An anti-abortion preacher got shut down while attempting to deliver a sermon on a busy peak-time train in Sydney, Australia.
Preacher Phillip Blair, founder and director of the Torch of Christ Ministries based in Los Angeles, was travelling on a packed train on April 1 when he began shouting his beliefs.
The sermon was reportedly part of the church’s missionary work, however his fellow passengers were not impressed and quickly told Blair to ‘shut up’.
In a now viral video of the incident, Blair can be seen addressing commuters in a raised voice while trying to put across his beliefs.
He says:
Hello Sydney, allow me three minutes of your time if you don’t mind. I don’t mean to offend anyone, I’m here to give you hope. My name is Phillip Blair from the United States and I want to talk to you about where you’re going in life.
We’re all rushing through life, we’re all on a train, we’re all going somewhere. I wanna ask you what is the purpose of your life? Are you living to work and working to live?
I know what it’s like to strive on the corporate ladder but I have left everything… to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m not trying to talk to you about religion, I’m here to talk to you so that you might have hope for tomorrow and every day that follows.
Blair wasn’t done there though, and proceeded to tell everyone in his carriage they were ‘going to the wrong places’.
He then said:
We care more about saving the whales than we care about saving our unborn children.
At this point, one man who was sitting down within the carriage decided enough was enough and politely interrupted to say, ‘thanks mate, thank you’.
If he thought that was enough to stop Blair though, he was sorely mistaken because the preacher just used this as an opportunity to continue his spiel, telling everyone ‘I love you guys so much’.
You can watch the whole encounter below:
As Blair announces, ‘we have to return to living in a moral way,’ the man tensely responds saying no-one has to return to anything.
The man then says:
You have no more right than anyone else on this bus, just shut up.
At this point, another man jumps in and tells Blair to shut up, to which the preacher replies with a resolute, ‘no’.
It seems there’s going to be no end to the back and forth, with both parties becoming more annoyed with each other and the conversation becoming more heated.
As Blair asks everyone to repent for their sin, more and more passengers become annoyed with the preacher and ask him to shut up.
One woman shouts, ‘no one wants to hear it, bro,’ while the original man repeatedly asks Blair to shut up and ‘be quiet’. He doesn’t though, simply saying, ‘my opinion is the truth’.
Blair told Newsflare:
Our main goal is to take the light of Christ into all the world. The organization focuses mostly on evangelism and missionary work in hard-to-reach areas.
I believe the world needs more love, hope, encouragement, and purpose.
The video ends with the train erupting into applause as one passenger tells Blair to ‘shut the fuck up’ and stop forcing his opinions on everyone.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).