As you will see from this short clip, I stood up outside the voting station’s boundary atop a ‘plastic garden chair’ and preached the Law and the Gospel of Grace for 15-20 minutes. God was gracious to let me preach unhindered calling the queue of voters to make their vote count.
Did you note from the clip that there was a presence of South African Police Service (SAPS) law-enforcement officers, who allowed me to preach without approaching me to stop? What you did not pick up from the unfortunate shortened version (the video is not as important as the sowing of God’s Word to sinners) of my sermon was the sporadic applause the Lord received at my closure of the open-air.
The next photo is of Kevin (a traffic police officer) who encouraged me and even extended an invitation to me to come and preach at the church he attends. To paraphrase what he said, was: “The church I attend needs to hear this message.” All Glory to God that His Word is powerful. We will wait and see if Kevin’s pastor gives the go-ahead.
I then joined my wife Tammy in the queue to vote with our consciences...
Once we had finished and I met up with a brother named Gerald Jackson who had joined us, a while earlier, I told him about the first open-air session and informed him that I would be doing a second preach and if he could take photos and intercede with prayer.The second open-air went without another problem and Gerald took one photo of people caught in the moment of listening...
As I had stepped down from the pulpit we were confronted by three Indian female SAPS law-enforcement officers who were driving-by. They asked me what I was doing and I explained that I was preaching the Gospel when they told me that this was not the forum as the crowd was volatile. From our position the crowd was not reacting so we cannot understand the 'volatile' statement, but one man who would appear to be an ANC member did come over and told the officers that he objected to what I was talking about. (We wondered whether he called the police.) We tried to explain our rights to freedom of speech and religion which included that we can preach, when they told us that the crowd was of many different religions and they did not want Christianity to be preached to them. If we wanted to preach we must go preach in a church or somewhere else. I then queried whether they knew whether there were not Christians in that crowd too, and we also asked what law was been transgressed.They told us that we didn’t have the right to preach there and that we must take our preaching else where. We merely pressed them for the law we were transgressing when they called for back-up in the form of a captain. When he and his officers arrived we asked them which law we were transgressing when he became verbally aggressive in threatening us with a six day stay in jail where after we could be heard in court thereafter. He told us something along the lines "that as a law officer he has the right to limit our rights”. My question is: Where is the democracy where one enjoys freedom? I now understand that South Africa is a socialist country camouflaged as being democratic. At this point I remembered what Tony Miano always says about law-enforcement officers. They always 'win', so I humbly stepped down without pressing “one’s rights” and it was at this time when he told us he doesn’t follow the God we follow. I did mention that we all will stand before God whether we believe in Him or not.
The end of all of this is All The Wonderful Glory to God that He allowed us to preach two open-airs and we can fight the good fight another day. We also do thank God that we left in my vehicle – and although the apparent ANC member, who mockingly waved us off, might think he won the day (and the election) – we will pray for them all that they will realize they are sinners who are wicked and evil and idolaters before Almighty God and He will cause them to repent. Gerald told me as we drove away that while I was discussing the legal infringements, the captain had one of the other officers take down my vehicle’s registration plate – GAL3V24
I hope he reads the Scripture – Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
It was another blessed day fishing – this time at an election poll.
