Virginia Share the Truth Tour, Day 4

Thursday morning, I got up at 4:15. After waking up Lauren and Jessica, I took a shower. The first stop of the day was an intersection in northern Virginia, so we needed to leave early. We left about 10 minutes late, at 5:10 and got on the road. At about 6 AM, we stopped for breakfast at McDonald’s and then got back on the road and proceeded to the intersection. The response there was pretty good, in truth. A man who is in charge of some Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the area stopped to thank us, as well as a couple other men. One woman came over distraught. She asked where we were from and I told her, “All over the place.” She said, “Oh, great. All over the place. Are you with a church or what?” I told her we were there with Life and Liberty Ministries, and she informed me she was going to call the police. The ‘problem’ was that we were on public property. Thank the Lord for our freedom of speech. After we finished up the stop, we dropped by a Wawa Market (it’s a gas station type thing they have in Virginia, for you Floridians) for some drinks. We then headed to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. For a while, it was just an average campus stop; some people were glad to see us and others were indifferent, and still some were incredibly angry. Where we were standing, Jesse was preaching (he is quite the preacher, might I add), some were holding signs, and Ben and I and a few others were passing out literature. After a while, Ben and I left to go elsewhere and pass out tracts, because things were really quiet. We had a couple of conversations. One was with a hefty black man who worked at one of the little snack places along the sidewalk (they are booths where snacks and gum and such are sold). He professed Christianity but didn’t know what he’d say to God if He asked Him why He should let Him into Heaven. So, we talked to him a little while and then Ben walked over to someone else, and I went up to this guy who had made a comment (not a bad one) while we were speaking to the black guy. I found out quickly that the guy was a Catholic and he ran the pro-life group on campus. Shortly, Ben walked up and we began trying to share the gospel with him. At first, he was giving salvation by works answers to our questions. When I started to hammer him on that, he backed down a bit and started giving more solid answers; I wasn’t sure what to make of the whole thing. After we talked to him for 5 or 10 minutes, a girl walked up (who he was apparently going on a date with) and told us how much she appreciated us being there because they never “have this kind of diversity on campus” and while she was “completely Christian” and didn’t necessary agree with us, she was glad we were there. So, that was pretty weird. They walked away, and this other, really strange guy came up to us. He claimed to have the “real word of God.” We talked back and forth with him for a while, and he came off and quite sensitive and easily offended and left. It was not the last time we spoke with him. We returned to where we had been originally. Not long after we returned, a guy showed up and was passing out Planned Parenthood stickers and a girl showed up and was holding Planned Parenthood signs up in front of the dead baby pictures. A group of students began gathering across the street. There was some yelling from their end, and some preaching from ours. During this time, there were some conversations worth mentioning. The best one was with a guy named Carlo. I noticed Ben talking to him, so I walked over. Apparently before I got there, Ben had gone through the law with him, after a discussion of abortion, the signs, etc, and he was very humble, admitting he had broken all of God’s laws. When Ben began talking to him about the solution to his sin, they began discussing the reliability of scripture, which was about the time I walked up. The paper I wrote in my apologetics course comes last semester comes in handy a lot on campus tours, since I remember a number of the things I wrote. Carlo asked some good questions, and thankfully, Ben and I were able to answer them. He asked how we knew the New Testament was reliable, why the gospel accounts varied, etc. He thanked us at the end of the conversation and left. He came back over to say something else, and he and Ben exchanged e-mail addresses. In the chaos that would ensue shortly, this conversation was a blessing, and I pray that God will grow the seed that was planted, if it’s His will. Not too long after, the group across the street had grown to at least a couple hundred students (and that’s a conservative estimate). They were chanting all kinds of things (“Off our campus!” “We’re here, we’re signs, we won’t change anyone’s minds!” etc). For a while we all just kind of looked at each other and wondered what to do, and then Mike Marcavage stood up on the stool with the truth horn and open aired. It’s safe to say, people love their sin and hate the Lord. The students did not like the preaching, but he preached for quite some time. After a while, everyone wanted a woman to speak (they were chanting, “Let a woman speak! Let a woman speak!”) so Stephanie, a girl from Wisconsin spoke for a while, and then Hannah did. Hannah is a 15 year old who is the sister of one of the full-time students at the School of Evangelism. She was conceived when her mother was raped. No one listened to the girls when they preached, which was sort of ironic, since they were the ones who wanted them to preach in the first place. From then for another hour or so, it was crazy. There were some more good conversations, though. I spoke to a group of a few high school girls who were on their lunch break and was able to explain the issue of abortion and go through the gospel. They thanked me, but had to leave for class. Another girl I spoke to while Mike was preaching. She was yelling about Christ not preaching a message of hate, so I went up to her in hopes of getting her to stop yelling. We talked for about 20 minutes, and while she was staunch in her views and even after reasoning from scripture, wouldn’t admit she was wrong, she calmed down and left once we finished talking. We ended up leaving after 6 hours of being there. We all met up at Wendy’s for dinner and then headed to a home where we spent the night.