Wow, what a night.  We preached and witnessed for 5-6 hours, glory to God!  50K+ partiers vs. 15-20 born-again, Spirit-filled Christians.  The numbers were in our favor.  :)

We finally got to the party at around 7:30-7:45pm where we found a cozy curb to unleash the 1/2 mile haler.  I started proclaiming God's Word and it only took a minute for a few God-mockers to come to verbalize their disdain for God and His Holy Word.  Jim, Dave, Robby, Rodney and Becky fielded dozens of people coming up to ask questions or to jeer at us. 

One of the common questions that was asked was, "what do you think about homosexuality?"  Our response... "it doesn't matter what we think, it matters what God thinks."  This seems to be a litmus test that sinners use to determine whether we are "bigots" or not.  We got this question over, and over again.  Things aren't what they used to be.  40+ years ago, homosexuality used to be classified a mental disorder.  These days it's classified as normal. 

I actually preached the above statement and preached what God's word says about the sin in I Corinthians 6 and Romans 1.  After verbalizing the facts of the Bible, one coward ran up to me from behind and gave me a blind-sided punch on the side of my neck / head.  It stunned me for a second until I realized I had been initiated into true persecution.  Being punched in the head for preaching God's word???  Yep.  I could have been stabbed or shot so I guess a punch is nothing compared to what the early followers of our Savior suffered.  I informed the crowd that I forgave the coward and that I would gladly take a bullet in the head for the cause of Christ.  Nobody took me up on it but the offer still stands.  I can think of no better way of dying!  (Praise God, no swelling or bruising the following day.  God is good!)

Rodney, David, and Becky also had their turns on the mic with the same reaction as I received.  Mockery.  We did have several meaningful conversations. 
 - Peter Pan - Pray for him.  He grew up in church and his mother is a born-again Christian.  He stood around us for nearly 2 hours trying to convince us that we were wrong.  Bro. Dave narrowed him down at the end by asking him this, "Are you trying to convince us that God isn't real or are you trying to convince yourself?  Deep down inside, you know he is real.."  AMEN!
 - Trash-bag dude - This guy was wearing a trash bag (hence the name).  :) He was hanging around us and taking in all the preaching.  Me and Rob talked with him one-on-one and gave him a Chic Tract to read.  It turned out that he played "Jesus" during a passion play at the Presbyterian church across the church earlier in the year and he had been thinking about turning his life over to the Lord.  Pray that he makes Jesus the Lord of his life
 - Short dude with no costume - this guy was a backslider.  He was convicted by the Word but appreciated the preaching.  Ok... that was the only sinner that appreciated our preaching.  Anyhow, this guy was under conviction big-time.  Pray that God get ahold of his heart. 

There were many more that the rest talked to that I couldn't even begin to write about.  Check out the videos I posted - click me!  If you want to go next year, email me and let's go and make disciples together! 

Pray for this generation.  They are void of morals.  They assume good to be evil and evil to be good.  God needs bold men and women of God to take a stand for the truth.  Are you willing to be used by Him?  Join us.        

      

After waiting in traffic for 2 hours to get into Circleville, we finally arrived among 100K+ people to preach the everlasting gospel.  It appeared that we were it... nobody else was there proclaiming God's Word.  [there apparently were others there earlier in the week... we were the only ones there on Saturday evening]

We found a good corner to begin proclaiming the full counsel of God and were met with immediate opposition.  Even in small-town America, people hate the truth.  We had to stop after about 20 minutes because the event coordinators were trying to listen to the walkie talkies above the noise of my preaching... they were trying to find a lost kid.  So we moved down the road.

We found a cozy spot next to a Methodist church booth... I'm sure Wesley would have been proud.  Anyhow, we began to preach our hearts out and, once again, God mockers and haters did their thing.  How do you know if you are saved or not?  If you think the preaching of the gospel is foolish, you are perishing.  I Cor 1:18.  We admonished them to repent and believe.  We patiently taught the crowd that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.  Whenever we preach against homosexuality, people hate it.  Why?  Because light is dark and dark is light these days.  This sinful generation has taught our youth that homosex is normal and that anyone who preaches against it is a bigot.  So... they think that God is a bigot?

After preaching on Bro. Rodney's bullhorn for 30+ minutes, we fired up the big-daddy, 1/2 mile haler.  Brother David began preaching and after about 20 minutes, a crowd began to gather.  I think one lady actually had a tear in her eye as she listened.  At that point, the police showed up and shut us down.  Yep... we got shut down.  Why?  What could have caused the gospel from going forth?  THE METHODISTS!  They didn't like the truth so they called the police.  One of the guys that was a METHODIST cursed at Bro Jim.  By their fruits you know them.  Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

The police informed us that we do NOT have the freedom of speech on a public street in Circleville.  Even bare-throat preaching, handing out tracts, or sharing our faith is not allowed in Naziville... I mean Circleville.  We had to go in front of the courthouse or in front of the police station.  According to the 1st and 14th  amendment, we have this freedom and we will be taking this to the ADF for consideration of another lawsuit to protect our freedoms. 

We shook off the dust from our feet and moved on to the University of OH where we preached for about 3o minutes and had the opportunity to share one-on-one with a few guys.  One was an atheist that was considering what we had to share.  Pray for this guy.  Also, pray for the freedom to preach in public. 

 - preached to 20K people as the exited game
 - preached to 500+ students as they were waiting in line for a concert
 - was able to have several one-on-one conversations

 - more to come..........under construction.........

preached to 50,000 approx
David Martinez came down from Akron to join us
had many fruitful one-on-one conversations
had a youth pastor that used F-word - said that we should only preach love

more to come... under construction..........

Wow!  What do you get when you jam 1/2 million beer-drinking people on one street, 4 blocks long?  A great opportunity to PREACH! 

Becky and I arrived there at around 5pm only to find about 180 other Christians out there handing out tracts!  Ray Comfort was in town with a group of guys and came out to the streets to share the good news.  That pretty much took care of our tracting for us.  So we set out to find a cozy street corner to snuggle up to, to preach God Word. 

To our surprise, there was literally a preacher on every corner!  This never happens in Cincinnati.  Usually we are IT.  What a blessing!  We eventually found an intersection where a preacher was preaching the other direction so we figured we would "saddle up" and begin to share.  It wasn't long before we were mocked, jeered, and yelled at.  A catholic guy came up and Becky began to share with him a more excellent way over idol worship. 

A few college kids were about 20 yards away heckling me pretty good so I used them as an illustration... which drew a few more people to listen.  Eventually a drunk guy got carried away while speaking with Becky and the cops were called over.  He kicked her Bible across the street! 

We had many fruitful conversations that evening.  Pray that God brings these perishing souls to salvation!

500K people showed up to watch one of the biggest firework shows in the midwest.  We showed up with tracts, bull-horn, and the Holy Spirit! 

We bare-throat preached before the show started.  We have learned that a bull-horn isn't always a welcomed guest to the Cincinnati police.  Therefore, bare-throat preaching early and bull-horn preaching when the mass-exodus occurs works out great!  We were able to preach to thousands and thousands of souls... warning them of judgment day and admonishing them to turn their hearts to Christ, repent and believe the gospel. 


We shared one-on-one with several people that day.  Becky was able to speak with a JW for over 30 minutes, giving a sober word of correction due to their false doctrine.  Later in the evening we found a guy that was an antinomian.  He had the idea that once a person has acknowledge that Jesus is the son of God, that person could continue in a sinful lifestyle and still be ok with God.  There is nothing further from the truth.  It's a shame that the majority of professing Christians these days feel that sin is not something a person can overcome through the Holy Spirit. 

A wonderful evening to preach the everlasting gospel!  We were able to preach to approximately 20K people.  What an opportunity!  What a Blessing!  Many mocked and jeered but many more heard the words of life.  Thousands of seeds were planted.  Pray that God brings about the harvest soon! 

Wow... talk about a good evening to preach!  I commented to Jim and Rodney last night that next to salvation, there is no greater "high" in my life than having the privilege of preaching the word of God to the masses.  It doesn't matter if I get spit on, threatened, screamed at, heckled, jeered, laughed at or "amened"... when the Holy Spirit begins to work through you, it's AWESOME!  I can honestly say that I can't think of a better way of dying than preaching the gospel to the lost... what a way to go...

We started the evening around 6pm-ish.  The Reds had just won their game and about 40K people were making their way to wherever they were going.  Mass crowds = mass opportunity to preach.  We went over to a bridge that the majority of fans were crossing to get to their cars.  On the bridge was a pillar about 2 feet high... a perfect platform to preach from!  So, Jim and Rodney began handing out 100's of tracts and I hopped up on my build-in, cement soapbox and began proclaiming the gospel to the crowd's surprise.  I was able to preach continually for about 15-20 minutes to crowds of people... wall-to-wall people.  15-20K people walked right up to the first Church of the pavement.  Some mocked, some listened, and some thanked me.  Praise God!

After that we made our way to the Blues Festival.  The crowd was sporadic but we found a place to hand out more tracts.  As the people walked by in crowds of 15-20, I preached the message of the gospel to them.  This lasted for about an hour.  We took a break until 10:30pm... we learned that the crowds were to let out at around 11pm.  So, we went back to the bridges and fired up the haler.  By 11:15pm we had consistent crowds of 100's walking past us until 1am.  We tag-team-preached until the end.  Approximately 10-15K people heard the Word of God preached last night. 

An interesting note was that allot of people were "amening" us.  It seemed as if the majority of these people were Christians... or they thought they were.  There is an issue, though.  They way these women were dressed was not modest at all.  How can a born-again Christian dress (or undress) that way?  The music they were listening to was 100% ungodly and worldly.  How can born-again Christians feast on worldly, fleshly music?  There is something horribly wrong with this.  James tells us that friendship with the world is enmity with God and that whosoever is a friend of the world is an enemy of God.  God help the American churches... they are lukewarm at best....  :(     

We headed to Columbus for one of the nations largest 4th of July festivals.  I have never been to one of these but Jim and Rodney experienced the "boom" 15 years ago (or so).  It turned out to be a great place to preach the gospel!

When we arrived at the event, we walked around handing out tracts and sharing one on one.  We found a woman that claimed to be a witch that taught us that there are many ways to God.  Since the Jesus proclaimed to be the only way to heaven and since Jesus is neither a lunatic nor liar, we quickly admonished her in a more excellent way.  She stated that the Christian God is too narrow and shewed us away.  God is narrow-minded and judgmental and some day, if she doesn't repent and believe, she will find that out the hard way.

To our pleasure, we found a street preacher preaching on a corner using a bull-horn.  Having never been to Columbus outreach, I was wondering how the police would respond to us preaching in public.  It turns out that this brother had been preaching on Columbus streets for nearly 30 years and had paved the way for street preachers in that town.  Praise God! 

When the brother was finished preaching, we fired up the haler and began tag-team preaching for about 2 hours.  We got a pretty quiet response except for one guy in particular.  He came up to us and screamed that we should be healing people like Jesus did.  The Bible teaches us that God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save them which believe.  The biggest healing anyone can find is the healing of a lost sinner's soul.  I think this guy was under conviction and wanted to shut us up.... but it didn't work.  :)

Once the fireworks began, we shut down the haler and geared up for the mass exodus that was about to take place.  After the last firework  exploded, hundreds of thousands of people made there way to their cars.  There were literally over 150 people passing us each second.  We figured that we had the privilege to preach to approximately 150K-200k PEOPLE!  We exhorted the crowds to:

• repent and believe the gospel
• put their faith in action
• stop playing church
  
• consider the brevity of life
• etc, etc, etc

This was a great outreach.  The Word of God was proclaimed to 200K people at least.  Pray that the people that heart the Word would yield to the Holy Spirit's drawing. 

There were two events in the Cincinnati area that we really wanted to target this summer: Mayfest and Taste of Cincinnati.  Due to health conditions of me and Jim, neither of us could do the "Taste."  But that didn't stop us from preaching our hearts out at Mayfest. 

We both parked pretty far from the event partly because we weren't sure where it was and partly to stay out of traffic.  We asked several people for direction and received several different answers.  But, God was faithful and led us to witness to several people on the way out to the event.  One guy that Jim spent quite a bit of time with was Cowboy and his girlfriend.  They both claimed to be saved.  In fact, Girlfriend claimed to be a minister, a Dr. and she claimed to have been the wife of the 3 richest men in Houston, TX.  (????)  As Jim spoke with her more, he was led to ask her if she ever experienced demonic activity and she said, "all the time."  He narrowed it down and asked her if she ever experienced lying spirits and she affirmed that she did, "all the time."  Talk about strange!  Now, as a practice, we don't go out of our way to search out demons behind every bush and tree.  It's rather rare to find someone with this type of demonic activity... but this lady was really 'out-there.' 

While Jim was witnessing to Cowboy and girlfriend, I was able to share with a quiet lady that was sitting on the side of a building.  She used to be a JW and now was nothing.  She obviously was hurt by this cult and was very confused.  I let her know that she still has to answer to God for her sins when she dies and pointed her to the savior.  I later learned that she had grown up in the Nazarene church and I admonished her to seek out a Nazarene church to fellowship in.  

After a while we made our way over to the event where we handed out tracts for about 30-40 minutes.  We were stopped by the police because we didn't have a permit to be a vendor.  Jim argued our case for a little bit (regarding our 1st and 14th amendment rights) but the cop was adamant that we leave the event area and set up camp behind the barricades.  So I asked the officer that if we complied, would we have any problems preaching the gospel over the haler from behind the barricade?  He said that we could "crank it up as loud as we wanted" if we complied.  SO WE DID...

I was up first and began preaching about God's grace... until we were stopped by another officer.  The first officer that gave us permission to be there came over and cleared everything up from that point forward and we had no problems with the law from then on.  In fact, the cops actually protected us from that point forward. 

So, I got back on the mic and preached that just because you call yourself a Christian it doesn't make you one.  I preached for quite some time, calling out sin, calling Covington to repentance, and pointing them to the grace that Christ offered on the cross. 

Jim was next and he preached for about an hour.  His topics ranged from God's mercy and grace to his wrath and judgment.  We both agree to preach the full counsel of God.  While he was preaching, several came up and we were able to minister to people, admonishing them to get right with God.

I had another opportunity to preach after Jim and felt a great liberty to really preach against the milk-toast gospel that is so prevalent in this sin-sodden Cincinnati area.  As I was breaking up the fallow ground, one guy in particular was really heckling me pretty bad (which I consider a blessing).  Hecklers bring crowds so this is a good thing.  He said, "what about abortion?"  I answered, "abortion is WRONG!  It's a sin to murder innocent people.  Shame on you for supporting killing innocent people!"  He then said, "what about homosexuality?"  I responded, "it's a SIN!  God didn't make man to lie with man as with a woman.  It's unnatural.  If all the homosexuals all went to an island to live, they would cease to exist after that generation.  God didn't make it that way."  Another heckler was getter real riled up and was screaming at us that we were RETARDS and STUPID.  That's ok.  If that's the extent of persecution we received at this event, we did pretty good.

I was preaching about God's law, expounding on his holy 10 commandments when 3 business ladies came up and mentioned that they broke God's laws on a regular basis.  I told them to repent and put their faith in Christ.  They asked me if I ever broke God's laws and I had to tell them, "yes, I've broken his laws.  But, I've repented and given my heart to Jesus.  My desire NOW is to walk in righteousness, not drink iniquity like it's water."  Once you are born again, your desires change.  No longer to you make excuses for your sins.  You STOP SINNING and you awake unto righteousness.  No longer do you seek to appease the flesh but you seek to please the Father. 

Another blessed outreach.  It's too bad we couldn't do the Taste of Cincinnati.  My appendix had to be taken out so there was no way I could be there which grieves me.  There is nobody out here doing this in the area of the country.  We are it.  If we don't warn the wicked, who will?  If we don't proclaim the truth in the streets, who will?  God help us!!!