Open Air Outreach

How did I end up preaching in the shopping streets of English cities?

Interestingly my first serious prayer to God involved this statement ‘I don’t believe in fairy tales’. This prayer at least contained the attribute of being honest! Since that time I have experienced God’s blessing in providing abundant evidence for His existence. At first this evidence was limited to a few articles and it was challenged in the early 1990’s by a book called Reason and Faith in which a Christian geologist gave three reasons why the rocks must be old. These reasons were the time it takes for canyons to form, the millions of individual layers we see in the rocks and the multiple petrified forests found in Yellowstone Park. At first this gave a significant jolt to my new found confidence that the Bible was an accurate record of past events. Then I decided to leave this matter in God’s hands and to simply trust God and as an act of faith believe His word that He did create the world (Hebrews 11:3).

It was about 9 months later that I came across a creationist video about Mt St Helens which showed how the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St Helens wonderfully answered all three questions: canyons were formed in one day, likewise thousands of individual layers of rock were laid down in a matter of hours and the depositing of thousands of ripped up trees into Spirit Lake at the base of Mount St Helens gives us a probable explanation for the multiple petrified forests of Yellowstone Park.

Since that time the evidence for a recent creation and a worldwide flood has grown exponentially. In 1996 Michael Behe produced his book Darwin’s Black Box which helped start the intelligent design movement. In this book he makes the point that modern research demonstrates the case for irreducible complexity existing throughout biology - including the miniature genetic machines found in each of our cells. In his latest book Darwin Devolves (2019) Behe observes that modern research has shown that this complexity is massively greater than we realised in 1996 and that real experimental evidence shows the genetic code is decaying not increasing in complexity - contrary to evolutionary expectations. In fact senior geneticist John Sanford in his book Genetic Entropy (2005) pointed out that natural selection was incapable of dealing with the genetic errors that random mutations creates and therefore scientific evidence actually points to a perfect genetic code being created at the beginning and this code is steadily decaying with no natural hope of this being reversed. Another confirmation that evolution could not be true was the recent findings of the human genome project which demonstrated that contrary to Darwinian claims that over 90% of our DNA code was ‘Junk DNA’ - the leftovers of millions of years of evolution - it turned out that all of our DNA was actively involved in maintaining our cells. This information became known by 2010 and helped me conclude that there was now overwhelming evidence that evolution must be false, however what propelled me to go on the streets to proclaim that evolution was false were developments in geology.

By 2010 I was aware that the most plausible explanation of the world wide phenomenon of flat rock strata (no evidence of erosion between rock layers) must be a worldwide flood. However it was in 2014 that I realised the full significance of the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones (blood, DNA etc). By then, after many years of scrutiny, the scientific community had reluctantly come to the conclusion that this material was not the product of contamination, but was genuine soft tissue from the dinosaur that had died. Unfortunately the scientific community refused to draw the obvious conclusion that these fossilised bones were not millions of years old but only thousands of years old - since soft tissue can only last thousands of years.

For me this evidence was irrefutable proof that not only was evolution false but that we now had clear evidence for a recent worldwide flood. As a consequence I wrote to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Education, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other heads of mainline churches to point out this incredible evidence and explain its significance. Unfortunately as expected no one showed any interest so that is why I started preaching in the streets of English Cathedral cities in April 2018. The aim was to pray in the Cathedrals that God would raise up people to fight for truth in the Anglican church as it decides on its response to gender issues (this response is likely to be finalised in next year's general Synod meeting in February). Alongside prayer I preached three times in the main shopping streets of these cities. The main emphasis being the overwhelming evidence for creation and need for us to respond to the gospel. During the summer of 2019 Maggie and myself started to regularly take part in the Chester outreach. (This has been a regular outreach for the last 40 years that takes place on a Saturday morning - 11 to 12pm). Also from the summer of 2021, having stepped down as head teacher at CFS, I felt I had the liberty to start doing open air preaching in Liverpool; which I have been doing with Maggie and some members of the church on a Thursday at midday on Church Street. Lockdown also provided an opportunity to create a website to contain a selection of good videos and articles on creation science alongside work I had produced on history and philosophy - if you google World History 3967 you should find the website.

So far the response to the open air evangelism has been limited however this has not been unexpected - what it does illustrate is the need for God to move with power in our nation. My other heart's desire is that the academic world would take stock of the evidence it now has and would therefore humbly acknowledge its mistake in rejecting Biblical Creation. Such an acknowledgement would be the modern equivalent of Luther’s starting the Reformation in 1517. The following table is my attempt to quantify what I believe is the eternal significance of this issue:

1) (a) World Priorities - 30.9.20 (RW)

To determine which issues have highest priority we need to multiply the number of people affected by the level of suffering they experience.^[1]

1 Damage caused by being treated badly (eg patchy discrimination) 0.1

2 Damage caused by being legally discriminated against 0.2

3 Harm caused by being unjustly imprisoned 0.3

4 Harm caused by being unjustly killed 1.0

5 Harm caused  by being eternally separated from God 1000.0

A Teaching of evolution and militant secularism that destroys Christianity 1000 for those who fail to receive salvation because of this.

B Sexual revolution that promotes divorce, adultery, fornication and uncleanness at least 0.1 for those families damaged by this and potentially 1000 for adults involved due to eternal judgment.

C Legalised Abortion worldwide since 2000 1.0 for each abortion and potentially 1000 for adults involved due to eternal judgment.

D Absolute poverty 0.3 Relative poverty 0.1.

E Persecuted Christians 2019.

F Racism in Europe and the USA 2019.

G The Covid 19 Pandemic - At least half the world's population adversely affected 0.1 and up to 2 million will die and a further 4 million will experience bad long Covid.

The outcome of this analysis of world priorities is to emphasise that most pertinent of Biblical truths that the most important priority in any person's life is the gospel. As Jesus said ‘What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but lose their soul’. Interestingly it also points out the significance of the sexual revolution and considering the key part that plays in the first chapter of Romans that makes sense.