Pastor Peter Simpson was preaching the gospel in the centre of High Wycombe on December 14th, helped by Mrs Jenefer Campbell and Mrs Lis Outten, who had an encouraging conversation with a passing Christian.
As the minister was preaching, a man walked by making a sign with his hand indicating that the preacher’s words words were just empty verbiage. The clear insinuation was, “Blah, blah, blah – I am not remotely interested”. Pastor Simpson responded that the rather insulting hand signal did not constitute a meaningful refutation of the truth of Jesus Christ, and asked the man if he had any better arguments. None was forthcoming.
A Polish man approached Pastor Simpson and denied the existence of God, and justified his refusal to believe because of suffering in the world, especially referring to the early death of his own sister. Pastor Simpson told him that we all die of illness sooner or later. This is the nature of all fallen men. We must not lay down to God the terms on which we are prepared to believe. To do so is utter arrogance. The man was further challenged with the reality that no one has the right to say to His Maker, I will only believe in you, if everything in my life goes just as I want it to. We must not attempt to bargain with God in this way.
On display was the text of Revelation 17:14, “(Jesus Christ) is Lord of lords and King of Kings”. This prompted a Muslim man to approach Pastor Simpson and ask, Is Jesus God?, to which he received an unhesitating reply in the affirmative. The Muslim responded to this with a rejection of the Trinity, claiming that Christians teach that there are 3 Gods. He was told that there is one God who manifests Himself in three Persons. We can understand this as Christians but only to some extent; it is also a deep mystery, and we must not subject the nature of the infinite God to our own feeble and corrupted human understanding. The Muslim asked, How is it possible for God to have a Son?, but he was thinking in carnal terms, in the sense of human procreation, whereas the Son was begotten in eternity by the Father, and God is Spirit, not on man’s puny level.
May the Lord open this Muslim’s heart to see that the Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who created the universe alongside His heavenly Father, but who became a man in order to accomplish man’s salvation from sin.
A Hindu man approached Pastor Simpson and asked, What os the world’s oldest religion? He did so with the conviction that Hinduism is. Pastor Simpson told him that Christianity os the world’s oldest religion, going back to the creation itself, because the Lord Jesus Christ was there at the creation, bringing the universe into existence. he also appeared in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve : “And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8). As the Puritan commentator Matthew Poole writes, “God the Son appeared in the shape of a man, as afterwards He frequently did, to give a foretaste of His incarnation” (1). The Hindu sadly got upset by this reply and walked off.
As he was preaching, Pastor Simpson attempted to engage with three schoolboys walking past, who appeared uninterested in the message. He tried to impress upon them that the message concerned them. One of the boys stopped to talk and the minister asked him, Are you a good person? he said that he was, and so he as asked if he had broken any of God’s commandments ? Had he watched pornography, taken any drugs, harboured hatred in his heart, told any lies? He said that he had not, but his friends laughed at this, and he began to admit that he was indeed far from perfect. He sadly did not stay to talk for a longer period, but may the Lord use even this brief encounter to make him realise the enormity of his sin and the need to come to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only way of dealing with sin.
Indeed, may many others who heard the preaching in High Wycombe realise, as the preaching told them, that all are spiritually dead because of sin, until they come to the Saviour for new life.
1) https://biblehub.com/commentaries/poole/genesis/3.htm