Post by messengermicah on Mar 7, 2006 19:18:05 GMT -5
Joining myself to South Beach this week were Elizabeth, Doug, and Emmanuel. John and Onica were in California this weekend preaching with Ruben at the Academy Awards.
I was looking forward to preaching today because I knew this was the beginning of Spring Break and the beach would be crowded. We arrived a little earlier than normal and began preaching on the coral wall across from Wet Willie?s. At this point it was too windy to fly the banners.
Doug started preaching on the wall around 4:15 PM and gathered a crowd of about 30-35 with quite a few hecklers. He preached for about 15-20 minutes and then turned it over to me. A policeman sat on his 4-wheel cycle and watched the preaching but did not say a word.
I asked Emmanuel if he wanted to preach first but he told me to go ahead.
I got on the wall and started preaching where Doug was. By now the crowd had dispersed quite a bit, so I started trying to get a crowd again. I was getting a few small groups stopping and listening, but one guy kept standing in front of me and turning up the music on his radio to drown me out. I came down off the wall and began to preach up close to the people who had gathered to listen, positioning myself between the guy with the radio and the listeners. He followed me around some and kept standing in front of me but I persevered and eventually he left.
I preached for about 45-50 minutes to a crowd that fluctuated between 30-60 with many attentive listeners. I had many hecklers and mockers, with a few questions, most of which were insincere (see pictures at www.pbase.com/lautermilch/repent). The questions were more like accusations or excuses but still were good to promote interaction with the audience and opened the door to preach Biblical answers to accusations and excuses.
After I finished preaching, Emmanuel took over and began preaching. I had several good conversations with listeners who wanted to comment or ask me questions.
Emmanuel preached for about 10 minutes, but most of the crowd dispersed after a short time and we moved on.
We set up our banner and worked our way down the beach to the Square where the Versace mansion is. Doug preached here first and had a good number of people stopping to listen, and was followed by Emmanuel who preached for about 35 minutes and had even more people stopping to listen. The drunk that I bought food for a few weeks ago whom we continue to give food kept on heckling Emmanuel. Another officer was sitting on a 4-wheel cycle watching the preaching for a good amount of time and said nothing. Later he drove off.
We then moved across the street to the sidewalk in front of the residential buildings where we preached the week before and were told to move from.
I preached here from about 7:05 PM until 7:50 PM to the many people passing by. I do not remember anyone stopping to listen for any length of time. We received no police interference.
At this location as well as others the police dressed in short sleeve black shirts from special operations walked by us several times and never said a word to us.
Doug arrived with the van around 7:50 PM to drive us to Lincoln Road. It was very crowded and we were caught in traffic waiting to park in the lot so Emmanuel and I got out. We would meet Elizabeth and Doug at the Starbuck?s across from the Lincoln Road Theater.
Emmanuel and I arrived around 8:25 PM and began to redeem the time while we waited for Doug and Elizabeth to arrive. Emmanuel preached to the passersby on the corner in front of Starbuck?s until Doug and Elizabeth arrived.
We were planning on preaching at some different spots this night since Starbuck?s had finally opened so we were not going to stay here long. When Doug arrived with Elizabeth, Doug got on the platform and began preaching. He was able to get a few young people stopping and asking questions.
Finally the manager of Starbuck?s came out and apologetically asked us if we would move. She claimed to be a Christian and said she regretted having to ask us to move. We asked her some questions to make her examine herself to see if she truly was a Christian, witnessed to her, and told her we were planning on moving to another spot anyway.
Dean led us down to a spot he thought would be a good place. Doug preached here for a while, and many passing by heard but no one really stopped to listen for any length of time.
We decided to move back up to the corner of the street in front of the Victoria?s Secret store. The sidewalk is quite broad here; we were quite far from the entrance of the store, and a good distance from the street intersection (Jefferson).
I set up my platform next to a public bench and started preaching around 9:20 PM. I am amazed at how fast an atmosphere can change sometimes in street preaching. I preached for about 10 minutes or so and it was as dead as could be. A few people walked by but no one stopped. I made some comments denouncing rap music and several young African American guys came over to debate with me. This caused a crowd to slowly build up to about 50-60. The crowd was watching, as the young guys would accuse, heckle, ask questions, etc. Several young Caucasian girls who claimed to be Christians also began accusing and heckling me. One time one of the young men came toward me acting as if he would hit me but I figured he was just bluffing.
I continued preaching, debating, and refuting arguments for about 20-30 minutes, with the crowd slowly building. Right around 10:00 PM, I felt someone come up from behind me and grab me by the right arm. I turned around and looked and noticed it was a police officer that I recognized. He asked me to step down which I did. After I stepped down he told me I was under arrest for disorderly conduct. He said he had been watching me. I did not argue, complain, or resist in any way but complied and told him to do what he needed to do.
He put the metal handcuffs on me and cuffed my hands behind my back. My wife was videotaping the preaching and the arrest. The officer who arrested me then ordered my wife to stop filming him. She did not comply with this, as this was our property and evidence in court.
He then ordered my wife to hand the video camera over to him several times because he was impounding it as evidence. She again refused to comply with this request. I told her to give the camera to Doug and told Doug to get the camera. Doug then got the camera and managed to leave the scene with the camera as if he were invisible.
The crowd who minutes before was against us now seemed to be on our side. Several wanted to know why we were being arrested. Another lady told my wife, ?Don?t give them your camera? and telling the officers ?You can?t take their camera.? As I was being taken away I heard someone say, ?They are arresting the Jesus guy??
I asked the officers if I could give my keys to my wife. The officer accompanying the officer who arrested me removed the keys from my front pants pocket and gave it to my wife. I was then moved to the street intersection and told to sit down on one of the large cement balls along the street. The officer accompanying the officer who arrested me began to tell me my speech was offensive to people. I tried to explain to him that the purpose of freedom of speech was to protect speech that was offensive to others. He told me then, ?Well I guess we will see you in court then.? I just nodded.
As I was being walked to the squad car by another officer, a sergeant who I have talked to several times and has been somewhat fair with us in the past looked at me and said, ?Long overdue.?
Another officer then brought me to a squad car. At first he gave me somewhat of an attitude (I think he was assuming I would be defiant), but once he saw I was polite and totally compliant he treated me very well. He removed all the objects from my pockets, searched me and put me in the back of his car.
As I was sitting in the car, I saw them taking my wife to another car with handcuffs on behind her back. I was surprised and dismayed that my wife was being arrested also. She was arrested for tampering with evidence and resisting arrest without violence (?). I knew sooner or later I would be arrested and expected it, but did not expect my wife to be arrested. They took us to the Miami Beach Police Station in separate cars. This seemed unusual being that they have such few police officers as they have told us before.
As soon as we got out of the cars the police outside of the station starting mocking/joking with us, ?Fornicators, masturbators! That is one of my favorite sins! I saw you preaching on Ocean Drive tonight! You had a big crowd of people around!?
Once we were in the police station, a tall African American officer who I do not recall seeing before kept looking at my red ?Fear God-Jesus Saves? (front) and ?Repent or Perish? (back) shirt and stated he did not like the fact that we were being arrested, said he did not agree with this. He left and said, ?You keep doing what your doing!? We thanked him.
Many of the officers came in that we have had encounters with in the last 2 years during the over 2 hours they spent writing up our reports. They all had to put their two cents in, telling us they told us so, telling us how to preach, etc. Most of the time I just stayed quiet, because I have learned from experience that whenever I defend our methods Biblically they tell me to stop preaching to them.
The sergeant I had seen in the street as I was being arrested told my wife that she was in big trouble, it was a felony what she did by not handing over the camera, and was tampering with evidence. He then said, ?I have been doing this for 20 years and when an officer tells you to hand over evidence you better do it.? The arresting officer said he was going to call the State Attorney to find out how to handle this. I knew he was wrong, all of their intimidation tactics whether sincere or insincere did not make me nervous, and I did not reply. I knew Doug had been able to remove the camera and we had the video.
Several other people were brought in under arrest during the time we were there but they were in and out in less than half an hour. One heavily built Hispanic man was brought in for splitting someone?s skull open and he had the nice handcuffs that hang down at the sides, while my wife and I were cuffed behind the back and sat with cuffs on for over two hours.
Sometime after midnight they took off the metal cuffs, put on the plastic ones, and drove us down together to the Dade County jail. The young, female African American officer who drove us down kept looking at us, looking at our report, then cracked her window and asked us what kind of message we preach. I explained to her Biblically what we preach, how we preach, and why we preach that way. I could tell she thought it was ridiculous for us to be arrested although she would not come out and say anything. She professed to be a Christian.
As we got inside the jail I could see the correction officers looking at my shirt and smirking (I think they knew why we were being arrested). They cut the cuffs off, searched us, put our belongings into bags, took mug shots, fingerprinted us, etc. It was very difficult for me to have to separate from my wife in that place and watch her being taken away for a more serious crime than myself. It is a shame there are not men who will stand up and obey the commands of Jesus Christ to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, so a woman has to take their place, and do what a man should be doing.
I was put into a temporary holding cell with about 15 other men sometime after 1:00 AM. As soon as they saw me come in with my shirt a few said, ?Aw man, now they putting God?s people in here too!?? I knew they were all disgruntled with the law so I told them I was in there for preaching. They did not like that (of course they would probably side with me no matter what I was in there for).
One of the guys who responded the loudest told me he was arrested for scalping tickets at the Miami Heat game. I asked him if he was out at the Heat game last Saturday during the Bob Marley festival? He replied, ?Yes?. I asked him if he saw us preaching out there and he said yes he had seen us.
After about 10-15 minutes they opened the cell and began calling out names until everyone name in the cell was called. They took us to see the medical person. He called us up individually and asked us some questions. Then they lined us up and took us upstairs to the third or fourth floor to the larger cells where the more permanent inmates were kept. I was put in a cell with about 75 to 100 other inmates around 1:45 AM. There were a lot more inmates than there were bunks.
They gave me a sorry excuse for a towel that looked like a pillowcase and a piece of soap to take a shower. I did not really want to take a shower but I did anyway, because when we were outside I heard an officer yelling at one of the guys in our group, ?What did you just say? Did you just say you weren?t going to take a shower?!? I figured I better take one to avoid any problems.
The cell was freezing cold and I was shivering a lot after I finished showering. I am so glad I put on my thermal undershirt before I preached at Lincoln Road.
Some of the guys started asking me questions about my shirt. They found out I was in there for preaching and started asking me questions about the Bible. I preached to them about repentance towards God and faith towards Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21), and they started taking out their Bibles and writing scriptures down. Another inmate called me over to talk to me about the Bible. After talking with him a while, it was now around 3:00 AM and I was going to try to rest somewhere.
As I was getting ready to go try to rest, the two guys I had talked to about the Bible came over, along with a very kind, older Mexican man who was a Christian to pray. So the two African American guys I had preached to, the Mexican Christian man, the longhaired Caucasian looking guy (he was actually Hispanic), the guy in the bunk across from us, and myself joined hands for prayer.
They wanted me to pray, so by God?s grace I prayed long, loud, and fervent. I prayed for their repentance, salvation, the requests they had, and for Elizabeth. The presence of God came down and hovered in a powerful way for a time.
After the prayer time the African American guys (they and the Mexican guy seemed to be the senior inmates of the cell) thanked me and said they needed more good prayer like that. They told me they wanted me to ?pray the grace? when breakfast came.
The Mexican guy told me I could rest on his bunk because he had been in there for 20 days straight and was plenty rested. I thanked him and rested from about 3:30 AM to 4:50 AM when breakfast came. I did not sleep at all, but rested, prayed, and prayed for Elizabeth.
I was honored at breakfast to be asked to ?pray the grace? over the food, but the guys let me know not to pray a long prayer like the night before.
I ate breakfast with the longhaired guy and gave him most of my food. After breakfast I was having a good talk with the Mexican guy. God bless that man for his kindness. He obviously had some health problems (he wore one of those bags around his waist that drained his stomach), but I laid hands on him during our prayer time for his healing.
Around 5:30 AM they called several names for bond and I was one of them. I was let out of the facility around 5:45 AM. Doug had stayed up most of the night and worked to get me out. I would much have preferred Elizabeth get out instead of myself first, but her bond was much higher than mine because I was charged with a misdemeanor while she was charged with a felony.
I met Doug and his brother Mike at the bail bonds office a few blocks away around 6:30 AM. Mike brought the money in cash we needed to get Elizabeth out. She was released around 10:45 AM.