Hey everyone, this is pastor Bruce Mejia here from First Works Baptist Church. I want to give you a little update regarding this past weekend
We had a soul winning marathon in the city of Santa Ana in Southern California, and it was a complete success
We had 67 soul owners out and then a total of 37
Salvations and it was a great day had a lot of new people out a lot of new soul winners first time going
to a marathon
37 salvation's it was great
But of course, you know
The Bible tells us that when there's a great and effectual door open unto us that there's many adversaries
And that was definitely the case on Saturday
You see during the first half we got a lot of people saved and I was with my soul winning partner my wife and kids
And we're actually just finishing up the first half and my soul winning partner was knocking on the door at an apartment complex
and so I decided to wait on the sidewalk with my family and
At which point there was a group of guys who came walking up to me
And I just thought maybe they were interested in what we were saying
Maybe they want an invitation and so I handed them an invitation
I said, hey, I just want to give you this want to invite you to our Easter service and
you know, we're just out here inviting folks to church and the first guy walked up to me and
Just simply asked me. What's your name? And I said, my name is Bruce and they said what's your last name?
And I said me here and they said what are you preaching?
And I said I'm preaching the gospel and they said no
But what are you preaching and I thought that was kind of strange and so I thought to myself well
Maybe these are some false prophets from some local church that they think this is their territory or whatever
And you know, they want to get into a doctrinal debate or something. And so I just simply told them I'm preaching God's Word and
He looked down at the invitation and he looked back up at me and he basically said well
What do you believe about gay people?
And at that point I knew who they were, you know, and I and I simply responded
I looked them dead in the eyes and I said well you already know what I believe because you already know who I am
And so and he looked back and he began to twitch and he looked like he was very irate and
he basically began to cuss and say well you can't preach your homophobic blank here and
I looked at him and I said well I can preach whatever I want whenever I want and they said well
This is our neighborhood and you can't preach here
And I said well if you have a problem with it
You can go call the police on me if you want but I'm not gonna stop preaching because it's not against the law
God's called me to preach the Word of God and that's exactly what I'm gonna do and you're too late
I already have over 50 soul owners out here preaching the Word of God. We've been out here for two hours
You're too late. You know, you're too late reprobate and
so, you know they began to
Make some have some body language as though they were gonna jump me and I really thought that they were I thought they were gonna
Assault me
So I took my wife and kids and I just put them behind me and I was just kind of waiting for that
But then I realized that they didn't notice that my sowing partner was in the back
And I didn't want them to notice that I wanted them to be completely oblivious to that
So you can get the person saved and just kind of walk away and not have to worry about these guys
So I just said, you know what? I'm already done with this area. I'm already leaving to which they replied
yeah, you better leave and you better get out of here and so I began to walk away and
They walked away and that was pretty much the end of it. I text my soul winning partner
I said hey, these guys were giving me a hard time to recognize me from the news
And so I had to leave and he was fine. He made it back safely
But then the second half a couple of the men and I just went back and
Actually a group of men went back to go do some more soul winning there because it was really receptive
I mean a lot of people were getting saved the people were very open to the gospel and
We got there and we're getting people saved
But then you know a group of people started following us around and kind of harassing us and making menacing
Gestures towards us and so at that point I basically said told my soul winning partner
You know what? I think we need to call it a day
I don't want to put anybody at risk here. It's time to go. But here's the thing. We still saw 37 salvations
We had 67 soul winners out
It was a complete success and it proves the point that when the Bible says, you know
There's a great and effectual door open unto us. There are many adversaries and that's completely true
And that's why it's important that when we go preach the gospel
We pray that the Word of God would have free course and that we would be delivered from
Unreasonable and wicked men for all men have not faith
You know, and I believe that the Word of God had free course in the city of Santa Anna
That's what we got 37 salvations
and even aside from that
We handed out a bunch of YouTube cards with a QR code with my gospel presentation on there and the views on the gospel
Presentation went up on YouTube. And so that was great. So more people heard the Word of God
You know
The work was accomplished and you know what God delivered us from
unreasonable and wicked men those who do not have faith those who are ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of
The truth and so I want to just make this video to encourage you to keep going forward. Keep preaching the gospel in
spite of persecution in spite of the the reviling in spite of
You know all manner of evil that they may say against you
You know if you're so winning you're doing God's work God's hand is on you
You know fear not what man can do into you and you know what God's protecting us
And so I want to thank you for for praying for us praying for our protection
praying for our success in this matter of soul winning and
Missions and please continue to pray for first works Baptist Church as we continue to do the first works
Amen, God bless and have a great one