Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope your week was blessed casting your cares upon Jesus. I had a good week on campus and was greeted by some students who prayed to receive Christ last year through the week who were happy to see me. 11 students prayed with me to receive Jesus this week. Sam, Juan, Andrew, Yahir, JT, Nick, TJ, Jurgen, and then yesterday Daniel, Danny and Sebastian. The responses of these last three guys are below. Please pray all these grow in their faith. I’m grateful to the Lord He blessed the first week again this year so I can know he still wants me to serve Him this way.

 Daniel was sitting on a couch in the first-floor PE lounge. I had cut through and there were a bunch of blue shirted team members of some sport distracting my eye as a large group. I walked to the elevator not seeing a place to cut in the different conversations. Then I saw a guy sitting on the couch. He had on a blue T-shirt with a waving American flag on it and white shorts. He had long light brown hair in a knot behind his head parted in the middle. So I turned and went over to ask him. He had kind of a rounded pug nose and was freckled, teeth in braces, good-looking American kid. He had an athletic build but looked young. I asked him if he’d want to do a survey for a student group about God and he agreed. When I asked one thing he wanted to do before he died he said, “Be a good father.” If a guy says, Have a family, it’s a tell he is already a Christian or will trust in Christ in my experience. That was as close as ya get without saying. 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 said, “I mean I always help people, put others first, don’t put myself above anyone, did the good deed when no one was looking.” I said most people don’t do good deeds whether someone is looking or not. He said he thought he had a 60% chance of going to Heaven and the other 40% was because he thought he needed to get closer to God. I asked if he ever went to church. He said he hadn’t gone to church for a while and I said I thought covid had screwed that up for a lot of people and he agreed. I began to go through the Gospel with him and when I asked what the big thing was Jesus had done back in History to take away the sins of the world he knew Jesus had died. He was very serious through the entire thing and didn’t smile. When I finished all I usually say about the blood of Christ to cleanse him and the righteousness of Christ to his credit I asked if he would want to be forgiven for his sins or the other quick options and he said, “Probably forgiven.” I said if he wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer he could pray. I talked him through it and asked if it expressed the desire of his heart and he said it did. So I said he could pray it silently right now and know that he was forgiven, “Wanna do it?” I asked. “Nice, yeah,” he said. He took the booklet and prayed then to receive Jesus. I told him then the likelihood he would go to Heaven trusting in the blood and righteousness of Christ was 100%. I began to go through the Christian life with him then and he didn’t have a Bible so I gave him one and wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front, after showing him the study helps. I gave him Bible Promises for You, The Case for Christ Answer Booklet and a Bible study on the deity of Christ explaining the prophecy that leads it off. “Thanks for the Bible I really appreciate it,” he said, taking the books. “Yeah sure,” I replied. Then we talked a bit and I explained that everything in the Bible was true, 6500-year-old mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosomal Adam and Noah’s Ark. He was very interested in that so I gave him a Magazine from ICR and he said he had not really been into reading when he was a kid but he had recently become more of a reader. “I’m gonna go down this rabbit hole,” he said of the creation research stuff. I stood up to leave as he had to get going and he stood too and shook my hand and said, “Thanks,” he said, “I’ll see you around.” “OK I replied and headed up the stairs.

 Upstairs in the PE lounge I came across Danny and Sebastian. Danny was up for doing a survey and Sebastian decided he’d do it since he was right there. Sebastian had dark shorts and a dark blue -shirt on and dark curly hair. He had long more squared off features probably better looking than Danny whose features were more rounded his nose, more puffy. He had shaggy, straight dishwater blond hair and was in workout clothes too, lighter colors. Danny was more open and friendly and Sebastian more guarded. It seemed like they were both Catholic in background though in the discussion after I offered them the prayer Sebastian did all the questioning. So I don’t know if Danny had Catholic convictions and Sebastian through his statements showed he did not really believe what the Church taught and did not understand the Sacraments to be the means of Grace. But I do not correct a student’s denominational doctrine based on what I know to be the statements of their denomination. I just tell them Bible verses of the Gospel. If they ask me questions I answer with Bible verses and say I believe the verse. It is rare for a student in my experience to know the doctrinal beliefs of the Church where they grew up as kids. By the time I finished talking to them we’d talked of the Church Fathers and what can be truly understood of theological statements not found in the Bible but that’s a part of the discussion too long to write. I asked, “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?” “I haven’t missed a single day of Church,” Sebastian said right away but then continued. “It’s not my job to say.” Danny then said, “I don’t know if I should. It depends on His mercy if I can.” Then Sebastian said, “I don’t know if my works are sufficient.” And Danny agreed. I began to go through the Gospel with them and asked what Jesus had done back in History to take away the sins of the world. “He died on the cross Sebastian said right away and Danny agreed. I explained the blood and righteousness of Christ talked about receiving this by faith not works asked if they wanted to be forgiven for their sins trusting in what Jesus had done. They both said yes. I offered then the prayer after I read it through. But Sebastian wasn’t satisfied suddenly and asked if I believed things were predetermined and I said Paul talked about being the “Elect” but what exactly that meant could be debated. I said it does seem like we have free will and the Bible is telling us to make decisions; God has a plan for our lives and who well we accomplish it will depend on how much we ask for his help by the power of the Spirit. “God certainly knows who you will marry because He knows who your children are,” I opined. There are verses that say God knows people Personally and Generationally. He went on to clarify that what he wanted to know is if I believed when someone prayed that prayer if they could sin and then not go to heaven. He stumbled around for something bad so I clarified for him that he was saying if you were evil after this could you go to Heaven. He agreed. I talked about the denial of Peter. They both agreed that was evil to do and then I explained where in the Bible Christ restored him. He asked the question other ways, I quoted, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and Just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I said I thought that if someone was practicing evil I thought that probably meant they had never sincerely asked God to forgiven them and did not really believe. I said the Bible said in 1John, paraphrasing, “They came out from among us because they were never of us.” I said I believed that people who ended life in disbelief were never believers to begin with and talked about hating God and that Heaven was His presence where people that hate Him would not want to be. He asked, “If you killed someone and then you died right away do you think you would go to Heaven?” I said that if I faced God after that I would say I trusted in the blood of Christ to cleanse me and pay for my sins and I ask for your mercy. “Do you think God would let you in?” I said I hoped. “I think He would let you in.” I said I thought so too. He’d asked me about purgatory if I believed in it. I said I thought that the closest thing too it was “no more” and told him about Sheol in the Old Testament and mentioned the Rich man and Lazarus and they seemed to know the story. He asked if that was limbo and I said there was consciousness there so it would depend on what you meant by limbo. It did not seem like he believed in Purgatory or the Catholic teaching about it or he would not have said I would go to heaven after committing a mortal sin and immediately dying. I said Jesus had said no one would snatch them out of His hand. I could not see someone’s heart who prayed to receive Christ. I said it seemed like they had been hoping in their good works before I had walked up. But I had explained to them earlier the impossibility of doing a good thing and controlling the outcome of that good thing so that it would be to their credit. I had also explained that for this good act to meritorious and counting toward their salvation it would also have to be a perfect action and we never have utterly pure motives in doing good. God has to change our actions into good and produce good with these actions. I explained them they would have to be all knowing to know the Good and then be able to control the future so their action resulted in Good. He wanted to know if I believed in penance. I said I thought every Christian acted penitently. “If you are rude to your Mom you try to be nice to her for a few weeks and make up for it. If you accidentally cut someone off in traffic you start letting people in for a while” (an action I had already explained could end in a bad thing). I said “but this regular attitude of penance did not have to be at the direction of a priest, we just do it. And I don’t think penance contributes to your salvation and as to it changing you if it did it would only happen by the Holy Spirit’s power changing us.” I said I did not believe we could change ourselves. I did not believe I saved me so I had a hard time seeing how I could un-save me either. “But you do believe in penance?” he said finally. I said I thought it was part of the Christian life, yes. I left it at that and did not point out my explanation of penance was not sacramentalism so was not Roman Catholic. I said I just wanted to ask again if you would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done for you on the cross. You can believe you could become evil and then not be forgiven; I wasn’t asking that but if they wanted to tell God they wished to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done if they had never done that. Sebastian didn’t argue, they both said “Yes,” at the same time and they each prayed to receive Jesus. Sebastian finished first. I said after you can disagree with me if you want but I believe the likelihood you will now go to Heaven is 100%. They smiled and I offered them Bible promise books and wrote in each their name the date and “forgiven!” in the front. I also gave them each The Case for Christ Answer Book explaining Strobel’s story. They liked the books and I gave them the Bible Study on the Deity of Christ. I said I would pray a Bible verse for them each day from now until Spring and one year after. “That’s my part,” I said. They liked that too and seemed content and even grateful to have prayed to receive Jesus. I headed out.

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

In Him,

Bob