Pastors John Sherwood, Peter Simpson and David Carson, and Mr Christopher Wild from Chester, were preaching the gospel at the Manchester Pride parade in the centre of the city on August 24th. They were helped by a small and valiant number of others in support. Various relevant portions of Scripture were on display that many thousands of people could not help but reading.
The Manchester parade is big, taking some 3 hours to pass through the streets. The band of those witnessing were located on a major thoroughfare of the city on the parade route. Large crowds came out is support of this annual event. What was especially distressing was seeing parents bringing their young children to watch, and their encouraging them to wave LGBT flags in an act of celebration. Children were even on some of the floats in the parade. What appalling harm is being done to impressionable young minds by the public display of drag queens and men dressed in fishnet stockings and skirts, along with the public trashing of God commandments.
This parade was also a specifically anti-Christian event in that it involved the overt and very public rejection and mockery of the Bible, which is the very word of God.
Parade supporters frequently tried to drown out the preachers by blowing trumpets, and cover up the word of God by waving rainbow flags in front of those witnessing. Drivers of parade-float lorries made a point of incessantly blowing their horns when in the front of the preachers, making it much more difficult for the amplified preaching to be heard. We are reminded of Zechariah 7:10 : “They refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear”. Many of those walking by the witnessing Christians uncannily adopted the same practice of shaking their heads and laughing, as if to say, How can anyone in this day and age hold such primitive and unenlightened opinions? However, one wonders if the laughter was in fact no more than an attempt to try and shake off being suddenly confronted with the harsh reality and fearful consequences of ignoring Almighty God’s holy commandments.
At one point a large number of opponents stood in front of the preachers and their helpers repeatedly chanting : ‘God loves gays’. By this of course they meant that God finds their lifestyle acceptable, and condones their sin, not that He reaches out to sinners in mercy, if only they will repent. This chant was of course bordering on the blasphemous, implying that the holy God happily embraces flagrant moral wickedness. This action was actually no different than chanting, say, ‘God loves adultery’, which is listed alongside homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 as keeping men outside of the kingdom of God.
These fashion-following parade supporters, hopelessly captive to the spirit of the age, can never have read Luke 13:3, where the Lord Jesus declares, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”. To publicly lie and deceive about God’s righteous laws and His anger at the sins of men is no minor aberration, but an arrogant shaking of the fist at Almighty God in foolish and reckless rebellion. Furthermore, what a terrible guilt lies upon the false, Bible-denying churches which promote such lies and deception.
Out of love for their unbelieving neighbours the preachers did not shrink from speaking of the reality of the wrath of God and of the place of eternal condemnation for all the unrepentant, namely hell. Pastor Simpson also told the parade participants and supporters that they were merely conformists, the establishment, the mainstream, those meekly following the crowd. It really is about time that the homosexual activists ceased claiming that they are an oppressed minority. They have the complete upper hand, having won over the education system, big business and our major national institutions. This is demonstrated by the following list of some of the bodies involved in the parade :
The National Trust, Aldi, the Civil Service, the NHS, Cadent Gas, the Quakers, Cheshire Fire Service, Greater Manchester Fire Service, Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s, Astra-Zeneca, The Science and Industry Museum, Wickes, Argos, the National Education Union, United Utilities (water company), and even the Royal British Legion.
One Roman Catholic young woman tried to justify her phone in support of all that was taking place by saying that she went to church every Sunday. It was pointed out to her that church-going never saved a single soul, and the witnessing brother questioned what her church must be teaching her. Attending a place of worship is very important, but the message of the Christian gospel is all about inward transformation by means of repentance and faith. It focuses on the reality that “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). All need a complete radical inward change, because “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).
A parade supporter asked one of those witnessing, “Why do you care so much about what we are doing?” She was told that it is because all have immortal spirits, and as Christians we care for our neighbours, and do not want to see them end up in hell. We want them to experience true “joy and peace in believing” (Romans 15:13), not the shallow and fleeting exuberance of the parade, worked up as it is by music with a heavy beat and by the euphoria of belonging to a crowd.
Towards the end of the parade there were some meaningful conversations with some pro-LGBT young people, and at least two of them seemed to be genuinely moved by the Biblical arguments put forward to them, and were beginning to rethink their attitude. May the Lord work powerfully on their hearts and lead them into all truth, as indeed is now being prayed for the thousands who heard and saw the word of God being set forth in the midst of the gross spiritual darkness which characterised this day.
