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"He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord."
Psalm 33:5
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God Did Not Want Me To Open Air Preach (Part 2)
God Did Not Want Me To Open Air Preach (Part 2)
Around the time I finished witnessing to Phil (see Part 1), Brandon showed up. He started off talking to Phil while I was having a conversation with Sabrina about Mormonism and morality. Out of nowhere she asked, “Do you think it is sinful to get a tattoo?” I told her I did not (I know this topic is of debated, but that is not the goal of this article, so we will leave it at that) and asked her about her tattoos. She had two sets of wings on her wrists. One set read, “Hope” while the other read, “Despair.”“Interesting! Phil shows me your tattoos.” I have noticed that people with tattoos usually have a personal symbolism behind them and enjoy telling the story of why they chose to get the design they did. The main reason I asked Phil is because I noticed Brandon had some tattoos on his arms, and I wanted to have a conversation with him. “Hi, I am Will. Could I see yours as well?”
He had a few, but the one that particularly struck my attention was a unique design with a date underneath of it, almost like a year of birth to year of death kind of thing. It turns out a few years back Brandon’s grandfather passed away, and they were close. From there, the conversation naturally turned to the things of eternity.
Brandon held a belief that is quickly gaining popularity today. He believed that when he died he would be reborn as a part of “nature’s energy.” He rejected the ideas of God and Christianity on the basis of being treated poorly by the Catholic Church as a child. Interestingly, although he did not believe in the God of Christianity, he did believe in Adam and Eve (with a unique twist). Brandon believed that a woman existed before Eve: Lilith. The legend goes that Lilith was created out of the dust as Adam’s companion and equal. One website I found presented her this way,
“One day Adam came to God and told Him that his wife Lilith had vanished. God sent angels to seek her out and bring her back, When the angels found Lilith, they ordered her to come back or be punished. Lilith refused, saying that she'd rather suffer punishment than go back to Adam (sounds like a typical modern couple). She supposedly had 100 children a day with demons.” (source)As the conversation went on, Brandon told me he believed that we are all gods with our own personal realities. He explained it to me this way: everything I see is my own perception of reality that I created. I am the god of my reality, and he is the god of his. I asked if that meant that in his reality he is not who he is in mine. “Are you still the Brandon I am seeing in my reality right now?” No, Brandon is simply a perception of my reality.
“You are god in your reality.” He informed me. Sound familiar?
Satan has been using the same lie since Adam and Eve (see Genesis 3:4). People keep buying into that we are our own gods. That we can be God. It is a deadly poison that has been running through the veins of our culture for thousands of years.
“So Brandon, if you are God in your reality…do you control everything?” He said that he did. “Did you cause 9/11 and the Holocaust?” To my amazement, Brandon declared that he had! I had never witnessed to somebody who took blame for terrorist acts before.
“Has anything bad happened to you Brandon?” He said that plenty of bad things have happened in his life. “So why did you cause bad things to happen to yourself?” He told me that he did because it kept life interesting.
I walked Brandon through the Law, and he admitted that if Christianity were true he would end up in hell. “Does that concern you?” He said it did not because he is his own god, and he decides what is true.
I decided to close the conversation and challenge him to consider the question: what if you are wrong? I often leave people with the statement, “Eternity is a long time to be wrong. You will be dead a lot longer than you will be alive. Make sure you have the right answer!” He agreed, shook my hand, and we parted ways.
Brandon was one of the nicest and sincere guys you could ever meet. But his sincerity will not mean a thing when he stands before God when he takes his last breathe. My prayers go out to him, and praise God for the planted seed.