Lighting The Way Worldwide: LTW Update: Witnessing to Rami and Cash at Venice Beach

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

LTW Update: Witnessing to Rami and Cash at Venice Beach

Photos from Labor Day (witnessing team, Mike, Eileen, and Dan); update below from Mike:

Ocean Front Walk-- Venice Beach

Our table was just down from the Hindu tables...

The table next to us had many books and drawings promoting Hinduism, and two men who appeared to be Indian were hanging out by the table. One of them, whose name we later found out is Rami, spent several minutes looking at our books. He picked up the book Avatar of Night by Tal Brooke and thumbed through it. When he asked me what it was about I told him I hadn’t read it, but I told him a little about Death of a Guru, by Rabi Maharaj (which was also displayed on the table). After a few minutes, a man on rollerblades named Cash came by. He and Rami are friends, and they started talking to us about “religion”. Cash has a relativistic view of truth, and Dan attempted to show him that he still believes in absolutes whether he admitted it or not. Cash kept talking about how there are many lies being told in society, so I mentioned that there has to be absolute truth if the lies are absolute. He didn’t seem to make the connection. Rami then mentioned that he believes all of the messengers of god (intentionally not capitalized) told part of the same ultimate truth, and that different messengers were sent to different cultures to learn the part that god meant for them to know. I pointed out that Jesus said he was the only way, and that those who came before Him were thieves and robbers. Rami then admitted that all the messengers claim to have the only way, and that this claim was not limited to Jesus. Cash then said that all the messengers came to bring unity and harmony, so I mentioned that Jesus said He came not to bring peace to the world, but a sword. He said He came to turn father against son, mother against daughter, and so on. Rami then said that he had never heard this about Jesus, and that he sounded like the other religious leaders who advocate killing in the name of their religion. I quickly pointed out that Jesus never advocated violence. He warned His followers that they would be hated because of Him and that many of them would be put to death. He merely told them to be faithful unto death – to allow themselves to be put to death if necessary for following Him. “So Jesus was a pacifist,” Rami said. I told him that He was, but that He allowed Himself to die on the cross on our behalf. I then briefly shared the Gospel with him, and he listened intently and tried to understand the message. He walked away with a puzzled look on his face, but for the next hour or so he would come by and listen to us as we spoke to other people who walked by.

Finally, Rami came over and asked me to show him in the Bible where Jesus said he did not come to bring peace. (As a side note: The Lord did a subtle miracle here, as Eileen did not have the Bible she usually uses, but the only one she could find happens to have a very good concordance. As I was thumbing through my Bible to try to find the verse, Eileen used her concordance to quickly locate it: Matthew 10:34). I opened up the Bible and read Matthew chapter 10 from verse 28 all the way to verse 39 for context (Eileen snapped a picture of me as I was reading this passage to him). He asked me to write the Bible reference down so he could discuss it with another Hindu friend who happened to have a Bible. A few minutes later I looked over behind their table, and Rami and another man were reading together from a book (I’m assuming it was a Bible) and having a serious discussion.