Go ye therefore into the highways (Matthew 22:9)
Report on Rev Hamilton's Preaching Trip - Monday
With the constant decline in the churches throughout our land, there is a great need for gospel preaching, not only in the churches, but at street level. We not only have a church that doesn’t preach the gospel, but doesn’t even know what the gospel is. The work of a Minister doesn’t finish at the church door, alas, in these days, for so many, that is in fact the case. On Monday the 15th, November with my own church’s financial and prayerful support I set out into the highways to proclaim the gospel, this is the diary of that week.
On Monday my first port of call as I travelled north was Lancaster. In the city square, a very useful venue for a street preacher I held forth amongst the people. Some stopped momentarily, some from a distance paused to listen. But one man sat down on the seat beside me and listened for the best part of half an hour, when I had finished he came and requested the gospel booklet that had been offered.
After this I moved on to Carlisle, my next venue. Carlisle, I have always found a delightful place to preach. Just as I’d begun to preach I was approached by Ralph, an agnostic, we conversed for some time. A phrase he kept beginning sentences with was, I don’t believe, I said to him at the close of our conversation, "Ralph, you have identified your own problem, you keep saying it yourself, you don’t believe". He smiled saying he needed evidence, I told him he had all he was getting in the Bible. If a person will not accept the testimony of God’s word, all the miracles God could perform won’t convince them.
A Christian lady stood for a good while in support, that was kind. A young girl, had become a Christian just a week ago, she unashamedly stood and listened, and took some literature gladly.
Having coffee afterwards an Hungarian Minister came and sat beside me. He told me he was working with a local Nazarene church, doing social work in a poor area of Carlisle. He said he had heard me preaching, he thought I was like one of the Old Testament prophets, it wasn’t meant this way, but I took that as a compliment. He questioned the relevancy of what I was doing. See what I mean, what we’re up against? The church knows better than the Lord, we’re lost in our own cleverness. There are real social workers who do social work better than we can. If the preaching of the gospel is now irrelevant, then so too is the word of God, for that is exactly what God in Holy Scripture has commanded his church to do, and that only.
