Provoked: Evangelism with Bobby McCreery (Part 2)

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Inside the Mind of Manson: Part 3

00:04

Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity. I mean, this is what's wrong with the

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Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are. This is where we hold them.

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This is where we fight. Officer, you need to repent of your lawless conduct.

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You don't know the law, and yet you pretend to represent it. That's not law enforcement, sir.

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That's being a thug. We will not stop fighting and bothering you all until this monstrous, barbaric practice of legalized abortion ends, and we are teaching our children to do the same.

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God's word says that the shed blood of innocent humans cries out for justice, and mark my words, they will have their day in court.

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Nobody gets saved by being treated nicely. They get saved by hearing the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

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If we don't open our mouths and commend Christ, we're not loving them, no matter what we're doing with our hands.

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Here's kind of a hot -button item that I always get in trouble with. But people believe that,

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OK, yeah, go, and let's do an Easter bunny egg giveaway, or let's do a big community event.

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Let's link arms with the city. And yeah, the city doesn't want us to share the gospel, but we're going to invite people back to church, and we're going to share the gospel there.

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We're going to invite people back to church, and then we're going to have our pastors share the gospel with them.

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So is it, and this is for you, Bobby, is it biblical? Can we find in scripture that type of methodology to where you invite the lost people back into the community of God's worship to share the gospel with them there?

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Yeah, no, brother, I don't think it's biblical at all. I don't think we have one example in the scriptures where you see a preacher get up or someone sharing the gospel with someone where what they're doing is ultimately inviting them to church.

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And so, yeah, I don't think it's biblical at all. Also, I think that you touched on something.

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I mean, there is so much that you guys mentioned that's so true.

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I think, you know, someone said so goes the pulpits, so goes the church. And so some of the objections you guys touched on were like people saying you're going to turn people away, right, by sharing the gospel with them or by preaching or whatever.

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I mean, those are usually professing Christian objections because that's what they've been told by pastors.

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Now, the flip side of, you know, well, let me get someone to church and then the pastor will share the gospel with them is, you know, what

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I want to say is, well, show me in the word of God where it says that's only the pastor's responsibility. Right.

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And I want to say to a person that says that, well, suppose this person dies in between the time they committed to your church invitation and the time you get them to the pastor.

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You know? That's a good, nice way to put it. So I think, you know, we lack a sense of urgency about people's souls.

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You know, I mean, 150 ,000 approximate people dying every day.

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I mean, why do we think these people are going to make it to church? That's exactly right. And that is, I mean, that is a sacred cow.

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And I remember I put a Facebook post maybe a couple year and a half ago that said, inviting the lost to church is not biblical evangelism.

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And I had all sorts of people come out of the woodwork. I remember that. But I'm going to say it again. Inviting the lost to church is not biblical evangelism.

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You cannot find it there. The church is the people of God, makes up the people of God. And in the church is where the people of God worship the

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Lord. It's the home of the regenerate in the community of faith, the elect, right?

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The faithful remnant is where we who are saved, we come together one with another to worship the

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Lord, to observe the sacraments. It's not a place for the lost. Yeah. We don't see that.

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And so what we do, what we do see in scripture is Jesus is evangelistic command in Acts chapter one, verse eight.

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Then we see the model of the early church. And the early church went out proclaiming the gospel everywhere.

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That was everyone preaching the gospel, getting beat up, starting riots, getting martyred for it.

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And then they would come back to the household of faith. They would come back together to worship collectively, to get encouraged, to be equipped and then go back out.

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So it's always the biblical model of Christians in the early church is going out, going to sacrificing their lives.

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I mean, it was a mobilized church into the community, into the public marketplace.

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And as they did that, what did the scripture say? Then God would add to the church.

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He would save people through the proclamation of the gospel. And then the regenerate heart, the regenerate person, the spirit of God would bring them into the community of faith, right?

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It's not us bringing lost people so we could share the gospel. Again, what do we do? We abdicate our duty to share the gospel that God's given every single

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Christian thinking that it's just the pastor's job to do it. But pastors, we really, as pastors in the pulpits, we really have to, we gotta reject this idea of evangelism if we are gonna get our people evangelizing, right?

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And unfortunately, I think, and I'll stop here, we have to get away with, am

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I really wanting the lost to come so that I could share the gospel with them? Is that my motive?

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Or do I just want a bigger church because I'm just focused on butts, buildings, and budgets?

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I'm just focused on actually getting people to sit down to listen to me preach so I can feel good about myself, so I could be quote -unquote successful?

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Go ahead, Bobby, I think you're gonna say something. Well, I was gonna say, I know you talked about having Pastor Luke on to do this show on cultural idols, but what about church idols?

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You know, I think, you know, I get in trouble for saying this sometimes, but I think the biggest idol in the

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Western church is the idol of reputation. You know, Jesus said things like, woe to you when all men speak well of you.

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And the modern church in the West, I mean, it's almost like they retranslate that as, you know, woe to you if anyone speaks ill of you.

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You know, I mean, I know Desi's gonna get to, at some point today, about something, you know, really just awful that happened to you guys when you were on the streets recently, but how many times you talk to a professing

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Christian about something that happened to you when you're out on the street, and they look at you like, what'd you do to bring that on?

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You know, and it's, you know, but like you said, you look in Acts, and they went out and they preached, and the gospel is offensive, it's moronic to those who are perishing.

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Right. Absolutely. Right, you see Paul's experience in Athens, you know, some mocked him, others said, we will, you know, hear some more of this, and others believed and followed him.

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People say, what kind of reaction do you get when you go out on the street? I said, the same one that he got there.

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Right. You know, to varying degrees, but. That's good. So that's a question I have here.

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I'm gonna kind of scroll down on the list that we have, because I think we're covering a lot of this. But that's a great question.

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What does it mean to be a successful evangelist? What is successful evangelism?

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So are we called to produce fruit? You hear that all the time. Oh wait, where's the fruit? And I remember trying to lead evangelism teams in churches and just saying, hey, you know, you're out there preaching the gospel, but I don't see anybody sitting in church.

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I don't see any addition to our church services. And so what the American Evangelical Church is, they'll discard any type of evangelistic definition or evangelistic endeavor if it's not filling up the pews.

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So I think we need to get into it. What does it mean to successfully evangelize? Can I say something? Because I already know once this comes out, we're gonna start getting people commenting on this.

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I just wanna touch on something really quick, because when we've talked about this before, when I've talked about this with other believers, it's always just made sure to be said that, and I wanna be clear on it too, and I think that we are.

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Inviting people to church is good, and discipleship is an essential component of the Christian walk.

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We want people to go to church. Of course, you're a pastor. You want people to come to your church. Of course, yeah. What we're saying is it's not evangelism.

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The definition of evangelism is literally telling the good news. So call it something else.

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Call it inviting people to church. Call it giving people hot dogs or serving people. Just don't call it evangelism if you're not sharing the gospel.

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That's the big thing, is the redefining of the word evangelism.

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So people take that word evangelism, and they just spray it, like, okay, evangelism is hot dog distribution.

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Evangelism is inviting people to church. Evangelism is going to Peru or Machu Picchu, and you know, it's just that redefinition, and so I just wanna make it clear that we're not saying don't invite people to church.

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Invite people to your church, especially if you go to a church that preaches the gospel. Christians need discipleship, and they need a covering of the local church, and so.

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Yeah, that's a good way of explaining it. I'm glad you did that, just kind of parsing that out a little bit more clearly.

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Yeah, invite people to church, but if I had a genie popped up in the big old blue fat genie popped out of a little genie thingy, and gave me three wishes, one of my wishes would be that person would have such a change of mind and philosophy of evangelism that just says, okay,

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I'm gonna invite Jack to church so he can hear the gospel, and you hear it all over American Evangelical Church.

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You need to get in church. You need to hear the gospel. If I could change it in a minute, it would be him saying, no,

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I'm gonna share the gospel. Jack's gonna share the gospel. I'm gonna share the gospel with Jack, rather than say,

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I'm just gonna invite him to church and have him hear this great, great eloquent pastor preach the gospel.

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That's what we need to get into the heart of the, in the mind of the broader church is that evangelism is just simply knowing how to do it and you doing it yourself.

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Then we're gonna see massive amounts of people getting saved here. Right, and the truth is people do get saved in church.

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They get saved going and hearing, I was saved in church. Oh, sure. I heard you preach the gospel, and God broke me at that moment.

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You had given me the gospel prior to that, but it was actually sitting in church that I got saved because you were preaching the gospel because God sovereignly saved me.

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So anyway. I like what Sai says. God can, what does Sai say, Bobby, about that? God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick.

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Something like that. Okay, let's get back to that. Successful evangelism. What is successful evangelism?

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Every time you share the gospel, you're successful in evangelism. And I would say a pastor of mine, probably about eight years ago, he was preaching through Acts, and he got to Acts 13 when

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Paul preaches outside the synagogue. They asked him to come back. He preaches again, and it says, all who were appointed to eternal life believed.

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Right. And he talked about that, and he just talked about Paul being faithful to the message.

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And he said, you know, we have all these ways of measuring what we call success or we call fruit in the modern church today, but he said the only way you can or ever should measure that is by faithfulness to the word of God.

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Awesome. And so as far as successful evangelism, every time you speak the gospel to someone, that is successful evangelism.

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And if I can, you know, you talked about something like fruit, right? So some of these things, you know, these things where people say, you know, how many people have you led to the

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Lord? Things like that. You know, I remember years ago, somebody asked me that, and I think the

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Lord just gave me the answer in the moment. I looked at him and I said, I think millions. And they said, what do you mean?

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Like, you know, they look at me like, how come I haven't heard of you? Like Billy Graham or something. And I said, well, you know, by God's grace,

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I've had the privilege to preach it outside of like 10 Super Bowls and eight

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Kentucky Derbies and the Olympics in London. And I think probably over these years, millions of people have heard me preach the gospel and I led them all right to the foot of the bloodstained cross.

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Right. You know, and they say, how many decisions have you seen? Well, I mean, again, same answer because every single person that heard that proclamation or took that track made a decision to either rejoice in what they heard is true or to continue on in their rebellion towards God.

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Excellent. But I mean, you know, you talk about fruit. I mean, Paul talked about it. First Corinthians three. He said,

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I planted, you know, a polished water but God gave the growth. He said, it's neither he who plants or waters is anything but only

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God who gives the growth. So, you know, like you talked about, if you get so concerned with putting people in the seats, which let's just face it.

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I mean, the seeker sensitive church in America, I mean, the church that my wife and I were saved in,

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I believe that the man that led that church was a good brother, but he used these, you know, sort of Willow Creek, you know, saddleback strategies, get the lost in, build a church full of tears.

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Well, what also comes with that is a lot of money coming in and then a big budget. And then you start bringing on staff.

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And so then you got to worry about not saying anything that offends the tears, you know, because if you offend the tears, then, you know, the tithing or however you want to use the word, the giving goes down.

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And so, I mean, when you talk about fruit, I mean, I guess for me, sometimes I say to people, it depends on what you call that.

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I mean, I've seen the word of God sober up a drunk, you know,

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I see that as like something fruitful. I've had, I mean,

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I've had college students that come up to me and they say, I've been avoiding this corner when we were in Athens for 10 years on the same corner every

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Friday night. They say, I've been avoiding this corner for four years, but I'm about to graduate. And before I go,

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I just got to hear your message. Tell me your message. I mean, I see that, I see those things as fruit, but I mean, you know, so it's tricky when they say fruit, well, what do you mean?

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Like, you know, how many decision cards did you get filled out? Or how many people, you know, walked an aisle or prayed a prayer?

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I mean, what is that when Jesus said you must be born again? It's just so important to talk about.

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Of course, all these are leading questions in a way of opening up the eyes of people who are throwing around biblical phrases that don't necessarily apply to a situation.

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So, I mean, if I'm producing anything in evangelism other than the message, they're going to be saved to me.

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And if I'm the savior of any man, I'm a horrible savior. And you can do that by just trying to force somebody to repent or force somebody to have some type of positive reaction.

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But what I'm getting at is we're not called to produce any fruit. Fruit is something that God produces.

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I mean, you look at Galatians 5, 22, it talks about fruit. Jesus is big on fruit in John chapter five, talking about being the vine and how if we don't produce fruit, we'll be thrown out.

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And also we glorify God in our fruit producing. But what is that fruit? If you look at it biblically, fruit is the work of the spirit in the heart of the

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Christian to put on the character qualities of Christ. That's what it is.

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Yeah, it's the fruit of the spirit, not the fruit of the evangelist. Yeah, exactly. And any type of evangelistic or evangelist fruit is gonna be no fruit at all.

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What we like to do, unfortunately, is we like to say, and I've talked to a lot of guys, well,

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I've had this many people bow the knee or I've had this many salvations. One guy said, I went out and got salvations.

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I'm like, you did? Uh -oh, we're in trouble there. But what we like to do is we like to boast in our own selves.

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We like to boast and receive the accolades of men. I mean, it's one of the greatest temptations out there.

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It's something that we have to fight with every single day. Am I doing what I'm doing all for the glory of God? Am I going about this evangelistic effort to give him honor and to boast in Jesus?

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Or am I changing it all just so I could say, look what I've done here. And let me show you my pedigree or my capability as a man or an evangelist based upon the fruit.

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No, I don't think that's the way we see it in scripture. What I think we see is we see people sacrificing their lives, the foolish things of the world confounding the wise.

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Not some great people, but some people with a great God, like Paul Washer says, people who go out, proclaim the gospel,

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God saves. And you know, bro, I mean, really, we've preached the gospel to hundreds of thousands of people and we don't know who

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God's gonna save. And John 3 talks about the movement of the spirit through the gospel is like the movement of the wind.

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You can't see it. So you're out there heralding the gospel message, hopefully doing it accurately. God saves

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Joe Schmo that's walking down the street. Maybe then, maybe later on when that seat is watered and when all is said and done, we're gonna boast in Jesus Christ and him alone for the work that he's doing.

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So we go about this evangelistic effort, just trying to say, look at what I've done. Look at the fruit that I've produced.

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We are doomed at the outset. God will not bless that.

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We need to become nothing. So he becomes, we need to decrease so that he would increase. And again, successful evangelism, like you said it so well, it's just the failure to evangelize.

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You succeed every single time you get that word out because that word and the gospel is gonna harden one and God will be glorified in his hardening or it will soften one to salvation and God will be glorified in his grace.

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Every time you go out and you share the gospel, you are successful in that. Obviously the gospel isn't just for the lost too.

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It's for the believer. We need it and we need to be reminded of it. And just a little while ago, my family and I were in Chick -fil -A and we always bring tracts with us because it's easy way.

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You know, our little paper missionaries, they do the work for you. And we were sitting there and my son actually was like, we should give a tract to somebody.

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I'm like, you're right, let's give a tract to somebody. And right behind us was a group of teenage boys that were laughing and stuff.

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And so as we were leaving, we gave him a tract, said, you know, we hope you read it. We prayed for him as we were walking out or getting in our car.

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And one of the boys runs out and his friends are inside and he just said, hey,

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I just wanted to thank you. I'm a Christian, but none of my friends are. And I've been praying that God would give me the boldness to share the gospel with them.

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And so you've really helped in that area. And we were just like, wow, that was so cool and so unexpected.

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And so something that only God could have done in the timing and everything like that. But it just goes to show that just being obedient,

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God is gonna produce the fruit. I couldn't have produced that if I tried to. That is all the working of God.

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And he's gonna do what he wants with that young man, all to his glory. And so I think if we get so caught up in like making a checklist of like, how many people have you had say the sinner's prayer?

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Then we're in trouble, we're missing the point. And the point is obedience. What God calls us to do.

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I just don't think we're even biblically warranted to even speak that way. But again, biblical fruit just doesn't apply.

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Doesn't apply to the evangelistic efforts. Do we wanna see people save? Of course. And when we see babies saved at the abortion clinics and we see people bow the knee to Jesus and break in front of us, which doesn't happen as much as you would hope it happens.

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And that's all a part of God's sovereign plan for that individual. And that's based upon his own pleasure and his own decrees.

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I mean, we wanna see that. But as evangelists who are gonna continue at this mission through the ups and downs, and I know you guys can agree, we have to be motivated not by results or not by fruit.

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And unfortunately you see within the broader American Evangelical Church, and I've seen it so many times, people will show up to an evangelistic event, there'll be one, there'll be me there too.

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And it's an immediate discouragement because not a lot of people there. And it just doesn't fit within their framework of what they think evangelism should be.

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And our motivation to do what we do every day is because we love Christ.

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And it doesn't matter if we don't see any results, it doesn't matter if we're spat on, or if we go through even increased, which we might as a nation go through an increased persecution, death, whatever it may be, jail.

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We have seen nothing yet. You should study the covenanters and the prison that they had to stay in.

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I mean, these people went through tremendous pain. We haven't even seen that. But if we're gonna be evangelists who stand the test of time and can get up every day in the joy of the

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Lord, it's gotta be based upon not results, again, not fruit that we can produce, we can't, but just surely based upon our love for Christ, our love for neighbor.

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Right, and the ease and comfort of evangelism because it's not fun sometimes. It's gross.

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Especially in the summer in Arizona. Yeah, so that's why I wanna talk about my husband going out recently.

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And Bobby, my husband, Don, he just really loves you and you've been such an encouragement for him.

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You guys are the same age too. And you guys got saved around the same time. That's pretty cool. And we love watching.

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Yeah, we love just listening to you and watching your family out there. It's just your family has encouraged our family tremendously.

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So I just wanted to thank you for that. But recently

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Don was at the abortion clinic and it's hot, it's super hot. He goes in the later part of the day.

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So it's like pretty much the hottest you can get because that sun's been baking the asphalt.

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But anyways, he's there and they get started. They're preaching. And they start seeing these bottles being launched over this wall that was in front of them.

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And he's like, it was a Gatorade bottle. And he's like, oh, Arctic, Arctic blue.

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Isn't usually, yeah, yeah, that's urine. That is urine. And then as he was saying that, he could just smell the disgusting smell of urine.

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And they did it a couple times. Praise the Lord, nothing got on them. And the guys were cowardly and ran away.

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It was a big group of probably teenagers or young men. And there was nothing that could be done in that moment.

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But anyways, they kept preaching. He goes out with another real faithful brother, Steven. And I'm of course like, that's gross.

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Did it get on you? Are you okay? And he's like, yeah, it's gross, but whatever. But that just goes to show like, it's not flowers and lambs hanging out with you and butterflies landing on your finger.

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Sometimes it's ugly and dirty and hot and uncomfortable, but the Lord will give you the strength to do it.

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I think, especially here in America, we're so used to being comfortable.

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We would rather go into a, I mean, I would rather go and sit in a church that has AC and have my pastor do the work for me.

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That's a lot easier going out and doing that. And if we're honest with ourselves, that's why we reduce doctrine and not only evangelism, but evangelism is kind of like a wax nose.

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We like to twist it to where we want. And it's all because we're creatures of comfort. It's all because we want to acclimate to the greatest level of comfort that we have that's in front of us.

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And so we say, well, going out into the public place, looking like fools to men, like Bobby said, looking like absolute morons and idiots and receiving vitriol and hatred and a lot of other worse stuff, that's not fun.

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That's actually gonna cost me. Why not reduce this to where I don't have to do it, where I can pass the buck onto another individual, an evangelist or a pastor?

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But man, it's just not biblical evangelism. In our culture is the report card of this type of evangelism.

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Methodology. Especially when you start doing it and you begin to share the gospel with your family members and your friends.

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And I would say, especially people who call themselves Christians, it's gonna get ugly. And I feel like that is probably one of the hardest things about evangelism is dealing with the closest people within your circle and them being confronted by the gospel.

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Yeah, especially when you have to, like Bobby was talking about true and false conversion. One of the toughest conversations you can have with a person is to say, hey, 2

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Corinthians 13, five, Paul says examine yourself to see if you're in the faith lest you fail the test, but it's so needed.

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And are you willing to hate mother and father? Yeah, are you willing to do that? And that's just confronting them with the truth.

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But Bobby, you wanna get the most out of you in the next 10 minutes? We got about 10 more minutes to go. I've got some questions.

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You have anything you wanna speak on right now? No, you go ahead with your questions, brother.

26:48

Okay, well, maybe one. What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you out there? She had just talked about pee pee bottles being launched at a good old

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Don. I don't know. I mean, there's been a number of things, a lot of threats, physical threats, physical.

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I mean, I've taken a few shots in the mouth. I mean, two or three times in 10 years,

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I don't look at that as like that big of a deal. One really,

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I don't know, sometimes I hesitate to talk about this stuff because I know like unbelievers listen to stuff like this.

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I don't wanna really give them like ideas, but I was preaching in Newark, New Jersey, my friend

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Don and I, and a guy, it was like a drug corner and we're preaching and it's just this crazy corner, drug selling, prostitutes getting picked up, dropped off, and I think it might've been like the store owner who might've been like the kingpin because he kept sending guys out from the store and they were taking these huge bottles of soda, like these 20 ounce bottles of soda and popping them just enough to get them fizzing and shaking them up and from like 30 feet away, like an almost full bottle of soda, they were just launching them at us.

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And so soda was flying everywhere too, but if one of those things like would've hit us from that far away, it probably could have done some damage.

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But the blessing from God that day was I figured out another use for scripture signs that day because they became my shield against the bottles, but I don't know,

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I mean, a lot of things have happened, but you know, one time someone asked my wife, are you afraid somebody will just, you know, shoot them one day or something?

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And she said, I was so grateful to God. She said, I never really think about it because I know that no one could ever lay a finger on his head unless God permits it.

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Right. And you know, so I think even, I mean, is that to say like I've never been scared or nervous,

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I mean, that is one thing I was gonna say. I mean, even after being on the streets for, you know, over 10 years,

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I mean, there's still times, I mean, every time before I preach the word of God, I tremble, I'm afraid.

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I mean, it's not to say that, you know, familiarity in doing it doesn't help that, but I'm still always afraid.

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I'm still, believe it or not, I mean, I don't know if this would be a popular thing to say, but there's some days that I wake up and I go,

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God, I don't wanna go get cursed out again. Sure. You know, I don't wanna go on that college campus unless all these people are gonna like call me an idiot and a moron and all that, but one of the things too, we have to get away from just seeing the

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Great Commission as a sense of duty, which it is, and so that's good, but a friend of mine years ago, he said, you know, that's a compound word, co -mission, and so, you know,

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I never really, I guess, that was maybe two or three years after I saved, I hadn't really thought, but what about the privilege that God, the

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God of the universe, that could have chosen to save people any way he wanted to has allowed us, these lowly beings, to be part of his co -mission to redeem his elect.

30:10

Right. You know, that's a huge privilege, it's a humbling privilege, and it's an exciting privilege.

30:17

You're right, and we have to keep that mindset too, because you can only go so far or last so long if it's just white -knuckle duty, and duty and obedience is huge, and you know,

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Jesus says, you love me, obey my command, so our duty ultimately flows out of just a loving, a loving worship for Christ, but yeah, it's important to keep these, and you know, that's why

30:37

Desi was saying earlier, we have to preach the gospel, we have to preach to ourselves every day, because I'm the same, I get up and I'm like,

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I really don't wanna go stand out in front of that clinic, and I really, you know, and it's just this, okay, let me remind myself, this is a duty,

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I mean, I am unworthy to even proclaim anything about Christ or his truth, and this is, this is the master, including me and his business, yeah.

31:02

So it's these, go ahead. I was gonna say, I thought of one thing, you know, you asked what's the worst thing that happened, so I won't be specific, but probably the worst heckler

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I've ever had, and we just don't have time for the specifics, but just very vile heckler, who was actually,

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I found out later, was a teacher in a local school, and even as he was heckling, got some of his students being really profane, and all this just, just horrific thing that happened.

31:34

Two years later, this was at that spot we were at every Friday night in Athens for 10 years, two years later,

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I see that guy come back, I don't see him for two years, and he's sitting there listening to preaching, two hecklers that night, a college student and an older gentleman got in a fight, and this guy's watching the whole thing go down, and when it all wraps up, and I finish preaching, he comes over to me, and he says,

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I need to talk to you, I said, okay, he said, you remember me? I said, yeah, sure, pretty hard to forget, man. I said, but listen, before you say anything,

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I want you to know, I hold no ill will towards you, I wanna see, know the Lord, and this guy, he said to me, he said, my mother committed suicide three weeks ago, and I came here just to talk to you about that.

32:17

Wow. And so it was like this thing that God just, it's definitely the most vile experience

32:24

I've ever had with a heckler, but a friend of mine, John Speed, I heard him say something years ago, he said, when it all hits the fan for an unbeliever, they wanna go find someone they know is gonna give them just the dead -level truth.

32:40

That's right, and I think that's what happened with that guy. It's right, and I think your response to the abuse was huge, because we know the guys out there on YouTube who, they respond in anger and rage to hecklers, and we have to remain, that's a huge part of evangelism, effective evangelism out in front of the abortion mill, wherever it is, you have to know how to be, bear the fruit of self -control, and not revile, even though being reviled, like Christ showed us, right?

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Not quarrel and fight and give insult to injury. That's so important in our evangelism.

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So if you had been receiving all of this abuse, and then you just fire back, right, just fire back at the guy, there's no way he would've came and talked to you, because you would've been a threat at that moment.

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When we receive the abuse, even though it's tough, and I've had a guy spit in my mouth one time when

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I was sick for two weeks after that, that was the worst, I'd rather, I wish he hit me in the face with a sledgehammer.

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I would've liked that more than being spit in my mouth at the abortion clinic. But we have to, in your evangelistic efforts, you have to not respond in vitriol.

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Like Jesus is saying, you turn the other cheek, what is that, it's a tempered spiritual response to an attack, it's absolutely so essential.

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If a guy throws a haymaker at you, and I understand we have to defend ourselves, I think the best way that you do it, if you get in a physical confrontation, a guy's coming on you, you try to wrestle him to the ground and hold him down and have your people help.

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But what we don't wanna do is just throw blow for blow. Right, with somebody, we have to be in control.

34:23

What I'm getting at, Bobby, is that, because you responded that way, I'm sure that was hugely indicative why the guy would come back.

34:30

Right. Yeah. I have a question. Go ahead. Sorry. And this might be a part three, maybe we need to have

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Bobby come on for number three, if he's available, but for the listener who maybe is just getting into evangelism, for actually all of us, out of your 10 years of doing this, for people that are going in who are married and have families, maybe even just single, it doesn't really matter, but I'm asking you specifically about this because you are married and you do go out with your family.

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Just to be prepared for the spiritual attacks that come onto your family, how do you deal with that?

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What do you think about bringing your kids? This is a huge subject, so maybe just touch on some of the things that believers can do to prepare their family for spiritual attack when it comes to bringing the gospel to the public square, what that looks like, because I know in our experience, it's like right leading up, you're gonna go out and you're gonna share the gospel, or even you know you've been praying about having this conversation with a family member, a friend, and I feel like leading up to the moment,

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I'm getting every single negative thought, doubt about my competency, that that person will hate me.

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I feel like there may be like a fight that might happen between me and my husband right before he goes out.

35:58

What things can we do to prepare our hearts to be protected by the word of God so that we know, obviously the enemy doesn't want us out sharing the gospel, so is there any advice and encouragement that you can give to all of us?

36:15

Wow, it's a big question, Debbie, but I think, you know, Paul in Romans 12, what is he, he says, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

36:27

I think that's a really good, there's so much there in that one verse, but specifically in regards to evangelism,

36:33

I totally know what you're talking about. I mean, there's been times that, you know, right before I was about to walk out the door, my wife or I just like annoyed one another and, you know, started like an argument or something like that, and just continuing to pray, being aware that that's the way the enemy works, because I mean,

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I think if you're just, you know, if you're just sitting, occupying a pew, never telling anybody about Jesus, I think

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Satan, you know, laughs at that, kind of has, you know, feels like that's a victory, but if you're actually going out to give people the good news, well, then he's gonna wanna do anything he can to get in the way of that.

37:12

Right. So I would say just be prayerful, be mindful. There's times my wife and I have like, you know, started to, you know, have a disagreement right before I'm about to walk out, and we both just look at each other and say, you know what's happening here right now, right?

37:25

Yeah, okay, so we need to stop. We both need to, you know, repent and just, you know, hug it out, pray, you know, and.

37:32

Smooch it out. Push through. Yeah. You know, but then as far,

37:37

I didn't know if you also wanted me to touch on being out with your family. Yeah.

37:42

As well. Yeah, do that real quickly. And then we'll have to have you on again, because I think this could be an episode just by itself.

37:50

Absolutely. I can't believe this time went by so fast. It did. Zach told me how long, I was like, how am

37:55

I gonna, I can't talk that long. But, so one thing that I would say, this might be controversial and it's caused controversy in my own life, but I would say start your children young in going out and evangelizing so that they don't think that it's something weird.

38:13

Right. My oldest daughter, who's now 15, when she was five years old, I was packing my stuff up to go preach at a

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UGA football game, 92 ,000 people. She said, daddy, can I go with you? I said, why do you want to?

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She said, well, I know that there's a lot of lost people and if I give them these tracks, they can hear about Jesus and be saved.

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I said, great, you can come. And so people would say things to us like, aren't you afraid your kids are gonna hear things you don't want them to hear?

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And I would say, well, I'm not afraid, I know they will, but I'd rather have them hear that when they're standing right next to their father and their mother, and we can talk about why the scripture says people are saying those things.

38:57

Right. So, you know, when Hannah was about nine, there was a guy just unloading on me at a game, just every vile, foul word, disgusting.

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And I just let him go. Sometimes I just let people go, you know? I'm like, I don't know, did you just get fired? Do you have a bad day? I don't know what, go ahead.

39:13

And the guy got done and I said, are you finished? Yeah. I hand him a track, I said,

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God bless you. I hope you meet Jesus sooner than later. And he even cursed me as he walked away.

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And in my spirit, I was vexed. And I was saying, Lord, what do I say to Hannah about that? She was standing right there.

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She heard the whole thing. And as I'm kind of praying internally to the Lord, she at nine comes over and takes my hand and says, you know, daddy, can we pray for that guy right now?

39:40

Because he really needs Jesus. Right. And it just shows, you know, like, I think,

39:46

I don't know, it's the family stuff is a whole longer conversation. I think we underestimate what children are capable of and understanding and things like that.

39:56

But I know this is, you know, getting treated ill by their fellow man for the gospel is not something that my children will perceive as strange.

40:06

And I don't think that it's something abnormal to the New Testament witness.

40:13

Absolutely. Yeah, we're so focused on teaching our kids how to play an instrument or learn a sport or just live out their childhood and pleasure.

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That's not a biblical model. I think we're super focused on safety too for our kids.

40:29

You know, I think, you know, that's why, you know, you hear people talk about, I mean, I don't really like using the pejoratives of the culture that much, but you hear people talk about the snowflake culture.

40:39

I mean, well, if you raise your kids in a bubble, you know, I mean, what do you expect?

40:45

You know, and now we're living in this culture of offense and, you know, I've had friends get arrested in Great Britain.

40:51

They have a law that says if you say anything that causes someone harassment, alarm or offense, you'd be subject to arrest.

40:59

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, that's, you know, it seems like what's probably coming here should the Lord not, you know, revive or return in this culture.

41:07

But, you know, we have to, you know, realize that, you know,

41:13

Paul, you know, what did he say? It's been counted to you not only to believe in him,

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Philippians 1, 29, 30, but also to suffer for his sake. But he doesn't stop there.

41:23

A lot of times I hear that even in pulp, it's truncated. He says that the reason you're gonna suffer, he says, engaged in the same conflict you heard that I have and now hear that I still have.

41:36

And so what is the conflict he was engaged in? Well, it was the ministry of the gospel. Right. You know, and Paul says, if you're gonna engage in that, you're gonna suffer for it.

41:46

Exactly right. You know, and it's not like we go out saying, you know, we're not the guy calling people names, you know, in front of the strip club.

41:53

And then the guy punches him in the face and then he says, persecuted, you know, as no, you were punched for being a jerk.

42:00

Right. Yeah, go preach in front of the strip club because there's people that need Jesus, but do it like the scripture says, with compassion, with gentleness and respect.

42:09

I mean, anybody can go get knocked out for being a jerk for Jesus. Sure. That's what Peter said, don't suffer as an unbeliever.

42:15

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. That's a blessing. And my nine -year -old son

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Liam said something recently that I think kind of sums that up too, is he was talking about us going out and he just kind of blurted it out, but he was like, we go, you know, we go share the gospel because that's what

42:33

Christians do. Yeah. And I was like, praise God. That's what they, you work it in.

42:39

It's so simple. Yeah, that's where you've truly succeeded. All right, man, well, again, I knew you didn't know if you could talk this long, but I knew exactly this would turn out this way.

42:48

You've been such a blessing and I'm so appreciative of your counsel and your advice and your expertise because you've been doing it so long.

42:55

I praise God for you. You know, one of the, sadly, I, well, let me explain this a little bit more.

43:01

We're going to wrap up here, but what we'd like to do in the American church is we'd like to give our money to missionaries overseas and that we need to keep on doing that.

43:10

And I'm not saying at all, we should stop, but there is this kind of out of balance giving and supporting of missionaries in America because we need missionaries on our home soil.

43:22

And I consider Bobby and his family at the End of the Earth Ministries a missionary to America.

43:29

And what we need to do as the Christian church is support our homebound missionaries. So if you could go to End of the

43:36

Earth Ministries and really prayerfully think about financially supporting Bobby and his family in this much needed ministry.

43:43

I mean, if you've heard throughout the show, he's doing it correctly. He's defined biblical evangelism the way it should be defined, and he's going about it.

43:53

He's not worthy in himself. What I'm trying to get at is he's a credible

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American evangelist that should be supported by his brothers and sisters in churches.

44:04

And so I really want to encourage you. Of course, this is not giving above your own local church. Like we say, we put your local church in the primary position of receiving your support.

44:13

But this is over and above your own tithing and your own giving to your local church. Go to the End of the

44:18

Earth Ministries. It's totheendoftheearth .org, right? Yeah, totheendoftheearth .org.

44:24

Go there and prayerfully consider helping our brothers. So I love you, man. Appreciate you. Thank you, Bobby. And I appreciate you coming on.

44:29

I love you guys. I just want to say I was really humbled that you even asked me and that both of you guys have been a huge encouragement to me.

44:39

And your church is a huge encouragement to me. One thing I want to say is, it was something

44:45

I know we were going to talk about, but you asked, should pastors be leading a church and equipping the church?

44:51

I don't think a church will really ever go beyond its pastor in any given area. Whether it's discipleship, whether it's evangelism, whether it's, you know, so one of the things you see with Apologia is a lot of times you guys are out on the abortion sidewalk with, you know, 15 people, 20 people, or a ball game with all these people.

45:10

And I think a big part of that is because they see the leadership doing it. That's right. And so I thank

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God for that. And, you know, Desi, you and Dawn just been encouragement to me since Zephaniah first told me about you guys.

45:25

And just so appreciate your ministry and love you guys so much praying for these pregnancies, these new blessings that God's about to bring into both of your families.

45:38

And please also, just for the people to know, like I'm just a servant. I'm just a unworthy servant seeking to do my duty.

45:46

But if there's any way I could ever help anyone, encourage anyone, pray for anyone, I'm not.

45:53

I am, just as Zach said in the beginning, you guys are just ordinary people. You found the most ordinary street preacher to be on your show.

46:01

But if there's any way I can ever help anyone or pray, encourage anyone in these things, please reach out to me.

46:08

Yeah. No, absolutely. And that's why we love you, man. Maintain that humble estimation of yourself and we become effective.

46:15

We continue to be effective for the Lord. And I see that in you and your ministry is such a blessing. So we'll see you later, man.

46:21

We'll be in touch. And of course you're gonna be coming on again, but we're praying for you. Thank you, Bobby. Love you guys.

46:27

We love you too, Bobby. And tell your wife we said hi and hug those kiddos. I'll do it.

46:32

Same for your families. We will. Thank you. All right. See you, brother. Bye, guys. Bye -bye. All right, folks.

46:38

Well, we hope that was a blessing. I thought that was a pretty amazing conversation with just a wonderful brother in the faith, such an exemplary evangelist.

46:46

And the moment that the words, when I had first heard him preach at the Herald Society so many years ago, and just a couple of words came out,

46:53

I said, man, this is such an example and a blessing and a leader in the street evangelism world.

46:59

So we hope you were equipped. We hope you're blessed. We're here to answer any questions. If you have any thoughts in regards to the content of the show, we're there to explain ourselves.

47:08

And like we were saying in what Bobby had just said, we're just a bunch of ordinary nobodies.

47:14

We're servants of the King. And we're here to do our best, to come alongside of the church and to serve the church, to equip the church.

47:22

And a lot of, sometimes what you gotta do is you gotta test the methodologies.

47:28

You have to be able to be open to critique and know when you're going about something that you think is the right way and it's not.

47:35

And I think we did that kind of on our explanation of faulty evangelistic definitions or methodologies.

47:40

Yeah, we need to be Bereans. We need to be studying the scriptures and examining and saying, is this lining up with what the word of God tells me?

47:48

Yeah, exactly. So we are gonna get out of here. We will see you next time. And we love you.

47:54

Yeah, thank you guys for joining us again. Just a reminder, go over to Facebook, go over to iTunes, give us a like and a review because we do wanna try to expand our little reach as much as we can.

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So we sure would appreciate it. We love you guys. We hope you have a good day and we'll see you next time. You'll preach the gospel.