The voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord; Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5)
Although we were prepared to inaugurate the strategy of multiple stoplight preachers along San Fernando, the Lord arranged for the blasting bands to be absent this evening, so we were able to proclaim the Gospel from our usual location on the Mall.
This makeshift system of amps amplifying other amps was perhaps our most convoluted yet. But, glory to God, it worked great!
Brother Richard was blessed with hecklers this evening. This young woman initially claimed to be an atheist, but then mockingly feigned a conversion to faith in Christ. She lunged toward Richard as if to do a "high five" to congratulate herself, but Richard effectively deflected her effort by challenging her professed atheism with a few basic questions which revealed the shallowness of her beliefs.
Richard did a remarkable job of verbally corralling this group of rambunctious teenagers who impatiently endured Richard's patient administration of the "Good Person Test." It seems common these days that young people such as these will simply adopt the anti-Christian, evolutionary-atheist dogma they are spoon-fed in the schools, without the slightest understanding. The result is a sad inability to make coherent and rational statements about their beliefs.
The Team In Action
Fourth of July In Santa Monica
A small but effective team of CBC'ers, including Jeremy, Sharon and Steve were blessed to be invited to join Tony Miano and his friend, Pastor Geoff Kirkland who was visiting from St. Louis, in an evangelism outreach at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
Pastor Geoff Kirkland leads a congregation in St. Louis which has grown to 90 believers since being planted as an outreach of Grace Community Church's Grace Advance.
Many of the Thomas Jefferson Fourth of July $1M tracts were distributed.
Sharon was blessed with several one-to-one conversations.
Tony Miano preached on idolatry during which time a woman was posing for pictures in the background.
Tony wrote about a certain heckler we encountered there in his blog.
As many already know Tony's legal case in Scotland has been dismissed. He appeared on The Comfort Zone to review what happened. He also posted a comprehensive article explaining his prayerful and scripturally-based decision not to sue the Scottish Police for false arrest.
Morning Shift 7/2/2014
Summer is the best time of year to enjoy sharing the Gospel at the Metro Station in North Hollywood.
Even the pigeons want to stick around to listen in spite of the new bird control devices installed during the recent renovation. Similarly, discouragements (i.e. vertical steel pipes) have been embedded into many of the flat surfaces that have attracted groups of loitering teenagers. Hopefully this will reduce the drug use and general noise level.
Like an unstoppable train, the word of God goes forth, in season and out of season. As our Lord said after He was rebuked by the Pharisees when His disciples rejoiced together with a loud voice saying, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!", He replied "I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out." (Luke 19:40 NKJV)
Apologetics Corner
Taking the Bible Seriously
This is an excellent and relatively comprehensive article written by Dr. Jonathan Safarti, of CMI, in response to a challenge by a professed believer who has bought into the old earth viewpoint. This old earth viewpoint, popular among many churches today, is an attempt to re-interpret scripture based upon the changeable opinions of current scientific assertions about the age of the universe and the earth. Ironically, by compromising with "science" so called, these Christians often lag behind the current state of such belief and so they wind up being wrong on both doctrine and science.
Evolution Evolves
Here is another helpful article about the rapidly shifting theory of evolution. It is helpful to be aware that many in the scientific community are giving up on the decaying Neo-Darwinian theory due to lack of evidence, while clinging to their desperate need for any explanation for the existence of life other than the God of the Bible.
Upcoming Opportunities
Glendale Cruise Night
Yes, it's that time of year! On Saturday, July 19th, The Glendale Cruise Night event will take place on Brand Blvd. in Downtown Glendale. Our booth will be located somewhere along the Blvd. among the other community booths. Here are links to the official event info, and a map of the parking structures in the area. The event is free and it officially starts at 5:30 pm., but we will meet at our booth at 5pm for prayer (Look for the CBC banner). It would be a big help to have one or two volunteers to help set up the booth at approx. 3:00pm. Please RSVP to Steve if you can help with setup.
The tasks for evangelists during the event will be to walk around distributing the giant $100 bill tracts (people love these!), and also we will need several people to stay at the booth to answer questions and keep the tract displays stocked. This is a great way to get your "feet wet" in street evangelism because most people are very happy to get the $100 bills (we distributed over 5,000 last year), and those who stop at the booth are already interested in what we are doing there, so it is easy to strike up a conversation and share the Gospel. In fact, many of those who have participated in the Cruise Night outreach in the past had never done any type of witnessing before. And, of course, there are plenty of classic cars to see. Please join us!!
Pismo Beach Outreach
Deacon Sean C. has asked for volunteer evangelists who might be interested in going to Arroyo Grande/Pismo Beach on Aug 1-3 to do street/beach evangelism alongside some people from our church and The Berean Bible Church there. Please contact Sean for details.
Join Us!
If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor. (John 12:26 NKJV)
MARANATHA!!
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