I would like to share my testimony for our weekly
Wednesday evangelism outreach at Monash University Clayton Campus.
Date and time: 23/5/12 (Wed), 12-2pm
Place: outside STA travel, campus centre
It is encouraging to see Rachel Chiang coming along to
the evax session. We went around and initiated conversations with people by
using surveys and the curved illusion gospel tract. A few people declined our offer to do a survey
but they had no problem receiving the ‘Are you a good person’ gospel tract.
Don’t be discouraged when someone rejected you, we can always let the gospel
tract to do the talking for us. Eventually we managed to talk to Ariel and her
friends in the main dining hall. We used the curved illusion tract to start the
conversation. They were amazed by the gospel tract and I proceeded to say, ‘you
know one of the biggest illusions in life is that people think that they are
good people, would you consider yourself to be a good person?’ We managed to go
through a few of the Ten Commandments before her friends came. After that,
Ariel showed her friends the curved illusion tract and did the eye test on
them. Thank God we managed to give out two other curved illusion tracts to her
friends as well.
Apart from that, Angela and I both had a heart for
Chinese students so we decided to talk to Chinese students about the Good News
every week. This week we used Mandarin to talk to Tony and his friends who were
from China. We found out that they were Buddhists so we went through the five
precepts from Buddhism with them using the ‘are you a good Buddhist?’ tract.
The five precepts are:
1. Do not kill (similar as the sixth commandment - you
shall not murder)
2. Do not steal (similar to the eighth commandment – you
shall not steal)
3. Do not indulge in sexual misconduct (similar to the
seventh commandment – you shall not commit adultery)
4. Do not make false speech (similar to the ninth
commandment - You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour /lying)
5. Do not take intoxicants
I found it surprising that Tony and their friends have
never heard about the five precepts before. The five precepts are different
from the Ten Commandments in that they are more like guidelines rather than
commandments for Buddhists. However, the five precepts are excellent tools for
building bridges for using the Law to convict the heart of Buddhists. Tony
thought he probably had broken a few. Remarkably he had heard about Jesus
before because some missionaries have talked to him on that topic. Although
they made jokes about the commandment while we talked to them, they were open
to listen to the gospel.
After that, we did a questionnaire with a local student called
Alex. After we went through a few of the Ten Commandments, he appeared to get
offended by the questions. This is better than an apathetic response because
his conscience was convicting him of his own sins. Apathy means that the person
might have a seared conscience (1 Tim 4:2). Paul in Romans 7:7 said ‘I would not have
known what sin was except through the law’. Don’t be afraid when people are
offended, because it is necessary for the Law to expose the true condition of
people’s heart. If the person’s self-righteousness is not humbled by the law,
he won’t be ready to accept the grace of God. How will they realize the need of
a saviour when they don’t even understand the trouble they are in when they
face God on the Day of Judgment? Anyway, we thanked Alex for his time and left
him The Regal Standard newspaper. The Regal Standard is a newspaper originally
designed to counter the atheist convention in Melbourne in April 2012, with
contents such as science and faith, a prominent atheist renouncing atheism and
the problem of suffering. I find this newspaper a useful tool for spiritual
conversation starters with friends. I have tried that on my housemates. It worked.
Every week we handed out dozens of Regal Standard and I believe the newspaper can
change people’s life. You can read the newspaper on this website and share it
with your friends: http://regalstandard.com.au/
Charlie Lam
Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre
