Final Update

Last Update January 20, 2012 Thanks for reading these updates. This will be the last one as I am on my way home. Most of what we did the rest of last week was street work and trying to generate interest for the seminar Tuesday night. We have handed out many bibles and a lot of flyers. Speaking of Tuesday night, we finally had the seminar on How We Got The Bible. After some technical difficulties we got the presentation going. The DVD presentation was about 38 minutes long. Then we did questions and answers…. About 24 people showed up. If you don’t count the brethren then we had 10-12 people, some of whom we knew. However, we did have a few people show up that we had never met before. I think we generated some good leads.

The Q&A was eventful. We had lots of questions about canonicity (which books should be in the bible), the Apocrypha, and the Gnostic books. We also had one guy who really tried to give us a hard time. He wanted us to explain everything we said. That may sound like no big deal but let me recount one exchange: Visitor: What are you guys? Us: Christians Visitor: What kind of Christians? Us: We’re not affiliated with any organization and our congregations are local and autonomous. Visitor: What do you believe? Us: [explanation of the gospel] Visitor: Are you born again Christians? Us: Yes. That’s the only kind according to John 3. Visitor: No. No. You keep saying Jesus is the Christ. The bible never calls Jesus the Christ or god or anything. Us: Let’s read John 1 Visitor: What do you mean by “the Word” (He was referencing John 1) Us: That is a reference to Jesus Christ (we read Jn 1:14) Visitor: No, no. The Word means sound or vibration. This man tried to tie up the entire Q&A period talking about a New Age spirituality. I tried to give him some latitude and be gracious but he became increasingly agitated. Eventually we had to move on if anyone else was going to get to ask questions. Afterword, he told me he knew he was right because he had met Jesus “and really liked the guy.” I gave him my information and hopefully we will be in touch again. We had another man who expressed his frustrations with some of the Irish churches not paying their debts and how it was really causing him a crisis of faith. Hopefully we can help him. We also had another man there named Theophilus who asked a lot of good questions about why some books are part of the canon and some are not. We answered as many questions as we could and are going to be in touch some more. All in all I think it went well. Some leads were generated and I actually got to share the gospel with a few non-believers (praise God for this gift!). Hopefully much will come of this. Wednesday Michael showed me another part of the Island and Thursday night I taught the brethren in Cork before leaving early Friday morning. God willing I will be back in KY on Friday the 20th. I cannot wait to see my family and my church family and friends. Thanks for being interested in the work I have been doing. God bless you and would you say a prayer for my travel? Grace and peace and love, -JC3