Open Air Evangelism Discussion with Andrew Rappaport

Kootenai Church

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00:00

Okay, so that I know, but we could do role play, where we just go through and practice sharing the gospel with one another, or we could go out.

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Pastor Jim has said we could do either, whatever we thought. My thinking, even though I won't be coming out with you guys regularly, my thinking is that it'd be good to go somewhere so we could figure out a spot, so you guys could keep going to the spot.

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But if not everyone can go, then that's fine, because, I mean, I leave, but you guys are still here, so you can go next week.

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All right, so let me give you an overview of what at Tribune for a Caring, what we call ambassador evangelism, okay?

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So I know you guys are familiar with living water, is anyone else familiar with living waters, with the good person test?

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Okay. So basically what you're gonna see, the things that we end up teaching, your follow rate comfort, you're gonna see he actually practices everything we teach.

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He doesn't teach it though. He just, there's some principles that you're, the reason

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Ray is so loved, is because he's practicing the same principles that we teach, okay?

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I have a, after I learned about living waters, I actually did change the last section of it, and it's gonna sound very much like the good person test, because, well, it is.

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I kind of adapted my outline. So really quick, the easiest way to share the gospel, is where I mostly prefer to do it, which is to hand a track and run.

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It's very effective, it's, you know, that way

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I don't have to actually get into the conversation. So, but tracks are gonna be the easiest way.

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Then we have, you know, really what you wanna do with the gospel track is, is to get the gospel out there, but you wanna use it to start a conversation, because really you wanna get a one -on -one conversation, okay?

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But tracks aren't a bad thing, because tracks go where you can't, all right? I know a friend who got saved because he saw, he threw his garbage on the floor, picked it up, threw it in his pocket when he was drunk, comes home at night, takes all his stuff out, throws it out in the morning, he's reading this thing, he didn't know where he got it from.

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Where was this? You know, like, and then he read it and got saved. So you never know.

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So gospel tracks can go where you can't. But a one -on -one conversation is usually more productive.

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It's gonna be more helpful for folks to be able to get questions answered and things like that, which also makes us nervous.

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You might not know the answers. That's okay, we'll get to that. And then another way of evangelizing that some people do is open air.

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I don't encourage everyone to do open air. There's some people who are gifted at it, and unfortunately more people shouldn't be doing it than do it, okay?

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The reason I call this ambassador evangelism is because when we go out there, we are ambassadors.

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We are reflecting Jesus Christ. And when you have people that go out and evangelize and they are not reflecting

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Jesus Christ, but reflecting pride, it's a stand on all of us. And that's the reason that I was told in AHA in this area that they have a really bad reputation.

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So open air evangelism as a whole has a really bad reputation in the area because of the way they do it.

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There's places where there's some guys that are known as plagians. If you don't know what that is, it's a theology.

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But they're very prideful in the way they go about doing it. Same thing with them. They put a stain because they get up there and they're prideful.

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So even though I do open air, I don't actually encourage open air, okay?

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If someone wants to do open air, I actually look for, I'm very cautious with that.

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I want to see people that have maturity, people who, just the fact that someone's standing up in front of people, there's a reason you don't have a pastor that instantly comes up and can't be a new believer because some people can get prideful just having an audience that's looking at them and they think they're something special and they have a hard time realizing they're not sometimes.

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And so some people just enjoy that feeling. Actually, it's kind of weird. In the book,

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Sharing the Good News with Mormons, my chapter's on open air evangelism and the publisher got very upset with me and said, you're spending, you only get six pages.

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It's like 3 ,000 words and half of it I'm spending on saying who shouldn't do open air. They're like, this is supposed to encourage people to do it.

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And I said, the problem is anyone can go on YouTube and find out what open air is. There's some pointers to it and stuff, but the problem is they need to know how to do it and how not to do it is more the issue.

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So here's the three principles that we have. Disarming their defenses, disarming your defenses, and avoid being judgmental.

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Let me break each of those down. You want to disarm the defenses of the person you're speaking to because whenever you're in a conversation, they can get defensive.

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Now do any of you enjoy a conversation where you're just kind of yelling back and forth at each other or you're having an argument and no one's actually listening, they're just trying to get their points in?

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Yeah, when someone's defensive, they don't actually process what you're saying, they don't think about it, they're just trying to get their point of view in, but you have two people trying to convince you of their position and not listen.

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We want to avoid that because we want them to listen to us. Real simple way of doing that, of disarming their defenses, use humor and be polite, really simple.

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The use of humor is actually a really neat tool. Now I'm not saying you have to try and be a comedian or something like that, but when people, you're talking about where they spend eternity, that's a pretty personal issue, right?

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They can get very defensive about it, especially if they're a Roman Catholic, Mormon or Islam, and you're saying that their religion's wrong.

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They're gonna get upset over that, right? So they're gonna get defensive and you want to ease that because if you do, now you're in a conversation rather than a debate.

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And so when you use humor, I have found that what humor does is it just lightens the mood.

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And it can be that you, if you want an example, if you guys see Ray Comfort do it, like on the flash drives we have, there's hours of him evangelizing, you'll see he can use the same stupid lines over and over and over again, but you gotta remember the person who's hearing it, it's probably the first time.

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Okay, I'm listening to Huntington Beach and they're there every week listening to Ray, every week. But things like, have you ever stolen anything?

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And they'll say, yes, what does that make you? And they'll say a stealer. And he'll always be like, oh, that's a football team in Pittsburgh.

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What is that? That's humor. What does it do to the person? They laugh.

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I mean, people always ask, how does Ray get away with what Ray gets away with? Because he uses humor.

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He gets away with it because his use of humor allows, people are just disarmed with him.

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Because they're disarmed, he can say things that anyone else wouldn't be able to get away with.

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It's the use of humor that does that. Now, there's things you get, some people are just not funny people, okay?

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But the goal of it is you wanna lighten the mood. When you feel that tension, find a way that works for you to lighten it.

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I use humor. Now, I also do something else. I make fun of myself. Now, this is where I have an advantage you guys don't.

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I have a lot of material to work with. I do dumb things. I mean, really.

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I know you guys can't have as much material, but the irony that I found in New York City was by making fun of myself,

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I had all these people that told me how humble I am. Who are you talking about, right?

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And I'd ask them why they think I'm humble. You know what the answer kept coming back? Because I'm not afraid of allowing people to make fun of me or even making fun of myself.

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And I've come to realize in our culture nowadays, nobody makes fun of them. No one allows someone else to make fun of them.

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That's like a strange thing. And so by being willing to make fun of myself, you know, it lightens the mood, it keeps people talking, and it deceives them into thinking

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I'm humble. You know, and there's different things you can do. I mean, I had a guy, we were at a university in Cleveland, and there was a guy that was above me on a thing, and because he was above me, he got to notice that there's this, you know what

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Jewish people wear yarmulkes, right? It's to cover this up right here. That's really the reason, this bald spot that occurs. So that's what's happening.

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So he shouts out something about me going bald, right?

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So I'm like, I just turned, I don't remember what I said, but I turned and just made a joke of it. I accepted it, because you know what, it's true,

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I am going bald up there, right? I just, I'm not offended when they do something, because they're doing it to try to get me upset, and that's one of the things you always have to remember.

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Even on a one -on -one conversation, some people are trying to get you upset, and I'll give you an example of that in a minute.

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The other thing is be polite. It's amazing how just being polite in today's day and age goes a long way.

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Calling someone sir or ma 'am, you know, okay, ma 'am may be a problem sometimes, actually even sir.

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In New York, I actually, you know, because I'll call people sir or ma 'am, and I had a guy that said

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I shouldn't call him sir, I should call him miss. He had a full beard. So what do you do with that?

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Because in New York, actually, if I call him sir when he says he has to be called miss, I can get fined $250 ,000.

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I don't actually have that much. Now I don't particularly care if someone tells me

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I have to call them something. I came up with a humorous way of getting around that.

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He said, you have to call me miss. I said, you have to call me your majesty, and don't forget to bow when you do so.

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And the crowd laughed at that, and he goes, I'm not doing that. Okay, neither am I. Now what happened?

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If he ever tries to say something, I said, well, he wouldn't call me by my preferred pronoun. Right? Now sometimes it backfires because we had one lady that she thought that was great, she did that.

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Is Jennifer Pepling, if you know her? I don't know if you know Giggles. Okay. Yeah, great comfort calls are

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Giggles. If you ever hear her laugh, you'd know why. But she basically, she had someone that actually was calling her your majesty and bowing.

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I mean, like a full bow, which just added to the humor, but she was like, okay, I guess I have to call you by your pronoun.

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You're respecting mine, I'll respect yours. But go with what they do sometimes, because sometimes that actually just helps in keeping the conversation going.

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Remember, we're not out there to win a debate, and it's not about us. And it's about Christ, and we need to present

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Christ. If we act like a jerk, we present Christ as a jerk. So just keeping that in mind and realizing, sometimes we take it personal what people say, but we have to keep in mind that most of the time, what they're reacting to is not us, unless we're being a jerk.

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It's the message that they already know is true. And so guess what?

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We'd be the same way. We have to remember that and keep that in mind.

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I used to go every Friday to the courthouse, and there's a beautiful thing about the courthouses in our country.

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It's a great place to go and evangelize. Why? Because every Monday, they bring in new jurors for you to hand gospel tracts out to.

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I would sit outside and just be like, did you get one of these? Did you get one of these? Did you get one of these? I sound like a broken record.

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But in my town, my county, 300 new jurors every Monday morning. And we had a couple of us that were doing it.

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Now, you can tell who the regulars are, because the regulars, they are there every day, so they've already gotten all the tracts, and they're like, no, thank you.

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You'll have a couple. There was one Jehovah Witness, two that just, I was told, they'll never take a gospel tract.

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My buddies who were there were doing it every three times a week for a year and a half before me. And I was going over to give someone a tract, and they said, oh, they just warned me, don't even bother, they'll never take a tract.

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I walked over, did you get one of these? They're like, no, thanks. I said, okay, this is what I said. I hope you have a nice weekend.

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With that, she turned and went, I'll take that. My buddies are like, what did you say to her? Have a nice weekend?

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Three people that I was told would never take a gospel tract, including a Jehovah Witness, took a gospel tract just because I was being polite, just because I was, you know.

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The irony is, I will, if people go to take a gospel tract, I'll say, did you get one of these? If they say yes,

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I usually don't say anything after that. I hand it to them, and they keep walking. If they say no, I'm more likely to say, have a nice day.

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I've had more people take a gospel tract on have a nice day than anything else.

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Okay, another quirk, this might not work in your area. You can find different things that work. If I have a guy who's like, you know, under 50,

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I call him boss for some reason, especially if he's a macho -looking guy. It works.

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I had a friend of mine in New York. He's like, there's no way you get people to take a gospel tract just by calling them boss. We're in New York, and I have the gospel tract out.

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This guy's already got his hand up. I'm like, did you get one of these, sir? And at this point,

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I said, did you get one of these? And he's like, here. And I said, you know, boss. And I call him boss, and literally, the guy went like this on the word boss and took the tract.

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And my buddy goes, that's incredible, I'm doing that. My buddy, Chad Williams, started calling everyone chief. He's a

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Navy SEAL, so maybe chief, you know, that's a Navy thing, so he started doing that. Strangely, it works for women. I don't know why women,

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I don't get it, but if you say to a woman, this is just for you, and they think like, this is the only one, and they're the only ones getting it, they take it.

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I don't know why. You know, when I went out to the Ambassador's Academy, we ordered, you could order tracts before, and they tell you, order how many tracts you think you can give out.

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And I ordered 1 ,000, and the guy who was leading it was like, he's like, I know some of you think you can give out lots of tracts today, and you ordered 1 ,000, you're never gonna give out that many tracts, share them with friends.

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After day one, I had given out over 700 tracts. I said, I think I need to order more, because we have two more days.

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He's like, excuse me, I'm from New York. No, it's because I found some dumb things that work really well.

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And so it gets the tracts out, all right? But guess who else can get defensive?

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I can. So I need to disarm my own defenses. Okay, and the way I learned to do that is asking good questions.

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Anyone know who Socrates is? Okay, anyone know the Socratic model?

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It's to teach by asking questions. Now this is a great way of teaching.

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I had two Jehovah's Witnesses, a couple. Came to my house for nine months. All I did was ask questions while I was teaching them.

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They were having some trouble trying to answer questions. Here's what a question does. A question actually changes the way you think.

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If I'm in an argument, all I gotta do is throw out arguments. I don't have to think about what you're saying.

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I don't have to give an account for it. I just have to poke holes in what you're saying. But if you ask me a question,

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I actually have to process the thought to give the answer. It's a difference, okay?

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And so Socrates realized that and came up with what's called the Socratic model. Now there's something about asking questions.

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The advantage of asking questions is it shows respect because the person is answering the question.

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One of the things in New York that I have, I have atheists and people who practice homosexuality that hate

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Christians, that have actually acted as bodyguards for me because I ask questions. Because they say, you show respect to us.

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You let us give answers to things. I don't know, I let you show how little you know. But you actually control the conversation with questions.

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And so I ask thousands of questions when I go out evangelizing. I'm just constantly asking questions. Someone will say, well,

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I'm an atheist. Really? Cool, what's your best argument for atheism? And it's funny because Bill, well,

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I don't want to get into this. What, you don't want to get into what you believe? I'm just asking your best argument. Maybe you can convince me.

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What's your best argument for atheism? Well, evolution. What's your proof for evolution? Well, just every scientist believes it.

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Well, I mean, it almost sounds like a logical fallacy. But what's your evidence for it? You could keep asking questions all day.

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The thing is, you can actually have fun asking questions. I was at Montclair State University and I had this guy who came up, he walks up to the table that we were at and he knew we were evangelizing.

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And he said, you people got to get an education. I said, really, why? He says, you guys have to realize that the

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Bible you hold was basically written down, the

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Catholic Church in the 1500s took it and replaced it with a different copy.

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You don't even know what was in the original Bible. I said, really? He said, you know, you sound really smart.

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You sound like you know what you're talking about. I'm not familiar with this. So this happened in the 1500s? Yes, and the

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Catholic Church had done this? Like with the Bibles all over the world? He's like, yes. I said,

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I mean, because if this is true, I mean, this could just blow a whole hole in my whole belief system. Maybe you can help me here.

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I said, can we walk through this? I mean, it's kind of hard for me to understand. Can we take a simpler example? He said, sure. I said, let's look at this school newspaper here.

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I said, how many of these does the school print? And he goes, he happened to be a photographer by the way. So he knew the exact number.

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It was like 1 ,500. He goes, they just came out today at 11. I go, OK, if I wanted to do what you were saying, like I want to take the school newspaper that just came out at 11 o 'clock today,

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I want to take them and I want to replace them with another copy, where would

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I look for the school paper? He's like, well, right there. I said, where else? He goes, well,

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I guess all over the student center. Where else? He goes, well, I guess in students' cars. Where else?

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He's like, in students' dorms. I'm like, where else? He's like, well, I guess where people work. I'm like, where else?

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He's like, I guess in the garbage. I said, OK, good. That was the one I wanted. So there's an important reason for garbage.

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So I said, well, let me understand this. So you're saying that if I wanted to do that, I can get a bunch of people to take this stack here, go all around the campus, go into people's cars and people's dorm rooms and people's workplaces in the garbage, and replace them all.

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And I guess I have a problem because now I can't throw out the old ones, because if I look in the garbage

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I can find that there was a change, right? He's like, yeah, I guess so. I said,

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OK, so how can I do that with the paper that just came out today? He goes, yeah, it's not making a lot of sense to me.

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I don't think that you could do that. I said, yeah, good, because it wasn't making sense to me either, because we have, with the

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Bible, not just right here that came out at 11 o 'clock today. If you look just at the

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Greek, we have about 8 ,000 manuscripts. And then you have the Hebrew, and then you have translations.

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When you add the translations, we have like 70 ,000 copies all over the world. And some that are within the first couple hundred years that we have existing today from within 100, 200 years of their writing.

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So for the Catholic Church to do that in the 1500s, I'm really confused, because we even find these manuscripts in the garbage.

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One of the oldest manuscripts we found was P52, which was found in a mummy's tomb. It was garbage they used to mummify someone.

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That's trash. We find some where they scrape the words off of the

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Bible and use it for paper, because paper was so expensive. But with the technology we have today, we can actually see the words underneath.

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That's garbage. So we can see the garbage, and guess what? There wasn't the changes that you were talking about.

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So I'm confused. Help me understand this. And he's just like, oh, I don't think this is possible.

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And I go, I agree with you. You know what I did the whole time? I just asked questions and played dumb.

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I had fun. It was a fun conversation for me. But he was in the hot seat. That's what a question does.

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I'll tell you why I learned to do this with evangelism. I said I do dumb things. Here's a dumb thing.

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The guys on my board, they love this story, because I look really stupid. I'm convinced that's why. It's a good thing

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Pastor Jim is not here to hear it. Okay, so I was in Freehold, New Jersey.

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And this was before I knew of Ray Comfort and learned all the, he has all these techniques that he teaches people about open air.

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I didn't know that. But I knew that elevation was good. So I was standing on this ledge, just so my voice would carry a lot further.

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And I'm sharing the gospel. And this guy walks up to me. And he comes in from the right. And he says,

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Christians are stupid. I said, really?

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I said, why would you say that? He goes, I'll prove it. He goes, how many chromosomes are there in a human being?

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Who knows the answer? 41. You're close.

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Multiply it by two. 46. 46. So, you get 20, he goes, 23 from the mother, 23 from the father.

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He goes, I said 46. And I said, 23 from the mother, 23 from the father. He goes, see, that's how stupid

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Christians are. You can't divide 23 by two. You're laughing because you realize what he did.

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You don't divide 23, you divide 46. So what did I say in my ingenious moment?

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I went, you're such an idiot. You don't divide 23 by two, you divide 46 by two.

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And he walked away. You know, it's kind of interesting because I reflected on that. And I said, I realized something that just happened.

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He got me upset. I acted like an idiot. And in his pride, he can now walk away feeling he's in the right.

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And he walked away because I got defensive over something he said. No, I did what

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I know every one of you would do. You realize you're doing something wrong, you repent, right? That's exactly what

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I did. I said, Lord, that was wrong of me to do. I shouldn't have done this. Please forgive me. Give me a second chance to talk to him.

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And God is so gracious. You know what he does? Here comes a guy right here from my left side. He's walking by. And he goes, are you still stupid?

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And my ingenious comment was, are you still an idiot? Eh? Okay, I did say earlier that I take a little bit longer than you guys to learn, right?

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So I literally was like, Lord, three? Three times? Like, I'll do better this time, really.

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And here he comes again. Lord gives me a third chance. I got down from my ledge. I walked over to him and said, sir, the way

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I spoke to you was wrong and rude. Will you please forgive me? He goes, well, you're still stupid. And he walked off.

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But I learned a very valuable lesson that I can get defensive. And when I get defensive, it can allow a person to walk away in pride feeling they're in the right.

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I didn't want that. I want them feeling they're in the wrong even when they walk away. I want them feeling that they have nothing that they could say about me and the way

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I conduct myself that will justify them ignoring the gospel. And that's when I started using questions.

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And just asking tons of questions until I realized it takes all the pressure off me and puts it on them.

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How would you have said it instead? Huh? How would you have said it instead? Oh, now? Well, I don't know.

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I probably would have asked the question instead of saying, I probably would have asked, why are you dividing 23 by two instead of 46?

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I probably, you know, it's hard to say what I would say because, like, this is why I give stories of what I have said. Because, you know, a lot of times you don't know what you're gonna say until it happens.

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But I'll tell you one thing, the more you practice it, you find you say the same, some things you say over and over again. You may sound like a broken record, but that might be the first time they're hearing you.

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And it's because it's just easier as you continue to do it, you find things that work for your personality. And I'm saying this because you're not like me and I'm not like you guys.

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So I'm giving general pointers because I want you to figure out what works for your personality. As long as you're not doing anything that's against scripture you know, but, so the thing that I ended up realizing is,

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I gotta, you know, I gotta watch my own defenses. So I started learning to ask questions. Very powerful tool, okay?

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And so when you do that, you're disarming yourself. Now, they're disarmed and I'm disarmed, guess what?

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Now we can have the conversation. So at that point, what do

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I wanna do? Well, I wanna avoid being judgmental because I got news for you. In our culture right now, just saying you're a

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Christian, they assume you're judgmental. How do I avoid that? Well, I avoid being called judgmental by using the law, okay?

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I used to do this when, okay, when I was in college, I started to realize the advantage of using the

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Ten Commandments, to using the law of God to explain what sin is because I'm sorry to explain, to tell you guys, but Christians talk funny.

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Coming from a Jewish background, I didn't understand all the lingo that you guys have, okay?

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And neither do unbelievers. I went door -to -door with a friend of mine once, literally, he's knocking on the door, woman opens the door, he's like, hi, you know, we're from such and such church and I'm just wondering if you're washed in the blood of Jesus Christ.

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Kaboom! I'm looking, I'm like, Bernie, what in the world are you saying?

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He's like, what? It's biblical language. What is she thinking? I'm like, she thinks you wanna wash her physical blood.

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I'm like, don't use that language. We have to realize that there's sometimes we use

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Christian language that unbelievers don't know and because of that, we have to be careful.

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When we use the term sinner, I mean, just walk up to people and say, what's a sinner? You'll find that the majority of people have no idea what the term sinner means.

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It's just a bad person. Why is it a bad person? What makes a person a sinner? Most people can't tell you that but if I ask them, have you ever lied?

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Have you ever stolen? Have you ever looked with lust, which would be adultery of the heart? They understand those things, right?

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So what am I doing? By the way, what am I doing? I'm asking questions, right? But what

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I'm doing there is defining what a sinner is for them by something they do understand. I mean, you could go online with Ray Comfort and watch all his videos.

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You can watch videos, I don't have too many because I hate being, I hate doing the videos. But the thing is, when you watch videos, you'll see, or if you go out time and time again, here's how the conversation goes.

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And I mean, it happens so often. So do you consider yourself to be a good person? Oh yes, I'm a great person.

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By the way, 90 % of the people think they're a good person. 5 % think they're a great person.

29:14

3 % think they're an awesome person and 2 % are honest, okay? So just general, completely subjective from my studies.

29:25

But they say they're a good person. Have you ever lied? Yes. What does that make you?

29:32

Number one answer I get, human. Number two answer I get, sinner.

29:40

Very rarely do I get liar. So it's usually human, sinner, bad person, not liar.

29:48

So here's what I do. I say, if I lied to you, what would you call me? Liar. And it's amazing how fast that comes out when it's me.

29:54

When it's me being the liar, it's like, out quick. Now I do that on purpose, you know why? Because I say, it's amazing.

30:00

You know, it's amazing how quick you could call me a liar, but you had a little bit more difficulty identifying yourself as one. I say, do you ever notice that that's how we are?

30:08

We can always identify faults in others. We have a harder time identifying it in ourselves. If you're like, oh yeah.

30:14

Notice that was a question mark. I'll say, okay, have you ever stolen anything? Yes, what does that make you?

30:20

Number one answer is, stealer. My answer is, that's a football team in Pittsburgh.

30:27

Why, because they laugh. And then they'll say thief. And I correct them.

30:33

No, you said you're a lying thief. Now, if you're doing it well, they're laughing even at that.

30:40

Because they still think it's funny a lot of times. They're not really thinking through it sometimes. Yeah, you can ask them.

30:46

Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever, go through it, think about it. Have you ever dishonored your parents? Have you always obeyed your parents?

30:54

Have you ever looked at something, coveted it? Have you ever committed adultery? Now, I only had,

31:00

I usually don't for guys, I don't ask women if they committed adultery. I slipped once, I don't know why I did it.

31:05

I said, have you ever committed adultery? And a woman said, yes. And I was like, okay, we're just, that just made that conversation uncomfortable and we're not gonna go there.

31:13

But I don't ask women if they, I just tend to avoid that one, from a guy to a girl.

31:19

Same, if a girl's talking to a guy, I just suggest avoiding that one on opposite sex. But I can ask, have you ever murdered anyone?

31:26

And they say, no. And I say, have you ever been angry? Now see, in New Jersey, you can't drive on the roads without being angry.

31:33

So, I know that anybody in New Jersey, or in New York, I got you, okay?

31:38

Okay, so the things I'll say, have you ever been angry? You know, God says, if you hate someone in your heart, you committed murder of the heart.

31:48

So what would that make you? Murderer, a murderer of the heart, yeah. You know, lying, thieving, murderer of the heart.

31:54

Now sometimes you get some strange conversations. This is a true conversation. I was in the mall, evangelizing. I have a guy comes up, and I said, so let me ask you a question, sir, do you consider yourself to be a good person?

32:06

He goes, I am an awesome person. I mean, he emphasized the word awesome.

32:12

He was, and so, have you ever lied? Sure, what does it make you? You know, liar, have you ever stolen?

32:17

Yes. What does that make you, a thief? Have you ever murdered someone? Yes. So my question, you know, because I don't know if he, some people confuse murder and killing.

32:31

So I said, you don't happen to be in law enforcement or military. He goes, they weren't legal killings.

32:38

Killings, I heard, hmm. Okay. I got a little bit nervous.

32:45

So what happens? I said, hey, because I'm feeling nervous myself right now. I'm like, can we go back to that first question?

32:53

Do you consider yourself to be a good person? He goes, oh yeah, I guess that, he goes, I guess I should rethink that.

32:59

And he was like, he was actually, because of the way I was conducting myself, I was a little bit nervous, but he started to lighten up a little.

33:06

And we had a great conversation. Okay, and we got to realize he's not such a good person after all.

33:13

Okay, so you have to, and there are things that when you go through this, that you will find people have different defense mechanisms that you may not expect.

33:24

I remember once I was at a, I was at a park, and this guy,

33:31

I'm going through a good person test, and usually where you get people to start getting convicted is where you ask them, okay, so you admit to being a lying, thieving, murderer at heart.

33:40

If God was to judge you by the 10 Commandments, would you be innocent or guilty?

33:45

That's the first question that gets them to start realizing they have to admit they would be guilty. Okay, if they say they're innocent, but no, the standard is

33:54

God's, you've admitted to breaking the lying, the stealing, the murder of heart. By that standard, would you be guilty?

34:02

By that standard, not yours. Okay, you're guilty. So the second question that gets them thinking, if not that one, is would you, and this is how

34:10

I word it, not which do you want, but by that standard, which would you deserve, heaven or hell?

34:17

So we all want heaven, right? Which would we deserve? Oh, hell.

34:23

Now, at that point, this one time in the park, I had a guy do something that for some men would be uncomfortable.

34:30

He started touching me. He starts like this on my arm, and I took a step back, and that distance that was made was enough that he just turned and walked away from the conversation.

34:47

I learned something else, that sometimes people have some different types of ways, not verbal ways of ending a conversation, but different ways, and that was unnerving.

34:55

I had that happen a second time. I actually caught it on video. We had a video recorder going, and this guy walks up, and literally, he's touching me everywhere as he's talking.

35:07

He's like, well, you know, I don't think that I'm that bad of a person, and I'm just like, you know, I realized,

35:13

I'm just gonna stand here and endure this for Christ. Christ endured way more than just some guy touching.

35:18

You know, you try to kiss me, okay, well, then you're gonna be unconscious. I'm sorry, but, you know, but, you know,

35:26

I'm like, I can just stand here, and we kept, and I could see with him, and he was, he was,

35:31

I think he figured I would be upset with that, and I would walk away, because it was unnerving me.

35:37

I think he even saw that it was unnerving me, but I just kept talking to him. I ignored what he was doing, kept talking to him, and so sometimes people will do some different things, okay?

35:50

So that's how I go about evangelizing, okay? Disarming their defenses by being polite. Disarm my defenses by asking good questions.

35:58

Don't be judgmental by using the law, because when I use the law, all I'm doing is, I go up all the time.

36:03

Now, I have one goal in evangelism. My number one goal in evangelism, when I do open air, is to share the gospel on mortar day.

36:12

I have a second purpose in doing this, a second goal that I have. Whenever I get up and do open air,

36:17

I wanna communicate the gospel, and I wanna get one professing atheist to tell another professing atheist to shut up.

36:26

One of the things that I get a lot of dialogue back and forth about is, what is the minimum requirement to share the gospel?

36:37

Do you mind giving an example? Yeah, I'm gonna get to that, yep. I'm gonna get to that. Don't be about judgmental.

36:43

Nope. So, because I wanna get to the message of the gospel in the last 15 minutes.

36:49

Actually, I'm watching the clock, and I have a 15 minute block for each. So when I do open air, I wanna conduct myself in such a way, right?

36:56

I said this is ambassador evangelism. I wanna conduct myself in such a way that I get one person who hates the message that I'm proclaiming, telling another person who hates the message that I'm proclaiming to shut up.

37:10

In other words, they see that that person's being rude, and I'm being polite. They see that the way

37:16

I'm treating someone is respectful, and they're being disrespectful. Now, what does that do in the mind of a person?

37:23

They end up, even though they're disagreeing with the message because they like the messenger, they're more likely to listen.

37:31

Okay, I have that happen regularly. But that's the goal. I actually want that.

37:37

I actually wanna see someone that disagrees with the message tell someone else to shut up. Why? Because I wanna have myself,

37:43

I wanna conduct myself in such a way that I represent Christ, that I'm not acting like the jerk in the conversation.

37:52

Okay, does that make sense? So, if we're doing all of this, you get a person, you go through the good person test.

38:02

I do like the good person test. I do like going through the law, help them see what sin is.

38:07

Because what you're doing is you can say, this is how God defines sin. Now that I've gone through this,

38:13

I can explain it. This list is what God would call sin. I mean, you could do a whole bunch of other things other than the

38:19

Ten Commandments, but I can use them. Right? And so, going through that,

38:25

I can say this is how God judges us. Now, if they recognize they'd be guilty, that they'd be deserving of hell, okay, do you know what

38:35

God did to make a way of escape for you? Just how I word it.

38:40

You can word it however, but that's how I word it. And the answer typically is, sent

38:46

Jesus, sent his son. Now, I don't, by the way, when I'm in public, I do not refer to Jesus as the son of God.

38:53

It's a biblical term. I agree. No one in our day and age understands it. They think he's offspring.

39:00

Causes confusion. I call him God, because that's what the term means. I'll say, no,

39:06

God died on the cross for you. Jesus Christ was God himself. God came to earth as a man who died in your place.

39:14

So, there's a couple things that you want to make sure that you communicate when you communicate the gospel. First, as we use the law, we communicate that they're guilty, right?

39:25

The other thing that I want to communicate is that they can't be saved by works. Their works won't save them.

39:32

And I do it by some different illustrations. If you go on our website, strivingforcourting .org,

39:38

I have a message called the most important message you could ever hear. You could click on that, just click and listen.

39:44

That's me sharing the gospel to an imaginary person in a radio station. Okay, and you'll hear all my illustrations that I use and things like that.

39:52

But it's basically me giving a 30 -minute gospel presentation. So, you could take that and use the different things to see if it works for you.

40:01

One guy was really upset. He's like, I feel so, I'm gonna do open air and I feel bad that you're standing here. I'm like, why? He goes, because I'm gonna use your doctor illustration.

40:08

I said, that's okay. I think I stole it from Todd Friel. You know?

40:14

So, there's probably nothing original in these. So, don't worry. But the reality is that what

40:21

I wanna do is I wanna communicate to them why works can't save. And I have an illustration there that I probably stole from someone else about a guy's fishing, you know, a father -son fishing with an alligator.

40:31

And basically what I try to do though is I try to communicate that for us to think that the works that we do compared to the work that Jesus did on that cross, that's the comparison.

40:41

I mean, you just think about this. Our sin's so bad that God himself had to come to earth, die on a cross, that we could be forgiven.

40:50

And we go, oh, but look, I walked that old lady across the street. Oh, I gave some money to a homeless person.

40:57

Oh, I went to church. You know, I mean, seriously. Think of the best thing you've ever done in your life and now compare that to an eternal being coming to earth and becoming one of his creation for the sole purpose of being nailed to a cross by his own creation so that he, being an eternal being, can suffer an eternal fine so that we can be set free.

41:25

Yeah, whatever we thought just doesn't compare anymore. I mean, that comparison actually is disingenuous.

41:31

When we think that our works, like God should think about our works, compared to the work he did, it suddenly becomes really disrespectful for us to think that our works should be considered when we think of what he did, right?

41:43

So I try to communicate that point. Once they understand that, then they realize we can't save ourselves, so we need a savior, right?

41:54

Then we can explain that Christ died. He died as a punishment of sin. What I often do is

42:01

I try to explain why Jesus was different than, you know, is the fact that he's fully God, fully man, or truly

42:07

God, truly man. In the fact that being a human being, having never broken the law, he can be that unblemished sacrifice we talked about this morning, right?

42:22

It's because he never broke the law that he is that perfect sacrifice. He can be the sacrifice for you and I. Here's the thing.

42:29

In the court systems, if you break a law, I can actually pay the fine for you. There's some rules to it.

42:36

I have to be innocent of the crime. I have to be of the right state of mind, so in my case, I'm free, and you have to accept it.

42:43

So if, in our case, we did the crime, and Jesus did the time, he actually paid that, but he has to be innocent of any crime.

42:55

So if the crime is against God, he's gotta be innocent of any crime, all of it, because if he breaks one part of the law, he's guilty of it, and therefore, he didn't need to spend eternity in the lake of fire.

43:08

So he had to be perfect. So he had to be a man to do that, but being God, he can pay an eternal fine.

43:17

I always explain it this way. If I was perfect, say, and any of you have already met me, you already know this isn't true, but say

43:23

I was a perfect human being. I could pay the fine for another human being, but guess what? I can only pay for one because it's an eternal fine.

43:31

Being an eternal fine, I can only pay for one person. No offense to any of you, it would be my wife, none of you, sorry, right?

43:39

And I used that, what did I just do? I used humor, and got him to crack a smile. Right, it's humorous, but I'm still communicating a point.

43:51

Jesus being eternal God paid that fine once in time, but because he's eternal, he counted for eternity, and he can pay it for more than one person.

44:01

That's what makes Jesus different. See, now what did I just do? I did a little theology lesson, didn't I? But in that theology,

44:08

I made the difference of what makes Christianity different than every other world religion as well, while explaining why it was what

44:15

Christ did on the cross, and he vindicated it. He proved that he was who he said he was.

44:23

He proved that he offers the forgiveness of sin. You know how he did it? He said, I'll be in the ground, three days later,

44:30

I'll raise myself from the dead. You know what dead people do? Rot. They don't raise themselves from the dead.

44:39

He said, I'll raise myself three days later. So that's the message that we end up wanting to communicate.

44:49

We want to talk about what makes Christ different. We want to talk about the fact that he died, what's special about his death, the fact that he was buried, but we also want to talk about the resurrection.

45:03

Now if you do want, in the back of my book, I actually added,

45:09

I think it was last year, I added an addendum to that, because I never knew that that book was actually going to be used as an evangelism tool.

45:17

I expected it to be used for Christians, to learn about other religions. And I kind of put a chapter in there on Christianity, just so that people would be able to see the difference of Christianity compared to all these other religions.

45:30

Now people kept buying it as an evangelism tool, which it wasn't meant for. So I added an epilogue to the book that is, first, the epilogue is the uniqueness of Christianity, which goes over one of the things

45:43

I just mentioned, that Christ is truly God and truly man. Second thing it goes over is that only in Christianity, you think about all the religions, only

45:52

Christianity can have a solution to God being both just and merciful. Do you ever think about that?

46:00

If I hit Justin, and I would, and the law said that Justin can hit me back.

46:13

That's the law. So now I smack him. If he's gonna be just, he smacks me back.

46:21

If he's gonna be merciful, he doesn't. Can he be both?

46:29

He can't be both, right? Because if he just gives me a tap, guess what? He wasn't just, and he wasn't merciful.

46:37

Only in Christianity do you have a God that is both just and merciful. I know, Muslims will say,

46:43

Allah most merciful, and they'll say he's just, but he let sinners off just on his own whims, right?

46:50

So when you look at that, you start to realize, only Christianity has a solution to this, because God himself paid the full price.

47:01

The payment was made, he was just, he did punish. Punished himself, and now he can offer mercy.

47:09

So that's the second thing that makes Christianity unique. The third thing that makes Christianity unique, from every world religion, it is the only religion in the world where God does all the work.

47:20

Every other religion adds human effort in some capacity. Christianity is the only one that says

47:28

God does it all. So if you wanna know which, and I tell people all the time, I'll ask people, I'll say, how many religions are there in the world?

47:36

Huh? You already know the answer, cheater. You get hundreds, you get the answer, a thousand, some people try it.

47:42

14 ,361, and I go, two, man -made and divine.

47:49

Now, is there an objective way that we can know which ones are man -made and which ones would be divine?

47:55

That's the question, right? Well, there happens to be an objective way. What do we know about humans?

48:02

They love to praise themselves, right? Right? So I'll tell people, you know, if there's a king and he loses a war, what does he do in the journals?

48:13

He talks about the battles that he won, right? He doesn't talk about the war he lost, he talks about the battles he won. Because men like to praise their own efforts.

48:21

So one of the things we know is that man -made religion, it's gonna be one where man praises himself. They add the works.

48:29

They may be completely based on their works, or it could be their faith plus their works. Who am

48:34

I hitting with that one? Well, Mormons too, but specifically Catholics, because that's exactly how they work, right?

48:41

And so in some ways, I'll say, you know, there's some element of works. Sometimes you'll get, you know, like I had a

48:48

Buddhist. No, we don't add works. I just said, okay, how do you get a better life in the next life?

48:54

He goes, well, it's based on what you do in this life. I say, you mean the works we do? No! You see, there's only one in all the religions, there's only one that says

49:07

God did all the work. He did it on the cross, and it's Christian. So if I wanna know objectively which religion is divine, all

49:14

I gotta do is look at these things. It's the only one that has God doing all the work, and not men praising themselves, okay?

49:22

So that's how we'd end up doing that, right? And so that'd be the message I end up doing. If you're like,

49:29

I don't know if I could do it, that's why I put, you know, you could go on the website and listen to the most important message you could ever hear.

49:36

Just go and listen to it over and over again. I know that people have done this, that they've listened to that, they literally have memorized that, and they go out and they try to do that.

49:45

I don't encourage you to do that for long. If you do that because you're nervous, you know, fine, do that, but then make it your own.

49:53

Use your own personality so it's you, right? Don't try to be me, don't try to be Ray Comfort.

50:00

You know, you're not gonna pull it off, you know? Because it's not gonna be who you are, right?

50:08

So you wanna use it as an outline, not a routine, okay?

50:15

So I have 10 minutes left, let me get to some of the biggest questions or challenges that you get on the street, okay?

50:23

Number one, and if you go out and you start talking to people, I'm not a prophet, it's just that this has happened so often that I can predict this.

50:31

If you go out and you stay out and you talk to a number of people, maybe a half dozen people, and you get into some good conversations, you will be challenged in some way with the trustworthiness of the

50:43

Bible. It's gonna come differently. Well, the Bible's been edited, the Bible has contradictions. Men wrote the Bible. I mean, they're gonna ask it different ways, but what they're addressing is whether the

50:52

Bible can be trusted, that's what they're addressing, okay? So there's not enough time to get into that.

51:02

There is a study of textual criticism. If you wanna learn more on that, my book, What Do We Believe, chapter two, covers that.

51:10

The chapter's actually such an important thing that we put that into Dr. Silvestra's book, I think it's chapter seven in his book, okay?

51:17

If you have the book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, my buddy Matt Slick wrote the chapter, same topic on there, okay?

51:24

So three different books, if you've gotten any of those three books today, or last time I was out, that's where you can find those chapters and give you more information.

51:31

But you say, I don't have a background in textual criticism, I don't understand it. Well, good, let me give you an easy way to get around the issue, okay?

51:42

What I do when people say, well, the Bible was written by men, because that's the most common. If they say,

51:47

Bible has contradictions, just ask them for one. Because they usually go, they're all over the place. Good, then you should be able to give me one.

51:55

If they do try to give you one, well, typically, literally, all you have to do is just go up a few verses and start reading there.

52:03

Read to the verse that they said and keep going a little bit. And usually you'll figure out that the answer's right there somewhere, okay?

52:12

If you don't have an answer, just say, well, hey, give me your email, I'll get back to you with that. You know, they probably won't give you their email because they really don't care for the answer, but then go study that one thing that they asked you, okay?

52:23

You can get Jason Lyle's book that he had here yesterday on reasoning of faith, okay?

52:31

But what I'll do is I'll get someone and say, well, men wrote the Bible, and I want to get the issue of trust.

52:37

I'll say, oh, so you don't trust things that men write? And they'll go, no, because they're thinking only of the

52:43

Bible. So I like to ask it like three or four different ways. So you mean the fact that men wrote it means it can't be trusted?

52:49

That's right. So if men write something, we shouldn't trust it, right? Yeah. Do you believe in, do you trust in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution?

52:57

Yes. I used to actually carry a copy of it in my preaching bag and I'd pull it out and go, and I'd look at it and go, that's funny, it was written by a man.

53:07

In fact, almost everything you know, you learn from other people. If we can't trust it, then we shouldn't send kids to school because you can't trust things people say.

53:19

Everything you know is from another person, right? And they'll go, oh, well,

53:24

Charles Darwin was a trustworthy person. Now, in that case, I have the background in textual criticism, so I love when they go there because then

53:29

I can talk about how it is trustworthy. And I go, now you explain to me the reasons you don't think it's trustworthy. And they go, yeah, I've never seen it.

53:36

Because what is the apologetics supposed to do? Shut their mouth.

53:42

We're not there to win a debate. The apologetics has one purpose and one purpose only, to shut their mouth so you can share the gospel.

53:49

So you can stop thinking highly of themselves so you can share the gospel. Other thing that comes up almost all the time, oh, go ahead.

54:00

So, when you're dealing with a whole, it was written by a man, did you not bring up the divine inspiration?

54:06

Nope. Nope, I don't even bring it up. You know why? It's not the issue. You know, it's really not the issue.

54:16

The issue's not that. As much as the fact that they're saying you just can't trust it.

54:23

Now, there may be times I get into it, but generally I don't because for the most part, that's not the real question.

54:29

Because the real thing is, they want to challenge me with that. So what

54:35

I want to do is I want to ask them questions. I want to get them having to answer for their worldview. They just said we can't trust anything written by men, and yet they trust things written by men.

54:45

That's the argument. I'm going to ask a question to challenge it, right? Now, if they say the

54:50

Bible's full of contradictions, I could say, well, they might seem like contradictions, but I can get in and just say, the reason there can't be a contradiction is because its author can't lie.

55:04

Well, men wrote it. Well, no, actually God wrote it. And now

55:09

I can get into it, but you have to be careful with it because sometimes it's just a distraction. Remember, many of the people you're speaking with don't understand theology.

55:18

They don't understand the concept of divine inspiration. Right? So they just think it sounds weird.

55:27

So I may not get into it. Generally, I don't need to because that's not really their issue. Their issue is they want to challenge me.

55:36

And questions do that. Questions get you to a great book. If you want to learn how to ask questions, a great book is

55:41

Greg Koukl's Tactics. Don't get it, don't go buy it yet because he's actually coming out with a new edition.

55:51

So, if you already have it, then be like me and go get the new edition. The second challenge

55:58

I want to deal with, it comes up a lot, maybe it's just in the area I live, is homosexuality.

56:04

Comes up all the time. What do you think about homosexuality? You know what my answer is when someone asks me what

56:12

I think about homosexuality is? I don't care, just don't try to kiss me. Because I don't,

56:18

I really don't care, right? It doesn't affect me. You try to kiss me, it's going to affect me and it's going to affect you in a really bad way.

56:26

But the reality is, in one sense, it doesn't bother, someone practicing homosexuality where I don't know it doesn't bother me personally anymore than someone telling a lie that I don't know about.

56:39

You lie to me, I'm going to be concerned about, right? Then I care. You try to kiss me,

56:45

I'm going to care, right? But here's why I do that. What does it do? They are typically wanting to get you because they think everyone's just supposed to think homosexuality is right.

56:58

So they ask that question to put you in a defensive posture. What did I just do? I just took the rug that they're standing on, went whoosh, and ripped it out from underneath them.

57:08

The follow up they almost always say is, well, what does God think about it? They want me to get defensive again, right?

57:16

Bless you. So what do I do? I ask a question. What do you think that God thinks about it?

57:23

They almost always say, he says it's a sin or it's wrong. I did this at Princeton University.

57:29

I had a guy who actually, the guy who was doing open air preaching before me, they called the police on him for being homophobic.

57:38

So the police are trying to talk to us to take a statement because they want to press charges. I asked the officers if it's okay if I get up and do some open air.

57:45

And he's like, oh yeah, sure. I just got to take statements. So I get up there and this guy, James, what do you think about homosexuality?

57:51

I don't care, just don't try to kiss me. He said, what does God think about it? I said, what do you think

57:59

God says about it? He says, God says it's a sin. I agree. He ran over to the officer and said, arrest him.

58:07

He said something about it against homosexuality. I turned to the officer, I said, he said it was a sin, not me.

58:13

Arrest him. And the officer goes, he's got a point. Right?

58:19

I wasn't on the defensive. Why? I just asked a question. That's all

58:24

I was doing. Okay. Okay. Well, for us, yes.

58:37

For God, no. God judges the sinner. So God is angry with the wicked every day, according to Psalm 711.

58:46

And so people say that about God. That's not true. For us, that is true.

58:53

We should hate the sin and love the sinner. Because guess what? We're a sinner too. Well, you mean, if they say, well,

59:04

God says to love the, if they say God says that? Well, if they're. Well, yeah,

59:15

I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say, because the only way, if they ask me, what do I think about it?

59:20

If you're saying, well, I hate the sin, but love the sinner, that'd be fine. If they're saying it for God, I wouldn't say that then.

59:27

Because see, then they think, well, God loves me. Because there's a kind of a gospel tract that says, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

59:34

It's the worst thing ever. Because they think, God loves me the way I am, I don't have to change. And you know how

59:40

I know that? Because people say that to me. They say, well, God loves me. Yeah, what verse is that?

59:48

And then they go, uh, because they've just heard it so much, they think it's in the Bible. You know?

59:54

No, it's not, I'm sorry. So let me give you an encounter I had with another guy,

01:00:00

James, in New York City. And this kind of goes through how I deal with homosexuality. But in a real -life case, and I'll explain, you know, give you a way of doing it.

01:00:10

I was in New York, and this guy, James, we had a group of people that practice homosexuality that were kind of challenging me as I was doing open air.

01:00:17

And he asks, you know, he's like, you know, what do you think about homosexuality? And the first thing

01:00:23

I actually did was I said, sir, what's your name? And notice I called him sir first. I said, what's your name?

01:00:29

Because I want to call him by name. You want to see how using someone's name works, go on our YouTube channel, just go to Striking Fraternity's YouTube channel, and look at, just search for demon -possessed.

01:00:40

Open air preaching to a demon -possessed heckler, I think is what it's called. This guy, Will. And I actually, you see

01:00:45

Will, every time I use his name, Will, he actually would calm down. But this guy,

01:00:51

James, I said to him, he says, James, I said, you know, I don't care, don't try to kiss me.

01:00:57

He says, what does God think? I said, well, what do you think God thinks? He said, well, God says it's a sin. I said, I agree with you.

01:01:03

He said, well, would God send me to hell for having sex with other men?

01:01:11

Now, there's a couple ways, I could just say yes, right? But with him with his buddies, what does he want to do?

01:01:16

They want to put themselves on a pedestal and put me down, right? And they want to say that I think I'm holier than that.

01:01:21

I already, I kind of know that because that's the common thing that they do. So here's what I ended up doing. I said,

01:01:27

James, now I asked this question first, and I have a purpose for it, but it didn't work well with James.

01:01:33

I said, James, can I go and have sex with every woman that I lust after out here? And he said, no.

01:01:40

Now, there's a reason I asked that question. I want to get certain things committed to up front because later

01:01:46

I'm going to use them. And you learn which things you need to get committed to up front. The reason I wanted that up front because I thought typically the conversation goes where he's going to say, well,

01:01:54

I was born this way, right? I can go have sex with other men because I'm born this way. When they say that,

01:02:01

I go, well, we already established that just because I lust after a woman doesn't give me the right to have sex with her. You see?

01:02:07

Well, I get them to commit to that before that part of the conversation comes. Now, that never happened with James, but I did ask him.

01:02:14

I said, can I go have sex with every woman that I lust after out here? He goes, no. I said, okay, do you lie?

01:02:22

He said, yes. I said, me too. So we're both liars. Now, what am I doing with James? Am I putting myself above him?

01:02:30

Yeah, I'm disarming and I'm putting myself on the same level as him, aren't I? I'm saying I do the same thing. I said, so you practice homosexuality?

01:02:39

He said, yeah. I said, I lie. We both break God's law. I said, you know what?

01:02:46

Let me make it more personal. Do you lust after men? He said, yes. I said, you know what?

01:02:52

I lust after women. Guess what? God says both of them are committing adultery of the heart.

01:02:58

It's breaking his law. You and I both break the same sins. And what am

01:03:04

I doing? I'm not putting myself above him, am I? I'm saying I'm just like you. Both of us would be guilty in God's sight.

01:03:12

Both of us would deserve hell. Now, in this case, I wasn't asking the questions of the good person test just because of the dynamic that we were in.

01:03:19

But I was putting myself at the same level. I said to him, I said, in fact, you might be,

01:03:24

I said, you might be a more moral person than I am, but it's not our morality that gets us in a right state with God.

01:03:33

Now, what did I just do? I actually put him above me morally. And he was like, no, no, no, no.

01:03:39

I said, no, really, I live with myself. I know how bad I am, right? I'm using humor. Who am

01:03:44

I insulting now? Self, and I'm lifting him up, right? So he sits there and I got to explain the gospel to him.

01:03:54

What did I do? I don't even address that. I went to a gay pride parade. I never even addressed the issue of homosexuality once. I didn't need to.

01:03:59

They already know it's wrong. Now, James, this is just a fun story. But with James, what he did is, with any of my hecklers,

01:04:07

I want to shake their hand. So James, you know, I said, James, will you shake my hand? And he's like starting to make a walk out and he's starting to put his hand out and his buddies grab him by the shoulder.

01:04:17

Don't give into that question, right? And he does one of these.

01:04:23

He does a shoulder pull. And he goes, no, I am gonna shake his hand. He said, he didn't judge me.

01:04:29

He treated me with respect and he taught me some things. I'm gonna shake his hand. So I'm standing on my box.

01:04:35

I see him coming over. His hand is, I did whatever, what any of you would do. I came down, his hand's out. I just smacked it away.

01:04:42

And I just gave him a big hug. I wish I had a video of that because the look on his face when

01:04:49

I gave him a hug, it was not what he was expecting. And he just looked at me and said,

01:04:54

I am never gonna forget you. I said, forget all about me. Never forget about Jesus and what I told you. And when he was walking away, and this is the thing you have to understand.

01:05:04

Someone could walk away, but he's in a culture where they're not supposed to ever give into Christians.

01:05:10

He was walking away like this. As his friends were literally grabbing him by the shoulder, pulling him, he kept looking back.

01:05:19

I don't know where James is, but I wanna think that because of the way I conducted myself because of the message

01:05:25

I communicated, he realized Christians aren't all like the way

01:05:32

ATV portrays them. I wanna be that good ambassador. Just as a tag along on that, keep in mind that people are not lost because they're homosexual.

01:05:47

They're homosexual because they're lost. Good point. Does that make sense? Hold on, let me tweet that out real quick.

01:05:55

Yeah, they're not lost because they're homosexual. They're homosexual because they're lost. There's two ladies, two lesbian ladies that just moved into my neighborhood, and I just met them for the first time the other day.

01:06:08

I mean, I can tell they're lesbians. Are you judging them? I mean, it's obvious.

01:06:17

And I just introduced myself, and I didn't immediately go right for the jugular or anything like that.

01:06:25

I just wanted to say hello, get to know them. They had a dog out there. I had my little dog with me that I was walking, so we started talking about our dogs and stuff like that.

01:06:36

And anyway, I was on my way back to the hatchet. It was starting to rain, so I had to leave anyway.

01:06:41

But I just wanted to leave a good impression with them, you know, just be very nice and cordial, and they seemed to respond.

01:06:49

And next chance I get when I'm out walking the dog and they're out, I'm gonna share the gospel with them.

01:06:56

But I'm not even gonna talk about their homosexuality. I'm not even gonna talk about their lesbianism.

01:07:01

I don't have to, because they're liars. They're thieves. They're blasphemers. You know, they're covetous.

01:07:09

And so if someone is saved, if they hear the gospel and God grants them faith and repentance, the homosexuality will go away.

01:07:21

So you share the gospel with a homosexual the exact same way you share the gospel with anybody else. There's nothing special about that sin that makes it any more difficult.

01:07:31

So that's a good way, just like what Andrew was saying, you kind of disarm them, because they have this stereotype of Christians in their minds.

01:07:39

And you don't even have to go to the homosexuality. God saves them, that stuff will go away. You know, I was in Cleveland after a pride parade.

01:07:49

And, you know, I mean, it kept coming up. They kept bringing it up. I kept ignoring it and going to lying and thieving and, you know, other sins.

01:08:00

And, you know, it was interesting because four of the people that were giving me the hardest time after I got down came over to apologize.

01:08:09

I had the same experience, but sharing the gospel with somebody that aged me up. And they kept pushing it.

01:08:16

And I did exactly like you said, as far as, I said, you know,

01:08:22

I told them about, you know, I struggled with lust as a woman. You know, that's what I mean.

01:08:27

I said, that's no different than what you're doing. It's a sin before God, and that's what we have to deal with.

01:08:33

And that did disarm them. And after that, I said, that's a sin

01:08:38

I battled, along with lying, along with naming all those other things. And I said, you struggle with those other things too?

01:08:43

And they're like, yeah. And it just, you could see them soften. And then they wanted to listen because it wasn't like you said, it's not like you're just judging them.

01:08:52

Because that's the first thing they want you to do is they want you to say. They want you to. Let me tell you why.

01:09:00

There's two, typically what I find, there's two types of people who practice homosexuality. People who grew up in Christian homes and are rebellious.

01:09:10

People who know nothing about Christianity. I was amazed at the gay pride parades, how many people say that they grew up Christian.

01:09:17

So the first thing I do there is I talk about what church they grew up in. It was always, it's a legalistic church.

01:09:24

And really, their homosexuality is a response, is a rebellion against their parents. Is really what it is.

01:09:31

There's others who have no idea what Christianity really is, they just know the way that their group, their community portrays it.

01:09:37

And we're, you know, the way media portrays us. And we're these judgmental, you know, homophobic haters that are looking to kill every homosexual.

01:09:47

Yeah, no. And that's why we need to be the ambassadors that they realize, no, that's not who we are.

01:09:56

So another thing that Justin said I wanna highlight is, you know, a lot of the reason I, the way

01:10:02

I go about, when I said, if someone doesn't take my gospel track, I say have a nice day, it's because of what he just said.

01:10:11

Even if they don't want the gospel track, I want to leave them with a good impression. They may already have a negative impression.

01:10:18

I went, I was speaking in California, in Redwood City, California.

01:10:25

And there was, we're at a, the church had us at a bed and breakfast, so there's a lot of different people there. You know, if you know

01:10:34

Dr. Silvestro and I, we're gonna share the gospel with people. So we're sitting there having breakfast.

01:10:41

You know, one of the women asked what we were doing out here. Said, we're here sharing the gospel.

01:10:49

We're gonna be speaking at this conference. You know, the husband was asking, you know, what our topics are gonna be.

01:10:57

We were like, great. I'm talking on, you know, can you trust the Bible? And is

01:11:04

Jesus God? And Anthony goes, I'm talking about whether Genesis is something that, you know, we should take as literal.

01:11:13

And whether, you know, evolution is really a good solution to how man came to be.

01:11:21

So, okay, let's talk about that. I mean, we had the gospel covered. His wife was getting so upset.

01:11:27

I mean, like visibly upset to the point where she got up and left. She came in, she's trying to grab her husband.

01:11:34

He won't leave. I don't know what's going on there, but guess what? I know that we offended her. So this is just my personality.

01:11:43

I don't know that I did anything to offend her, but I don't wanna take the chance. I happen to have with me a $25 gift card to Amazon.

01:11:52

So I opened the card and I asked her forgiveness for anything I might've said that upset her.

01:11:58

I really didn't wanna ruin her vacation where she's visiting her daughter and, you know, and upset her breakfast.

01:12:04

And, you know, I really feel bad. You just accept this gift as a token of forgiveness.

01:12:11

You know, and I left it for her. Next morning, we see her at breakfast. She wants to give it back.

01:12:17

I'm like, no, you can't give a gift back. Totally different answer. She's like all apologetic.

01:12:23

She's apologizing. She goes, you know, she was really upset with Anthony and I, and we were like, what did we do? We just answered your husband's questions.

01:12:30

You know, and she was saying there's, this is no place for a conversation like this, and, you know, you know.

01:12:36

Well, we had a very different conversation the next day. Still shared the gospel. But, you know,

01:12:42

I was trying to get into there. I was trying to be like, obviously there's something in her life that really upset her.

01:12:47

I don't know what was her background. But, you know, I gave her my email and everything, and said, you know,

01:12:52

I'd love to help you. It just seems like you might have run into some Christians that really weren't Christians.

01:12:58

They just said they were. And, you know, if I could be of any help, I'd love to. You know, I haven't heard from her.

01:13:05

But we had a very different gospel conversation the next day where she would, you know, she understood forgiveness a little bit more.

01:13:11

Sometimes we have to go out of our way to not be offensive. So, any other questions, any challenges you think might be tough?

01:13:21

Have you ever encountered Amish or Mennonite in your life? No, not really.

01:13:26

I mean, I've talked to a few of them. Because we went out to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where there's a big

01:13:34

Amish area, and I tried to evangelize them, but they, I guess maybe it's just their culture.

01:13:40

They just shut down. I kind of put them in the same category as Siddic Jews. They just don't talk to anyone that's not their own.

01:13:50

And so, you know, I was just, what I was doing with them was I was just trying to ask them questions of what they believe to understand.

01:13:57

And that's how I was approaching it. To try to understand so I can then explain how

01:14:03

I, what I believe would be different. Up here, I know, I'm not sure about as much here in San Juan, but especially up in Bonneville, there's a lot of Mennonites.

01:14:14

And I know that the Amish and the Mennonites are different in that, in what way? Well, they're different in, the

01:14:20

Mennonite are less legalistic, and can accept a couple of more modern things.

01:14:27

Cars, things like that, buttons. So the Amish believe you shouldn't have any modern, nothing modern.

01:14:35

So. At least not in your house. So you have it out in the barn. Yeah, well that, okay.

01:14:40

Yeah, it is kind of funny how they, like Amish will have phones in the barn so that they can take orders, and they have the internet so they can take orders.

01:14:49

Like, they're placed by, my neighbors all bought sheds from the Amish. And like, how did you get them?

01:14:54

And they were like, oh, you go online. I'm like, yeah. They can't have computers. Oh, in their barns they can. How do you handle

01:15:02

Christians who come in and start criticizing you, and judging these people, and you're banning them from cars.

01:15:11

You're giving us bad things as Christians by being out here and being so offensive. Yeah. Well, one thing

01:15:16

I'll say is you definitely have an open air voice. I typically do it in two ways.

01:15:26

I never know how I'm gonna answer it because a lot of times it depends on the person's personality. Sometimes what

01:15:32

I'll do is I'll ask questions. I'll just say, well, how am I doing it wrong?

01:15:38

Well, you shouldn't be mentioning hell. Well, can you tell me, all these people, do they break

01:15:46

God's law? Yes. If they don't repent and believe in Christ, where are they gonna go?

01:15:52

Well, they're gonna go to hell. Well, then why can't you say it, but I can't, right?

01:16:00

They don't even realize they're falling into the trap until it's too late, okay? One of the things

01:16:06

I do, whether it's Christian or not, people are like, you're judging us. Stop judging, okay?

01:16:14

I have a couple different ways I handle that. One thing I do very often is I go, well, I have no problem with judging,

01:16:20

I'm married. And I pause for a while until everyone goes, what in the world does that have to do with each other?

01:16:28

Well, I judged one woman was right for me to marry and a whole bunch that weren't. We judge all the time.

01:16:36

Everybody does. You're judging me right now by saying that I'm being judgmental. That's actually a judgment.

01:16:42

So if you don't think it's right, you should really stop. I don't think there's a problem with it.

01:16:49

Because the Bible says we are to judge with a righteous judgment. As long as I'm judging you by the word of God, not judging your motives, but judging your fruit, according to God's word, which is exactly what

01:16:59

I'm doing when I give you these commandments, all I'm doing is judging your fruit. You're the ones that admit to being a lying, thieving, murderer at heart, not me.

01:17:09

I didn't call you that, you called yourself that, okay? The other thing that I do,

01:17:14

I can do this when I'm doing open air. Remember, my goal was to get one professing atheist and another professing atheist to shut up.

01:17:22

I always want to be able to appeal to the crowd. I was outside, it was

01:17:29

Yale University, and this woman just walked up from nowhere. I had been preaching for 40, 45 minutes.

01:17:35

This lady comes up and just yells at me, just gets right in my face and goes, you're a homophobic, judgmental blankety blank.

01:17:43

She just walked up, she didn't even hear what I had been saying. But it's just that I mentioned Christ that she comes to that conclusion.

01:17:50

So I just turned to the crowd, I said, folks, you've been listening to me for 45 minutes. Have I judged you at all?

01:17:56

I mean, I gave you God's standard for judgment, but did I judge you, or did I let you judge yourselves? And they went, we judged ourselves.

01:18:04

I said, did I say anything about homosexuality at all? No, and the crowd actually got so upset because she kept ranting at me that a couple people in this crowd actually stood up, got in her face, and told her to shut up.

01:18:20

They actually were, it was a yelling match that continued so much that when the bus came, I don't know if it was her bus or not, but she backed up into the bus because a bunch of unbelievers were so upset with the way she was acting.

01:18:34

I always want to, if I'm doing open air, I want to be able to appeal to a crowd. I want to be able to say, have

01:18:40

I judged you? All I did was give you the standard because I want to avoid being judgmental by using the law.

01:18:48

That's what the law does. It avoids that whole argument. I didn't judge you. I just gave you

01:18:53

God's law. I let you judge yourself. I agreed with you. Do you have anything else you want to add?

01:19:04

Do Jehovah's Witness or Mormons come to your door? Can you use the question approach? Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons don't come to my door.

01:19:11

Well, okay, they come to my door a bit. A bit more. Yeah, I moved into my neighborhood and my one neighbor, his sister was

01:19:21

Jehovah's Witness, so they used to come by my neighborhood every week. I found out before I moved in that for two or three years, they came by Saturday, 10 o 'clock, every single

01:19:31

Saturday. And my neighbors would answer the door anyway, knowing, 10 o 'clock.

01:19:39

They came to my door when I moved in and I sit and talk with them. They avoid my door the next week.

01:19:46

Now, this is what I do. If you want to get them out of your neighborhood, you learn what they believe, you defend it well, and what you do is,

01:19:53

I see them go from my one neighbor. Once I mark, they walk straight across to the other neighbor and avoid my house.

01:20:00

Now, if you haven't heard this and you want to get an idea of my personality, I saw them avoid my house.

01:20:06

I ran, I got my New World Translation off my shelf. I ran out the door. I ran to my neighbors. As my neighbors opened the door,

01:20:12

I'm like, I go, hey, Pete, they're gonna lie to you about the Bible and I'm gonna tell you the truth. Go ahead, guys. And they just looked at me like,

01:20:20

I said, go ahead, come on. And they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, go ahead, you're gonna lie and I'm just gonna correct it.

01:20:26

I got your Bible right here. I can talk to you right from that. So go ahead. And they just turned and left.

01:20:33

And I'm like, bye, Pete. And I walked and I just followed them. They're going to the next neighbor's house. And they didn't even get out the driveway.

01:20:39

They're like, what are you doing? So I'm not gonna let you lie to my neighbors. Next week, they ignored the whole block.

01:20:46

They eventually ignored our whole neighborhood. My neighbors loved me until Christmas time when I gave each of them a book that explains the gospel.

01:20:53

One of my CDs, a gospel track. They're like, oh no, he's in the neighborhood. But yeah, that's how you get rid of drunk witnesses at Mormons.

01:21:01

I begged the Mormons to come to my house. Actually, every time I move, I send a letter to a

01:21:06

Mormon church asking for a book of Mormon. They won't send a missionary anymore. Last time

01:21:12

I moved, all they did was they mailed me the book. So, well, hold on.

01:21:18

So here's how you do with them. A way to do it is just ask them questions about what they believe. If you want to pick up my book,

01:21:26

What Do They Believe? It'll help with some of it. If you can, if it's

01:21:33

Jehovah Witnesses and you really want to get answers, I can give you the cheat sheet. You ever like getting the answers to the test beforehand?

01:21:40

Okay. If you get, and you can get it online now, you know, the internet. I couldn't back then, but you can get the book

01:21:47

Reasoning the Scriptures. It's a little brown book. Basically what that is, is that's their answer to Christianity.

01:21:55

How do you answer when a Christian asks you questions? Kind of funny that they don't have anything in there about if a Muslim asks you questions or, you know.

01:22:02

Just the Christians. But in there, they have all their answers. So the nice thing about that is, it's like having the answer key.

01:22:10

I avoid all those. I go to different things that they don't have. So my book,

01:22:18

What Do They Believe? is one resource, another free resource you can get on our YouTube channel. Go to strivingfortruth .org

01:22:24

under Academy. We have an Introduction to World Religions, and I go through the different religions. And so I give some pointers in there.

01:22:32

There's gonna be certain things I'll bring up, and it's hard to say how to handle those things. I like those two groups because there's really so much there that you have to peel back.

01:22:41

With Mormons, you have to realize that they've been trained to not trust the Bible, not trust the church.

01:22:47

Most people that leave Mormonism become atheists. One of the things

01:22:53

I will do is ask them about works. Because if they say they're saved by works,

01:22:58

I'm gonna go back to that thing that makes Christianity unique. That's the only religion that doesn't teach works salvation.

01:23:08

So it's hard to answer that one quick because there's a lot there. But there's a lot of resources.

01:23:15

A great website if you wanna go with Mormonism is mrm .org, it stands for Mormon Research Ministry.

01:23:22

Excellent stuff on Mormonism. If you wanna get stuff on Mormonism to our witnesses,

01:23:33

I have stuff on my website. You can go to karm .org, there's information out there.

01:23:40

I'm trying to leave you guys with as many resources so you have ideas of where to get stuff. Because look, the simple reality is you're gonna be like, well,

01:23:47

I can't evangelize like you. I know, I've been doing it for 30 years. You haven't, maybe you haven't.

01:23:53

The only reason I don't evangelize is because I may be good at evangelism is because I've been doing it so long. The only reason I have answers to questions is because I was asked and I didn't have the answer at some point earlier.

01:24:03

And I learned an answer and then tried to remember it. So really, the best way if you have a

01:24:11

Mormon or a Jehovah Witness, ask what they believe. Try to learn from them. And you can say, oh, well, what

01:24:17

I believe is different. Or you could ask how they know what they know. And if you know ahead of time what it is they believe, you can kind of have ideas of where to go with it.

01:24:29

Here's a little tip that I do. With Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons or any people like that, I don't go after their foundation.

01:24:36

I don't go attacking Joseph Smith or Muhammad or any of their founders or the structure of their church.

01:24:47

There's people that feel if you destroy their foundation, they'll crumble. That's true, but you know what happens?

01:24:54

The Mormons, I mean, you could bring up the Book of Abraham. If you don't know what it is, it's fine.

01:25:00

The seal that Joseph Smith bought, it was a hieroglyphics. He pretended like he knew what it was and interpreted it because no one knew how to translate it.

01:25:10

And then we found a Rosetta Stone. We actually know how to translate it. And he was completely off. And a lot of people are leaving

01:25:15

Mormonism because of that. You know what they're going to? Atheism. Atheism. So what good was it?

01:25:21

They're just going a hella different way, right? So I always focus on the gospel.

01:25:28

What makes us different is that Christ died for us, not us working our way. So I just always, that's the one thing

01:25:35

I want to do. By the way, let me give you one quick thing. I won't forget about you, but I want to give you one quick thing, a saving device.

01:25:42

In any conversation, I don't care what conversation that you have, you're sharing the gospel.

01:25:50

Some guy goes off, he's riding the law for 15 or 20 minutes about who knows what. Had this happen once, a guy literally for 15 minutes, he's talking about how really all religion is based in the

01:26:03

Celtic paganism. And that's where we really see the truth. Now he's going off on all this stuff that I'd never heard before, had no clue what he was talking about.

01:26:11

And after 15 minutes, I just looked at him and said, that's great, how does that help you on judgment day? That's a little thing

01:26:19

I came up with. I don't know if it ever works for you, but my thing is that if they go off and I have no idea what they're saying, if they're sharing the gospel,

01:26:25

I've already explained about judgment day, I'm just going to go, great, how does that help you when you stand before God on judgment day? Or how does that help you, depending where I got in the conversation, we haven't gotten to explain the gospel on judgment day,

01:26:37

I may say, okay, how does that help you? You and I are already established we're both guilty before God. How does all that help you?

01:26:43

That's a question, isn't it? It's a question that I'm controlling the conversation and getting right back to the gospel. Let them go off and go on for 20 minutes.

01:26:53

If it's a one -on -one conversation, if you're doing open air, I don't do that so much because I don't want to lose the crowd.

01:26:59

But in a one -on -one conversation, the guy's going off and I'm just, okay, so how did all that help you on judgment day?

01:27:10

So a little saving device to just have a way that you can always get back to the gospel. Doesn't have to be anything to do with what they're saying.

01:27:18

You know, so how does that help you the second after you die, you know?

01:27:25

What do you do when you run into somebody who you share the gospel with, maybe in a very, maybe a week or two has passed and you run back into them?

01:27:38

Well, first off, I try not to run into anybody. My buddy Mark Spence has actually run into Will Smith at a

01:27:46

Lakers game. Literally knocked Will Smith down. A couple weeks later, you know who he ran into a second time?

01:27:53

Yep, that's right, walking out of the bathroom. So how does he deal with it? He goes, are you stalking me?

01:28:03

Use of humor. That's a tough one to answer because, again, every conversation is different.

01:28:12

People are different, so it depended how that conversation went to know. So, okay, so I'm realizing he's looking at the camera here, so if I want to look at him,

01:28:22

I should just look right here. So it looks like I'm looking at you. But realistically, it's hard to say because every conversation is kind of different.

01:28:31

It depended how the conversation went. I had a conversation, I used to work a secular job and I was in the mall evangelizing and I saw a guy that I used to work with.

01:28:43

We didn't work directly together, but so he's a Muslim. We start talking. Well, guess what?

01:28:50

Guess where I run into him again? Work. I just continue the conversation.

01:28:56

We give it any more thought about what we talked about. Now that's how I usually open when I do that. If they say, yeah, no,

01:29:04

I didn't think twice about it, then I'm not gonna waste my time. That may seem strange, but they know the gospel.

01:29:14

I don't need to keep bringing it up because then it can become annoying. My family,

01:29:20

I don't talk about the gospel. I've shared it and I don't keep bringing it up, but there's times where they come to me when something's happening, then

01:29:30

I bring it up and then they don't wanna talk about it anymore. I have a simple rule for that.

01:29:50

I offer to buy lunch. If I'm buying lunch, people always love free lunch.

01:29:56

If I'm buying lunch just to get to know my coworkers, I share the gospel at lunch. They can't complain because we're not on work time and I'm buying lunch.

01:30:07

I bought lunch because I wanted to share something really important to me with you. I wanted to get to know you. But if you do that, learn about them.

01:30:14

Spend some time to learn about them first. But that's what I've always done. It's funny because sometimes you just have to know.

01:30:33

So one of the other speakers who's a fraternity, Dr. Silvestro, he's a dentist. And so he just sold his practice and now he works for the guy he sold his practice to.

01:30:44

He knows, he's like, you know, one of these days I'm gonna get fired because he just shares the gospel.

01:30:51

He actually designed his practice, his office, to be open. So you can see all the other patients, which is kind of nice because you can see who, you can see where you are in the line.

01:31:02

Okay, those four seats are taken already so I know I'm number four. But he did that so that when he shares the gospel with one patient, all the others that are waiting hear the gospel and he's not quiet about it.

01:31:15

Neither is his wife. They actually designed their office so that they could share the gospel.

01:31:21

He still does it. So new patients still hear the gospel. And he figures eventually the guy's gonna fire him.

01:31:28

But he knows he's gonna get fired. Hold on, let me go with this gentleman, then over here. What I'm saying, with your

01:31:34

Muslim friend, I remember last time you were here, you were talking about time -wasting. You could probably make an investment in that support to another evangelist like you were doing in the

01:31:47

NIH and maybe this voice would work through that later. Dwight, there's anything about Islam?

01:31:53

Okay. Yeah, I mean, giving resources is a great idea.

01:31:59

Yeah, but you don't wanna, and sometimes it's not that they're a time -waster, it's just you don't wanna be annoying.

01:32:06

I mean, how much do you, okay. Are there any vegans here? Okay, so I can use that.

01:32:13

Any of you have a friend that's a vegan? How annoying can that be? Look at our team, right?

01:32:20

Now, if you wanna have some fun, oh, I forget the guy's name. There's a guy that does a thing, he does this whole skit on if a meat -eater was a vegan.

01:32:30

He's like holding a raw steak all the time, shoving it in people's faces. It's hilarious. Just taking their arguments and changing it.

01:32:38

But I don't wanna be that guy. I just don't wanna be that person. There's other things we can, but the reality is

01:32:46

I often find that some of my unsafe friends just wanna do other things, like we were talking about,

01:32:53

Justin and I were talking, and Dwight were talking about my family. I'm the only believer.

01:32:58

I don't do much with my family. It's like my brother comes to town.

01:33:06

He'll call my other brother and say, hey, you wanna go to the bar? Yeah, we have an Andrew at the bar, just no, no, not so much fun.

01:33:18

Yeah, Andrew at the bar. Hey, do you want one of these? Do you want one of these? Do you want one of these? Yeah, no, they don't enjoy that.

01:33:24

Yeah. Okay, so there was a hand raised, there we go. So, I just have a two -part question.

01:33:32

Let's get into the one general. So the general question is, how much time do you spend talking about secondary issues that aren't the gospel, topics like that?

01:33:42

How do you deal with feminism? Okay, so first question.

01:33:49

Hard to say. It depends on my mood. Depends on their personality.

01:33:56

It's kind of a judgment call. A lot of times, I mean, sometimes

01:34:03

I'm spending a lot of time just trying to figure out how I'm gonna transition to the gospel. Because that's the whole thing. I'll talk about like anything, let them talk.

01:34:10

And I'm just trying to get to the gospel in every conversation. I'm like, hey, that's a cool tattoo or whatever.

01:34:17

Something gets them talking. So they'll give me something that I can use to get to the gospel. And so sometimes it takes me a while.

01:34:25

I was in San Francisco once with my wife. I see this woman with like purple hair.

01:34:32

And I just walked up and I figured, okay, we're gonna share the gospel with her. I'm like, I go, what do you do for a living that you can get that colorful hair?

01:34:39

Because when you think about it, like corporate America, that wouldn't work, right? She goes, oh, I'm an artist. I work on video games.

01:34:45

Actually, it turned out well because the woman that was with my wife and I actually used to work for a video game company. Her husband still does.

01:34:51

So it was like, I'm like, oh, cool. I just served that one right up to her. And so we start talking about video games.

01:34:57

And as we're just, I'm like, she does the artwork and I'm trying to think of how to get to the gospel. I thought of one way to try to transition and it just didn't work with her.

01:35:05

I asked her son and it just fell flat. I tried another way. And if you know me, things that people know about me,

01:35:12

I'm really good at transitioning to the gospel. I have a whole series if you want to see them on YouTube of me transitioning to anything to the gospel.

01:35:19

And this was just failing over and over. I finally had one that I was like, okay, I thought this was gonna work.

01:35:24

And it just seems like I'm just about to get to the gospel and a guy walked up. It was the guy she was waiting for at the train station.

01:35:32

And it just, boom. And so I start talking with him and I'm like, so we were talking for probably 30 to 45 minutes about completely, to me, nonsense.

01:35:41

Like, stuff I really didn't care. I cared only because I wanted to get a feel of them and learn about them and try to get to the gospel.

01:35:49

And so he's like, so I already established I was from Jersey. So he's like, what are you doing out here?

01:35:55

So I was like, okay, I just tried like four or five attempts to transition. I'm just gonna do Ray's comfort style.

01:36:01

Now Ray's comfort style is this. Ray Comfort, transition from a squirrel to a gospel. Speaking of squirrels, can you consider yourself a good person?

01:36:08

That's basically how he transitions, okay? So he's like, so what are you doing in California?

01:36:14

I'm like, well, I'm actually out here because I'm a Christian speaker and I'm speaking at a conference. We're actually out here just because we were looking to talk to people about Jesus Christ.

01:36:25

So that was how I did. It worked. Turns out that she grew up in the church and he didn't.

01:36:30

He was completely clueless of Christianity. Had a great conversation with him. Where things she was saying earlier that was more against Christianity, now she was in the position with,

01:36:40

I guess, boyfriend, of defending Christianity, explaining Christianity to him.

01:36:47

Which was interesting, because before she was against Christianity and the little things that we talked about, and it was kind of an interesting thing to happen.

01:36:56

So yeah, so sometimes it's, I feel like it goes on forever. So it's hard to say.

01:37:05

I've never had to deal with the issue of penance. I don't know how to deal with it.

01:37:11

It's like I was talking with one of my teammates who was in school project when we were talking, and the issue of feminism came up.

01:37:20

She kept, for some reason, she just thought that the whole feminism thing, that God's a sexist, and I was like, no, we're equal, but she didn't have any of it.

01:37:30

Okay, so yeah, someone like that, someone used to give me, some people would be like, well, God's a woman, and things like that.

01:37:36

There, it's like. Well, she brought up the fact that he came from Adam, so therefore, women are inferior.

01:37:43

Okay. That's a leap. If you get, so let me give the easiest one.

01:37:52

I've been dying to use this line, but I haven't gotten it yet but I'm waiting for someone to tell me that God is a woman.

01:37:59

I used to get here that sometimes, but not, but because nowadays, if someone tells me that God's a woman, this is what

01:38:06

I want to try. I want to see if it works, and this is what I do. I try things, and if it doesn't work, I don't do it anymore, and if it does work,

01:38:12

I keep doing it. So I want to try, if someone says, well,

01:38:17

God's a woman, I want to be like, well, do you believe that people have the right to identify any way they want to?

01:38:25

I mean, if someone identifies as a man, I call them by male pronouns, and if they identify as a woman,

01:38:31

I should call them female pronouns, to which most of them are going to say yes, to which

01:38:36

I want to say, well, God identifies as a male, so don't you think you should respect him? What am

01:38:43

I doing? I'm just taking their worldview and flipping it on, right? Then what do they say?

01:38:48

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. That's my personality. I just, I'm kind of funny that way.

01:38:56

Yeah, if they, sometimes they start, you know, what you want to do with that is just ask where they're getting their information from.

01:39:04

Tangentially related to that, I would recommend, this is what I do in my own evangelism, I'll hand out a gospel tract to anyone, male or female, but in my conversations,

01:39:15

I'm gonna, I'm not gonna go up and start talking to a lady that just, you're just opening a can of worms.

01:39:23

You're opening up opportunities for someone to take a picture of you and twist it. I mean, it's just safer, wiser men to talk to men, ladies to talk to women.

01:39:32

Now, I'll talk to couples, but I typically look to the man. Yeah, I'll talk to couples. I'll talk to couples, but. You typically look to the man. I have a funny thing.

01:39:38

I will look at the man even if the wife is talking to me. Yeah, I kind of just give a quick eye contact to her and look at the man.

01:39:47

Yeah, I don't suggest evangelizing the opposite sex one -on -one. Yeah, group situation would be good.

01:39:56

So, as you mentioned, as we comfort transitions, like speaking of trees, you think you're a good person, something completely unrelated, that is actually, because for me, my mind works slowly, and I can't think of as the other person's talking and I'm asking questions,

01:40:14

I'm not fast enough to come up at the same time with how I can tie things together, so that's an option.

01:40:20

That's an option. Oh yeah, Ray pulls it off all the time. I watch him do this all the time.

01:40:26

But he's also been doing it for a long time, and he's just, if you don't know Ray, he is very funny.

01:40:32

I mean, just nonstop. As in a hotel, I'm like, you know, a typical thing you see, you get to breakfast,

01:40:39

I ask him, so Ray, how do you sleep? He goes, oh, well, I kind of slept like this for a little while, then I rolled over like this.

01:40:45

Like, in a hotel, this is what he's doing. I'm just like, okay, Ray. Hold on,

01:40:51

I think that you had a question? No, I was just gonna make a statement. I'm like, Mike, he gets to train some of his fellow drivers.

01:41:03

Ah. Yeah, I have a friend of mine, he's a police officer. He calls his patrol car his fishing hole.

01:41:13

He goes, I have a captive audience. I take the long way. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

01:41:22

So, consider yourself to be a good person. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

01:41:27

Oh, and make sure you have good gospel tracts. Don't get poor spiritual laws.

01:41:33

Don't get God loves you, he has a wonderful plan for your life. Get good, get good gospel tracts.

01:41:41

Mediate repentance, faith, law, grace. Yeah, so, American Tract Society, don't ever go there.

01:41:49

Good. Yeah. Some people don't like them because they look like money. Huh? I couldn't, they wouldn't give me change.

01:41:59

Yeah. Before I get to you, let me just mention some tracts. So, where to get tracts?

01:42:05

Living Waters. One Million Tracts. Tract Planet. So, tractplanet .com,

01:42:12

onemilliontracts .com, livingwaters .org. Great places to get, almost any of the tracts you get from those three are gonna be good.

01:42:19

If you go to One Million Tracts or Tract Planet, you can customize them.

01:42:25

So, if you can buy them, and the nice thing about that is you can put your own contact information on them. You can even write your own if you want.

01:42:32

They'll do it. Now, Tract Planet, if you go to them and you write your own tracts, and he doesn't approve it, he won't print it.

01:42:41

In other words, if he doesn't think the gospel message is good enough, sorry, go somewhere else. Let me go to him first.

01:42:48

And, I understand if you don't have an answer to this, so I'll leave you out for the time. Great comfort,

01:42:55

I watch a lot of his videos. He's learning, he's learning, he's analyzing.

01:43:01

I've noticed as of late, he doesn't seem to be asking somebody what he'd call that.

01:43:09

He seems to be just, it used to be pretty common, he'd say, you know, here's a lie, okay, what would that man do?

01:43:15

And, I've noticed he's not doing that anymore. He's just going through that question. Do you know why he's doing that? Is that someone that's changing one of those things?

01:43:22

So, one thing to keep in mind, when you're watching Ray's videos, they're edited. Yeah, no.

01:43:28

I haven't seen that. You don't? The whole unedited section. Yeah, there's times where they'll edit things out even if you don't pick up on it.

01:43:37

And so, it's usually because when they're putting videos out, they're trying to teach something with each video.

01:43:43

So, they want it shorter, and they're just choosing what to cut. So, it could be that people already know that part of the, you know, they hear it so much that they've cut it out.

01:43:52

It depends on what, you know, what they've, I mean, I could try to ask

01:43:58

Eddie if he's editing that out. I've noticed he's having pretty regular accounts.

01:44:05

It could be that they just edit that out because they just, you know, have more content that they want in there.

01:44:14

By the way, if you want to see a really funny video with Justin and I, if you go to livingwaters .com,

01:44:19

I forget what it's called. I think it's called Bold Preacher Calls Out False Prophet or something like that.

01:44:25

Look for the pirate. Literally, if I say look for the pirate. Yeah, that was a hysterical.

01:44:31

If you look, Anthony Silvestro actually has the full, and the full is even funnier. Yeah. And then he goes over to Justin.

01:44:41

He's like, it was very entertaining. So, your question. I just wanted to see if you know where you can get the tracks in.

01:44:52

Same place as I mentioned. Because they do have some in other languages. And if you have a specific track, if you have a track that you, or you know the other language and you want it written,

01:45:06

Andy at TrackPlanet might do it if he can find someone that can translate it other than you so he knows what it says.

01:45:14

Can I get the idea that Andy's a little bit particular? Marv might do it, even if he doesn't know what it says.

01:45:22

He's the one that has one million tracks. The only reason I say that is because he gave me a Chinese track for my wife to translate that he had already made for New Year's.

01:45:33

But he also had known the person and trusted him, so. So I think, is there any other questions?

01:45:43

How important do you think it's manual? Oh, that's gonna be great. Like physically, you did, like manual.

01:45:51

Oh yeah. I mean, there's gonna be nothing better than scripture. Yeah. I mean, especially if it's in context, you know.

01:46:00

But yeah, scripture's gonna be great. Yeah. A soft answer turns away a rat.

01:46:17

I mean, that's the advantage of being polite using humor. Sometimes they feel uncomfortable.

01:46:23

They know they're acting out. Now, one -on -one, they can open air when they have a group of people or if you're doing one -to -a -group, they may act up because they gotta show off to their friends.

01:46:35

I don't know, I've done different things. I had once where I had a guy that was trying to show off for his buddies and I'm standing on my box and he kept saying he was gonna punch me.

01:46:49

And, okay, so my personality. People tell me they're gonna punch me. I usually encourage it.

01:46:56

I usually tell them, you know, like, I fight regularly. Like, you know, I haven't been in the gym for about a year now doing jujitsu, but I train martial arts.

01:47:06

I actually love to fight. Like, I'm sorry, you know, so. I go, you know, like I said, one guy, he kept telling me he was gonna punch me.

01:47:13

I'm like, dude, I haven't been in dojo for like two weeks. Please bring it on. Like, I need a good fight.

01:47:19

And then he stopped. This other guy told me he was gonna punch me and I was like, well, don't just say it.

01:47:28

Which the crowd laughed, but he actually started walking over at one point. He got right in my face. Now, you have to understand,

01:47:33

I was on a box and we were looking eye -to -eye and he was just as big this way, you know. But there is a,

01:47:41

I mean, one thing that martial arts actually helped me with is I can identify real aggression versus talking. This guy was talking.

01:47:49

So, and I took that chance. This was a gamble. I admit, this was a gamble. I turned to him and he was upset with me.

01:47:56

He's telling me he's gonna punch me. Now he's in my face. And he says, if you keep this up,

01:48:01

I'm gonna deck you. I said, okay, that's fair. I wanna, I have a question for you, but first I wanna establish some things before I get to my question, okay.

01:48:09

Would that be okay? He's like, fine. I said, first off, you clearly look like you're in the gym like three hours a day.

01:48:15

You're all like buff and stuff. Look at me. I said, you're like, I'm like twice your age. I'm the old scrawny guy.

01:48:22

Okay, I was a little thinner back then. I said, so I'm just curious. Those your buddies over there?

01:48:28

He's like, yeah. I said, don't you think you'd look pretty pathetic in their eyes if you beat up an old man like me?

01:48:38

Right, so what am I doing? The big thing that I thought he was kinda being a blowhard about was because his friends were there.

01:48:44

And now I'm turning it on. Notice I do this a lot. I try to turn the tables on people. So he looks at his friends.

01:48:49

The fact that he looked at his friends, I figured I had a good chance of being right on this. So I said, okay, I got my question.

01:48:55

When he looks back at me, I said, here's my question. I leaned into his face. I go, what if you can't? He suddenly realized he's in a no -win situation, right?

01:49:04

If he beats me up, he looks pathetic. If he can't, he looks even worse.

01:49:10

And I don't seem intimidated. And he turns around, man, you ain't worth my time. And he walked off.

01:49:16

Now, I did have a guy that was real aggressive. Okay, I could tell that he was like, you say another word and I'm gonna hit you.

01:49:25

And he would've. Have a nice day, sir. Not worth it.

01:49:35

I'll walk away. Find another place to evangelize. What would you say to well -meaning

01:49:41

Christians like you who say they're very adamant to adopt one and very adherent to the gospel? Jesus loves you.

01:49:50

Would you bother trying to get an aptitude out of them if they heard you? Depends on the situation.

01:49:57

If it's in the open air, probably not. If it's in a group setting, probably not.

01:50:02

If they walked up to me privately, and this has happened, when they walk up to me privately after doing open air or after they see a crowd of people that I'm talking to or even a one -on -one conversation, if it's privately, then

01:50:13

I'm gonna chat with them. Typically what I'll do when they're saying that,

01:50:19

I'll just ask them, what happens to a sinner that doesn't repent? Where do they go? They're either gonna deny hell when now we're in a totally different conversation or they're gonna say hell and I'm gonna say, don't you think you should warn them?

01:50:36

Typically they're like, well, it's not good to warn them. And my response to that typically is, so are you against the fact that the government puts on warning labels on cigarette packages?

01:50:48

And what's the purpose of them? Because they're trying to tell you that something bad can happen if you continue doing this?

01:50:54

Don't you think that something bad can happen to a sinner that doesn't repent continuously? Take them to something that they're gonna agree is,

01:51:03

I always try to find some common ground too. Okay? Okay, we'll make this hopefully the last question.

01:51:10

One of the ones I struggle with is I'm sharing a gospel with somebody and they claim to be a

01:51:16

Christian. They realize they're, they say they've repented and that's the truth.

01:51:32

And this is in a one -on -one gospel presentation to somebody.

01:51:41

And it's like, they have done that. What's the... James chapter two?

01:51:51

Whether or not, you know, is it a false conversion or are they just saying, yes,

01:51:57

I made this concession, so now I'm safe? Yeah, I mean, I literally, you go through the same argument that James goes through in James chapter two.

01:52:06

It might be a different way of doing it. Given the track, Justin has some tracks called, What If I'm Just Pretending?

01:52:11

It's a great track. People that think they're a believer, you may wanna ask them how they got saved, try to dig in, ask them if they've noticed any growth in their life.

01:52:25

You know, you might be able, depending on how close you are with the person, how well you know them, you might be able to say,

01:52:31

I really haven't seen much spiritual fruit in your life and that's why I'm asking. I'm just concerned for your soul.

01:52:43

Yeah. I'm just concerned to see where they're at. It's just like, and I haven't tried to see, has

01:52:49

God given you a new heart, a new change, you see a change in your life? It can be hard. I was in, we used to do evangelism out at the

01:52:56

Balfour Green Village and we had a guy who was getting upset with the guy that was doing open air.

01:53:04

And I'm trying to evangelize to this guy that's visibly drunk with two beers in his hand, okay?

01:53:10

So clearly, the fact that he couldn't stand straight wasn't enough alcohol for him. And he got upset that this guy was shouting at the open air evangelist.

01:53:23

And he was gonna, I was making moves to act because there's a technique that we do to protect the open air evangelist from a heckler that might be aggressive.

01:53:34

And so I was moving into place, leaving the conversation with this guy, moving to place to protect the guy doing the evangelism.

01:53:41

And this guy followed me, which I realized now I might have a problem because this guy's drunk and I might have two people.

01:53:47

I might be inviting another person. And so this guy actually was gonna make moves, but he wanted to actually beat the guy up, the heckler, because he was like, well,

01:53:56

I'm a Christian and I don't want him speaking about other Christians like he is. And I'm looking at him going like,

01:54:05

I'm really questioning your Christianity right now. But he also was not in a stable mind where I didn't trust that he wouldn't get violent.

01:54:14

And so I just told him, I was like, sir, I got it. You just go enjoy the festival. That's literally what

01:54:19

I did to get rid of him and then take care of my friend. But there's like in that case,

01:54:26

I have no reason to question or no reason, no reason to assume he was a believer just on that short interaction.

01:54:34

Could he be in just a really bad sin? But that's a case where you just never know.

01:54:43

Like if you're seeing a lot of these are just, you have to, you try. Now I'll say err on the side of safety.

01:54:49

I mean, just like Justin was saying, always stick men to men, women to women, or groups.

01:54:55

Safety, it's safer to do that than have a problem.

01:55:03

If you ever have, if you're out evangelizing, always do it on public property. If you ever get stopped by the police officers, always be respectful.

01:55:10

Asking questions works well with them. You know what doesn't work well? Well, I have a right to be here.

01:55:17

This is public property. That doesn't work well. They can have pride issues too.

01:55:27

And on the street, you will lose. You may win in court, but you'll lose more often than not on the street.

01:55:32

You know, I've had where police officers, you can't do this here, you know, you gotta do it over there.

01:55:38

Okay, we were at the U .S. Open in tennis. And we went to an area that I thought would be really good, right where the train station is, right between the

01:55:49

Met Stadium. If you know that area, but it's right between the Met Stadium and where the tennis stadium is. And we're at a spot, and the officer's like, we can't have this here.

01:55:57

You guys, we need you down. We can go down there and do that. He put us in like a much better spot where our voices could be heard, because we were against the wind.

01:56:07

And I didn't want to get too close to the stadium, because I didn't know where it was private and public.

01:56:13

He put us in a much better spot. When someone else came, I said, well, the officer over there told us we had to be here. Oh, okay.

01:56:21

So a lot of it's trial and error. Try different things. You know,

01:56:27

I'd say don't try stupid things. If you're not sure if it's stupid, just give Justin a call. Hey, I have this idea.

01:56:33

I want to go out, and I want to put this really big sombrero on, and make fun of Mexicans, and do that as Vangelum.

01:56:39

He'll say, no, don't do that. You know, weird things happen.

01:56:46

We had a guy that came right from work. He's an attorney. He came right from work. So he was still in a suit and tie.

01:56:53

You know what we discovered? Open -air Vangelum in a suit and tie works much better. When I would get up, as polite as I would want to be, he had a much better crowd.

01:57:03

Every week that he, so he'd start coming every week in a suit and tie. Every time, I'd start saying, hey, I should wear a suit and tie when we go out, which is really hot on the boardwalk in the summer.

01:57:13

I'm sweating, like, but we'd just go out for an hour, so I figured I could do that, which is another thing.

01:57:20

As you guys start an Vangelum team, don't try to go out for like six hours.

01:57:28

Just set a commitment. Do one hour a week. You know how long

01:57:33

Ray Comfort evangelizes every week? About half an hour. He works during the week, just like everyone else.

01:57:45

He goes out on Saturday to Huntington Beach. He preaches for half an hour. Scotty preaches for half an hour.

01:57:50

If someone, like if I'm there, he'll sometimes preach 15 minutes so I can get up. So yeah, he's not out, and people think, well, he does all day.

01:57:59

Now, if they're trying to work on a film and they need to get some footage, they'll go out to the local college and get footage, and when they go, they're out for maybe an hour.

01:58:10

So people think, like, they had a position for an intern over there, and people were like, they had to put a thing saying, you're not going to be evangelizing all day.

01:58:20

Because they realize, like, everyone thinks that's all that Ray's doing. Like, all day long, he's just out evangelizing.

01:58:26

He's like, no, he's actually working on things. He's writing books and working on projects. But Ray realizes, he gets out for an hour, and he gets up, and Scotty gets up, and Scotty gets out for, he goes an hour on Friday night.

01:58:42

So Scotty does two hours. He does an hour with Ray on Saturdays. He does an hour on Friday nights at the movie theater. Don't go too long.

01:58:51

I'll tell you why. You start going too long, you're taking away from family time. Okay? I got news for you, and this is the most important thing

01:59:03

I can tell you for today. God is sovereign. God will bring people, if he wants them to hear the gospel from you that day, guess what he'll do?

01:59:13

He'll bring them. He knows when you're going to leave. Even before you do. He knows.

01:59:21

He's omniscient. Trust God. All right?

01:59:27

So do you have anything you want to add? So we'll go in prayer, we'll close in prayer. I know some people can't go out. You could do one or two things.

01:59:34

How many people want to go out handing out tracts? Hold it higher, like this

01:59:42

I can't really see. Three, four, five, six, seven. Okay, so the rest of you guys don't want to go out? Okay, what time?

01:59:51

Oh, okay, then we're just going to go out. All right, then we'll close in prayer and then we'll go out.

01:59:57

I was going to do some role play for those who couldn't go out. All right, so let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we're grateful that we can evangelize, that we can proclaim the message that you have had someone proclaim to us so that we can know the truth and that you would bring us to repentance.

02:00:14

May we just be faithful to doing what you call us to do, to go out and share. The results are up to you, but we just want to be obedient to you in going out and evangelizing and sharing to those that you would bring on our path.

02:00:26

We ask that as some of us go out today that you provide good conversations via will that we might be able to witness you bringing someone to repentance today.

02:00:38

That would be a joy to our heart. We think of those who have to leave and go for the workday that you'd keep them safe and that they would be able to get done what they need to do.