Post by messengermicah on Mar 31, 2009 17:22:41 GMT -5
Tuesday March 17, 2009-Panama City Beach, Florida: One of the campuses we seemed to have had the biggest impact on and the most favor at (University of Alabama) supposedly changed their free speech policy this year and went to a sponsorship only policy.
This means that in order for someone like ourselves to preach on the campus we must be sponsored by a campus group. The chances of any student group wanting to sponsor our “hell-fire-and brimstone, holiness or hell, repent or perish” preaching is slim and none.
The University of Alabama was on spring break this week and many of these students celebrate in revelry in the Panama City Beach area. I was in the area and thought it would be a good opportunity to get a chance to preach to the students at the University of Alabama without having to waste time, money and energy trying to go through the sponsorship only policy.
Sister Elizabeth and I drove down to the Panama City Beach area and tried to spy out a good area to preach. I was looking for an area with lots of foot traffic, a wide sidewalk or boardwalk, which was public property. It was difficult to find any such area. All I seemed to see was the beach area and hotels with nothing in between.
After driving around for some time Sister Elizabeth and I parked and began our trek walking. We found our way down to an area near the beach where they were having a huge concert on the beach. The beach and hotel area was not the place to preach but there was a sidewalk in front of the hotel where most of the crowds would enter towards the beach area.
It was not a great spot but it was getting late and seemed to be the best spot. It was a narrow sidewalk and there were not huge crowds of people passing by but a steady stream of small groups would walk by to and from the hotel/beach area where the concert was going on.
I donned my sandwich board and began preaching simple short sermons to the passersby. Many of the passersby were carrying cases of beer and wearing bathing suits. It seemed almost everyone I encountered was either drunk, had been drunk, or was hung over.
As soon as I began preaching around 3:00 PM, I was constantly threatened with violence, shoved, or punched. One young man began shoving me all over the grass area and finally pushed me down the hill into a ditch area. He then punched me several times in the face and a large knot swelled up under my right eye. My wife came to talk to me for a minute and told me there was blood all over my teeth.
I continued preaching and the young man who had punched me continued to hang around, listening, making threats and shoving me.
Soon another young man began shoving me around and punched me several times in the face and head area. His girlfriend stole the hat off of my head. I then reached out to try to grab my hat back and her boyfriend shoved me and tried to punch me. Thankfully he made the girl give the hat back.
The whole time this fiasco was going on the police were about 50 yards away but did nothing but turn a deaf ear and a blind eye. At one point a police car came driving up and looked as if they would stop but they just turned around in our area and went the other way.
The whole time I was being shoved, threatened and punched, a drunken girl who cursed like a gangster rapper stood in front of me claiming she was a Christian, loved God and quoted scriptures out of context she felt justified her continuing in sin because she was now “saved and forgiven”.
Soon the girl who stole my hat came running at me like a wild woman out of control swinging fists, tried to rip my sandwich board off from me and pull off my camelback.
I continued to preach as best I could but now some of the boys who were friends of the boys who hit me began to surrounded my wife, threaten her, demanded she put away the camera and mobile phone. Around 4:00 PM I decided to leave the area.
One the way back I stopped at a restaurant to get ice for my swollen eye now turning black. A large young man recognized my wife and told her he apologized for the way we were treated. We thanked him and I am sure many others felt the same way but none would seem to take a stand and step out to defend us.
We are living in a day and hour where “he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey” (Isaiah 59:15).