A Week In Chicago

We have been in Chicago for a week now, and, as always, have had a great time. We pulled in last Wednesday in time for service at Garfield Ridge Baptist, and it was great to be back with our friends here! Pastor T. had asked Dad to preach, so Dad did a positive (one of only 3 that he has ever done!) message on Thankfulness. For Thanksgiving the next day we went to the T's house and enjoyed dinner and fellowship for several hours. Friday and Saturday we were on the street downtown for about 3-4 hours each day. Friday we dealt with 3 young people that were upset over the sign Dad had made regarding the new occultic movie New Moon. These professing "Christians" saw no problem in watching a movie that was so blatantly occultic, and also said that it was okay to drink alcohol, go to bars, and listen to rock music. They also said that long hair on men was okay, since John the Baptist was a Nazarene, and had long hair (John the Baptist aka John the Nazarene?!) Mom corrected him that Jesus was a Nazarene, and that it was a Nazarite who had long hair! While they were discussing this with Dad all I could think was "Is anything wrong or sinful to them?" Anything we brought up they took a very liberal stance on, and seriously, nothing was wrong according to their viewpoint! Towards the end of the conversation Dad brought up the King James Bible, and all of them started laughing. One of the young men said that it was a great scholarly work (I always thought it was God's Word, not just a "scholarly work") for it's time, but that the NIV was a much better translation. For example, he said that 1 John 5:7, the most powerful verse proving the Trinity (although not the only one), should not be in our Bibles, it was a mistake. When confronted with the facts that a lesbian was on the NIV board of translators, and that Westcott and Hort, the "fathers" of the modern translations were involved in occultism, his exact response was "So?" I actually started laughing, because it was so obvious, and yet he didn't realize how ignorant his stand was. "The KJV is imperfect, and has mistakes, but the NIV is perfect, even though it comes from a line of corrupted manuscripts, occultism and a lesbian". NOT! Anyways, we had to leave at that point, and told him that he was very backslidden, if he was even saved at all. Saturday started out a mild day, but after lunch the crowd was totally different. Many people got upset, including one woman who came up to Pastor T. and told him that Mormons were true Christians, and he shouldn't be picking on them. We also had a man come up that we had dealt with before, who is very messed up. He stood near us for several minutes spouting off things like "the were trees curved to the right; the leaves on top were red, and the leaves below were green. In James 5 and Isaiah 22 it prophesies of a foot cut off, but there is no blood. The foot was wearing a white sock and a black shoe." Like I said, he's very messed up! After turning both camcorders on him he took off, as he doesn't like being filmed. Overall it was a very good weekend of ministry, and, thankfully, the Lord gave us good weather. Although it was a little chilly, at least we didn't have the snow that was in the forecast for the weekend!