Bezeugen BLOG

When I first read Tony Miano’s two part (part one, part two) blog entry on standing on a street corner with a cross, I thought, I could/would never do that. Since then, I’ve seen a number of Tony’s additional posts as well as posts of several other brothers in Christ who have also made crosses and gone and stood up for Christ on street corners. I have gotten a lot of inspiration by Mark’s regular blog entries about his experience standing on the corner with his cross. I gleaned a lot of information from Jeff’s blog on how to make a cross and his experiences standing on the street with it as well.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve prayed about this and read blog posts and facebook updates by others that are on the streets holding crosses and standing up for Christ in that way. Day by day, I’ve felt God tugging at my heart and asking me to take the same stand. At the same time, I’ve been going door to door in Carrollton, Texas in order to reach the city for Christ. While doing that, I’ve also been praying about other ways to reach the city for Christ. It alls seems to be pointing towards the cross and using a cross to point others to Christ.

I prayed about what saying to put on the cross when I made one.  Tony’s says “Are You Ready” and Mark’s says that plus “Mark 1:15” which says “and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.'” (ESV). Then I read in Mark’s blog a comment that suggested the cross could say “Repent” and “Believe”. It hit me that that was the message to put on the cross!

I began thinking about how to make a cross. I started talking with some others about it. Some were supportive. Others not so much. Yet, the tug on my heart to make a cross and go stand on a street corner with it remained.

Over the past couple of weeks, I started looking at materials, stencils, etc.  I got an idea in my head of how to make it. Last week when my new ministry partner, Duane, was in town, I mentioned the idea to him and suggested that we could make a cross out of 2x4s that were at another friends house. Duane said, “let’s do it!” On Sunday we went to the local Home Depot picked up some stencils and decided it could be made with some 2×4’s. Then I picked up the 2×4’s from my friends house and brought them home.

So this evening I built a cross.

I used three 2x4s to make the cross. I was not sure exactly how big to make it. So I used an very precise way to figure it out! I put the stencil on the wood to spell out REPENT and BELIEVE and then figured out how much space I wanted between them. This made the cross bar 3.5 feet (42 inches).

With the width set, then the proportion to the height is roughly 3×5, so I made the height 5.5 feet (66 inches). This next picture shows the cross pieces laid out on the floor. I wanted the cross to be square. Not just one 2×4 nailed on top of the other. So essentially what I did was to lay the upright beam on the ground and then put the cross beam over it. I then cut pieces to go from the cross beam to the bottom and the cross beam to the top. These pieces were then nailed into place.

Finally, I cut pieces to go under the cross beam and nailed them in place. The cross beam slides into place and stays put. I had originally intended to put a bolt to hold the cross beam in place. But, that will not be necessary. The nice thing is that the cross comes apart so will be easier to transport in my car. Here is a picture of me with the cross.

The last step which is not completed yet is to put the words on it. I tried to paint “REPENT” with the stencils, but the paint ran under the stencil. So I cut a new cross bar and with the help of my son built a new cross bar. My wife is making cut out letters and will modge podge them onto the cross for me. One side will say “REPENT” and “BELIEVE” on the cross bar. The other side will have “WWW” and “COM” on the cross bar along with “After Life Catalog” going down. This is a reference to our outreach web site. So in addition to people being able to view the cross, they can see the web site and go look it up at home. This final picture shows how the lettering looks laid out on one side of the cross.

If all goes well, the lettering will be in place in a couple of days. Duane will be in town until the 30th. So sometime between now and then we will be on a street corner with the cross. I’ll post an update with our expereince when that happens! Your prayers are appreciated.

The City of Carrollton (Texas) has approximately 40,000 houses. I am not sure if this includes apartments or not. Actually, the total number does not matter too much to me. I wanted a way to be able to visually tract which of the houses I have been too. I was able to get a city map from city hall for free. I simply looked up the city web site and then sent a request for a map. They mailed it to me and I had it in about two days. Here is a picture of the city map. The pen at the top is pointing to an area that I highlighted that shows the portion I have covered so far.

I wanted the map of the whole site to pray over the city and also to be able to see in one shot the whole project. However, when going door to door, a zoomed in map is easier to deal with. For this purpose, I went to google maps, zoomer in on the area where I am working and then printed out the map. Then I use a highlighter to track the areas where I have been. This map shows the area that is pointe to by the pen in the top picture:

In a previous blog post, I showed off the t-shirt that my wife made for me. We have now decided to do a first run printing of this shirt. The t-shirts will be FREE with a minimum donation of $25 to Bezeugen Ministries. You will receive a tax donation receipt from our ministry for the amount of your donation less our actual cost of the t-shirt. On a $25 donation you will likely be getting a tax donation receipt for about $16-17 depending on the final cost of the shirt based on the quantity that we are able to print. The more shirts ordered, the lower the cost and the higher the tax deduction for you! The t-shirts will be black with white letters and look pretty much like you see here in these pictures. 

These shirts are great for witnessing “as you go” (Matthew 28:19) about your daily life. People see the question and it leads directly to a spirtual conversation. Or they see the web site on the back and have direct access to the Gospel presentation.

To request your free t-shirt, email me you shirt size and quantity and then mail a check for at least $25 per shirt made out to “Mountain Movers International” with “BEZEUGEN” in the memo line to:

We expect to have the shirts ready to ship out to you by October 7th. In order to guarantee your shirt in the first run, please email me your shirt size and quantity by Monday, September 28th. Requests after Monday, September 28th will be filled as available or on a second run. All proceeds to Bezeugen Ministries go directly to the purchase of additional Evangelism resources, funding the Bezeugen Tract Club, buying tracts for witnessing events, hosting Evangelism training, etc.

I decided to create a separate blog for the Carrollton for Christ effort of Bezeugen Ministries. This makes it easier for people to follow the effort without having to go through the other updates on the Bezeugen Ministries Blog. Feel free to subscribe to both blogs!

On Saturday we covered 13 more houses, had 6 more one on one conversations, gathered 4 more prayer requests and 2 more cans of food. With these, the total counts now stand as:

I’ve also been praying about other ways to reach Carrollton for Christ and researching these ways. If anyone has experience with these and can provide insight on their effectiveness please let me know. Some things I’m considering:

• Open Air revival at the park
• standing on a street corner with a sign or cross
• settign up a prayer table at a local wal-mart – I’ll note here that although I was told the company policy allowed this, it appears the policy has changed. Two of the four wal-marts in or surrounding Carrollton have told me that they no longer allow this
• purchasing a billboard to proclaim the Gospel
• finding a place within Carrollton to do Project Ezra. Currently I do Project Ezra at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano which borders Carrollton.

To read past entries about this effort please visit the Bezeugen Ministries Blog entries:

• September 13 – provides a quick update
• August 30 – provides information on the method
• August 2 – update
• July 26 – the vision and report on first experience

Seems like we are hearing in the news a lot these days of celebrities that die. The most recent is that this week, Patrick Swayze died. If Patrick could send you a message from beyond the grave, I believe the message would be “choose heaven!”

You see, according to the Bible it is appointed once for man to die and then the judgment. Accordingly, Patrick’s place in eternity is now set. He is either in heaven or hell. Forever!

If Patrick is in heaven, then his message to you would be, “choose heaven, it’s a wonderful place, come and join me.” If he is in hell, then I believe his message to you would be, “choose heaven. I am in hell and it is a horrible place, don’t come here.”

In Luke 16:19-31, the Rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers about hell. “And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house” (Luke 16:27)

So the message is the same from the Rich man and from Lazarus.

Now, it is not anyone’s place to judge where a particular man may be after he dies. However, we can look at what they did and said and what they believed.

Swayze said, “religion is a melting pot … Bhudha, Mohammed … are all important in my world” Patrick Swayze in this video.

Swayze is quoted on his IMDB page as saying, “I have a great deal of faith in faith; if you believe something strongly enough, it becomes true for you.” No it does not! No matter how much you believe 2+2 is 5, it is still 4. What’s TRUE is TRUE whether you believe it or NOT!

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 ESV)

Patrick’s fate is secure. Don’t make the same mistake that he seemingly made. Choose wisely where you will spend eternity. Choose heaven!

Consider again the question. What is 2+2?

Answer: 4

For this simple math problem there is one right answer and an infinite number of wrong answers. You can believe with all your heart that the answer is five. You’d be wrong!

Here is another question. What happens when a person dies? Like the math problem, there can only be one true answer. The other millions of answers are false.

The Bible says it is appointed once for man to die and then face judgment based on God’s standards, the Ten Commandments. Let’s take a quick test to see how you do!

•Ever told a lie?

•Ever stolen anything?

•Ever used God’s name as a curse word? That’s blasphemy!

•Ever hated anyone or called them a fool? God calls that murder.

•Ever lusted after another person? That’s adultery!

Would you be innocent or guilty?

Would you spend eternity in heaven or hell?

Remember it doesn’t matter if you believe in God or these standards. It only matters what is true. God does not want you to go to hell. He sent his son Jesus to live a perfect life for you. Jesus died on the cross for you and rose from the dead. The Bible says if you repent and trust in Jesus then you will have eternal life. It does not matter what you believe about eternity, only what is true!

Please visit www.AfterLifeCatalog.com/true/ and listen to the message and look at other evidence about the Jesus’ claims of being God. Then, repent and trust Jesus while you still have time!

This is another update in the Carrollton for Christ series of posts. Here are the current stats:

Here is a picture of the food collected so far. I need to get this delivered to MetroCrest this week!
Thanks for your continued prayers and support.

I’ve done a lot of witnessing at The Shops at Legacy over the last couple of years. There are some times in the past when it was a regular stop each week. Patterns have changed some in the last six months, so I had not been there to witness in probably six months.

The last time that we tried to open air preach at the Shops at Legacy was about 15 months ago. At that time myself and two others were told by the theater management and a security officer that we could not be there because it was “private property”. I did not think that was correct but we complied anyway and open air preached in another part of the metroplex that night.

Following that incident I had contacted the city and obtained a plat of the area so that I would know where the public property was. In addition, I had consulted an attorney as to how to handle the situation. Finally, having been to the Ambassador’s Academy in May, I had learned some things about dealing with management, security and police. In short, I knew the law and had the training about how to handle things at the Shops at Legacy. I’d even been out and done open air with Jon Speed a month ago at a similar location in Southlake. Yet, I had fear that showing up to open air at the Shops at Legacy was simply inviting the police to come. So, I had been waiting to go out there when I had someone with me.

Well, this weekend Duane Seaberg has been visiting. As we had been talking over the weekend about various places to go and open air preach, I mentioned this loction and my fear that it would involve dealing with the police. His response was, “let’s go!”

So, Tuesday night after dinner, Duane and I headed out to the Shops at Legacy. Using the platt, we examined three areas that we could set up. We opted for the third location (probably because we were there) at the south end of Bishop street, near the park.

We set up the box, prayed and then Duane got on the box first. He shared his testimony, about his wifes death and then preached the Law and the Gospel. I was video taping Duane’s open air. As I had expected, the police showed up! But, what I did not expect was that they simply drove past. WOW! What a relief. Duane finished his open air. Now it was my turn.

We decided to put the video camera on a wall so that we could capture anything that happened on tape and then free Duane up to distribute tracts. It was a day past Project Ezra did Matthew 11-12 and those passages were fresh on my mind from reading them and preaching on them over the weekend. I had wanted to do some dollar trivia to draw a crowd, but the crowd was fairly light. So, I decided that I’d give Matthew 11-12 one more try for this week. I got up on the box and read Matthew 11-12. Then I began to preach the Law and the Gospel. As I was preaching I saw another Police car coming down Bishop street right towards me. I knew I just had to keep preaching until told otherwise. But, after the police car stopped at the stop sign across the street, it proceeded to make a right hand turn. What happened next, shocked me. The Police Officer waved to me as he drove past! WOW, again! Another shock. The police knew we were here. Could hear what we were doing and left us alone. Praise God! Answered prayer!

As I continued to preach the Law and Gospel, I could see two teens that had been sitting and listening were now talking to Duane. A number of people were passing by the area where I was preaching. Some across the street at one of the restaurants were turned looking and listening. Some people on the street had stopped to listen. I continued to preach and went over the Gospel again. I called people to repentence several times. I had been expecting that Duane would wrap up his conversation and then I would finish and he would preach again. I noticed that Duane was still engaged in conversation. After 25 minutes of preaching, I was exhausted so drew to a close and got down from the box.

Duane was still speaking to the teens. I started handing out some tracts as people were passing by. Eventually I joined the conversation with Duane and the teens. They were both believers. One had recently rededicated her life to Christ. We gave them some tracts and told them about the tract club and encouraged them to join so that they could share their faith. Eventually, one of the moms showed up. She was not upset that we were talking to her daughters. She was also a believer and we gave her some tracts and information on the tract club too!

Finally, it was time to go. We packed up and were headed towards the car. As we crossed Bishop Street, I noticed that the waitress that had been listening was making a bee line to intercept us. Somehow I was expecting the worst. But, when we reached where she was, she said, “what church are you with?” We explained that we were representing Jesus Christ, had our own Evangelism ministry and happened to worship at two different churches. She said, that she appreciated our being out there and that the words that I shared from Matthew was exactly what she needed to hear. We shared some tracts and information on the tract club with her and offered her some encouraement in her walk with Christ.

We went home praising God that the Law and Gospel was preached. Believers in Christ were encouraged. And the lost heard the message of salvation. Now to go back and next time try one of the two other spots!

On September 5, 2009, the first college football game was played at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the Brigham Young Cougars. A group of eight of us from Bezeugen Ministries and The Lost Cause Ministries met at the game for open air preaching, tract distribution and one on one witnessing. The new stadium is an impressive site. It is state of the art in every way. We arrived four ours before kickoff and had my wife drop us off just west of the stadium. As we walked to the stadium we got our first close up view of it. We handed out a few tracts at the intersection, even to the policeman who was directing traffic. We proceeded across the street. As you can see from the picture, there were a lot of people tailgating. We set up shop on the sidewalk in that area. There was a steady flow of people coming. We handed out a number of Gospel tracts and then decided to try some open air. I went first and tried some dollar trivia using 2008 statistics for each team. The people had fun trying to guess the name of BYU’s running back, the pass completion percentage of OU’s Heismen winning quarterback and so forth. I gave a dollar for each correct answer. Then the big question! Would someone prove they are a good person for FIVE dollars? I got a taker from the group that was tailgating. I walked through the good test with him and allowed him to examine himself to see how he had broken God’s law. Once I got him to agree that he was not good, I took him to the cross and shared the Gospel of Jesus with him. I told him how Jesus being fully man and fully God was the only acceptible sacrifice for our sins so that His death on the cross made full atonement for us. Then I shared that he must repent and trust Christ to be saved. Afterwards I had a long talk with Hunter and Tyler. Tyler told me he was a believer already and that he was trying to share the Gospel with some atheist friends. I gave him a copy of Ray Comfort’s CD “God doesn’t believe in Atheists”. As we talked more he was looking for a deeper relationship with Christ. So I offered him a copy of Mark Cahill’s book, “One thing you can’t do in heaven”. He said he would read it.

We continued doing open air, one on one conversations and tract distribution at this location with two people while two others from our group went further down the sidewalk and handed out tracts there as well. One man I talked too guaranteed he knew everything there was to know about Oklahoma football. Then looking at the tract he was stumped by the first question about the name of the leading receiver on Oklahoma’s the 1985 National Championship team. After several hints, his wife got tired of waiting for him to guess and gave him the answer from the back. He said, “I was just about to say Keith Jackson!” He and his wife were both believers. I gave them some information about our tract club and then moved on to talk with some other people. After about an hour we moved slightly to the west and continued the same thing for another 30 minutes. Finally we noticed that the bulk of the people were on the North side of the road going down to the east and then crossing over to where our other group was handing out tracts. So we packed up the box, cooler of water and tracts and moved to that location. At about the same time Jon Speed and his group from The Lost Cause Ministries arrived to meet us. After some short fellowship, they proceeded to go a block further east and set up there.

We preached at that cross walk for another two and a half hours. The crowd finally slowed down a bit about fifteen minutes before the game was to kick off. We stayed until kickoff. Thne my wife came back and picked us up. The drop off and pick up worked great. I am very thankful for my wife and youngest son to hang out for the afternoon and save us the money on parking.

A couple of things that we noticed. First, the Oklahoma Trivia tracts were a big hit! The OU fans would snatch them up, some people even came back to us to get one or to get an extra one to give to a friend. Second, the BYU fans were leary of “Oklahoma Trivia” but we would say, “hey, you need to know your enemy, right?” and then many of them would take one too. Our friends from TLC were giving the BYU fans others tracts, which was a very good idea. We had a number of other tracts with us as well, but we did not tend to give out many of them. The phrase “know your enemy” has a spiritual truth too. Jesus is the savior of the world. Satan is the enemy! By reading the tract or listening to the open air preaching, a person could truly know who their enemy is, satan! We will definitely be making some more trivia tracts specific for certain events or teams.

Third, this stadium is a great place to open air preach and witness. The Arlington police did a great job of traffic and crowd control. We thanked them. And they never questioned our right to be expressing our first amendment rights. When one man came over to me while I was on the box and threatened bodily harm because he did not like what I was saying and stood with his backto the PA to block the sound, I turned slightly back towards the road. At that point, I think he saw the police office standing about 50 feet away and decided to head to the game instead of mess with me! Another thing about the stadium is that the walls of the building deflect the sound from the PA. So if we stood on the sidewalk and pointed the PA towards the building, it was actually possible to hear the preaching all the way up at the building and throughout the parking lot.

The above picture was taken just before we headed home. My estimate is that we distributed over 7,000 Gospel tracts. Given that it seemed like about somewhere around every 1 out of 2 two 1 out of 4 people were getting tracts as they went by then I would estimate that somewhere betwee 14,000 and 25,000 people heard the Gospel message!

It makes me wonder, how long would it take the average church to share the Gospel with that many people?