Battle Log
Battle Log > Plymouth Team > Sunday, 1 January, 2012
Sunday, 1 January, 2012
For 6 days over the Christmas and New Years break, 4 men from our church set off to stay at Forestside Christian centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to stay at the church for fellowship and evangelism.
Over the 6 days we were very fortunate to have lots of theological discussions, great food, table tennis and lots of witnessing opportunites out in the city centre. Northern Ireland is the predominantly Protestant side of Ireland, and although having MANY different denominational churches there, there are still many there who are not sure what the gospel is, how it is appropriated to someones life, or feel that religion and Church attendance are enough. So with our Living waters 'Intelligence Test', easil, a soap box and loads of tracts, we headed out onto the streets most days to call people to repent to God from their sins, and to put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
One guy I chatted with had Jewish parents and said he was Jewish, though was not really practising it.I therefore tried to reason with him about how he was going to heaven when he died? He listed many things, including being a good person, believing in God etc, that God was merciful and forgave all sin etc, but I kept referring him back to the OT commandments,how he had broken them, and explaining how Jews had their sins covered in the past, through sacrifice. The verse in the OT and NT that 'without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness/ remission of sins' was used to show him that he needed a blood sacrifice to atone for his sins, and yet with the Jewish temple being destroyed in AD 70, what was he going to do to get right with God?
It was great, as we went onto discuss what the sacrifices composed of in the OT, and then logically led onto Jesus the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He had to go quite sharpish, but It definatly led him to think about what this meant, with some tracts to take with him as well.
2 Atheists wanted to try the intelligence test, and although they got 5/6 correct, they had some very strange ideas, such as saying there was no energy in the Universe, as it is cancelled out by negative energy and black holes etc? They kept saying the burden of proof was on us to prove God exists, but yet had no reasons to give why he wouldnt exist. They tried to refute the notion that just because buildings need builders and paintings need painters, that creation would need a creator. They kept tangling themselves up, saying things like you cant be sure on things, so I said are you absolutely sure, or that they didnt have absolute knowledge of the universe, but refused to acknowledge they were therefore agnostics etc. We left them in the end as they werew there fore an arguement and not to be reasonable.
Other Christians encouraged us as we preached on certain days, some hearing of Ray Comfort and the Way of the Master before and the million pound/ million Euro tracts we had.
People there of all ages seemed so much politer there, with Tracts so much easier to give out of all sorts, ones about evolution and creationism, to ones about which religion was the right one to choose etc.
We managed to visit the local Museum which was great with lots of colourful displays, dinosaur fossils, different varieties of species of butterfly and insects etc... and LOTS of evolution theories, supposedly portrayed as scientific act. These included Ardi- austro Lyphythicus (bad spelling!), drawings of how supposedly a dinosaur had evolved into becoming archaeoptryx, big drawings of how the moon supposedly came from the earth after a meteorite hit it etc, yet stating how we relky on the moon so muh to support life with tides/ gravitational forces and light etc.
We planted lots of Anti evolution tracts around, and at the end I questioned one of the staff there about some of these so called 'evidences' for evolution, stating lots had been proven scientifically wrong, yet theyt were lying to people stating them as fact! The staff member was not happy about us 'distributing reliigious paraphanelia' around the Museum, but the manager in charge just weakly said there was nothing he could now do about it. The security guard got a million euro tract at least.
We were also all able to share our testimonies on the Sunday evening at the Church which was great, and many said how they were encouraged.
It was a great few days away, though is disheartening coming back to Plymouth where people just sem to apathetic about spiritual things. But at least we can rely on God to do the saving if we continually sow the seed, some will fall on good ground and produce a harvest. It also shows us how we need to pray for more labourers too as the fields are ripe! God blessed us with a great time away and many tracts were given out and the gospel faithfully, lovingly and truthfully proclaimed to the city of Belfast. Soli deo Gloria!
Russ & Dewi At the Museum planting tracts! Young people taking the ''Intelligence/ Good person' tests.
Charles preaching in Belfast city centre
Me doing the Intelligence test in Belfast city centre