Please pray for us as we go here to give out tracts and preach in the open air. This will be a first for me. The ballpark seats 49,115. Carl said that about 15,000 tracts were passed out last year. There will be about 50 people attending this year. I'm excited to be a part of this. We will be using three different baseball trivia tracts.Here is one of them -
Baseball Trivia Tract
Answers: a, b, c, b, death. Speaking of death, what do you think happens when a person dies? The Bible says it is appointed once for man to die and then face judgment based on God’s standard, the Ten Commandments (Hebrews 9:27). Have you ever told a lie? Stolen anything? Hated someone? Jesus calls hatred murder! Ever looked with lust? Jesus says lust is adultery. Would you be innocent or guilty? Heaven or Hell? God does not want you to go to Hell (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9). The good news is that 2,000 years ago God sent his only son Jesus to earth. Jesus, being fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life, fulfilled God’s law, died on the cross then rose from the dead to pay for your sin. The Bible says that if you will repent (turn away from sin) and trust Jesus alone to save you, then you will have eternal life (John 3:36, Mark 1:15). www.AfterLifeCatalog.com 80-BEZEUGEN / (802)393-8436
Monday, April 27, 2015
Texas Rangers Game Outreach
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Johnathan Goforth - Missionary To China
Jonathan Goforth, Radiant Soul-Winner of North China
The mother was faithful in teaching the Scriptures to her children, and when Jonathan was seven years of age he received a Bible from a neighbor lady. At ten, he came under deep conviction of sin and the need of salvation; but no one asked him to make a decision for Christ.
Opportunely, there came to the community a Presbyterian pastor by the name of Lachlan Cameron, who was faithful in preaching the Word of God. Jonathan Goforth dated his conversion from a service which he attended when he was eighteen years of age. Cameron was preaching, and he responded to the appeal for decisions. He joined the Presbyterian Church.
Through much hardship and noble effort, he obtained his grammar and high school education. During the years of his youth he often debated within himself whether he should be a teacher or a politician. His pastor, the Rev. Mr. Cameron, invited Jonathan to his home for instruction in the Scriptures and in Latin and Greek, and thus helped him prepare to enter Knox College, Toronto.
One day, while he was in college, he heard Missionary George Leslie Mackay of Formosa present the claims of Christ for that mission field in a most forceful way. Jonathan described that meeting in a few words: "I heard the voice of the Lord saying: 'Who will go for us and whom shall we send?' and I answered: 'Here am I, send me.' From that hour I became a foreign missionary." He lost no opportunity to prepare himself for the mission field and to declare the claims of Christ and the needs of the unevangelized multitudes.
APPOINTMENT TO CHINA
In the year 1885, Goforth received a copy of Hudson Taylor's book, China's Spiritual Need and Claims. He was deeply impressed and from that time on, with renewed dedication, he began to pray that a door would be opened for him to go to China. At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Canada in June, 1887, a new missionary vision came to that body of Christians with the result that Jonathan Goforth was appointed their pioneer missionary to North China.
On October 25 of the same year Goforth was ordained, and the same month he was married to Florence Rosalind Bell-Smith. On February 4, 1888, they sailed for China. By the middle of September of the same year they were looking over their new mission field in the Province of Honan.
It was soon evident that Goforth was "a man sent from God." He was untiring in his evangelistic services and efficient in the training of national workers and the establishing of churches under the leadership of Chinese Christians. It was there that the grace of God was revealed in a special way, as the Lord sustained and comforted Jonathan Goforth and his family in their manifold trials, sufferings, and sorrows.
Goforth had a passion for winning souls for Christ. He was outstanding as a conservative theologian. He required that at his public prayer meetings the one who took part should be definite in petition, and that the prayer should be accompanied by thanksgiving and confession.
He visited eight of the principal mission centers in Korea in 1907, the year the great revival was passing over that country, and wrote the booklet, When the Fire Swept Korea. His book, By My Spirit, has enjoyed world-wide circulation.
Dr. Charles G. Trumbull, late editor of the Sunday School Times, wrote: "Dr. Goforth was one of the most radiant, dynamic personalities that ever enriched my life. God's missionary program of the past half century would not have been complete without him."
The last few years of his life Jonathan Goforth was totally blind. Nevertheless, the fragrance of thanksgiving and holiness accompanied the distinguished missionary until he died in Canada, October 7, 1936. His life's motto was: "By my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts."
Having read aloud to his wife from Finney's booklet, Lectures on Revival, Mr. Goforth said to her: "It simply means this: The spiritual laws governing a spiritual harvest are as real and tangible as the laws governing the natural harvest." Then he added solemnly, as though he were making a vow: "If Finney is right, and I believe he is, I am going to find out what these spiritual laws are and obey them, no matter what the cost may be." Goforth did obey these "laws of revival," as he said he would, and God made him a channel of blessing to many Christians in China as well as a mighty winner of souls.
Goforth was convinced that it was the simple gospel message that was "the power of God unto salvation," and he was eager to share this conviction with others. He said, "Oh, that God would give me an opportunity before I pass on to demonstrate to missionaries and to the home church what results would follow if we but GAVE GOD A CHANCE by broadcasting this wonderful message of salvation by every possible means in our power. I am convinced the simple Gospel story has never had a chance in China."
Goforth was known among the other missionaries as well as the Chinese workers for his detailed knowledge of the Scriptures. Concerning the importance of memorizing the Bible, he wrote: "It is well to be able to repeat Scripture, but it is of very great importance to remember where it is in the Bible. My ideal has always been (though I cannot say I have always attained unto it), that it would be a shame for me, a missionary, to have to go to a concordance to find a portion of Scripture that a Chinese brother might ask me for. My wife seems to regard me as her walking concordance and my Chinese fellow-workers seem to think that I know everything in the Bible, but I am ever wishing I could spend several hundred years at the Bible.
"Since the New Version of the New Testament came out in Chinese, I will in a few days have gone over it thirty-five times in the Chinese text, comparing it with the Authorized and Revised New Testament. My method now is to go over each verse five times, but ever trying after the first time to repeat it from memory... As a result of this method, when I preach to the Chinese, the Scripture comes readily to mind and the Holy Spirit is able through me to compare spiritual things with spiritual. It is appalling how God and souls are defrauded because we know so little of His saving Word."
Robert Moffat - Missionary To Africa
To write the name of Jesus there, and point to worlds both bright and fair, and see the sinner bow in prayer, is my supreme delight.
- Robert Moffat - Missionary to
Africa
| Scottish pioneer missionary to South Africa for over 50 years. He opened mission stations in the interior, translated the Bible into the language of the Bechuanas, and wrote two missionary books on South Africa: Labors and Scenes in South Africa and Rivers of Water in a Dry Place. His oldest daughter Mary, married David Livingstone. |
When I think of Robert Moffat, I am rightly reminded of the Scripture in Zechariah 4:10, which witnesses, "For who hath despised the day of small things?"
It seemed a small thing to some godly men in a southern Scotland church when a boy about four years old, from a home of poor but pious parents, knelt at an altar to pray. His decision was despised by the elders as one who was too young to understand. Thank God, one unnamed, unknown-to-us brother bothered to kneel in prayer with "Robbie."
Moffat may well have been converted to Christ then — if not, it was the commencement of a chain of events that led to his conversion and to the opening of doors of evangelism to the uncharted depths of the dark continent of Africa.
In his mid-teens he left home for High Leigh, near Liverpool, England, to begin work as an undergardner. It was there that Moffat's spiritual convictions were confirmed and he became a member of the Methodists. And it was on a walk from High Leigh to Warrenton that another event occurred which would engineer him into evangelism in Africa. He saw a sign announcing a missionary meeting. On such a small thing as a poster, God prompted the heart of the youth to purpose to become a missionary. Moffat attended the meeting and there is every evidence he got the message for shortly afterward he contacted Rev. William Roby, the Methodist preacher in Manchester, and was soon recommended to the London Missionary Society. At the age of twenty-one, Moffat reached South Africa.
His earliest ministries were treks taken into the interior. There were few railroads or roads and oftentimes those were washed away by rains. Travel was difficult, dangerous and often death-bringing. Rivers, rocks, swamps, and forests had to be avoided or mastered somehow. Intense heat by day and chill cold by night complicated travel. Always there were the wild beasts: lions, jackals, hyenas, crocodiles, snakes, monkeys and, worst of all, warlike and untrustworthy native bushmen. Such journeys were not often undertaken by those who knew the country well, and to a newcomer like Moffat such treks were deadly dangerous! But Moffat, motivated by his missionary call, meant to master all such obstacles. He gradually became physically acclimated to Africa's extreme climates. He learned the country and became proficient in its customs and its languages, and he developed the great power of leadership that was to be his badge and make him a blessing to multitudes.
In 1817 he set out for the kraal, or village, of the Namaquas where the chief, Afrikaner, a blood-thirsty butcherer, was converted. That conversion has been considered one of the great accounts of the grace of God on the mission fields. On that trip he saw for the first time the Kurumon River and the Bechuanas, the peoples with whom he would spend most of his long missionary ministry.
The Bechuanas' reception of Moffat's ministry ranged from stony indifference — to steeled intolerance — to incorrigible rejection. Moffat, who had now married an English sweetheart, "saw no reward for untiring work." That work, by the way, consisted of being a builder, a carpenter, a smith and a farmer all in one; while at the same time preaching.
Probably one of the most momentous events in Moffat's ministry was not preaching but attempting to defend his Bechuanas from the warring Zuluas. He did not avert a war, but procured firearms and equipped his people. The Bechuanas conquered the Zuluas and, realizing Moffat's bravery and compassion in their behalf, they began to respect him as a friend.
It was twelve more years before his message bore the fruit of revival. Suddenly the meeting house was crowded. Heathen songs were not sung in the village and dancing stopped. Prayers came to the lips of the Bechuanas, and the songs of Zion were sung. They began to give up their dirty habits. Converts were recorded, then time-tested, then baptized. Other tribes, hearing the news, sent representatives to learn of the white man's teaching. Moffat often would return with them and thus the revival message and results spread.
It was then that Moffat realized he must concentrate on translating the New Testament into the language of the people if they were to learn God's Word and live God's way! And, customarily, he not only translated the text, he procured a press and printed it.
Moffat returned to England only one time before returning to die. On that visit he persuaded Livingstone to go to Africa instead of China. Livingstone built mightily upon the foundation that Moffat had so ably laid, yet, incredibly, Moffat outlived Livingstone ten more years.
He had opened jungle villages to the Gospel, he had braved the dangers, the deadlines of African jungles, he had withstood medicine men like Elijah had withstood the prophets of Baal at Carmel. He had preached, he had translated, he had instructed Africans to read, write, sing and farm. He had exalted Christ and magnified the ministry of a missionary. August 9, 1883, he wound his watch with a trembling hand. "For the last time," he said. And it was so. The next morning the 88-year-old soldier of the Cross was dead, with eighty-four years of life for his Lord since that night as a four-year-old bairn (boy) he had come to Christ.
"For who hath despised the day of small things?"
Friday, April 24, 2015
ULM's Spring Fever Concert
Friday, April 17, 2015
The Camo Card Tract
