That'll be $140 sir

Witnessing cost me $140 this weekend.

Who went?: Myself, Daniel Lamiman, Mark, Anne and Anna

How did you split up?: Mark and Daniel as one group, and Anne, Anna and
I as the second group.

How did the witnessing go?: As always, there were those who were receptive, and those who rejected the message. One particular individual, Chris, had a lot of knowledge of Christianity and what the bible teaches, but he was incredibly hard hearted and clearly rejected the truth.

Did you run into anybody you already knew?: We stopped and talked to Victor, who I met the first time we came to lower Greenville. Victor runs a hot dog stand and is a Christian. I stocked him up with some more tracts, and also gave him a CD with the following messages on it:

Hell's Best Kept Secret --> 1. http://www.oneplace.com/common/download-free.asp?fn=/rc/hbkscdnm01.mp3
What does God Owe you? -> http://www.deliverancebiblechurch.com/podcast/media/2007-05-07_01_what_does_god_owe_you__(11-05-06).mp3

Challenge of the night: Witnessing to Chris the Episcopal Athiest. Chris was steeped in knowledge but he rejected the Bible. His objections to Christianity were mostly founded on the premise that the bible wasn't trustworthy, i.e. it had changed through the ages and that the council of Nicaea (When the N.T. was canonized) was a farce where a bunch of power hungry Catholics came together to decide how they could best use the scriptures to control the people. Having studied that period of church history myself, I knew this was a blatantly false statement, and what he was presenting was his own interpretive opinion of what happened, not the facts. (And I repeatedly told him so!). The council of Nicaea was simply an assembly of church leaders to determine which books/letters/epistles were ALREADY in use by the churches and already considered authoritative, and bind them together (as it were) in ONE book (Canonize) . Unfortunately Chris wasn't willing be reasonable in discussing what the historical record clearly demonstrates. Throughout the entire conversation Chris also mocked the concept of hell, God's justice, righteousness, the scriptures, etc. The sad part was, as he mocked, he was "nice" about it! In other words he wasn't visibly angry or emotional, which are are usually signs that people are under conviction and are uncomfortable or angry that their sin is being exposed for what it is, ( anger cause by conviction is actually a good sign.) People often get angry when their sins are exposed for what they really are under the light of God's law! I consistently attempted to refocus the conversation back to the Cross of Christ and reaching his conscience, as he tended to bring up a lot of rabbit trails. The smokescreen he continually propped up and stood upon was that the Bible had changed down through the ages. However, he never provided any examples of this other than his opinion about the council of Nicaea and he continued to be unreasonable when I presented the historical facts that contradicted his opinion. We spent about 30-40 minutes going back and forth talking with him, Anne and Anna occasionally jumping into the conversation. I had to chuckle when Victor (The Hot Dog Stand guy) who had been listening in the whole time proclaimed "Man, that was way better then the Presidential debates!" :)

What was the most unexpected occurrence of the night?: Heading back to where we had parked and realizing that my car was nowhere to be found in the parking lot.

What was the highlight of the night?: The people I witnessed to after coming back to our parking spot and discovering that my car was gone. Here's what happened. While we were waiting for my friend Luke to come pick us up and take us to the towing yard where my car had been towed, about 6 high school age guys on skateboards showed up in the parking lot. (By the way, my car getting towed is why witnessing cost me $140 :) I wasn't about to pass up witnessing to them since they were just skating around the parking lot olleying and doing kickflips and stuff (I used to do a lot of skateboarding so I can relate :) and we certainly were'nt going anwywhere:) . So I approached them and showed them the curved illusion tract. One of the guys had seen it before, but the rest of them were all really impressed. I then took one guy through the good person test while the entire group listened in. They all appeared to be very convicted. After taking them through the law and then presenting the gospel, they had some great questions, which I tried to answer. One guy had some really good questions about the story of Job in the bible. One his friends asked me a question that I've been asked before, but the genuineness in which he wanted to know the answer was so very different than the mocking demeanor in which I have seen the question asked by others. His question was "What if you are lying to us and there is no judgment day and there is no afterlife and it's just not true?" Being taken aback by the sincerity in which he asked the question, I complimented him on asking a good question. Usually people ask this in a mocking way, and they really don't want to know the answer, their real intent being evident in the tone in which the question is asked. Not so with this guy. I told them that if what I was presenting was not true the implications were that " we(humans) can do whatever we want, and as long as Man's law doesn't catch us, or catch up with us, as there will be no consequences or ultimate Justice in the afterlife. Justice can only be in this lifetime. The Nazi's who committed horrible atrocities in their lifetime but simply never got caught won't face any Justice for their crimes. The 100,000 murders that are committed every 10 years in the US, where the murderer is never brought to justice will never face any consequences for their crimes. All the lies, stealing, adultery, greed, pride, malice and slander that people have done will be of no consequence. I told these skateboarders that I would not want to live my life in such a universe where all the evil in the world and in us would never be brought to judgment. I encouraged the entire group to check out the bible themselves and see if what I was saying was true, and I told them I had no motive to lie to them. By this time my poor groggy friend luke had shown up and been waiting to drive us to the tow yard. So Anna (who had joined me in witnessing to the skateboarders) and I thanked the guys for talking and listening to us and exhorted them to soberly consider their eternal outcome, reminded of theirneed for repentance to God through Christ, and proclaimed to them that TODAY is the Day of salvation, and that Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross was the ONLY answer to the (and thier ) problem of sin.