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Gospel Witness in Two Cities
Two Weeks in England and Northern Ireland
Testifying
outside a Legislative Hearing
A Lesbian Congressman, Her Unborn Victims, and the Gospel
Sharing the Gospel with Santa and His Followers
With God, All Things Are Possible.
The Judge's Disposition Has Not Improved
Oshkosh by Invitation
PCC Lit Distribution
Sharing the Gospel in the United Kingdom
December 21, 2005
"And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith
should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of
God."
1 Corinthians 2:4-5
Dear Brethren,
I begin this letter by extending my thanks to those of you who continue to support the work of PCC. None of your gifts go for any church expenses or are used for our overseas missionary programs but rather for the things reported on in this newsletter, except for the UK trip. As you know, our ministry endeavors extend well beyond our local area because of your support. This ministry report details some of the public ministry work of PCC but does not cover it all by any means, including pro-life work and some aspects of the ministry Mike Foht engages in through our church.
While we are involved in many different efforts, I do want to assure you that we are continuing to battle the evil agenda of New Sodom, just as we have for so many years. We continue to believe that the antidote for the unfruitful works of sodomite darkness is light. Thus we are continuing our public distribution of
Homosexuality: The Truth and
What the Bible Really Says about
Homosexuality. In addition, we continue to have our insert on the marriage amendment in each of the tracts we lit drop and mail. Those inserts are also included when we supply the named brochures to others in our state who lit drop them.
With God's help, the threat of sodomite
"marriage" in our state must be turned back. It is no coincidence that in Holland, where such an abomination has been
"legalized," licenses for polygamous marriages are now being issued. It is likewise no coincidence that in Canada, again a place where sodomites can
"marry," Christians are dragged before human rights tribunals for simply criticizing sodomite sexual acts. Yes, we must soundly turn back the same-sex marriage threat and then work to roll back the rest of the sodomite agenda. We must not take for granted that the people of Wisconsin will vote yes on the marriage amendment in November. The sodomites are working at the grassroots level, and we must do the same. It is a dangerous delusion to think that victory in the marriage battle can be secured exclusively by Christians talking to each other within the churches and over Christian radio. We must go to the people of Wisconsin with the truth that will set them free from sodomite deception. That is exactly what PCC is doing with our mailings and lit drops.
When all is said and done, the proclamation of the gospel is the first and most pressing duty of all who have been saved through the preaching of that gospel. PCC will always include the gospel in all our ministry, and we will continue to engage in old-fashioned evangelistic work with the gospel as THE issue. The crying need of the hour is uncompromised, non-ecumenical Christian witness. Those who pollute their ministry work with ecumenism out of a perceived need for help from the Roman Catholic Church are doing more harm than good in the long run.
"As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save
us" (Lamentations 4:17).
In closing, I want to thank you again for your friendship and support. We appreciate prayer for this ministry as we are planning many important upcoming events.
Pastor Ralph Ovadal
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One corner of our gospel
display in Mukwonago. |
Gospel
Witness in Two Cities
On November 5, PCC set up a gospel witness at busy intersections in Mukwonago and Delavan. We held gospel signs and banners around the intersections and also handed out a good number of
gospel tracts to pedestrians and motorists. One man felt compelled to stop and tell us that we are destroying America. He made it clear that we exemplify everything which is wrong with America and are no better than the
Taliban. The Taliban has now replaced the Nazis as the group which we are most juxtaposed alongside. At least our adversaries are keeping up with the times. Among other pros and cons was a Christian from another state who stopped to tell us how encouraged he was by our witness. We hope that he and many other Christians are encouraged by such a gospel presence to go and do likewise!
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Two Weeks in England
and Northern Ireland
On November 7, four from my family and one young man from the church which I pastor left America for London, England. My arrival in that city signaled the beginning of two weeks of preaching, open-air witness, and traveling in England, the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland. During that time, I preached ten times in six churches. The churches in England were located in London, Birmingham, and Chester. In Northern Ireland, I spoke in Belfast and Londonderry. My one time of preaching in the Republic of Ireland took place in Convoy. My hope for the trip was to encourage and in some way help the brethren with whom we fellowshipped.
During our time in the UK, which lasted until November 22, we also engaged in some open-air ministry including street preaching, gospel sign holding, and tract distribution. In London, we ministered on a very busy downtown street corner with Rev. Peter Ratcliff, his wife, and several other Christians. With the
Lord's help, we gave out hundreds of gospel tracts, actually running out within an hour of our arrival. We had many good one-on-one conversations and reached thousands by the preaching of the Word via amplification.
In Chester, England, we preached to teeming crowds on a downtown pedestrian mall. Again, we ran out of gospel tracts before the time set for our departure. We also had a run-in with
Chester's finest in the form of a girl bobby. It seems that a Muslim man and a homosexual who happened by while David Carson and one of his men were preaching were quite offended by their messages. Consequently, we were told that the crown prosecutor would have to investigate Pastor Carson and his Zion Tabernacle church member. If convicted of stirring up hatred by preaching the gospel, the two culprits would have faced a minimum of four months in jail! The very thought is outrageous, and the Chester police certainly were informed of that. David Carson made certain the authorities knew that he was more than ready to enter into a court battle for the glory of God and the future of Christian liberty in his country. The authorities were also informed that the Americans who were with Pastor Carson and his people were more than happy to come back to England to testify on his behalf. Recently, we received word that the offended sodomite has decided to drop his complaint, and the crown prosecutor has decided to drop the entire case. Certainly, this is cause for relief and we hope is an encouragement for UK Christians that the Lord is with them as they boldly preach His Word to their countrymen sitting in darkness.
While in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we gave out gospel tracts in front of the
Queen's University. Again, we had great success in getting the gospel out.
Make no mistake about it, the UK is a very decadent place which needs our prayers. But at the same time, God is working; and we were privileged to keep company with some of His choice servants, including Rev. Ian Brown whose Londonderry Free Presbyterian Church put on a Reformation Conference at which I preached several times. Rev. Brown is decidedly on the offensive for our
Lord's kingdom and His righteousness.
We will never forget the warmth and kindness which was shown to us by so many of the
Lord's people in the United Kingdom. We are praying for the opportunity to host a number of them at a preaching conference which Pilgrims Covenant Church will be holding near Monroe in May. Before I leave this subject, I do want to be sure to tell you that no PCC ministry funds were used for our trip to the UK.
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Testifying
outside a Legislative Hearing
On Tuesday, November 29, a legislative hearing was held on the proposed
amendment to our state constitution which would ban state recognition or
"legalization" of so-called same-sex marriage or similar arrangements by other names. The amendment has already passed both houses of our legislature once. If it passes this session, it will be put on the ballot November, 2006, for the voters to approve or reject. At this point, it seems certain that the proposal will be on the ballot.
Mike Foht and I journeyed to Madison to testify in favor of the amendment at the hearing. Since hundreds of others had already registered to do the same thing and chances of our being heard before the sun went down were slim, we decided to make our voices heard another way. After sitting in the hearing for several hours, we left the capitol building and did some ministry outside in front of it. We set up a large sign reading,
"Jesus said: One man + one woman = marriage. Matthew
19:1-12." While I held the sign and did some preaching, Mike handed out our brochure
What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality complete with our marriage amendment
insert. Mike gave out a great many of the brochures, including to legislators and also to a bus load of school children touring the capitol. Believe it or not, the teachers allowed the kids to keep the brochures!
Many of the individuals whom we saw in the capitol building supporting the sodomite cause certainly were less restrained and proper when they met us outside the building. One man went totally berserk, running at me several times, screaming in my face, and in general, trying to intimidate me with his tantrum. It was almost comical to listen to him scream repeatedly in a guttural voice,
"We are love; you are hate!" Other men and women mocked us for being Christians, but we see such mocking as an invitation to preach the gospel louder and longer. All in all, Mike and I were borderline euphoric at the end of several hours of contending for the faith and defending
God's Word. We knew that the Lord had used us to strike a blow for righteousness and truth. When we were done outside the capitol, we went back into the hearing room where Mike made sure that every single legislator on the committee present received the brochure
What the Bible Really Says about
Homosexuality. Back
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A Lesbian Congressman, Her Unborn Victims, and the Gospel
Congresslesbian Tammy Baldwin made a stop in Monroe to meet with interested constituents; and as usual, Pilgrims Covenant Church greeted her warmly. This time around, we used pictures of unborn babies, both live and aborted.
We do not use the aborted baby pictures just anywhere, as we do not want to put them in the faces of children. We use them where children are not present or in situations where parents can easily shield their little
ones' faces, such as a picket along a highway in an area where children are present only in vehicles. We also make use of the pictures at Planned Parenthood and at the abortion mill in Madison.
At any rate, Tammy's meeting was in a senior center in Monroe. Our presence at the doors to the center once more drove home the reality that many older people in America are very selfish and very immoral. Depending on who was speaking, we were either sick, stupid, or badly in need of incarceration. But I was able to confront a corrupt high government official again face-to-face; and for that, we are most grateful. In an unexpected blessing, I spent quite some time with Rep.
Baldwin's young aid, sharing the way of salvation with him as he listened. In closing, I told him we really do care for his soul and would pray for him. The fact that he accepted a gospel tract, stood in semi-frigid weather, and listened intently to my witness was a cause for rejoicing on our part. May we never underestimate the power of the Word and the Spirit.
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Two of our number who witnessed
at the Monroe holiday parade. |
Sharing the Gospel with Santa
and His Followers
On the evening of December 2, we witnessed for Christ at the holiday parade in Monroe. We held our large gospel message signs, handed out
tracts, and did some preaching. We were happy with the number of tracts which were accepted, even if some of the crowd on-hand were not so happy with us.
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With God, All Things Are Possible.
Wednesday, December 7 found me once again inside a government school speaking to a civics class. The subject this time was
"same-sex marriage" and related issues. I was invited to give one side of the issue while on another day the other side was presented. This is the fourth time in several years I have been invited to speak in that particular class. I do not want to name the school as the sodomites will then turn their truculent talents upon the teacher who allowed me to speak.
As in the past, I was given carte blanche to say anything I wanted to say, which I did for fifty minutes. I spoke extensively on all the foundational issues relating to the marriage debate and dealt with all the reasons that I, an American and a pastor, am against so-called same-sex marriage. I used many Scripture verses as I spent a good deal of time talking about the legal foundation of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, and drove home to the kids the danger of creating law out of thin air. I compared the subjective, humanistic philosophy of the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution to the immutable law to which our founders turned as the basis not only for declaring our
nation's independence but also for our nation's laws. The point was to stress the results of trusting in our internal feelings and the fickle opinions of men as opposed to anchoring our laws—and for that matter, our lives—in the immutable, eternal law of the God who also is the source of all our unalienable rights.
During the presentation, I also refuted all of the
sodomites' thin-reed arguments, such as the Constitution having always been a mechanism for expanding rights when in reality the Constitution was written to keep the government from exceeding its lawful authority and engaging in such unlawful acts as creating a new definition for marriage. As I said at the beginning of my talk, the supporters of s.s.
"marriage" are hypocrites because they tell us to keep the Bible out of the debate; and at the same time, they trot out one
"clergyman" after another to twist the Scriptures to justify sexual perversion. I shared with the students that we cannot keep the Bible out of debates on law and morality; thus I would be using it in my talk. I also shared the gospel several different times. As the clock was winding down, I took questions; and that proved to be a great opportunity to amplify the foolish and empty nature of our
opponents' arguments.
As I was walking to my car, several girls from the class followed me, including one who was raised by lesbians. We had a very nice talk which ended with the girls accepting
gospel tracts and a number of the brochure titled
What the Bible Really Says about
Homosexuality. May God use this opportunity which He so graciously arranged to save from hell some of those young people who heard so much truth and the most important truth of all, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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The
Judge's Disposition Has Not Improved
This story is too long to do more than summarize and hope that the reader remembers the basic facts undergirding it. Several years ago, the Madison Police Department, at the instruction of the city attorney, on two different dates threw PCC off of two different caged-in overpasses spanning the Beltline highway in Madison. The excuse given was that drivers were
"upset" with the message we were displaying, to wit,
"Homosexuality is sin. Christ can set you free." Of course, the
city's actions were an unconstitutional, content-based restriction of religious speech, but Madison ever since has claimed its ban of PCC from all government-sign-plastered overpasses on the the billboard-littered Beltline was all for
safety's sake—which is strange because, since PCC was banned from those overpasses, we have documented by video tape John Kerry supporters and anti-war protesters being allowed by police to spend hours and hours on the overpasses holding huge signs and even attaching them to the overpass cages!
Back in July, 2004, federal Judge John Shabaz, in a summary decision with no trial, ruled for the City of Madison in this case. Then in July, 2005, a federal appeals court reversed that decision and sent the case back to Shabaz for a trial. On December 12, we had that trial. The
city's entire case rested on an absurd, fantastical, non-occurring event which they laid out in court but which is refuted by clear evidence. Briefly put, the city claimed that the
"spectacle" created by our message so "startled" drivers that they
"dynamited" their brakes, coming to a complete halt from highway speeds in front of our overpass. Pandemonium resulted with drivers swerving, cursing, dynamiting, and trying desperately to avoid fatal crashes. All of this then resulted in a massive traffic jam. The problem is that none of it is true. The reality is that miles past our overpass, there was a traffic accident on the eastbound lanes which resulted in a traffic jam which eventually reached and went past us. At the same time, the westbound lanes never stopped flowing smoothly past our display. (We had one banner and one sign pointed in each direction.) Of course, that was the first time we were forced off of an overpass. The second time, there was no traffic jam and no slow traffic, but the city avoided talking about that. Space forbids me to share more of the
city's fanciful construct which they used to justify allowing liberal, left-wingers to share their message on Beltline overpasses while cleansing those same overpasses of a biblical message on homosexuality. At the end of the trial, Judge John Shabaz, who made clear his animus against me in the initial hearing, issued his ruling without even taking the time to consider the evidence presented. In fact, he took the opportunity to rail on me at length, including letting me know his opinion that my
"message" is not getting through to anyone. At the heart of Ovadal v. City of Madison is the question of whether or not the City of Madison will be successful in restricting religious speech based on its content. So now
it's on to a higher court. Back
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Some of the forty-plus
Christians who braved frigid
weather to be a public witness for
the Word of God in Oshkosh. |
Oshkosh by Invitation
On Saturday, December 17, PCC brought literature, signs, and workers to Oshkosh to join local Christians in lit dropping that city with
Homosexuality: The Truth and our
marriage
flyer. In spite of cold weather and plenty of snow, we lit dropped about 6,500 homes! Oshkosh is a stronghold for the sodomite political group Action Wisconsin and is home to a very pro-sodomite newspaper. A local group of Christians, Wisconsin Marriage Defenders, has been courageously taking on the sodomites, with the local media siding strongly with New Sodom. We were happy to be in Oshkosh in answer to the request of WMD and join with them in bypassing the media and reaching a multitude of Oshkosh residents with the truth about homosexuality, the proposed marriage amendment, and a strong gospel message as well. After our lit drop, we also set up, at two different busy intersections, signs and banners bearing the biblical truth about homosexuality. The first few days after our outing in Oshkosh, PCC received an avalanche of obscene, threatening, blasphemous phone calls from that city, confirming that the truth we shared was badly needed. Please pray for the Christians in Oshkosh who are taking their stand under a banner of biblical truth.
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PCC Lit Distribution
Except where noted, the tracts were either Homosexuality: The Truth or
What the Bible Really Says about
Homosexuality.
Distributed by PCC:
• Tracts were lit dropped at homes in Arena, Madison, Sauk City, Prairie du Sac, Sussex,
Merrillan, Augusta, Alma Center, Neillsville, Nekoosa, Dickeyville, Janesville, Muscoda, Walworth, Fontana, Edgerton, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, and Genoa City, Wisconsin; Freeport and Scales Mound, Illinois.
• PCC lit was given out at the following high schools: Mt. Horeb, Sauk Prairie, Neillsville, Augusta, Janesville, Platteville,
Merrillan, Plainfield, Albany, and Milwaukee (Custer), Wisconsin; and Scales Mound, Illinois.
• Homosexuality: The
Truth, What the Bible Really Says about
Homosexuality, and our marriage amendment flyer were sent to 2,767 rural Shawano homes in the week of October 31.
PCC tracts provided free to others for distribution in
Wisconsin—We provided PCC tracts that were distributed at the Janesville Craig High School and in: Milwaukee, Janesville, Sharon, Eagle, Argyle/Blanchardville (gospel), Albany (gospel), Brookfield, and Appleton.
PCC tracts were provided free to Christians in South Carolina
(An Urgent Plea to Roman
Catholics); Newtownabbey and Londonderry, Northern Ireland for distribution.
A brother in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland distributed copies of my sermon
"The Marriage
Perverters" to all members of the Newtownabbey Borough Council. That body was deliberating civil union ceremonies.
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