Arresting Truth
A FRIEND OF MINE WAS ARRESTED IN ENGLAND AND FOUND GUILTY for a heinous crime. Was it robbery? Assault? Murder? Nope. None of those. Mike Stockwell got busted, along with his compatriot Michael Overd, for speaking the truth!
I met Mike Stockwell back in 2008 when I was leading a team for The Ambassador’s Academy, an evangelism ministry started by Ray Comfort that teaches normal Christians how to share their faith simply and biblically by handing out Gospel tracts, having personal conversations and by street preaching.
I didn’t know it then, but Stockwell would continue to preach the gospel in streets around the country and the world as a calling and vocation for the next nine years. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the good news”—and he obeyed!
Now he’s paying the price.
Evangelism Gone Wrong, Part 1: Mistakes Were Made
Those unbelievers out there can be so darn difficult.
They don’t understand the Gospel message—or don’t care; they’ll try to get the
evangelist off his game by ridicule, loud shouts of disapproval or verbal abuse; they’ll mock you and the God who made them, sometimes even blaspheming his name. And it’s possible they may even try to get you to stop preaching that message of eternal life by using force.
What’s a Christian to do? We’re called to be gracious, gentle, respectful, loving, kind, helpful and prayerful, especially to our enemies. But what happens when things go wrong—desperately wrong—and the witness for Christ is totally blown? And what about those other guys; you know, those who call themselves brothers but don’t represent Christ at all in action and attitude when witnessing about him? What should you do? What about Gospel tracts that don’t tell the full story of the Gospel, are imbalanced, giving a skewed picture of the Savior?
He tells the story about a woman who was heckling him so badly, using filthy language and caustic comments, that he blew it. She asked him a question that went something like this: “I’m a lady, but I don’t agree at all with you about what you are saying about women.”
Ray flippantly responded with, “You may be a woman, Ma’am, but you certainly are no lady…”
He then explained how the “lady” proceeded to beat him up.
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