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Saturday the Saints hit the sidewalks bringing Judgment and Mercy to the denizens of Sin City , walking, what Flip described as, the longest five miles in the world. "No one should ever come to Las Vegas alone or stay long," he said. "It is too overwhelming! It's too much! There are too many temptations!"
A beautiful young lady, provocatively dressed, yet wearing a cross necklace, was the first person they encountered. She was coming out of a casino, where she had been gambling all night. She kept trying to give our team her last five dollars, but they insisted that she keep it. She said she was a firefighter from Arizona . Flip told her, "Young lady, mark this date, March 27, 2004 , because on this date God is reaching out to draw you to Himself. He has a plan for your life." As he witnessed to her, her heart was touched and she began to weep. Before they parted, the team gathered around her and prayed for her. Later, Flip discovered $5.00 in his pocket where she apparently placed it as they prayed.
Wisdom cried aloud from the streets. Jim Phillips kept the sound system on his car going the entire time. Flip said police kept trying to attract Jim's attention and get him to pull over to the curb, but he just kept driving. It seems he was so caught up in delivering the Truth about the terrible judgment facing the lost, and the Good News about the mercy that can be ours through Jesus, that he was oblivious to their efforts.
On the sidewalks, the bizarre mingled with the wicked, who mingled with the just plain ol' confused. The team was followed much of the way by a man who said he had seen The Passion of the Christ. Everywhere they went he got down on his hands and knees, calling out, "I will be publicly humiliated for Christ."
Police stopped to question them in front of the Venetian Hotel & Casino. Flip said, "Here it is again, just like in Palm Springs, any behavior, no matter how perverse is okay, except when Christians come bringing the Gospel of Christ." One of the policemen said, "Actually, it's the horse and donkey that's giving us a problem." When asked, however, he admitted that he couldn't arrest the horse and donkey and graciously allowed them to go on their way.
Flip said they passed many tiny wedding chapels where they called out a warning to the patrons that they must not desecrate what God intended marriage to be, for without Jesus as the bedrock foundation the couple will have nothing. The chapel managers were incensed.
Meanwhile, a bevy of Hispanic men, speaking very little English, plied the sidewalks, handing out free call-girl guides with the phone numbers and pictures of prostitutes.
Rusty was preaching up a storm across from New York / New York when security guards started pushing him. He told them, "I could be offering homosexual wares here with no problem at all, but let me quote the Bible and you push me out into the street." This made the guards so mad that they became very self-righteous and told him he wasn't behaving the way Jesus would act!
The saints came across a line of about 100 people waiting to buy half-price tickets for a show. Flip called out, "How many here love Jesus?" One person raised his hand. "People," Flip pleaded, "if you've seen The Passion then you know what Christ gave for you. How can you deny Him? 'And I say to you, everyone who confesses Me before men, the Son of Man shall confess him also before the angels of God; but he who denies Me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.'" (Luke 12:8-9)
Flip said they had four hours of the most intense witnessing he had ever been involved in, with opportunity after opportunity to confront sin and offer the plan of salvation. That television commercial advertising Las Vegas that ends with the punch line, "What happens here, stays here,"....don't believe it! What happens here reverberates across eternity.
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