800

Crossed a milestone today. I knocked on the door of my 800th house! Looking at the map, it looks like I can finish off this section of town in about 4 more hours. With the 34 houses I went to today, I have now been to 832 houses total. I have had 210 one on one conversations, gathered 133 prayer requests and gathered 678 food items.

Today I ended up at a couple houses of people that I’ve known for many years, but had not seen in a long time. We had good conversations and I was able to share the Gospel with them. Just goes to show that it is tougher to witness to people that you know. But, I was able to do it. Praise God!

The map below shows my current progress in my neighborhood. The highlighted areas are the portions I have already been too! Since First Baptist Hebron is covering the entire 75010 zip code, once I finish these houses, I’ll move on to another zip code within Carrollton.


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God is not a shopping mall

I was talking with a Muslim man named Ronnie at the Grapevine Mills mall last week. Ronnie claimed Islam as his faith, but he also claimed that he believed in reincarnation. I’ve never heard of a Muslim that believes in reincarnation before. But that is ok. Ronnie said that his family has had these beliefs for many generations. His mother and father, their parents and so on. Then Ronnie said something that really struck me. He said, “God is like this shopping mall. There are many doors. You can come into whichever one you like and still get into the mall.”

Now, to be sure, the one true God, the God of the scriptures, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob is not like a shopping mall. Listen to the words of Jesus in John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

What Jesus is describing is an exclusivity that belongs all to him. In Ronnie’s example, all of the doors to the mall are locked except one. Now, I don’t want to sound like I am picking on Ronnie. I’ve talked to many people who have this belief that “all roads lead to heaven” or “whatever I believe will happen when I die.” The reality is it does not matter one bit what a person believes. It only matters what is true. So is Ronnie the only one who thinks this way? No. Of course not. Check out these videos of some popular modern leaders


In this video, Joel Osteen can not make up his mind. He claims to believe in Jesus, who claims to be the only way. Why then would it be difficult to say that the other ways are the wrong way?

In this next video, Osteen says that Hindu’s that are sincere in their faith can still go to heaven. 

What? Faith is only as valuable as the object of the faith. Faith must be placed in Jesus Christ alone or else it is worthless.


Let me leave you with this video where John MacArthur points out that Jesus is the only way means that all other ways are false. He states, “Theology of Islam is wrong. It’s the wrong God. It’s the wrong view of Christ…” 




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Jesus can’t be just a prophet

Muslims claim that Jesus is just a prophet and deny that He is God. They continually ask me for a verse where Jesus says, “I am God.” This is a form of idolatry because what they are essentially saying, if God says it exactly the way I want him to say it then I will follow him. This is creating a God to suit themselves and is called idolatry.

The message of the Bible is clear from both the Old and New Testaments that Jesus is God. A list of those verses is on our web page about Jesus on our website. I ask them to read the verses there and also listen to the Timothy Keller sermon which provides plenty of evidence of Jesus’ divinity.

Recently, I have come to a much simplier proof that Jesus can not be just a prophet. Let me lay little ground work. I will show you here that Jesus can not be just a prophet. He is either God, like he said he is, or he is a liar. If he is a liar, then he can not be a prophet.  Deuteronomy 18:20-22 provides the test of a true prophet:

20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ 21And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

If what the prophet says comes true then he is a true prophet of God. Now look at who speaks to Moses when he is sent to lead the people out of Egypt. I know Muslims believe also in the prophet Moses. In Exodus 3:13-14 it says:

13Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”

Now when Jesus comes along he is speaking with the pharisees. Here he claims to be God. See John 8:57-59

So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

The pharisees pick up stones to stone him. Why? They took his statement to be that he claimed to be God. As blasphemy. So, either he IS God, like he claimed. Or he is not God. If he is not God, he also can not be a prophet because he would have violated the rule of a true prophet as specified in Deuteronomy 18.

No, Jesus is not just a man, not just a prophet. He is God! To read and hear about how excellent Jesus Christ really is, please see my article The Excellencies of Christ.

For more information on witnessing to Muslims, please see my articles titled Test the SpiritsWitnessing to Muslims, and Witnessing to Muslims from Mark 12.

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The Excellencies of Christ

Matt Johnson has posted two sermons on the excellencies of Christ as well a list of the attributes of Jesus. One friend has commented regarding Matt’s messages from the Super Bowl Outreach that, “I don’t believe there has been a sermon since Hells Best Kept Secret that has so influenced how I share the Gospel. A must hear!”


Some of my favorite quotes by Matt Johonson in these messages are:


“Does our proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ leave people to want to follow Him? Or does it just leave them relieved that they don’t have to go to hell?”  

“Not only do you need a savior, you need this savior!”  


“Don’t leave thought that you deserve to go to heaven, leave thought that you don’t deserve this glorious Christ!” 

Please set aside 45 minutes per message. Download them. Put them on your iPod. Burn them to a CD. Listen to them. You’ll be glad you did. Matt has given me permission to post these sermons here on this site. Enjoy!

The Biblical proclamation of the Gospel is always Christ-centered, not man centered. A PDF suitable to print and tape into your Bible is available on the Bezeugen Resources site.

 

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Outreach in the Park

On Saturday, April 3rd, Bezeugen Ministries and First Baptist Hebron partnered together to host an outreach in the park. We met at Harvest Run Park in Carrollton, TX. Many thanks to Hebron Community Church who loaned us a bounce house. The kids enjoyed the bounce house. We also had free snow cones, cookies and bottles of water for people to enjoy. We shared bottles of water with the kids that were playing football and basketball at the park and then used that as a springboard to the Gospel. Roy, Mande, Deb and Byron read Matthew 26-28, the designated Project Ezra reading for the week.

Many of us engaged in one on one conversations as well as small group discussions with the people at the park. I did some dollar trivia with a group of teens and then took two of them through the good person test. They were brothers who are also Hindu. I think they were really touched when I gave them the five dollars as a gift of grace even when they both failed the good person test.

We handed out about 100 tracts, gave out some new testaments and a couple of copies of Mark Cahill’s One Heartbeat Away.

Deb and Roy brought an easel and set it up to do some preaching using painting. Three boys watched intently and heard the Gospel!

Todd and Wayne spoke with a woman named Christina. She repented of her sin and trusted in Jesus! WOW! It is awesome to see the fruit of the labors. God is so good to let us see it.

The outreach was a big success. We plan to do this monthly throughout the summer.

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Life Assurance

This article is from Todd. He writes:

I just had an insurance agent come into my office about 3 minutes ago and I was able share the gospel with him. He was an obvious candidate to ask this question. Do you have life assurance? I have used this question to share the gospel with many people. The typical response is. Do you mean life insurance? I respond by saying no, I mean life assurance. I then might say something like. Who benefits from life insurance? They will then say, the survivors of someone who has died. I will then say, but how does life insurance benefit the dead man? Now you are off to the races.

You can then say, life assurance is the assurance of eternal life. Amazingly, it is far more important to a life insurance policy holder than life insurance. Furthermore, it cannot be purchased by human means, the only provider is God and the cost is zero! Wow! Who would have ever thought that life assurance, the assurance of eternal is free! The scripture that you may use to verify God’s assurance of eternal life is: 1st John 5:11-13 ” And this is the testimony that God has given eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the son has life and He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you know that you have eternal ( life assurance) and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.”

Please feel free to share this with the lost souls everywhere. You will find that it is a great way to start a conversation about the life assurance that can only be provided by our loving, eternal Father at the expense of His beloved Son.

G R A C E
o i t h x
d c r p
s h i e
e s n
s. t s

e

God bless you all!
In Christ

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Test the spirits

Recently I was tagged in a video on Facebook. The video is of a Muslim man explaining his rationale that Mohammed is a true prophet of God based on 1 John 4:1-3 which reads:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

The speaker then declares that Mohammed was a true prophet because he proclaimed Christ Jesus and then quotes Surah 3:45 which states that Christ Jesus is the son of Mary. In researching what the actual verse in the quran states, I found two translations that seem to differ widely.

The first is found at http://www.islam101.com/history/people/prophets/jesus/christ_in_islam2.htm and says

Quran 3:45, “CHRIST JESUS THE SON OF MARY WAS (NO MORE THAN) AN APOSTLE OF GOD”

The second is found at http://www.quranexplorer.com/Default.aspx and reads:

Sura 3 – Al-E-Imran (MADINA) : Verse 45

Behold! the angels said “O Mary! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary held in honour in this world and the Hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to Allah.

There is little doubt that Jesus lived. He is a well documented historical figure even outside of the Bible like in the writings of Josephus. So, the real question is, what did John mean when he wrote, “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God”? Let’s first look at two other scriptures from the Bible:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Matthew 16:13-20

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:30-31

It is clear from these passages that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” and that the reason this was written is so that others may believe and have life in the name of Jesus. So when John writes in 1 John 4:2, it must also be in this context.

So, the next question is: what did Mohammed mean when he wrote Surah 3:45 in the quran? Did he really intend to make the same declaration as John and Peter? I submit that the answer is a resounding no! In the first translation option, it is interesting that the words in parenthesis specifically state that Jesus is “no more than” an apostle. It is unclear (to me) why these two translations of the quran very so much and what the parenthetical “no more than” means in the first translation. So whereas John was pointing out the Deity of Christ and his excellencies, Mohammed is stripping Jesus of all of these things. The Bible declares that Jesus is “The King of Kings and Lord of Lords”, “The way, the truth and the Life” (John 14:6) and even God. These semantic differences between the Bible and the quran are very important. Similar to Matthew 22, even the Pharisees knew that Jesus would be the son of David, but they did not believe He would be greater than David.

C. S. Lewis wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”

1 John 4:1-3 is pointing to Jesus being God. Mohammed, in the quran, is merely mentioning that Jesus existed while stripping him of all of his Deity. Historically, many have acknowledged Jesus, but they failed to see who he really is. Oher religions like Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses acknowledge Jesus as a man, while denying him his Deity.

Therefore, Mohammed, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses when put to the test, are not true Spirit’s of God. These writings are therefore from “the spirit of the antichrist.” (1 John 4:3)

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Witnessing video

Rhonda Stuck put together a nice video about using Gospel tracts and sharing the Gospel. It is posted on facebook. If you are unable to view the video, then send me a friend request.

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Witnessing Resources – Mormonism

I’ve written in the past couple of months about witnessing to mormons. Since then, God has blessed me with several other conversations with Mormons. My son and I have continued to learn about Mormonism and how to witness to Mormons. At the Ambassadors Academy, I met Gary, who lives in Utah and had some additional pointers for me. He shared some information about some videos. In all, I’ve obtained four DVDs that examine Mormonism. Each shows how Mormonism is a lie.

The DVD’s that I have watched are:

The Bible vs Joseph Smith – In this video, a Christian and a Mormon look at a number of the Biblical prophets as well as prophets in the Book of Mormon to examine if they are true prophets based on the Biblical test of a prophet from Dueteronomy 18:20-22. Finally, they look at Joseph Smith himself. I liked this video not only for exposing the lies of the Book of Mormon, but also for validating the truth of the Bible. I’ve ordered a bulk supply of these to hand out to Mormons that I meet door to door and in other settings. I plan to send a copy of this video to each of the Mormons that I’ve already witnessed too going door to door. You can order the DVD online.

The Lost Book of Abraham – This video is very well done. Actors play the parts of Joseph Smith and other people of his day to portray how Smith obtained some ancient scrolls that he claimed contained ancient writtings from Abraham. The video then shows some recent research into the ancient scrolls. The DVD is available for purchase. The video can also be watched entirely online.

The Bible vs the Book of Mormon – In this video a comparison for the history and archeology of the two books is done. This shows that the people and places of the Bible can be traced to actual places that exist today, while the people and places of the Book of Mormon can not. You can order a DVD or watch online.

DNA vs the Book of Mormon – The Book of Mormon claims that 500+ years before Christ, people from Israel sailed to the Americas and populated North and South America. This video examines this claim. Great for the scientific mind. You can order a DVD or watch online.

In Conclusion
It is important to remember that “the Gospel is the power to salvation.” (Romans 1:16) These videos can never replace the need to bring “Law to the proud and Grace to the humble.” We must continue to bring conviction of sin through the Ten Commandments and then share the Gospel as being the only means of salvation. What I have found with Mormons though, is even though their explanation of salvation is not something I agree with, when I explain to them to “repent and believe the Gospel” they claim that they have. What we must do is show them that they are worshipping another Jesus. The video “Joseph Smith vs The Bible” does a great job at exposing this, even showing video of one of the past mormon prophets agreeing that they worship a “different Jesus” and hence this is a different Gospel that Paul warned about in Galatians. It is my prayer that these videos will help to expose our Mormon friends to the idolatry that they are stuck in and help them to find the truth.

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What do we do with Prayer Requests

I was asked in a comment on one of the posts “how do we collect the prayer requests and what do we do with them?” I thought the answer was worthy of its own blog post. So here it is…

The way we collect prayer requests is by asking, “is there any specific way that we can pray for you and your family?” This is step two of our three step approach. Step one is to ask for a food donation. And step three is to share the Gospel with them.

I carry a clip board with me when I go door to door. Among other things, on the clip board is a stack of prayer request forms. When I get a prayer request I complete information like data, name, address, request and general comments. I also have a place to mark if the person is a Christian or what other religion they belong too.

Once we have the prayer requests, we have a prayer meeting on the 1st and 3rd mondays of each month. At those meetings we pray for the prayer requests that were gathered. Normally we do this by dividing up the prayer request forms amongst all of those present at the meeting. Then someone opens in prayer. Wew each then pray over the cards we have. The cards can then either be put into the center of the table for someone else to take or passed left or right (as agreed in advance) so that everyone can pray for multiple requests.

Some requests it is appropriate to follow-up with the people. We have a separate team of people that are involved with the follow-up.

Normally, we will keep the prayer requests from previous meetings in future meetings for 2-4 months depending on the request and the follow-up feedback we receive.

For more information on the Carrollton for Christ Door to Door ministry please see the Bezeugen Door to Door web page.

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