Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope you had a blessed day in Christ and were able to serve Him in kindness by the Spirit’s power. I had a good day on campus and John prayed to receive Jesus. Please pray he grows in his faith.

John was standing in front of a bulletin board right before you enter the SSC Lounge on the third floor. He had a coat and a back pack on the couch behind him so I asked if he’d do a student survey about God and he agreed. He had on a navy-blue hoodie and sweats. He was shorter and had a diamond shaped, short face with a small flat nose, perfect skin. His hair was in dreadlocks that reached his chin. He was friendly and had gone to church when he was younger more, the business of college had him seldom going. He wanted to travel the world. I asked him, “You’re walking down the road and you get hit by a bus. So you’re dead. And you stand before God and He says, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven?’ What would you say?” He threw out a couple “Um’s” and finally said, “Because I lived my life following in your steps.” He thought he had a 75% chance of going to Heaven. When I asked him what the big thing was Jesus had done back in History to take away the sins of the world he said, “Crucifixiation.” Which might be a new word but hey it fits the fact that the end result of being crucified is asphyxiation, so possibly the word could be descriptively put together. But he was actually an articulate intelligent guy he had just missed by a bit on the word. He listened closely to all I said and about the blood and righteousness of Christ and the adoption as children of God. I said he could receive all this by faith and faith saved him. I asked if he would want to be forgiven for his sins trusting in what Jesus had done, then the Holy Spirit would live in him and give him strength and take him to heaven when he died or did he think something else? I then gave him the CliffsNotes version of Islam and of the Buddha. “So would you want to be forgiven or do ya think something else?” I said again. “I’d go with a life entrusted to Christ,” he replied. I said if he wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer he could pray and I talked him through it and when I finished he said, “Amen,” affirming it. I asked if he would want to pray it silently. “Yeah,” he said enthusiastically and he took the booklet and prayed to receive Jesus finishing with another, “Amen.” I told him that now the likelihood he would go to Heaven was 100% trusting in the blood and righteousness of Jesus. I explained the Christian life reading the Bible Praying and living “By the Spirit’s Power” “Inside Out”. I gave him Bible Promises for You and wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front which he really liked and he thanked me. I also gave him a Bible study explaining it and the Case for Christ Answer Booklet. I told him some of Strobel’s story. I told him I would pray a Bible verse for him each day from now until Spring and one year after.  “Asking God to bless ya,” I said. “Thank you so much,” he said getting up to go. “You’re welcome, God bless you,” I replied and he headed off through the big lounge to the West visibly happy.

I talked with a Muslim, Abdullah, for an hour and a half as he questioned me and presented arguments for the Quran and against the Bible a bit. We ended on very good terms so maybe I’ll speak with him again. I gave him the booklet I use and a Bible study on Jesus claims to be God after he said Jesus had never said he was God. I pointed out Jesus claimed to be God both by actions and words regularly, like walking on the sea, showing him the statement in Job in the study. I explained the Trinity explaining that God could become a man is that was a definition of what God could do. We each described God differently. But I explained if the right description of God was that He could become a man there is only one God so that is simply what God can do. It’s not like there are several other God’s who we can compare to and say God just doesn’t do that. He mentioned that the infinite could not become the finite but I said that those were philosophical categories that did not apply to religion. I suggested that using philosophical propositions like that did not really clarify religious categories concerning God. He thought for a moment and agreed seeming to think of another application of that he would also reject. I defeated some of his statements concerning the Bible. We talked about medicine, a direction he hoped for educationally and had a lot of agreement there. I gave him a Creation Ministries International magazine. We talked about the flood, Noah and evolution, which neither of us bought but for development inside a species. But I could tell he was listening to Dawa arguments that were not well thought through. The Muslim Dawa apologists are allowed by their religion to lie to people like me. Unfortunately for their Muslim hearers they are also being lied to and the arguments are poorly contrived. He said the Bible called the head of Egypt “Pharaoh” but the Quran and scholars now said at Joseph’s time in Egypt they were merely called Kings. I pointed out that there was no written language in Joseph’s time (most Egyptology denies the Jews were there anyway). Hieroglyphics could not be literally made into language but were at best paraphrased sounds and would be impossible to be certain of his statement. I also explained the Egyptian timelines contradict most of the archeology of the rest of the digs of North Africa and Europe. Officially scholars claim that they only have unearthed 10% of what could be known about ancient Egypt. I said that if I told him I understood about 10% of what could be known of Islam he would agree I would make a lot of errors about what I speculated about the other 90%. He agreed. We compared some stories in our two books. I explained the Genesis account. One of his arguments was that the Bible had been changed from the one endorsed by the Quran. But I said he would have to come up with an unchanged Bible (from maybe 65 AD giving a different message) with facts stating Jesus was not God, had not died or risen from the dead thus predating the existing Gospels to demonstrate it had been altered. No such text has ever been found. Scholars who were not Christians have said we have the original NT in Greek and know where variants go wrong, he did not know that was true. He asked if I thought the Bible had been written by men. I said yes it was all written down by men but God inspired the thoughts in their heads which was practically no different than an Angel giving God’s thoughts to Mohammed through an Angel. We talked about memorization of the text vs. writing it. He had some things he believed were scientific statements in the Quran the people of the time could not have known, but I pointed out the actual level of scientific knowledge of the people of the ancient world was unknown to us.  [85% of the knowledge of the ancient world was destroyed in the burning of 3 major libraries. The Romans burned Carthage, a technologically superior culture and the Library at Alexandria was burned twice.] He said he saw me often sharing the faith and respected me for that so I was glad to hear that. I hope that also means the Muslims at school are not seeing me as a threat or would be inclined to harm me. I am polite to them and most simply say they are Muslim as a way to say no when I ask to do a Survey for a Bible study group. So it was interesting and I hope helpful to talk to Abdullah.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance God truly blessed.

In Him,

Bob