The Superbowl, the U.S. Open, the World Series, the Daytona 500, Mardi Gras, Gasparilla, Movie Openings, Spring Break events, 4th of July events, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, you name it; Seems all the street preachers are actually going to these sort of scheduled attractions, parades and festivals. To go out of our way with God’s money to go to a large group of sinners that have no interest in our Savior and are purposefully meeting for sinful reasons may fall under the category of laboring in vain. Don't cast me out yet. Here is my reasoning.
The Laodicean Church Age is agreed upon by most prominent scholars to have began in the late 1800’s or early part of the 1900’s. This coincides with the first per-version of the word of God in the Revised Version 1881. Soon after, you start seeing a strain of apostasy. The shift no longer is consecrated devotion to the Lord, and edifying the church. It starts to transform to “evangelistic”, Kingdom building, techniques that emphasizes reaching the masses, planned revivals, and inventing a whole new way of doing missions.
Righteousness is not accepted collectively as a nation as it was in the Philadelphian church age. Holiness is no longer practiced in the government and education systems as it was in the “old days”. This is the age of apostasy. It’s a different age. As much as I or others would love to live in the 1800’s, or the 1920’2 or the glorious 1950’s, we can’t and we don’t.
Many outreach minded pastors consider it a full tilt fight, no matter how the world changes, the old time ways continue. These big events where we tract bomb and street rant, how can sinners decipher his drawing or calling among 50,000 people.
We think because we live in America and have our rights (Laodicea) that this is our beloved, Puritan Christian nation of old. It is not any longer. America is a after thought to God at this point. Politics, corruption, corporate greed, our school systems, abortions, vanity, materialism, debt, kids killing kids, love of money, crime, extortion, the poor, the fatherless, the degenerate, the proliferate, divorce rates, theft, atheism, sodomy, lawlessness, lasciviousness. Who are we kidding. We are another nation that turned on God, like Israel.
I take it further then that, I think his focus has not been a nation sense Acts. Israel is his chosen people, not us Gentile American Baptist. God the father and his focus is always Israel. Did you hear me? ISRAEL is the apple of His eye, not the United states of America.
So when I hear pastors and preachers arguing with police about every little minutia and detail of the law, I wonder how we got so lost in our ways? We incessantly focus on our rights, which is precisely what Laodicea represents, the peoples rights.
Now since we know God is not dealing with nations in the church age, he is dealing with individuals is also precisely the reason we should not be going unto the masses in the manners we are.
Do we ever stop to consider? We may be adding fuel to the fire?
You have the freedom to preach the same way they have certain freedoms and rights to live their lifestyles. Disagree or agreement? Again, we are not in a Theocratic society. No king is removing sodomites out of the land, they are embracing them. No king is reinstating a prohibition on the people. Obey the powers that be, for THEY are ORDAINED of God. We do not have a NT command to remove them either.
How do you get around that one? What ever president it is, Christian or Muslim, it matters not. He is in power. It is written. God is aware of it. It didn’t surprise Him. God allowed it. Barrack Obama is His servant to that capacity. His minister in the sense of a ruler of a nation.
Sin is rampant in society, much more now then ever in mankind. Think about what faces the average young man and young woman coming up in todays societies. Access to sin is 100%. A Christians character and will is definitely tested in todays age. We see things and hear things that were unimaginable to the early church.
And instead of the fields, the streets, the pulpits, many men look for more spectacular events. They look for people who have given themselves such to sin and lasciviousness and the defilement of their bodies are diseased by their sin. These are men and women that have made conscience choices to revel, get drunk, and lust. If they are to be drawn of God I assure you it will be God doing it, and it will in all probability not be the confrontational street preacher doing it.
The same sinners you see at these immoral, worldly gatherings, are the same sinners you see at the corner store. They are all sinners by nature. They are not just the drunkards and fornicators. They can be fornicators and drunkards after salvation. You just happen to catch a multitude of sinners, gathered together. They are eating, drinking, dancing, and worshipping false idols. And you, the bold, unashamed street preaching Moses of the day must proclaim of wrath and pending judgment.
If your preaching to “every creature”, the largest multitudes available, you won’t have time for specifics anyways, it will create to many questions, and cause to much of a stir yes, but what has it really impacted beyond that? And we have seen that is what happens many times. Questions, confusion, disbelief, shock, they view it has hatred. They view the street preacher as a close minded hateful bigot not a man passionate for their soul. Paul is against things that ministered questions. There has to be understanding. The philosophy is to reach as many in the “least amount of time,” but you won’t even answer a question in that time? You would rather preach it out!
You will leave these events, and never see these people again. Often refereed to churches you know nothing about other then here-say. You piously pray for those who have rejected the truth, after you have just ridiculed them, embarrassed them, threatened their family and friends, told them their kids will go to hell to, called their wives “whores” or worse with unfounded claims of condemnation.
You have not established any report with these people, as the Lord did with the multitudes. You didn’t feed them or heal the sick among them. You gave nothing but harsh words, scripture signs and a unified front against them, the doers of iniquity. You may have given a gospel but it was laced with destruction. You have nothing they want to hear, as the multitudes did with Christ and the Apostles.
Go live with the 200 bums downtown as the Lord did. It’s not “epic” enough for you and your pride. It isn’t what legends are made of. Walk the earth in sandals preaching as he did in Israel. Stand on top of your “housetops” and compel your neighborhood to get saved. You won’t do these things. It’s not romantic enough. You wouldn’t recieve the attention and recognition.
They choose topics, the ones that will allow them to be most controversial. The easy targets, sodomy, drug use, fornication, whatever sin they can be sure someone somewhere is committing. The one that allow them to carry a big stick, and that allows them to tear up, root out, pull down, all the high places and the followers of Baal. And after they tear, they give the gospel?
They tell sinners on the street to their face their children will burn in Hell, or their mother will burn in Hell because of her devotion to a church of man. If some poor sinner teaches their children about Santa Claus he is damming their soul to hell.
Knee jerk reactionary, sensual statements to get a jolt, to get a reaction. Why? Yes we have the truth; yes their kids may go to Hell; Yes their Mom might perish in the lake of fire?
Wisdom is knowing how to handle the knowledge and truth that you have. Wisdom will guide you in giving out that knowledge and truth with discretion. You never hear these guys preaching on the sacrificial blood of the lamb. The redemption of the blood. The love of God. The horrible payment of Calvary. They are incorrect in their ways.
If you want to be like Jonah, go to New York, LA or one of the worst cities and do it. Go to Chicago, or D.C. And preach. If you want to be like Jeremiah, go to Hollywood and stand against these cities. But don’t call your self an evangelist so you can travel the country seeing every national monument there is and take support from the body of Christ while you revival hop, and conference hop to living off the brethren. This is called defrauding the brethren.
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