Newquay Evangelism - "I am going to bomb your church!"

Depending on where you were located in Newquay, today was either sunny and warm, or overcast and cool. Thankfully, the town centre was full of sunshine as we made our way to the open-air preaching location. 

As the five of us from Newquay Baptist Church walked through the town centre it was immediately clear that things were going to be busy. The main street was busy with people enjoying the sunshine and making the most of their weekend. 

At about 1:30 pm the open-air preaching commenced. I put my soapbox down, stood up, and then began to preach from Isaiah 43:25 - "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." My message commenced by talking about how people try different ways to remove their guilt, shame and past, but then I pointed out that nothing we do can remove the sins we've committed previously. From there I was able to draw hope from the text by preaching about how God alone can remove sin. 

As I preached one man began to heckle about loving people, since he kept talking about love, I asked him if it was good to love people. He said it was, but before I could develop this theme any further another heckler came rushing in nice and close. He told me that God doesn't exist because he had been through many traumas, including losing his wife in a car accident. In these cases, we have to be loving, truthful and also firm, so I asked how a tragedy like that disproved the existence of God. The man couldn't answer, all he could do was rant about how God isn't real. I used this to explain to the crowd that people often oppose the idea of God simply because they love their sin and hate Christ. I then once again spoke of the love of God in sending Jesus for sinners. 

After the preaching, a young man came up to me to ask how do I know if the Bible is true. It is always good to have people chat after a sermon. I answered by pointing out that the Bible makes two claims which if shown to be false would bring down the whole system. The first claim is that God is perfect, and He cannot make mistakes. The second claim is that the Bible is the very word of God. I challenged the young man to read the Bible to see if he can find any errors. If he could find errors, then it isn't God's Word; if He could not then that confirms the claims the Bible makes about itself. He then went on to ask about other religions and their texts, so I was able to show him some of the errors in the writings of the false religions (which proved they aren't God's Word). He thanked me for the answers, and I encouraged him to read the Bible for himself.

It was at this point a young lady came up to talk. She was very emotional as she said, "Where was God when I needed Him? I grew up Christian, but where was God when I needed Him?" It was clear this young lady had been through some kind of trauma, so we gently answered her questions. It turned out that she was a pastor's kid, and had grown up going to church, but over the years she had been hurt by professing Christians. We spoke about what it means to truly love and what a true Christian is. She took a tract with the church details and thanked us for taking the time to talk to her.=

It now came time for James to preach. He started by quoting from Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." He then held up some bags of sweets and spoke about how gifts are offered but people don't always receive them. He began to offer bags of sweets to the crowd, and for a time no one would respond, but eventually, one man did, then another and another. It was a perfect illustration of how we must take the gift of Jesus by faith. 

While James was preaching a lady who was probably in her fifties began to heckle. It turns out she was an extremely hate-filled atheist. She screamed that James should get off the streets and only preach in churches. She cursed and swore at Christians and then she announced that she will be building a bomb to place in our chapel. By this stage James had stood down from preaching, so I thought it best to take on this heckler. 

As I stood up I announced to the crowd, "Behold the intolerance of atheism." I spoke about how this angry lady wanted to kill Christians, and how she was planning to make a bomb. Most of the crowd didn't seem to be on her side, but one or two shopkeepers appeared to be (one worker from a Japanese restaurant turned up their music to try and drown out the preaching). I made the case to the crowd that if atheism was true, then morality is subjective, and each person can do what they please. Of course, none of us lives like that, so I pointed out that this showed we have to have a moral law-giver. The heckler kept yelling and cursing at me, but the crowd seemed to be mostly laughing at her now. This intolerant atheist wanted to silence the preaching, but all she did was draw a bigger crowd in to hear the gospel. 

Things are certainly heating up in Newquay. We love the people of this community, and we want all of them to come to know the Lord Jesus. By God's grace, we will keep on preaching, even though hostility may be increasing. Jesus is Lord over Newquay, so we will call on all people to repent and trust in Him. 

SDG!

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