson, since he reads a lot, and this gives him a good share of knowledge and answers for the public's "questions for", and "objections to" Jesus Christ as the only Saviour from God's wrath at man's sin.

By God's grace I preached the gospel, and then proceeded to dialogue with a few people. At this point it had been raining for about ten minutes, and some young men I was talking too, had stayed in the rain, as they must have found the subject interesting. It was at this time that two officers of the Queensland Police, arrived and commanded me to step down, and as I did so, they forced me to my knees, and held and locked my arms out 90 degrees to my body. I will release the details of what ensued, after we have completed our official media release, and we are aware that the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission are working on the incident.

What I can say, is that David Lazenby and Tania Shliahov was able to hand out many many tracts, simply because the police treated me the way they did. To God be the glory, great things he hath done. I bow to Jesus Christ, who has all power in heaven and in earth. David Lazenby is a local member of the our Gold Coast team, and he is a member of the local independant baptist church "Nerang Baptist Church".

For the glory of God alone,

May the Lamb that was slain, recieve the reward of His suffering,

josh mitchell

Saturday, 29 December, 2007

Posted 3 January 2008, 2:40 PM by Josh Williamson. Permalink

The sense of the festive season was still in the air as I arrived in Brisbane City for our weekly Operation 513 outreach. As I walked through the Queen Street Mall, I noticed that it wasn't all to busy, and that few people were hanging around. I presumed that it may have been due to the fact that in two more nights the city would be full due to the New Year Eve celebrations.

The team met in our normal spot in King George square for a time of prayer and thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father, then after prayer we spent some time as a group reading through the Scriptures. It was good to have some old friends from Sydney with us tonight as we ministered the Word.

At 9pm we made our way to the Queen Street Mall, and began to set up for the outreach. It was then that I decided that I would be the ‘strike' preacher, that is, the first preacher of the night. Normally I don't like going first, since my preaching style plays a lot of hecklers, and the first preacher of the night normally gets not many hecklers.

I started off by talking about how in a couple of nights people will make New Year resolutions, and how many people will break their resolution within hours of making it. Then I asked how many people would make the New Years resolution of "I will not die in 2008!".

From there I asked the question of ‘How many people died in the past year?' and ‘Are you assured of surviving 2008'? By God's grace a crowd began to gather, so I then opened up the Scripture and gave the crowd a biblical perspective of life from James 4:13-14:

"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (ESV)

Then I established with the crowd, that we could die at any moment, and it did not matter how old one was. Once people were thinking about death, and thinking about eternity, then I spoke about why we die, and how originally there was no death, but through sin and rebellion against God, sin passed to all people.

I had a couple of hecklers during this time, and they brought up one of the most ask questions that we have had in recent weeks, and that was the question of "prove there was a historical Jesus". I have enjoyed these questions, since it has made me study more the historical documents outside of the Bible that testify to the life and death of Jesus Christ.

After I stood down from preaching I had a good conversation with a young man who was an intellectually. He was really interested in knowing more about the historical Jesus, so I spent some time doing a bit of an apologetic work with him, and then brought it back to the Lord Jesus Christ, and how He only is the only one who can save sinners.

The rest of the night was fairly quiet until just before midnight, when a drunk Irishman decided to start abusing and threatening Josh Mitchell as he preached. So I moved into position behind Josh Mitchell to give any support if the situation got violent. The Irish man saw me, and then started to threaten me and generally abuse me. I was happy to let him threaten me since he was allowing the preacher to continue without interruption.

While he was yelling at me he did hit me once in the stomach, so I warned him if he did that again then I would get the police. He apologised, but then denied hitting me. After about ten minutes passed he started to hit me again, so this time I grabbed his arm and pushed him of me. He then started to shout that I assaulted him, so I sent one of our guys down to the get the police. The police arrived, and arrested the Irish man. I must commend the members of the Queensland Police in Brisbane for doing a fine job in tough situations!

Sunday, 30 December, 2007

The news reported gale force winds, and heavy rain for the Gold Coast, but we decided that we would still go out and witness to those who went to the beach to see the six metre high surf.

Upon arrival it was raining, so Josh Mitchell and Ryan started handing out tracts while Dave and I kept an eye on the teams equipment. Once the rain stopped we noticed the crowd rush to the beach front, so we went to where we normally preach and began to declare the gospel.

Josh Mitchell and Ryan Hemelaar went first, and they preached even though we were being pounded by strong winds, and sand being blown from the beach. A few people stopped to listen, and a couple even heckled. After about twenty minutes the heavens opened up and the rain began again. So once again we took cover, after about five minutes of rain it stopped so again we went back to the beach front.

This time it was my turn to preach, so I jumped up and preached from Hebrews 9:27, and how it is appointed for us to die once and then judgment. A small crowd gathered, and a heckler opened up on me saying that there was no historical evidence for Jesus. So as I did the night before I made an apologetic argument for the historic Jesus Christ.

It was hard preaching in gale force winds, so after about twenty minutes, I tagged Josh Mitchell in to preach. He was preaching for about ten minutes when it began to rain again, but this time we kept preaching, and there were four young men sitting on a seat listening to the gospel, and they were asking some good questions.

Let me set the scene for you. Picture one preacher, addressing four listeners. Behind the preach stood Ryan and I. It was onto this scene that things got nasty.

As I stood behind Josh Mitchell I noticed two Queensland police officers approach us. By the way they came towards us we knew they were coming to speak to us. However, speaking seemed to be the furthest thing from their mind.

They split up and went either side of Josh Mitchell, and as they did this I noticed the rank of a Sergeant and a Constable. They then both grabbed an arm of Josh Mitchell and pulled him down from preaching and forced him to his knees.

At no stage had they said about any law being broken, but they just decided to bring the preacher down. Josh Mitchell complied with their forceful actions, and as they stood him up I noticed that in his left hand, he was still gripping the Bible. The police turned to Ryan and I and asked if we were with him. We answered that we were so they ordered us to follow them to the Cavill Avenue police station.

Josh Mitchell was restrained the whole distance of the walk from the beach front to the police station, and we were all at a lost to what was going on.

Upon arrival at the station Josh Mitchell was taken into the holding area while Ryan and I waited in the waiting room. Before they took Josh away he requested that I come with him to be his witness for the interview. This got be pushed in the chest by the Sergeant and then yelled at.

Once the Sergeant and Josh Mitchell had gone I turned to the Constable who was not behind the front counter and I asked him for his name and details. The officer refused, and would not say anything. So I asked again, this time he gave me his name and rank. I then proceeded to ask for the Sergeants name, and all the constable would say is "his name is Sergeant".

I was also ignored by him when I asked what law we had broken. Since the police were not being forthcoming in what we had actually done wrong, I said that I would be making a formal complaint. And I began to write some notes down in my note book. It was then that I got the greatest shock of the whole situation.

While my back was turned the Constable came out from behind the counter and grabbed me by the neck and upper arm and slammed me into the wall. I called out that this was assault and he replied "Tough!" He then dragged me by my neck further into the station at the same time yelling "You're under-arrest!"

I was then manhandled down the hall way into the holding area where I was reunited with Josh Mitchell. None of us resisted what was going, but we were both breaking that God's will be done.

Since I was under-arrest, I asked for a lawyer, and it was then that the police became rather abusive and made offensive sexual comments towards us. During this whole time they never once told us what law we had broken, however, they did make many offensive comments against Christianity.

For about fifteen minutes we were in the holding area, and finally the Sergeant changed and became a lot more friendly. He told us that he would release us without charge, and that we could go free. But he still wouldn't say what we had done wrong. We were however, ordered to leave that part of the Gold Coast or be arrested again.

We left the area and straight away began to write our notes out so that we had an accurate record of what happened. We also took the time then to make a formal complaint to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, who are now investigating.

Please pray for the conversion of those two Queensland Police officers, and that God will get the Glory!

Monday, 31 December, 2007

New Years eve! As we have done for the past two years we went to the big city party in Brisbane city, not to party with them, but to declare the Words of Eternal life.

Josh Mitchell was the first and only preacher of the night. He went for well over one and a half hours, and the whole time a large crowd was gathered. Then as the midnight hour approached we got ready to preach as the people began to leave. All our tract reserves ran out that night as hundreds of people got the gospel.

2007 is finished, and 2008 is beginning. Pray that God will be glorified all the more in the New Year!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Redcliffe (QLD) Team

Sunday, 30 December, 2007

Posted 30 December 2007, 11:19 PM by Daniel Kent. Permalink

Just a quick note today.

Getting out there at 2pm to find that there was not very many people at all, wasn't to bad but getting out of the car to find that if you weren't holding on to somthing you would most likely get blown over with the strength of the wind because of the low in the whether patten just off the coast. 

But sill moved around triing to yell through the wind with the 1-1's with no luck. Untill then I get a call from Dave whos at the gold coast telling me that Josh Mitchell and Josh Williamson had been taken away by the police. So I went straight back to my car and sat and prayed untill further notice, 10mins later Dave calls again saying that all was fine and they had been released back into the community.

Knowing that there was not much chance of tracting now as the wind picked up and the rain was starting to fall. I decided to visit that pastor of First Settlement Baptist Church to let him know how thing were going.

After that just headed home then off to church for the night.

Interested in comeing out to the Redcliffe for one - one witnessing every Sunday from 2-4pm

send me an e-mail. dank@operation513.com

God Bless
Go serve your King

Dan Kent

(Redcliffe Team)

Saturday, 29 December, 2007

Posted 30 December 2007, 8:21 PM by David Gee. Permalink

God gave us grace and courage to witness.  Mekail joined us for support.  Chris from Chester was out preaching.  Praise God for his labour in the harvest.  May the Word go out in truth and fullness with boldness.  May the Holy Spirit convict of sin, righteousness and judgement, granting faith and repentance.

It was cold, rainy and windy.  We gave out tracts and David preached.  An older gentleman stopped to heckle, he holds himself to be a christian yet calls Jesus a liar, believes that the bible has many errors, and says that everyone will go to heaven. 

Stopping this converation I began to talk with a group of four young people, Tivin was happy to do the good person test. We discussed his position before God and I had the glorious opportunity of sharing the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection. He confessed that he needs to be saved and that he wanted to trust in Jesus. I encouraged him to trully repent and have faith, then to go on to live a life that honours his Lord.

I wrapped up and we finished at that point and headed for home. May God get the glory of saved souls.  May He draw many to him.

Redcliffe (QLD) Team

Sunday, 16 December, 2007

Posted 30 December 2007, 8:17 PM by Daniel Kent. Permalink

Well what a wonderful day at the bay.  I got to Redcliffe at about 1:50pm and noticed that my phone had gone flat and I didn't get the messages from the other guys that they were busy.  So sitting there reading my Bible and praying and then I looked up and sure a old family friend that worked with my mum, who I haven't seen in over 15 yrs (sad that I don't normally forget a face).  I'd heard that he was a pastor somewhere so I thought I'd go catch up. Once he remembered me we got talking about Godly thing, he's not a pastor anymore but he was encouraged that I was out there working for the Lord. I left him with 'Are you a good person' Tract.

Noticing that the other guys weren't there yet it was 2:30pm so I thought if there still coming they'll know where to find me, so i moved out the the pire.

Using the WOTM 'Christmas Card' tract I was able to get a tract to 95% of the people that came out there that day. Only having 2-3 rejected.  Praise God  and pray for all those that received the word of God. 

Not really able to get into a full on 1-1 with people but trying where possible, the time was nearing the end and I'd given a card to a older fellah and his wife.  Then waiting for the last 2 people out there so I could tract them and then the couple from earlier came back and he started to question me and my beliefs and back ground. Sensing that they were involved in a church somewhere. I put it back on he with the same questions. all he could say was "believe me we are more spiritual then you and that all I need to say".  "All religions have there way of pleasing God which in the end will get them to heaven".  So I dealt with that pretty quick even thought he was trying to walk away I kept giving him more questions.  Then moving onto the Law and thats where he said thats enough we need to go.  1 finial question again "where do you go to church"  He's reply "we are Anglican and and more spiritual. Seeya" so that was that it goes to show that where light of Jesus Christ is pointed at the darkness with the law, people tend to run every quickly straight back into the darkness. But remember God is ALL powerful, ALL knowing, and ALL seeing, he sees your deeds, and your thoughts.  So facing him on judgement you WILL NOT be able to deign them, so deal with now while there is still time.

God Bless.

Go serve your King

Sunday, 9 December, 2007

Posted 30 December 2007, 8:15 PM by Josh Mitchell. Permalink

This week was truly interesting. Josh Williamson kindly drove me to the Gold Coast, as my car was losing about 3Ltrs of Water an hour, which is rather frustrating.

It turned out to be just Josh and I today, and as we find the normal area blocked off by people filming the bike race, we decided to take some lunch at the local Red Rooster and chat for a bit until the speakers were turned off and we could evangelise properly.

We headed out shortly after and handed out tracts, and then by God's grace were able to start preaching. It started off with Josh and I, tagging each other in while we kept doing short preaching bursts, waiting for God to send a heckler to build a crowd for the hearing of His gospel and its defense.

By the time Josh Williamson was about the fourth of sixth time, he had a live heckler. From there God brought about an average of about 90 people to listen, with the crowd fluctuating and shrinking here and there. It was exciting to watch the Lord use Josh witness to so many people, and see them openly consider thier sin and the God who is out there.

I got to speak to a middle aged gentelman who was an arabic Muslim. We had a good chat about sin and judgment, and while he kept throwing out many rabbit trails, by God's grace I kept pressing him about his own salvation. He took at tract, and I pray the Lord will save him for His glory.

It was a great afternoon, and fantastic opportunity to witness to a portion of the australian culture which is heavily athiestic or roman catholic in its thinking.

To God be the glory!

Saturday, 15 December, 2007

Posted 26 December 2007, 2:07 PM by Josh Williamson. Permalink

Tonight was an interesting night, it started off by looking like it would be a real busy night, but during the preaching the crowds dwindled down to a few people walking through the mall.

The first preacher up for the night was Ryan, and before he began preaching we had a regular heckler circling for a bit of a show. While Ryan was preaching the heckler kept opening up on him in regards to the Old Covenant and the need of a blood atonement. Ryan put up a decent apologetic, but the heckler was not interested in being reasonable, so he kept on arguing the same point.

Earlier in the night Andrew Hsu had told me that he wasn’t going to be preaching, yet when this heckler opened up he got the ‘preachers itch’ and had to jump up to deal with the heckler. This heckler and Andrew have a background of confrontation. They have debated each other in times past so Andrew used this to his favour when he debated this guy again.

Andrew was up for sometime, and while he was preaching I got surrounded by a group of scantly clad women who were trying to entice myself and another male listening to go off to the club with them. I refused and shared the gospel with them, but the other man who was listening was led off as a sheep to the slaughter.

After Andrew stood down from preaching, Josh Mitchell jumped up and preached the night home. During this time I was having a good conversation with one of our hecklers who has been present for the past six weeks. Over the weeks he has shown a great hatred for the gospel and Christianity. Tonight however, we were able to talk. He was open to hearing the Biblical message and he even took a Bible. Please be praying for this young man.

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