Militant Evangelism! (5 page)

What a wonderful allegory of those who doubt the promises of God. How perfectly it described my own experience. The second my mind doubted the promises of God's help, Giant Despair would appear and begin to beat me without mercy. What a fool I was to lie in such a dark, nasty and stinking dungeon! The moment I took out that key of promise, I found release.

A Day in the Life of "Mr. Spiritual"

Sue looked at me and said, "I have never had such a sore throat in all my life!" The painful expression on her face as she tried to swallow, revealed the truth of her words; and the painful expression on my faith revealed the truth of my lack of trust in God. I suddenly became conscious of
a dryness
in my own throat. This was the morning I was supposed to fly to New York. David Wilkerson had asked if I could do a seminar for his church, and I had also offered to do an open air in what was said to be the most demonic stronghold of New York. I spoke in Washington Square in Greenwich Village six weeks earlier, and there was a great deal of opposition. Paul Jorgensen, a video producer offered his services, and was driving nine hours from Pittsburgh to New York to produce a video to inspire other Christians to do open air preaching. Hundreds had already registered for the two hour seminar, and I had heard that some were even praying through the night, that God would bless the outreach.

Suddenly, I found myself in the heat of the
Battle of What-if?
Fiery darts blasted an exposed and
defenseless
part of my mind.
I pin-pointed the area targeted by the enemy.
It was the open expanse of the Hill of Imagination. It seemed, like some gigantic magnet, to attract the missiles of the adversary. In they came, one after another: "What if you get a sore throat? What if, like your wife, you can hardly swallow, let alone speak? What about the video producer's nine hour drive? He'll have a nine hour drive home too—all for nothing. Nice. All the expense of the airfare . . . all the trouble ones have gone to. And you are going to let them down." I also thought about how I was hoping to sell our books and tapes that weekend to raise finance needed for three new tracts we were having printed. What if the weekend meetings were
canceled
and we couldn't pay the printers?"

I felt a little nervous at the endless thoughts invading my imagination. That had the effect of making my mouth go dry, which naturally made me conscious of my swallowing.
This was it! I was sure I had the beginnings of a sore throat. I wouldn't be able to speak!
All this, despite the fact that I wouldn't let Sue come within
arms length
of me.
All this, despite that fact that I showed great faith and compassion by praying for her healing (by extending my hand towards her as she stood on the other side of the room).

I gulped down some water. That didn't help. What a pain! I might as well go somewhere,
lay
down and die. The thoughts had a familiar "Giant Despair" ring about them.

It was then I remembered what I should have been doing with my shield of faith. I began to think of how negative our imaginations are. We find it so easy to lean towards pessimism, and so hard to be optimistic. It is as though we are halfway up the "hill of the Lord." On the top are our aspirations for the Kingdom of God, and below is the darkness of the devil's will. There is a natural inclination to fall back down into negativity, and any progress takes nothing but the muscle of determined effort, if we want to achieve anything. Yet, almost all of life is just like that. We battle just to stay alive.

Imagine if you became passive in life. You just lay in bed, refusing to move an inch, hoping that evolution will somehow cause you to better yourself in life. What will be the natural development? Your hair will become greasy. Your teeth will cultivate the "furry" feeling. You will get bed sores. You will develop body
odor
, and other natural bodily functions will place your friends at a great distance. Hunger pains will grip your stomach, and thirst will cause your tongue to swell and your lips to blister. Your finger and toe nails will grow long, brown and curly. Your inactive muscles will begin to wither. If you don't get up and fight for life, you will eventually die; and if we don't get up and
willfully
fight for the will of God in our lives, we will naturally incline to the will of the devil. Satan will sift us as wheat, and he will eventually kill us if we don't stir ourselves to fight like the man or woman of God we know we should be.

We are surrounded by negative laws. Light must have a source to shine. Darkness just is. It is easier to spend money than it is to save. It is easier to destroy something rather than build. Going down is easier than up. It is easier to criticize than to encourage. Weeds grow easier than flowers. It is easier to eat than to fast. Bills come more often than checks. Man is born to trouble as sparks fly upwards. The curse that came with sin meant that we have to work for that which is worthwhile, by the hard sweat of our brow. It takes effort to breathe in the benefit of
oxygen,
breathing out the poison of carbon dioxide comes easy. To grow in God, we must breathe in the life of faith, and breathe out the poison of doubt. One takes effort, the other comes easy.

Of course, I didn't get a sore throat. That was all in my imagination—an imagination fed by the father of lies. In fact, I spoke in three teaching sessions, and preached open air without amplification for over an hour in Washington Square.

I was very pleased with the turnout for the seminar—about four hundred people came on a Saturday morning, then about 150-200 showed up at Washington Square in Greenwich Village for the open air. When we arrived, we found that the Hare
Krishnas
were having an open day. Hundreds of them had different weird and demonic displays—of "holy" cows, reincarnation images of half man and half pig (I know a few who are already like that).

Of course, after about ten minutes of speaking, the police arrived and pulled me aside. They seemed interested in what I was doing (a fake funeral), and then asked me to move. I wasn't breaking any law, but they were so polite and reasonable, I told the crowd we had been asked to move and invited them to follow us for 50 yards or so, which they did. I spoke on the fact that all religions are seeking salvation from death, and think that to do so they have to either do good works or offer some sort of religious sacrifice. In the West we sit on hard pews thinking God will be impressed with our suffering. The Hare
Krishnas
think they will be saved by their works and wear a pony tail so that Krishna can lift them up to Heaven when their reward comes. Not many know that they pour a mixture of yogurt and cow urine over the heads of their idols as a sacrifice. I'm sure God is impressed. Hindus also rub cow droppings into their skin as a religious act. Actually, the presence of the Hares in the park gave
color
to the afternoon. My video friend who drove for nine hours from Pittsburgh knew what he was doing and got some real good footage of hecklers, etc.

One of the greatest revelations a Christian can have is to realize that to doubt God is to call Him a liar: "Anyone who does not believe God has made Him out to be a liar" (1 John 5:10). If I was to ask you your name, and say "I don't believe you" when you told me, I'm sure you'd be insulted. If I don't believe what you say, it means I think you are a
liar, that
you're trying to deceive me! Martin Luther said, "What greater rebellion, impiety, or insult to God can there be, than not to believe His promises."

Mindless Obscenities

I looked at the angry police officer and asked, "Am I breaking the law?" "You are breaking about five
right
now!" he grunted. It was a warm Saturday night in Dallas in June of 1993. I spoke to a group of Christians who had never been involved in open air preaching, then took them to downtown Dallas and staged a fake funeral. I had been speaking to about 50 or 60 people for about 20 minutes, when two policemen arrived at the scene, left, and returned some time later with their boss. When I asked what laws I had broken, he could only give me two—I was blocking the sidewalk, and I was gathering a crowd. Both were minor crimes, but were enough to stop me from speaking. In the past, other officers had been reasonable and allowed me to ask the crowd to make room on the sidewalk for those who wanted to walk by. Not this one. When I asked if I may then conclude, he gave me the sum of 20 seconds to do so.

Afterwards the local pastor and I went back to him and asked if there was anywhere in the Dallas area where I could speak lawfully. He wasn't very impressed, and when the crowd gathered around, he became nervous and told me to tell "my" people to go away. When I said they weren't my people and that I was a guest speaker, he became quite upset and asked his officers if they had their citation books handy. That's when I left. Both the pastor and I were very close to being arrested.

After the incident we felt a little discouraged, but instead of giving up and going home, our group split up and did "one to one." It was the first time many of them had ever shared their faith, and the pastor told me the next day,
every one of them
was bubbling with excitement, despite the brush with the law. In fact, the incident had stirred a greater enthusiasm in most of them, and opened their eyes to see how anti-Christian America had become.

Being an overcoming Christian means arming yourself with a fighting spirit. It means not giving up when something goes wrong. Most people naturally don't have an aggressive attitude. Even in secular life, the world will stomp all over you if you will let it. Surveys show that more than 80% of people will not complain if they are not happy with a job done by a store—they complain
to
many others, but not the store. We tend to shy away from confrontation.

The Bible says, "Submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you." The word "submit" means to obey in a subordinate sense. It means that we should understand the structure of the Army of God, and have faith in Him who leads us to a point where we fling ourselves, without reserve, into His all-powerful arms. The word "resist," means just that. We are to stand against the enemy, having a fighting spirit in every area in which he seeks to overcome us. The Church should be a force to be reckoned with, and it is
satan's
will that we don't see the power that a mere man or woman has, if he has a fighting spirit and faith in the promises of God.

One thing I find that stirs me to
anger,
is graffiti. I feel angry when I drive through a city in which local residents have obviously taken pride in their community and planted trees, gardens and parks, and yet have had mindless graffiti scribbled all over their buildings. It must be so disheartening that so much work can be so quickly and easily degraded.

I heard that some businesses, in an effort to fight graffiti, are having motion detectors placed above the walls of their buildings, and when someone is detected too close to the wall, they set off water sprinklers, dousing the would-be "tagger," and spraying the wall to a point where paint will not adhere to it.

Satan wants to scrawl his mindless obscenities on the walls of the mind of the Christian. He wants to claim territory, and steal our confidence before God. But we must never become disheartened and give up the battle; we are to arm ourselves with a fighting spirit. That means having the motion detector of a
primed
conscience; a conscience which is sensitive to unlawful activity. As soon as there is any detection, we are to turn on the "washing of the water of the Word," so that nothing will stick on the walls of the mind.

Use every stick the devil throws at you to start a fire in your soul. Pile high every stone of persecution,
then
stand on it to be a true and faithful witness for the Kingdom of God.

I spoke to a man once who had the warmth of dry ice. I gave him two of our "I.Q." cards, as an icebreaker, and not a drop melted. His name was Dwight, and he had massive biceps that were even larger than mine (wow!). It turned out that he was another California Christian casualty—he had "tried" Christianity once, and it "didn't work" for him. Then he embarked on a theological
speel
of trying to justify Judas Iscariot. His line of reasoning was that Judas had no choice. I let him speak for some time on the subject, and then I told him that Judas was a thief and a hypocrite, and had the same choices as the other disciples. I told Dwight that if he stayed in his sins, he would follow directly in the path of Judas, but that God didn't want him to perish. The ice remained cold, but quiet. I think that Dwight felt my concern for him. He even took some literature, and allowed me to pray with him. When the devil tries to intimidate us through lack of warmth, we shouldn't be deterred. All we want is a listening ear, whether it
be
cold or hot, it doesn't matter.