There’s a homeless man who calls himself Angel, and he claims to be an actual for-reals angel from heaven. He also claims that I’m with Satan and I’m trying to deny an entire city of homeless people their due blessings.
I went to jail while he laughed.
I’d been away from this mission field for months, and when I returned, a man was working the crowd like a carnival barker. His hat read, JESUS IS MY BOSS. There were maybe 150 homeless people present.
“Do not miss out on your blessings!”
He was handing out these papers and asking folks to fill them out.
I slid onto a table under a sign saying, DO NOT SIT ON THIS TABLE, because I knew the man who sat on that table every morning before breakfast and every evening before dinner.
And then I watched Angel get distracted by my presence. When we made eye contact, he came straight for me.
He put his best handshake forward like we were at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, and not among people sitting on a concrete slab three steps above people sitting on the concrete sidewalk next door to the sewage treatment plant.
“Why hello there, sir!”
He really talked like that, or rather, he talked like that sometimes.
“Hi there,” I said, smiling. We shook hands.
He said, “I haven’t seen you before. Do you know me?”
I informed him that I’d been away for a while.
“Well, my name is Angel,” he said.
I thought nothing of it at the time, seeing that he was Latino. I’d observed him working on some Mexican day laborers, but not connecting with them.
Angel was Colombian, and he spoke with a heavy New York accent, and he liked to talk about how hard New York is, and how soft Santa Barbara is.
Suawft.
Angel wanted me to look at something and then to tell him what I think of it. He had a stack of sheets on a clipboard that looked like job applications, but more personal. Name, Birthday. Place of birth. Goals, desires. Fears.
And above a big open box at the bottom it said, “Name your blessings.”
I told Angel what I thought of it, and that caused our blossoming friendship to sour. We were already standing close, but he got up real close, pointed to his hat and asked, “What does this say?”
I said, “These forms you’re passing out give false hope, and Jesus isn’t in them. They’re evil.”
“What. Does. This. Say!”
“Jesus is my boss.”
Angel smiled and stood back. He took a deep breath, pleased with his big move.
“That’s right. So who are YOU to tell me I’m evil?”
Then, pointing around like a sprinkler, he said, “I’ve been serving these people. Look at the testimonies.”
He did have cases. He had cases and I knew some of those people. Mostly, they were among the needy who just want to talk to anyone, and they’ll fill out whatever, even draw pictures if you want.
This man Angel was failing to convince me to put my faith in his ministry of abundant blessings. That was clear, even to Angel. He decided to reset the relationship. I don’t claim to know how that’s supposed to work. You just pretend nothing happened.
“Hi, I’m Angel,” he said. We were shaking hands and meeting each other for the second time in 5 minutes, while a whole bunch of tired, bored, over-heated, broken homeless people watched on.
Angel told me his real work was in exposing fentanyl houses. He’d been raising awareness in NYC and now he was working in SB. There’s this rehab house called PATH, and just as with prisons where inmates only learn how to become better criminals, drug dealers deal there.
Angel makes cool signs. Everyone knows that. So Angel made a sign, and with brother Alfonso, we spent a few days raising awareness about the unaddressed fentanyl problem at the PATH shelter.
At the time, I was preaching daily at the homeless mission. Or rather, I was preaching from the sidewalk in front of the homeless mission. You see, the mission chapel was closed. They wouldn’t allow me (or anyone else, but really me) to preach Jesus Christ on the property. I was living there and praying over all the meals in the dining hall, which was fine with them, but no preaching on the premises. The mission was founded by a pastor, but it’s now gone full secular. Their reasoning is based on a false and ironic sense of tolerance and liberty. They still masquerade as Christians, though.
Angel became one of my most outspoken allies. Before I told him to lay back, he would march among the people while I preached, yelling “Amen!” “Preach!” “Hallelujah!” and ordering talkers to shut their mouths while a holy man of God is speaking.
He apologized and chilled out.
He camped on the beach, getting food and taking showers at the mission. We saw each other every day, and when he learned that I’d be preaching again on State Street, he insisted on making a sign. He told me to give him some ideas and I gave him three, but he went with his own.
The sign he made was about 5’ x 5’, canvas on a wooden frame, with the letters superimposed on a bold cross saying, SAVE ME TODAY LORD.
Pretty rad. He’d set that up on the corner and cars would honk, thumbs up, smiles and cheers for Jesus.
After preaching one day, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Thank God it was empty, because we got into it.
Angel smiles, actually winks, and says, “You know what’s wrong about your preaching?”
“Tell me what’s wrong with my preaching, Angel.”
He holds up the whoa hands. “Whoa, let’s back up a little. I’m just saying you’re too… linear.”
I’m thinking here Angel doesn’t know what linear means. He tries again.
“You’re too… rigid.”
“I’m by the book, Angel. You’ve known that since we met.”
And Angel with the pitch, goes,
“You need to go to their heartspace.”
I’m pretty sure heartspace is one word in his mind, and an actual thing in his mind. I’d just preached for three hours to hundreds of people that God is love, and we ought to love Him with all we’ve got, and now my buddy with the sign says I need to go to heartspaces.
“That’s New Age claptrap,” I tell him.
“Are you getting mad?”
“No.”
“You’re mad.”
He’s not wearing the JESUS IS MY BOSS hat on this day. No, he’s wearing his homemade Illuminati hat. He made a hat with a triangle and esoteric trimmings, and he said he wears it to mock the Illuminati. He puts it on and dances in front of the Scottish Rite Freemason Lodge.
I know at that moment that the hat ain’t mockery at all, but something to do with his religion.
Then Angel goes full clown.
He challenges me to a preach-off, or a preaching duel, or whatever you’d call it when two men compete to win over the most people to their side.
“Let’s go to the mission and settle this like men,” he says.
“You’ve gone full clown, Angel.”
And clown around Angel did from that day forward. That man clowned hard indeed, fully demonized. His enormous sign became a weapon in his eyes to use against me. He marched with it daily around the city, fist-pumping to honking traffic, looking to find me preaching somewhere. If he found me, the preaching would be over. He’d prop up his sign in front of me and then march back and forth, yelling to the crowd that I’m a false preacher working with Satan, trying to rob everyone of their due blessings from God. All I could do was walk away, praying.
My daily schedule included delivering a 10-minute message at 5pm to the homeless gathered for dinner at the mission, and so that became the main target of Angel’s assault.
He began to picture himself as a Bible preacher, having not read the Bible. He acquired a pew Bible in red. He began his preaching at 4:55, to preempt me, and would try to continue until dinner. He preached that he was an actual angel sent from God to destroy my false ministry.
Yes, his message was always about me, while he waved around a Bible he probably lifted from a Catholic church.
Usually, people would heckle Angel until he shut it and allowed me to preach a 10-minute message. I praised God for that encouragement every time.
But then Angel escalated. He began to open that Bible, not to teach, but to assault. Every time I spoke, he’d read aloud over me.
God has blessed me with a preacher’s voice, and I can project. Not so for Angel, thank God. So when I began to preach on the scriptures Angel was reading aloud, he had to abandon that tactic.
He resorted to banging on a metal trash can with a large stone. Staff had to stop him.
Angel’s given name is Andrew, and ever since he named himself Angel, he’s believed he’s an angel sent to earth from God. He just didn’t know his mission on earth until he met me, according to his own preaching on the subject.
It gets worse.
Angel started zooming around like a child does, with airplane arms, taking off from sidewalks and veering into traffic, then zooming back in for landings, trying to surprise people from behind. Many homeless people didn’t think that was cute.
Angel was always down to throw fists, though. He was a boxing trainer, in fact, but his left elbow was locked up from an injury. Dude could still fight better than most, and so most never stepped up.
Homeless guy tells me a story. He and his friends were drinking on the beach…
“Angel comes up and he’s all like, Don’t drink near my altar, and we’re like, *** your altar, and he’s like, let’s go, ***, so we go and I get him in a head-lock. That dude’s strong, bro.”
And I’m thinking, His altar?
I’m hanging out with some brothers in the courtyard of the homeless mission, about to preach the 10-minute message of hope at 5pm, and here comes Angel with his sign again. Only this time, he doesn’t setup on the sidewalk behind where I preach. Angel enters the courtyard. He props up his sign along a railing that fully blocks my preaching area from view. He intends to screen me out this time.
Then Angel launches into his war chant.
Angel has a war chant. He plays a hard-hitting hiphop track on his phone and stomps around chanting cringey, creepy lines such as,
All power and might
Keep him in sight
While pointing at me and laughing like it’s intimidating behavior.
Nobody can possibly take Angel seriously now, but at one point he did have a lot of people appealing to him as a spiritual guide.
By the time 5pm arrives, it’s time to preach and I’m willing to go to jail for it. So I stand in front of the sign. Message is,
SAVE ME TODAY LORD
I try to keep the tone light, because this day is about to go dark.
“How often do you go to church and the cops show up and arrest the preacher for preaching? All the time, amiright? Well I’m sorry to inform you that I’ll probably get arrested for this. I know. So boring.”
Staff is out in the courtyard immediately, just watching with their arms folded at first.
“Friends, the message today is, Save me Lord, and that message ain’t for me. I’m already saved. Why should I fear those who can only kill the body? Do you not know what saved means? This message is for all y’all who know you’ve turned from your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This message is for you to cry out, Save me, Lord, I’ve sinned and sinned again and I want to stop, for God’s sake!
“You need saving, and you’ll receive it if you ask your Father God for it.”
Angel is standing like staff are – fierce looks on their faces, at attention like attack dogs waiting for the order.
“The apostle Peter prayed the same simple prayer when he was sinking in the water. He lacked faith, and he had not yet been regenerated by the Holy Spirit.”
The head security guy is Aaron.
“That’s it,” Aaron says, and walks up to my face. “If you don’t stop and leave the property I’m calling the cops on you for trespassing.”
He’s already armed with his weapon, a flip phone with direct numbers to cops. People say he’s an ex-cop.
Then this happens:
“Is this because I’m preaching Jesus Christ, Aaron?”
“Yes.”
That’s the correct answer. Aaron and I have history together. He’s an avowed Stoic. I continue preaching, only into Aaron’s face. And I’m very loud.
“If you’re rejecting Jesus today as your Lord, you’re suffering today.”
Aaron is an obese man with bad skin. He’s seething with anger inside and spends a great deal of effort chilling on the outside. That’s Stoicism.
“I’m calling the cops,” Aaron says with monk-like calmness, giving the impression that he’a almost falling asleep.
Then he calls the cops. Some people advise me to bail, because of course they bail when Aaron calls the cops on them. It made no sense to them that I’d stay.
The officers who show up do their jobs superbly. They take my statement, which would be important later in court. My intention is to get a jury trial, and to call some staff members as witnesses.
The arresting officer is willing to take my cowboy hat into evidence so it won’t get crushed in storage at the county jail. When driving me in, he asks if the windows are rolled up or down enough, twice.
When we get to the jail, we talk out front for a few minutes. He had searched my bag, of course, and he had seen my Bible in Hebrew and Greek. We talk about language and translations, and how we can know what the Bible really says. Not your typical discussion with an arresting officer.
Then he hands me off to the Sheriff’s department. They let me keep my sweater because they keep the holding cell colder than a meat locker. They offer me all-I-can-eat baloney sandwiches, which is one sandwich. It’s actually tasty.
After getting held for the night, they let me out with a court date in 30 days.
That address is the rescue mission. Dox me, fool.
Fresh out of jail (haha), I walk across town to Police HQ and claim my cowboy hat. They bring me the hat in an evidence bag all sealed up and dated like it’s going to trial. What a thoughtful cop.
Since I had no travel restrictions as a suspected criminal (haha), I made arrangements to skip town until I had to appear.
But right before I left town, Angel found me. He had his sign, too.
He pitched the sign against a light pole and stood in the middle of an intersection. After performing a short war dance & chant, he began to preach his own strange religion.
“If you fill out this form, I’ll put it on my altar and you’ll receive your blessings! I have a holy altar on the beach.”
Right then I knew the whole thing to do, and I split from there.
I knew Angel would be shortly after me, but he had to carry that huge sign.
I was heading to the beach, and I was gonna stomp on some idols.
I knew the area where he camped on the beach, and I found his altar immediately. He built it on the only rocks out there. He had decked out the rocks with plant life, and vegetables from the mission dining all. Many candles, and melted wax splattered and blown all over stone. In the center was a stack of papers and a crucifix Angel stopped wearing when I told him it depicts a dead Jesus.
I laughed, thinking, Yep, I found the right altar on the beach.
I grabbed the papers and crucifix, then kicked and scattered everything else real nice. No more altar.
I threw the crucifix into a dumpster. I’m no fan of those.
I ripped up the forms filled out to receive blessings, and then read some of Angel’s writings.
His whack belief goes, God and Satan are in a battle, and you only receive blessings if you appease both of them on the altar, and Angel is the angel sent to open the door for those blessings to flow. The door is a triangle. He drew triangles all over those writings, which I tore up.
And then I went traveling until my court date. When that day arrived, the clerk informed me that my name wasn’t scheduled to appear that day.
“Wait a minute. Let me check something.”
He pulled out another clipboard from a drawer and flipped through it.
“Yep. Here it is. The DA rejected the charges.”
So that was nice. Praise God.
I see someone I know on the street. He tells me my presence is needed at the mission. And then he tells me Angel’s gone.
“Gone? Where?”
“Don’t know, but they took him. He was flying around and ***, and then he tried to fight the cops. They tazed him.”
That’s the last I heard of Angel.