The Tale of Two Pastors – The Blue Light Special

“A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” (Psalm 91: 7)

Stories of great and unusual deliverances have been heard by many like the soldier who was hit by a bullet that failed to kill him because it hit the pocket Bible in his shirt and was stopped.

When deliverance comes to your own life it produces awe and wonder and a few goose bumps as well. We tell the story again and again because we are amazed at what happened and rarely do we ask – why? Was there a purpose in our being spared?

Often, I repeat the story of how I marched down from Canal Street in New Orleans one day in January of 1973 to the distant sound of gunfire. Former Navy marksmen and sharpshooter Mark Essex had gone berserk and was atop the Howard Johnson Motel shooting police and bystanders.

I rounded the corner unto Loyola St. just in time to hear several gunshots and the sound of bullets pinging of the street right near me. Black people were lined up against a wall near me in open view and they cried out to me to take cover behind a car. I asked –why? They replied because he is shooting white people.

The short of it is this, Essex killed several people and police officers because he simply did not miss his target – he missed me!

Perhaps I was too young to seriously ask why and until recently I still had not pondered the reasons I was spared.

The Blue Light Special – Lake Pontchartrain the Longest Bridge

At 26 miles long, the Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans is still the longest bridge in the entire world. It was a deliverance experienced on that bridge that made me ponder the reasons God would deliver someone. It is a two pronged story because while I saw deliverance there another Pastor was not so fortunate along the same stretch of suspended highway.

Returning from the Eastern Seaboard, I crossed the Causeway about a year after the Mark Essex shootings. A violent storm came up as I started across the bridge with a friend. It grew in intensity and was so ferocious that cars had to stop; some had crashed into the side rails.

Riding in a little flimsy Volkswagen bug that was severely pelted by wind driven torrential rains made us feel very vulnerable and exposed. At the very height of the storm I saw something before me that was so remarkable that I thought I might be imagining it so I questioned my passenger. Do you see what I am seeing, I asked. My passenger described it exactly as I saw it. It was nice to be assured that I wasn’t simply seeing things – strange things.

What we both saw was a tall archway of blue light appearing about every fifty feet in front of the VW. We passed through the arch as if it were a special covering made just for us. The storm seemed to have no effect on the little VW bug and the arches continued to appear in even intervals of about fifty feet until we reached the end of the causeway.

I tucked the experience away in my memory and I don’t remember telling anyone about it for about a year or so until a seminary classmate walked into class one day with an incredible story and a copy of New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper rolled up under his arm.

Paul Morton was a deacon, one of many, in the Greater St Stephen Missionary Baptist Church (now full gospel) at the time he attended the now defunct, Union Baptist College and Theological Seminary of New Orleans, Louisiana. Paul and I were both in our early twenties and we enjoyed talking with each other because most of our classmates were much older. Paul went on to become a highly successful gospel music recording artist and the pastor of a large African American church in the Atlanta area.

On that day Paul said “Guess what just happened to me at my church?” He then proceeded to tell me how, at just 24 years of age, he was installed as the pastor of the largest black Baptist church in the greater New Orleans area. How could that happen with so many older and more experienced ministers to choose from? That was my question.

Paul threw the Times Picayune down on my desk and said “This is how.” The headlines told the story of how the senior pastor of the Greater St. Stephens Baptist church drove his car off the New Orleans causeway bridge into the muddy waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

Some seventeen witnesses to the accident on both spans of the causeway described a blue light descending and alighting to the top of the pastor’s car after which; it was as if the light led the car directly into the side rails. Crashing through the rails the car plunged to the waters below killing the pastor.

Paul, the youngest deacon was chosen as the replacement for the pastor over many candidates for the position which was unusual, but not to be compared with the events that led up to the senior pastor’s death.

Reading the headline gave me goose bumps and my memories of the blue arches on the same bridge kicked in. Why had a blue light been involved to take a life, and for me, to save a life. The events were weird enough, but asking why, seemed impossible to answer, so for years I just didn’t ask.

Years later the call to the prophetic ministry came and along with it I realized that there was a two pronged message that I was appointed to tell anyone who would listen. I was spared, not to become a great one, or a household name in the U.S., but there would be, and now is, a number of people in the tens of thousands that have heard and I suppose to some degree, heeded my message. What is that message?

First the message is that the return of the Lord Jesus Christ is very near. The prophecies of scripture and the unusual generational fulfillment of all, but a few of the last day’s warnings have culminated in this hour of time. I saw those events unfurl before me in a vision of great detail and have since seen all of those scenes detailed in the bible and now unfolding in history.

You will not see another generation come and go before these prophecies are fulfilled. Exactly the day or the hour is unknown to me, but there is no uncertainty in the declaration that the time is at hand.

Finally, the other message is that this nation will undergo a time of extreme poverty and scarcity like none it has ever undergone. It will begin very soon. ObamaCare, $17 trillion in debt and general fiscal irresponsibility are precursors to the full economic crash.

Skipping full speed ahead to the crux of this article, I now know the reason I experienced the blue light special is so you would get to hear this warning and take some measures in your life to deal with it.

You may think running off to buy some precious metals or joining a prepper group is all you need to do. Don’t waste your time. The first thing you must do is evaluate your relationship to God. If you have no relationship with him - start here.

“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1: 12, 13)