Three Minutes to Live and a New Birth

I have been so very blessed to serve as a "street fisherman," on Way of the Master Radio. Each week, I am allowed to serve Christ and share His gospel, by convincing people to get on the phone with Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron, and Todd Friel. After the phone conversations, I have the opportunity to affirm that which Ray, Kirk, or Todd said to the person, during follow-up conversations.

I can say with all sincerity that today's "street fishing" opportunity was, to date, the most amazing. I was allowed to watch God work in an extraordinary way.

As so often happens, I had about a minute until I was due to go on-air, and I had yet to find someone to put on the phone. I had received a few rejections (even after offering people a free lunch at "In-n-Out Burger"), and the traffic at the mall was light. Then, I saw a young man walking toward me.

I introduced myself to Israel and assured him that I didn't want to sell him anything. I told Israel that I was with WOTM Radio and I was looking for someone to put on the radio to talk about the spiritual ramifications of the massacre, at Virginia Tech University. Israel told me that he was a Christian. When I asked him if he considered himself to be a good person, his answer took me by surprise.

When I ask the "good person" question, I usually receive one of two answers. The person will either proclaim their own goodness (usually an unsaved person), or they will say that they are not a good person, explaining that they have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (usually a saved person). Israel's answer, however, was different. He said, "Well, if God judges me based on the Ten Commandments, I think I'm going to hell."

We walked outside the mall and sat down on a bench. While I waited for my segment of the show to start, I learned that Israel is a 2-year veteran with the Los Angeles County Police Department. (The Los Angeles County Police Department has jurisdiction over all of the county parks and hospitals.) At this point, I recognized that Todd and Ray were eavesdropping on our conversation, so I gave my phone to Israel.

Ray talked to Israel for a few minutes. You can listen to their conversation, here.

Once Israel was off the phone, I still wasn't sure about his spiritual condition. So, I took him through the Law and the gospel. The turning point in the conversation was when I put Israel in a hypothetical situation. In the scenario, the two of us were patrol car partners. We stopped a vehicle and shots rang out.

In order to find out what happened next, you will just have to listen for yourself.

What God did next was, well, amazing.

Don't Fear Fools

“I’m uncomfortable witnessing to people. What if they ask me a question I can’t answer? What if the person is college educated, a teacher, or a scientist? What if the person is a philosopher? How do I argue with someone who is probably smarter than me about the existence of God?”

Many Christians are intimidated by people they assume are more intelligent than they are. Are there people in the world that are smarter than you are? Yes. Oh, by the way, I have no delusions of grandeur. I know there are people in the world far more intelligent than me. I talk to smart people almost daily. But I’m not afraid of them—especially those who doubt or deny the existence of God. Why? Because when I talk to such people I am reminded that the Bible describes them with one simple, unarguable, definitive word—“fool.”

“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1).

“Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds, and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Romans 1:22-23).

I am not suggesting that we walk around, pointing a finger at agnostics and atheists, angrily and disdainfully telling them that they are fools. What I am suggesting is that Christians have no reason to fear people that God refers to as fools. No matter what a person’s academic credentials might be, no matter how intelligent or philosophical the person sounds, if they doubt or deny the existence of God, they are foolish. They are lost. They are bound for hell.

Instead of fearing such people, the Christian should lovingly, sympathetically, graciously, and kindly present them with the Truth that will save their lives—“repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Remember, if you are a born-again follower of Jesus Christ, then He has not given you a spirit of fear. Rather, He has given you a spirit of power, and love, and discipline (2 Timothy 1:7).

There is no reason to fear a foolish person when engaging him or her in spiritual conversation. You know the Truth. They do not. You believe the Truth. They do not. You are relying on the infallible, inerrant, God-breathed Scriptures. They are relying on their fallible, sin-stained intellect. You are relying on the wisdom of the Word. They are relying on the wisdom of the world. You are clothed in the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18). They are unarmed.

So, speak the truth in love. “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

Remember who your intellectual opponent is at heart.

“The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel” (Proverbs 12:15).

“A wise man is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is arrogant and careless” (Proverbs 14:16).

“Wisdom is in the presence of the one who has understanding, but the eyes of the fool are on the ends of the earth” (Proverbs 17:24).

“A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind” (Proverbs 18:2).

“He who trusts his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered” (Proverbs 28:26).

“And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink, and by merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared.’ So is the man who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:19-21).

Yes, there are people in the world smarter than you. Some of them doubt or deny the existence of God. They are fools. God’s Word is true. When you engage them in conversation, they may respond arrogantly and carelessly. Their eyes may remain fixed on the world around them, blind to the Creator’s work. Their only reason for talking to you may be to hear themselves talk. And they may continue to put their trust in their own heart—a heart that is deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).

Be that as it may, if you really care about them, you will not fear the fool. You will talk to them. You will share with them the only message that will save their lives—the gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:16). Remember, this very night their soul may be required of them.

Don’t fear fools.

The Jaws of Life

Two of my deputies and a 17-year-old explorer survived a horrific collision, today. Both units were responding to a "back-up" request from another deputy, when the collision occurred.

Firefighters had to use the "Jaws of Life" to extricate the deputy who was trapped in the patrol car pictured in the foreground. The "Jaws of Life," which is actually a brand name, is the nickname given to several types of piston-rod hydraulic tools. These tools include cutters, spreaders, and rams. The most common use of these tools is to pry open badly damaged vehicles, in which victims are trapped.

One deputy remains hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. All three feel very fortunate to be alive. God's common grace covered the three survivors.

I spent the afternoon at the hospital, along with dozens of deputies, family members, and friends. I look forward to opportunities in the coming days, weeks, and months to minister to my wounded brethren.

Times such as these cause members of the law enforcement family to take stock of their own lives and consider their own mortality. I could see the looks of introspection on some of my law enforcement brethren's faces--despite their best efforts to hide behind the hardened exterior of a deputy sheriff.

All you have to do is look at the photo to realize that the end result of this collision could have been much different, even tragic. But I would like you to do more than simply look at the photo and say, "Wow."

Look at the photo, again. However, look at the photo with the following Scriptures in mind.

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away" (James 4:13-14).

"Behold, Thou hast made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing in Thy sight, surely every man at his best is a mere breath" (Psalm 39:5).

"Man is like a mere breath; his days are like a passing shadow" (Psalm 144:4).

"And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).

"And He said to me, 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death'" (Revelation 21:7-8).

Jesus said, "And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

The ultimate statistic: 10 out of 10 people die. The truth: No one is promised tomorrow. The reality: No one knows the exact moment of their death. Everyone of us is but a blink of an eye away from finding ourselves a casualty in a scene like the one depicted in the photo.

The big question: Are you ready?

If you stumbled onto this blog, or if someone has sent you this article, and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, what you may not realize is that you are already in a scene similar to that which is depicted in the photo. You may not be trapped in the twisted wreckage of a vehicle damaged beyond repair, but you are most certainly trapped--your life hanging in the balance.

You are trapped by your sin. No matter how much or how sincerely you believe you do not need to be rescued, no matter how much you deny your present spiritual condition, you are trapped by your sin. Try as you might to free yourself through your good deeds, self-righteousness, religion, or denial of the truth, you remain trapped. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

Whenever I arrived first at the scene of a major traffic accident, my counsel to anyone trapped in a vehicle was, "Be still. Help is on the way." I say the same to you, now. Please be still and allow the "Jaws of Life"--in this case, the Law of God (The Ten Commandments)--to pry open your heart so that the Rescuer can save you.

Have you ever lied? Have you ever stolen anything, regardless of the value? Have you ever taken God's name in vain--using the name of the God who gave you life as a filthy, curse word or to express excitement or disgust? Have you ever looked at someone with lust, thus committing adultery in your heart? Have you ever hated someone, thus committing murder in your heart? If so, then by your own admission, you are a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterous, murderer at heart.

If you were to die today and stand before the holy, righteous God and Judge, He would find you guilty of breaking His Law. Finding you guilty, because He is good, God would sentence you to eternity in hell, as the just punishment for your sins against Him.

If this concerns you, then the "Jaws of Life" has done its job, having pried open your heart, making your rescue possible. And the only one who can rescue you is Jesus Christ.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believers in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

"For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly . . . But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6, 8).

God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ--fully God, while fully man. He lived a perfect, sinless life. He died a horrible, bloody death on the cross, taking upon Himself the punishment you rightly deserve for your many sins against God. He paid the penalty you should pay--and will pay if He doesn't save you. God the Father poured out His wrath upon God the Son, allowing His only Son to be crushed under the weight of the Father's wrath, because of your sin. God is so very loving and good that He allowed this to happen to His Son so that you might be saved from His wrath and judgment.

Three days later, God raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus, therefore, defeated death. He is alive today and forevermore. He is the eternal King of kings and Lord of Lords.

So, what is required of you? Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15).

You must repent. You must turn away from and forsake your sin. You must humble yourself and seek God's forgiveness. You must, by faith, put your trust and your faith in Jesus Christ alone to save you. "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Cry out to Him now. Confess your sins and receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved . . . For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:9, 13). "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is not other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Take one more look at the photo. What will you do? And where will you spend eternity?

Lunch Hour at the Mall

My brother-in-law, Ian, is a traffic engineer for our city. Like me, Ian, enjoys sharing the gospel with lost souls. Instead of downing a ham & cheese sandwich for lunch, Ian decided to spend his lunch hour with me, fishing for souls at our local mall.

We had several good conversations, the last of which was was with a group of teens in the food court. Have you ever shared the gospel with a teenager?

You have? Okay. Have you ever shared the gospel with a teenager who claimed to be a Marxist?

You have? Okay. Have you ever shared the gospel with a teenager who claimed to be a Marxist and a deist--someone who believes God exists but is uninvolved in the affairs of the world and of men?

You have? Okay. Have you ever shared the gospel with a teenager who claimed to be a Marxist, a deist, and a theistic evolutionist--someone who believes that God initiated creation, but then evolution took over?

You have? Okay. Have you ever shared the gospel with a teenager who claimed to be a Marxist, a deist, a theistic evoluntionist, and a person who believed that truth was relative--not absolute?

You have? Really! Okay. Have you ever shared the gospel with a teenager who claimed to be a Marxist, a deist, a theistic evolutionist, who believed that truth was relative--not absolute, and had a somewhat smug attitude?

You haven't? That's okay. Neither had I...before I met this young lady.

A young man in the group professed to be very religious. He was friendly, but rather self-righteous. Another young man in the group claimed to be a Christian who disagrees with what the Bible says about homosexuality.

What began as a silly offer to win a $5 gift card to "In-n-Out Burgers," became a 20-minute conversation in which Ian and I talked to the teens about evolution, the Big Bang Theory, truth, science and the Bible, the Law, and the Gospel.

Click here to listen to the entire conversation. There were disagreements (certainly), but no arguments. The Law and the Gospel was preached. Ian and I used a number of analogies. And pay particular attention to how Ian uses the imagery of a dismantled clock to dismantle our Marxist, deist, evolutionist's view of things.

What I hope you will take away from listening to this conversation is that no matter what someone may throw at you, so long as you stand on the truth--the Law and the Gospel--you can survive conversations like this. Not only can you survive, but you can effectively leave your listeners questioning their faulty belief systems and, in their place, plant spiritual seeds the Lord could use to draw unsaved sinners to Himself.

A Word from Martyn Lloyd-Jones

One of my favorite preachers is D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. If you are interested in learning about the life and ministry of one of the great men of God, of the 20th Century, I highly recommend Iain Murray's two volume biography. (The cover of Volume 2 is pictured here.)

From time to time, I am going to share quotes from the good doctor. The following passage is quoted in the before-mentioned volume and originally appeared in Lloyd-Jones' work, Preaching. Here the doctor recounts an opportunity he had to preach at Oxford University, in 1941.

It fell to my lot to preach on the Sunday night, the first service of the mission, in the famous pulpit of John Henry Newman--afterwards Cardinal Newman -- in St. Mary's Church, where he preached while he was still in the Church of England. It was, of course, chiefly a congregation of students. I preached to them as I would have preached anywhere else. It had been arranged, and announced, that if people had any questions to put to me, an opportunity would be given to them if they retired to another building at the back of the church after the service had ended. So the vicar and I went along expecting just a few people. But we found the place packed out. The vicar took the chair and asked if there were any questions. Immediately a bright young man sitting in the front row got up and said that he had a question to put; and he proceeded to put it with all the grace and polish characteristic of a union debater. He paid the preacher some compliments and said that he had much enjoyed the sermon; but there was one great difficulty and perplexity left in his mind as the result of the sermon. He really could not see but that the sermon might not equally well have been delivered to a congregation of farm labourers or anyone else. He then immediately sat down. The entire company roared with laughter. The chairman turned to me for my reply. I rose and gave what must always be the reply to such an attitude. I said that I was most interested in the question, but really could not see the questioner's difficulty; because, I confessed freely, that though I might be a heretic, I had to admit that until that moment I had regarded undergraduates and indeed graduates of Oxford University as being just ordinary common human clay and miserable sinners like everybody else, and held the view that their needs were precisely the same as those of the agricultural labourer or anyone else. I had preached as I had done quite deliberately! This again provoked a good deal of laughter and even cheering; but the point was that they appreciated what I was saying, and gave me a most attentive hearing from there on. There is no greater fallacy than to think that you need a gospel for special types of people.

Amen, doctor! The note I wrote in the margin of the book, next to the above passage was this. "One gospel for every man. Amen!" What was true sixty-five years ago is still true today. There is only one gospel, and that gospel should be preached just as Jesus and the apostles preached it--straight. The gospel is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16), and it doesn't need our help. Everyone who hears the gospel is, as the doctor said, "ordinary common human clay and [a] miserable sinner like everybody else."

Therefore, the gospel does not need to be presented in a more scholarly manner for the intellectual. It does not need to be presented with theatrics for those who need to be entertained. It does not need to be watered down for the angry man or the skeptic. It does not need to be presented with an apology for the person once taken advantage of by false religions or false converts. And it should not be presented with the promise of life-enhancement, with the hope of gathering decisions.

It should be preached as Jesus preached it. "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). To the intellectual, preach the Law and grace--repentance and faith. To the bored and lethargic, preach the Law and grace--repentance and faith. To the angry man and the skeptic, preach the Law and grace--repentance and faith. To the religious and irreligious, preach the Law and grace--repentance and faith. To the happy and the sad, to the rich and the poor, preach the Law and grace--repentance and faith. "There is no greater fallacy than to think that you need a gospel for special types of people."