Post by Messenger Micah on Oct 6, 2005 20:20:26 GMT -5
Elizabeth, Doug, John and Onica, and Emmanuel joined me in going to South Beach last Saturday. We parked on the same street we parked last week, near the same spot. It was a very slow day by South Beach standards and was overcast. As we were driving and looking for a parking spot, we did not see many people, but we saw the most people around Wet Willie?s, so we set up our banners and headed toward there.
We stood across the street from Wet Willie?s and John started preaching and got the crowd?s attention. After a minute or so, a heckler stood right in front of John, and John was having a conversation with him so I started preaching. I preached there for about 25 to 30 minutes and had a lot of interaction and heckling. There were bikers on our side of the street heckling, patrons in front of Wet Willie?s heckling, and patrons inside from the balcony and downstairs heckling. The message of ?holiness or hell, Repent or perish, Jesus or sin? (Hebrews 12:14, Luke 13:3, 1 John 3:5-10) was sounded forth loud and clear. After I finished preaching I went across the street and had some good conversations with some of the worst hecklers. I offered them tracts at first, they refused, and starting asking me questions. They were two young African American guys who were very much hung up with the race issue. I talked to them for a while, and when I started to leave a guy from the top floor started heckling me. He was saying I was a hypocrite and he was going to go home and pray and go to church tomorrow (while he was drinking and smoking cigarettes). I rebuked him strongly and told him God would not hear his prayers (Psalm 66:18).
We then made our way down past the Clevelander to the Lummus Park sign. A local photographer joined us and wanted to follow us, take pictures, and post them on his website. There have been few weeks on South Beach where I have seen so few people. Onica, Elizabeth, and Doug all preached. As John began preaching it started to rain. We decided to take cover, and wait for the rain to pass.
We put our banners back in the van, and went for cover under a building being built across from the Lummus Park sign. There were about 20 people there under cover so I preached to them for a few minutes. I struck up a good conversation with a young, unmarried, ?couple? from a Spanish speaking country (I forget where). As the rain slowed down, we moved down to the Square by the Clevelander. Even though there were very few people walking around, I preached for about 30 minutes. I had several drunks behind me who heckled me regularly.
Goldfinger South: After we ate, Emmanuel and I went to preach at the Goldfinger strip bar. I brought one banner (this bar is located off of one of the busiest streets in Miami), and held it while Emmanuel preached. I held the banner for about 20 minutes, but it was so windy, I had to hold it with tightly to keep it from flying away. As I was lowering it to put it down, a truck backed out in the gravel to right in front of us and began to skid out, spraying rocks at us. I put up the banner and Emmanuel preached for another 10 minutes.
We were using a small bullhorn, because the public sidewalk is about 75 yards away from the entrance. As soon as I began preaching a guy with a shirt and tie walked up to me. I thought he was the manager or something so I stopped to see what he wanted. He wanted to know what we were doing, asking questions, began telling me he was a firm believer himself (as he lit up a cigarette), etc. I told him he was not a believer (1 John 3:7-10, 5:18), found out he was not the manager, advised him to talk to Emmanuel, and kept on preaching. It turned out he did not want to talk to Emmanuel, but rather distract us from preaching, because he sat near me listening for a few minutes, and then tried to slap the bullhorn out of my hands.
I rebuked him as he walked away for his sexual sin of hanging out in a place like that. He turned around and got in my face, and I told him he needed to repent, or he would end up in hell. He was furious and I thought he would swing, but he walked away, picked up a rock and threw it at me. I continued preaching.
There were about 10 to 15 patrons consistently standing around outside listening to us. After a while the same guy came back and exchanged words with Emmanuel. He had an object in his hand so I watched him very carefully, as I kept preaching. He came up to me, said something, and stuck the object in my chest and it fell to the ground. As I looked down I saw it was a porno DVD. I crushed it while I preached. After I preached for about a half an hour, we got ready to leave, but Emmanuel got on the bullhorn and reminded them, that they were all potential Ted Bundy?s, because he got his start doing the same thing they were doing. I checked the DVD to make sure it was destroyed, and bent it in half until it snapped (it did have a disc inside it).
Perhaps this guy bringing the porno disc out to us was a sign of repentance on his part.