To Hell and Back
6/6/06
As you may have already heard, on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 there was a big party in Hell, Michigan to celebrate the "once in a lifetime" happening of the calendar date of 6-6-06. We decided to go there to be the "equalizers" to present the flip-side of the coin to all the people celebrating Hell and the antichrist. Here is a summary of what happened:
In the Sunday, June 4th, 2006 Lansing State Journal newspaper, there was an article on the "big party scheduled in Hell" for 6-6-06. We decided that we wanted to go there and pass out tracts that day. We had talked to a guy at church Sunday night, that said he wanted to go and do some street preaching.
We sent out a prayer request to get as much prayer support behind us as possible, knowing this was going to be a real battle! Dennis was able to get out of work early that day, but our friend at church could not go because his wife had had a baby, so we decided to go alone. As we prepared to go, we received a reply to our prayer email from Donna's brother's Pastor saying, "What time?" We talked to him on the phone and he made arrangements to meet us there.
Donna and I wore our bright red, "JESUS SAVES" street preaching t-Shirts from Bible Baptist Church in Deland, Florida, loaded up our scripture signs, tracts, and lots of yellow, "Get Out Of Hell Free" cards and hit the road to Hell.
We thought it was noteworthy to mention that the main road in Hell, going east and west is Patterson Lake Road, but the main north-south road is "Darwin Ave." We arrived around noon-ish and met up with Pastor Dan on the main drag that goes through town. Of course "town" consisted of a country store, an ice "scream" shop, a bar and "normally" about 72 resident citizens---however, this day there were multiple thousands of people, cars and Harley Davidson motorcycles everywhere. Immediately we felt a major oppression as soon as we arrived.
After finding a place to park, we prayed, grabbed our gear and walked to a great spot to set up. The bar (the Dam Site Inn) was down the road and around a curve, away from the main attractions and goings on. So, we went further up the road and set up next to a guard rail, at an empty parking spot between some cars and some Harleys, directly across the street from the country store and the ice cream shop, where all the activity was happening.
Immediately as we began to set up our signs, multitudes of reporters came over and started taking pictures and videos of us and interviewing each of us, asking us if we were "protesting". We replied that, "We were not protesting; it is free America and they should be allowed to do what they are doing, just as we should be. Later, we saw the news reports which called us "Protestors" anyway. The liberal "news mafia" usually twists our words and tries to portray Christians in a negative way.
We told them that we are just here to tell people that Hell is real. It is a place where unsaved people burn forever and we are here to let people know how to avoid Hell and how they can be sure they are going to Heaven when they die. The wages of sin is death (in Hell) and those wages must be paid. You can choose one of two things, either: You pay for them by going to Hell yourself, or you can trust in Jesus Christ's shed blood on the cross as payment for your sin and you won't have to go there because He went in your place. Hell is not a joke and it is not a party." Of course, we gave many "salvation" and "hell" Bible verses also. The Lord worked it out that pictures of his Word (the scripture signs) were put out in many news outlets all around the country! To God be the glory!!!
After we had been there a little while, a group of 7 Christians (3 men, 2 women & 2 children), from a Baptist Church in Ohio, came by and joined us. Pastor Dan knew them. They had some great, colorful, bold scripture signs with them. The ladies held the signs and the men took turns street preaching.
Immediately, when people realized what we were doing there, a crowd of "hecklers" began to develop directly across the street from us. There were bikers, satanists, pagans, atheists, and the just plain curious. We were right across from where hundreds of people were standing in a long line to get a "666" t-shirt and ice cream. Later the news reported that the wait in that line was 1-3 hours long all during the day. So those people and the multitudes of others standing around heard a complete gospel message many times over and couldn't help seeing the many scripture signs! Praise the Lord!!!
Donna and I periodically crossed the street and also walked up and down "the strip" where everyone was cruising and hanging around, to pass out tracts and talk to people individually, if they would listen. The "Get Out Of Hell Free" cards were an instant hit with even this motley group of people. When they saw what we were handing out, we were flocked by even more people who were coming up and asking us for them, saying, "I'll keep this forever!" Only a very small handful of people would not take them. To them it was a souvenir from Hell, but it had the Romans Road on the flip side.
There were many that would not take tracts of any kind and also those who were blatantly disgusting. The hecklers ripped up cardboard boxes to make signs against us of which some were so vile that we would not dare to repeat what they said or take pictures of them. A group of people from the Michigan Atheists came over and unrolled a banner and stood in front of us and tried to "convert" us. What really surprised us was these peoples' ages. The one couple was at least in their 70's or 80's. You would think that being that close to the end of their lives, they would begin thinking about eternity. How sad.
The bikers kept driving by and stopping in front of us, revving their engines on their loud Harley Davidsons to try to drown out our preaching and put up a smoke screen to try to block the view of our signs. However, this was the very picture that one reporter chose to put in large, living color, with the big picture witnessing sign on the front page of the Wednesday, June 7th Detroit Free Press newspaper! The devil's antics once again "back fired" on him (pun intended)!
Many people would come over and ask if they could have a friend take their picture with us and our signs. Of course we said an enthusiastic, "Sure!" That scripture picture will stay in their scrap book for the rest of their lives for many more people to see after today! People were taking pictures with their cell phone cameras, videos cameras and digital cameras. So God's Word will continue on even after the day is over!
All of us made sure to be very polite when speaking with people that day. Donna went to talk to one guy as he went to his Harley to get ready to leave. She said, "Excuse me sir, may I give you something to read when you get home?" and handed him a tract. The guy said, "Hey, we aren't doing anything bad here. We're just having some fun like at a Halloween Party." Donna told him that the devil is deceiving people to believe that this is all a joke and just a fun party so that people will not stop and think of where their eternal soul will go one day. She continued to get a great gospel witness in to that guy before he left.
We left around 2:30pm. Pastor Dan left around 5:30pm, but he said that just before he took off, a group from a black Baptist church in East Lansing, MI showed up to take over. Praise God that He had people lined up for the "evening shift"! We're sure that these brethren probably took the brunt of all the harassment as people were already well drunken when we left and it would only get worse at night time with the children of darkness. We continued to pray for the brethren the rest of the night.
So, this was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was like no other street preaching adventure that we have been on before. The Lord protected us from some potentially dangerous situations. We only saw one police car drive by, one time, while we were there, thus no trouble from them, but also, no help either.
We know we are truly saved because when we went to Hell they told us to leave and don't come back! LOL! We preached to the captives in Hell and returned to tell about it!
