Last week I posted an excellent article by Tony Miano called “I’m a Herald, not a Negotiator.” Atheists didn’t like it.
What has ensued is a lively discussion. For the Christian, you will see how best to reason with those who are unbelievers and not give up any ground whatsoever. It’s called standing firm in your faith. Join in the fray by clicking here.
Since I am getting a fair number of atheists and materialists to this blog as of late, I thought this article, written by my friend Tony Miano from his blog The Lawman Chronicles, will answer the myriad questions that are posed by them about what I believe and why I believe it.
But I’m almost positive that I’ve opened a whole new can of worms.
I’m a Herald, not a Negotiator
by Tony Miano
God exists. I know that God exists. How do I know? He has revealed Himself to me by the power of His Holy Spirit, and through the sacrificial death and glorious resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. He has caused me to be born again, resulting in my repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given me spiritual eyes to see, the desire to know Him and obey Him, and the ability (although I still have much to learn) to understand His Word.
Whether you or I believe God exists is utterly irrelevant. One’s belief in God has no impact, positive or negative, on the existence of God. God is God. He always has been. He always will be.
I’m a herald, not a negotiator.
The Bible is true. How do I know? (more…)
Oh well. No preaching at the World Series or at the Dodgers Victory Parade… this year!
God saw fit to let another city do this work. But wait! You can relive the glorious Dodger Blue days by reading two stories about our evangelism endeavors at Dodger Stadium by clicking on the links below. And as an extra bonus, a special Baseball “Sudden Death!”
WOW!!! That’s better than the World Series!
I loved this article, sent to me about an evangelistic Grampa, written by Steve Watters…
It wasn’t always easy being around Grandpa.
Although he had a good sense of humor and told entertaining stories, you always knew what was coming — something about Jesus.
He had a habit of interrupting a perfectly good football game on Sunday by asking “What are they saying about Jesus on television today?”
Often my brothers and I were reluctant to invite friends to join us for Sunday dinner because we knew Grandpa would find a way to corner them and ask if they knew where they were going when they died — if they were “holding on to those nail-scarred hands.”
Grocery stores were even worse. Before the checkout clerk could ask “paper or plastic?” Grandpa found a way to enquire about the condition of her immortal soul. My uncle once confided that he hid behind a display of Legg’s hose while Grandpa
sprang his question.
And there were other things — witnessing in the county jail, handing out tracts in the mall, walking down Main Street with a cross on his back. My dad was a pastor and both of his parents were ordained ministers and so I understood why they often acted the way they did. Yet my mom’s dad didn’t even have a church title and still he went around acting more like a preacher than anyone I knew.
The one thing that baffled me most was what he did on the telephone. To read the rest, click here.
Here’s a neat article from the St. Petersburg Times about the evangelists preaching at the Super Bowl:
TAMPA — Wesley Tyler stepped atop a plastic stool Friday at the corner of Channelside and Beneficial drives and began to preach at jersey-clad Steelers fans and other passers-by.
“Be very careful crossing the street,” warned Tyler, a 32-year-old social worker. “If you get hit by a car, make sure you know where you’re going to spend eternity.”
Most people barely looked his way. Undeterred, Tyler picked up his stool and moved to a busier spot.
His mission: to share the Gospel with Super Bowl fans.
I ran this post a year ago on the forum of the School of Biblical Evangelism, a ministry of the Way of the Master. Recently, a 70-year-old man in Mexico who recently joined the school, re-discovered this post and made it active again. Read his testimony below.
My original post from a year ago:
I am recommiting for yet another year to sharing my faith everyday with at least one person or handing out ten Gospel tracts, and hope to make this my goal for the rest of my life. This my goal and sometimes I fall short of that goal, but I have kept it up for the last 5 years and am amazed at what God continues to do.Do you have an evangelistic goal of your own? What is your commitment in sharing the good news? If you don’t set a goal, you will reach it everytime. I will be encouraged to hear what you share…
Now read this man’s comments:
I am a missionary in full-time prison ministry based in central Mexico, that is, in Aguascalientes. I ordered 500 of the million dollar bill tracts in Spanish, (more…)
With Billy Graham hitting the 90th milestone (Oh! How I’d love to preach the Gospel well into my Golden Years. If only God would grant me my health and well-being until then…), Christianity Today has collected a variety of current and classic articles on Billy Graham and put them on one page.
You’ll also find some of his sermons on the site.
Click here to get there!
The debate rages on. Should we tell sinners that God loves them or hates them? Or both? Or neither?
Here is an excellent article that offers some perspective; you decide if the author, Dr. John H. Gerstner, makes a few solid biblical points. Who’s Dr. Gerstner? He was R.C. Sproul’s mentor…
“Repent or Perish” forces people to ponder seriously the popular slogan, “God hates the sin and loves the sinner.” Is a necessary repentance consistent with “God loves the sinner?” If God loves the sinner while he is alive, it is strange that God sends him to hell as soon as he dies. God loves the sinner to death? Loves him to everlasting torment?
There is something wrong here. Either God loves the sinner and will not send him into the furnace of His eternal wrath; or He sends him into His eternal wrath and does not love him. Either “you are going to hell unless” because God hates you, as you are. Or, God loves you and “you are going to hell unless” is false. Read the rest of the article here.
This is a wonderful article from the BBC on an illiterate little boy who takes to the streets preaching for Jesus in Uganda.
A woman cuts in, saying: “You wonder what makes a young person like him come onto the street and preach like he does? He’s so strange but I think that people might take him seriously.”
Another man in their party says the preacher boy is having an effect because, “Even if you don’t want to listen to what he is saying, in a way, his message still touches you.”
In an article entitled “I’ve lost my burden for the unsaved, so why am I still leading worship?” author Dwayne Moore, who has been leading and teaching worship for more than 30 years, realized there was something wrong in his Christian witness. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
For some reason, my burden for the lost has waned of late. I have become so busy and focused on “my ministry” of leading and teaching worship that somehow I have missed the whole point of ministry and worship. I couldn’t tell you the last time I prayed more than one minute for a lost person. In fact, I could name on one hand the lost people I know. My indictment is that I have been living in my own little church world and failing to be salt of the earth to those around me who desperately need God’s tender seasoning. Read the rest here.
This is a great article about using apologetics versus using the Law on sinners and atheists. It’s by Ray Comfort and I think you will enjoy it:
I’m not big on fishing. I far prefer catching. However, there can be no catching without fishing, so I have made a point of studying the skills that make a difference as to whether I catch or fish.
For example, there is a right and wrong way to bait a hook. Bait should be used to attract fish and at the same time disguise the hook. Fish are not stupid. They aren’t going to bite onto a hook that they can see. So, a wise fisherman baits the hook to hide its deadly barbs. Then, when he sees that a fish is nibbling at the bait, he quickly jerks the line and pulls the hook into the jaw, and reels him in.
Click here to continue reading!
My daughter D.D. and I visited Ray Comfort and his team on Saturday down at the Huntington Beach Pier where we encountered a bunch of evangelistic atheists.
One rather caustic man, Frank, challenged my daughter after I asked her this question in front of him: “D.D., is there a God?”
D.D. replied matter-of-factly, “Yes!”
With a smile, I pointed out to Frank that even an 8-year-old child knows that God exists.
He knelt down, and in a smooth, Satan-like tone, tried to convince her otherwise, to no avail. D.D. looked at me and would have rolled her eyes if she was wasn’t taught to be respectful to her elders, even when they are headed for Hell.
Below, read Ray Comfort’s version of events (from his blog, w/permission), as he stood on the sidelines aghast at this foolish man’s persistance.
MILLSTONE FRANK
By Ray Comfort
I was at Huntington Beach just after open air preaching, when a friend showed up with his eight year-old daughter. She’s a sweet little kid with a strong faith in God. Some time later I saw him conversing with an atheist named Frank. Frank had been heckling me, and seemed to consider himself to be quite an intellectual. When my friend’s little girl told the atheist that she believed in God, Frank bent down to her and in a fatherly way told her that God was just like Santa Clause–He didn’t exist. How could he do such a thing? I was horrified. He was like a poor mentally challenged man, sticking a fork into a live power outlet. I said, “Frank, do you know what a millstone is?” (To continue reading, go to Ray’s Blog by clicking here.)
By Ray Comfort
I was talking with a friend who regularly runs “The Way of the Master” evangelism classes. He said that when the class starts there is always a good turnout, but when people realize that they have to actually go out and speak to the lost, he loses about a third of them. He was grieved that it happened, even though he explained that through the class they would learn to share their faith without fear. If those who deserted the battlefield had stayed, they would have found out something amazing.
Imagine you and I are standing beside a swimming pool in which there are large chunks of ice. I soberly say, “Two minutes in that freezing water and you will be dead! I dare you to jump in and do a length.” Hopefully, you would have the good sense not to. However, if your two year-old child fell in and began to drown, how long would you hesitate to dive in and save him? Not for a second. But wouldn’t you be fearful of the freezing water? Of course not. Not for a second. That’s the power of love. So, do you hesitate to enter the freezing waters of evangelism to seek and save the lost? Do you listen to your fears? That’s the gauge to the depth of your love.
(Article and art used w/permission from Ray Comfort’s blog. )
Ray Comfort has a new blog called Comfort Food. While I take a few days off for Thanksgiving, check out his site. See ya back on Monday.
Here is an article from the editor of Charisma Magazine bemoaning the fact that so few Christians share their faith.
You don’t have to be a Charismatic or Pentacostal to agree with him. He writes:
It seems as if personal evangelism is a dying art. Fewer of us are taking our faith beyond familiar circles of friends and family. Witnessing has become intrusive in a culture that demands tolerance and diversity. Knocking on doors is illegal in most neighborhoods. “Soul-winning” is an outdated term. Polls show that few Christians today have ever led a person to faith in Christ.
As our society has become more secular, our faith has become more timid. It is no longer cool to declare Jesus is the only way. So we don’t say it—we just hope people will figure out our message by listening to our music or by wandering into our churches at an odd hour on Sunday mornings. Click here to read the rest!
As a counterpoint to John Shore’s seeker friendly-don’t evangelize-book (which I haven’t read and probably won’t), I thought it appropriate to post this article by a true and faithful witness…
..who doesn’t question God’s command to “Go!”:
One hundred and fifty thousand children had been on the brink of starving to death, but thanks to the kind gift of a very generous billionaire, every child now had enough food to keep him alive. That gift had arrived in the form of one big check. The horror was now over. It was finished. It was just a matter of distributing the food using the few relief workers we had. Without them to get the food to the children, there would have been many more deaths.Some days later, a frantic worker burst into the camp and cried, “Some of the relief workers have stopped distributing food. Masses of children are dying!”
Why would the workers stop when there was plenty of food? It didn’t make sense. The distraught man said, “It’s because one of them held up a sign that said, ‘Feed the starving children. Where necessary, use food.’ That has caused some of the workers to simply befriend the starving children without giving them food. It’s insane!”(Click here to read more.)
Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for the Creator, addresses the problem of man-centered approaches to the Gospel in this article from Outreach Magazine.
Unfortunately, the emphasis on repentance seems to have evaporated in many churches these days. Instead, some churches attract people by simply telling them their life will improve if they become a follower of Jesus. The result can be false conversions—people who “sign up” for a better life through Christ, only to fall away when times get tough. They’ve never really come face-to-face with the depth of their own sinfulness and called out in utter helplessness to Jesus for forgiveness and mercy as the only alternative to spending eternity in hell. (Read the rest of the article here.)
He was born in Italy but came to the United States as a young man. He studied juggling and became famous throughout the whole world.
Finally he decided to retire. He longed to return to his home country and settle down. He took all his worldly possessions, booked a passage on a ship to Italy and invested all the rest of the money in a single diamond. He hid the diamond in his stateroom.
While aboard ship, he was showing a boy how he could juggle a bunch of apples. Soon a crowd had gathered. The pride of the moment went to his head. He ran to his stateroom and got the diamond. He explained to the crowd that it represented his entire life’s savings. He started juggling the diamond. Soon he was taking more and more chances.
(more…)
William Lobdell, a Times staff writer, responded to a false Gospel presentation by asking Jesus into his heart at a weekend mountain retreat. Here’s what he wrote:
At the climactic service Sunday, Mike Barris, a pastor-to-be, delivered an old-fashioned altar call. He said we needed to let Jesus into our hearts.
With my eyes closed in prayer, I saw my heart slowly opening in two and then being infused with a warm, glowing light. A tingle spread across my chest. This, I thought, was what it was to be born again.
The pastor asked those who wanted to accept Jesus to raise their hands.
Unfortunately, because he never repented and trusted fully in the Savior he fell away after witnessing the scandals in church organizations. Disillusioned, he came to this conclusion: “…I considered another possibility: Maybe God didn’t exist.”
This man was not a backslider. He never slid forward in the first place.
Read the article here.
Read “The 10 Reasons Not to Ask Jesus Into Your Heart” here.
Joe Average doesn’t think about creation, let alone the Creator. If you asked him if God had ever done anything for him, he probably couldn’t think of one thing.
He gets out of bed early in the morning in his beachfront home, makes some toast, and without much thought spreads on some butter and honey. He then walks outside, takes a deep breath of the cool morning air, and breathes out slowly. He drinks a glass of milk as he looks at his rose garden, and listens to the birds chirping at the break of another day. He smiles, because as he looks towards the ocean he sees that rain is on its way. That means he won’t have to water his garden. It’s just another average day for Joe Average.
Not quite. There is nothing “average” about Joe or what he has done that morning. He’s actually a miracle machine that no man-made mechanism could ever begin to even imitate. To continue reading, click here!
