The Deathscorts Are Here!

Time: Saturday morning bright and early—ughh!
Place: Abortion mill in Greenville—2x ughh!
Situation: Friend trying to share gospel getting bombarded by deathscorts and their kids—3x ughh!

Let’s rewind. It’s Fall for Greenville weekend which is one of my favorites, because we get over 100,000 peeps flocking to our little city for food, drink and entertainment. I don’t really get the appeal, because it’s just a bunch of tents with overpriced food, local businesses promoting themselves and subpar entertainment. Maybe it’s cause I’m not a Southerner? For whatever reason, people love it, and give us Greenville locals the poifect opportunity to share the gospel with as many as these peeps as we can. Year to year we have a small, but mighty, faithful crew that help Steve and I with this task. Truth be told, if we had to do it alone, we would. But we are very thankful to have others with us cuz it’s a jungle out there in the spiritual warzone.

Typically we go downtown the Friday evening, Saturday morning at the mill <shudder>, and then downtown again Saturday afternoon/evening. Mind you, this year we had baby with us for the first time, so that made things interesting. Friday evening went well. I don’t think anything major happened if I remember rightly. There was a police incident that got cleared up, and other than a few drunks and self-proclaimed Christians telling us we were evangelizing wrong (typical in the buckle of the Bible Belt), it was business as usual.

Then came Saturday morning. Now we hadn’t been to the mill since baby was born—about a year—so it was a big step to get out there with her. First of all, there’s that. Second, anyone that knows us, knows we are NOT, I repeat, NOT morning people by any standard. So the context of a mill outing already does not start out well. Then there’s the new stress of getting baby up extra early, which being one of us she’s cranky about, and rushing around trying to get ourselves ready, the baby ready, car loaded with tracks and sign and 8ft ladder attached to the roof—I’ll get to that later. All while realizing we’re going to have another early rush-around morning on Sunday for church, so that means two early rush-around mornings in a row.

So yeah, typically mill mornings are not off to a happy, cheery start. What doesn’t help is knowing we’re going to a place where we not only have to fight for souls, but lives. Babies are murdered while we’re on the gospel clock there, and all that keeps us from being able to dive in that building and save them are a few walls. But since the law in our society currently protects the murder of innocent sons and daughters within those walls, and sometimes even tries to shoo us off, we can’t go on the property. I think I’ve said something like this in another post, but on one hand we’re fighting an invisible war for souls, on another we’re fighting a visible war for lives. On both fronts our weapons are prayer, God’s Word, and mouth.

You can kinda see the physical circumstances we have to work with from the post pic, but compared to other mills around the US we have interesting architectural challenges that others don’t. Hence the 20ft ladder. I’ll try and describe it the best I can to get a picture in your mind. This is the only physical abortion mill I’ve been to, but from what I see via my friends’ pics who go out in different states, for the most part they are able to get somewhat near the front door. At the very least, there are able to stand on the same level ground as those they’re trying to reach. Not our mill. There are only three spots you can stand. Near the long driveway that snakes around to the parking lot where cars are whizzing in and out, alongside a very busy road at the bottom of a hill where semi trucks are flying by you at 50mph at least, or on top of an 8ft ladder at the top of a hill where you get an aerial view of the parking lot and can at least see the front door, but you are towering 20ft above the people you are trying to speak to.

We need the 20ft ladder, because there are not one, but two fences, the mill put in place to try and stop us from preaching the gospel and calling out/pleading with people not to murder their sons/daughters. The first fence you could pretty much see over if you were tall enough. They put the second fence in after a Fall for Greenville outreach a few years back. Ok, that’s not going to keep sound out—A. B—we just brought a taller ladder. They can’t build it any higher either, because there are power lines above it. Steve was the first one to pop his head over that new expensive fence they built, and man did those nurses that saw him have an angry field day when they realized they had wasted their money trying to stop us from preaching there. Whipping out their phones taking pictures, etc, lol. Ok, taking our pic is still not going to stop us. Doi.

From a visual/logistics standpoint, none of those positions are ideal for being able to present a reasonable stance to chat to people. I mean anyone that has someone hovering 20ft over their head or sees people approaching their car as they’re trying to drive in and out of a driveway is not going to have a natural response of wanting to chat. In the end it doesn’t matter, because no matter what physical position you have to the people you’re trying to reach, your very presence there is a witness and testimony via the Spirit to their soul and conscience that what they’re about to do just ain’t right.

On with the Saturday. We’re finally ready and stop at the same QT we always stop at near the mill. Lo and behold, as soon as Steve steps out of the car a woman beelines to him with a grand story about how her car is out of gas and she needs money. I think I’ve written about other situations we have run into out here with the con artists and their stories. There’s always a story. I can do another article on this, lol, but suffice to say while we’ve met a few people who were genuine in their request for help, most are just making up grandiose stories to play on your emotions so you will give them money. This woman was one of them, and I knew Satan had sent her the instant she beelined to us.

Steve listened for a little bit and then I took over the listening so he could go inside and get his stuff. But as soon as she detected we weren’t going to fall for her ploy, she went on for eons to try other tactics to make us feel bad and “teach us a lesson” for not giving her money. Eventually it got down to, “Ma’am, right now there are babies being murdered down the road and you are hindering us from going there to save their lives. Don’t believe us? Look at our ‘Babies are murdered here’ sign.” Cue trunk opening so she can see the sign and her starting to spout her opinion about that. See ya later.

That whole situation did delay us a little bit, and as soon as we got there I knew why. “Friend trying to share gospel getting bombarded by deathscorts and their kids.” He had started without us, and had one crazy woman with 2–3 of her kids right in his face on both sides of the fence— shouting, waving their signs and blasting heavy metal music. He clearly needed reinforcements which was why Satan sent that woman to delay us. On the other hand, he hopefully learned his lesson not to fight on his own. You want to talk about spiritual warfare? You want to see it up close and personal on the front lines? Go and share the gospel at your local mill.

… on one hand we’re fighting an invisible war for souls, on another we’re fighting a visible war for lives. On both fronts our weapons are prayer, God’s Word, and mouth.

Our friends at Apologia Church recently had the murder “doctor” at their mill, point a gun at them inside his car, and caught it on video, only to have the Phoenix Police (at first) say they didn’t see a gun in the video. They changed their mind once Apologia released the video to the public and had to deal with calls coming in from all over the country from Christians demanding justice and that they arrest that doc. Last I heard he was charged with aggravated assault. Good. And you just know that if it had been one of the Christians that had pulled a gun, it would have been instant arrest and media outcry. Satan has a loose-ish leash for now, even though he can never operate outside of God’s sovereignty, so there’s that.

Almost three pages, this is a long post. I’m almost at the climax, sort of. All y’all who follow this blog know I can write, alot, and bless you for making it the end of these posts. Too much waffling, I know, but it’s fun. When I have to write academically, it’s hard to keep the sarcastic, witty “me” out of it, but I try. Not so much on my blog.

Now, we’ve never experienced deathscorts up close and personal before. We’ve heard about them and seen them via videos at other mills. At your typical mill, these are the peeps who escort parents into the murder mill, and blast music, scream, do whatever means necessary to prevent Christians from being able to engage with the parents. As soon as we saw them, Steve and I were like, “Sweet! People to engage with!” Though between the Catholics on the driveway and now these protestor peeps, it’s so hard to actually get to chat to the parents about to murder their babies. Really whoever is on the ladder is the best shot at that. Downhill, we gotta fight (not physically) through these groups in the rare instance that someone walks around from the parking lot to talk to us. Honestly I spent the whole time on the deathscorts during this trip. I’m not complaining at all. I love engaging with these types and Catholics are my favorite peeps to witness to since I was a former Catholic. The hard part is choosing who to share the gospel with. Catholics and deathscorts and murderers, oh my! How do I choose?

I don’t know if I really chose as much as walked to that driveway ready to engage with the deathscorts. They were completely unexpected, so I was hyped. A bit too hyped looking back, but it worked. As soon as I got within ear and eyeshot of them, calling them out, all of them were on me. I suppose it was good, because I was keeping them all distracted while others could focus on the cars driving in and out of the place. So there was a middle-aged lady with what appeared to be her two kids (she wouldn’t confirm or deny this). A hyper, leftist liberal in her 20s dressed in a tiger suit, and another older lady on the phone. The kids were what got me though. They were running around, climbing the fence, tripping and falling right by the road the semis were barrelling down, swearing their heads off (they looked to be 8–11 years old). One girl that looked about eight or nine had devil horns on. We’re just like, ok, when these kids are teenagers, you parents are going to have a rough time, that’s all I got to say. They have no idea what they’re doing, they’re just copying the parents. That part kind of hit us in the gut but nothing we could do about it.

Before I get into the rest of my experience downhill, uphill Steve had set up the ladder and the amp. As I was walking towards the driveway I all of a sudden heard the “whooooooop” our Half-mile Hailer makes when it needs new batteries or something is wrong. Great. It was just working fine the night before on new batteries, and they usually last a really long time. Spiritual warfare anyone? Steve had the crazy mom and her kids around him when that happened, mocking him that obviously God didn’t want him to speak if the amp wasn’t working. That lady referred to herself as a Christian btw—welcome to the Bible Belt. No biggie. Our friend had an amp that wasn’t as powerful as ours that Steve was able to use. But man, if the hailer had worked it would’ve drowned out all their noise very easily.

The other advantage was having that 20ft ladder, because once he climbed up there, they could only try and poke at him with their signs. Though one of the kids threw his Bible in-between the two fences. What they didn’t realize is how gracious we were being to them, because we could’ve easily called the cops. They obviously were new at this, because if you are a protestor and physically touch someone and/or their property and are in their faces, you’re the one getting asked to leave. That’s how the law is supposed to work to protect free speech, but it depends how liberal your city is if that’s going to be followed or not. We’re pretty good in Greenville, but I can see it ever-slowly starting to change. Though if they’re out again, we may just call the police next time if they get to be too much.

After all that, as I approached the driveway, I was met by Tigger (we nicknamed the lady in the tiger suit). By the way, she self-identified as a man and then yelled at Steve that since he didn’t have a womb he didn’t have a voice in this issue. Steve replied that since she identified as a man, she identified herself as not having a womb either, therefore she didn’t have a voice. That was met with “rape apologist!”. She resorted to that anytime she got called out which was often. She was pretty volitile and kept screaming at me that God supported abortion in Numbers 5. Then I hear the older woman on her phone holding one of the deathscort signs start to engage with me at the same time. The Catholics just took it and were standing there all timid, so Tigger and phone lady had no idea how to handle me.

Amidst the screaming the older lady hung up the phone and said, “I’m not religious, so your Bible doesn’t apply to me.” Tigger kept saying that God supported abortion in Numbers 5:11–31. So I was like, “That’s it!”. I got out my Bible and said to phone lady, Romans 1 for you, and afterwards we will go through Numbers to see if Tigger’s claim holds any water. None of her claims did, because every time I asked her to back them up, she couldn’t and just resorted to “rape apologist!”. Uh huh. That means you have no legit argument. Amidst both of them having a go at me, I opened up my bible and started reading Romans 1 word for word. Most of you should be familiar with that, but if not, go read it and the next part will make sense. As I was reading it, God ignited his Word, because Tigger bounced off and phone lady went silent. This doesn’t happen every time I just start reading from the Word, but man, God certainly shut their mouths with it that day. The other cool thing was that phone lady calmed down by the time I finished and we had a really good convo for about 40 mins after that. Tigger eventually came back and bounced off again after I read through her passage and showed that the context had nothing to do with abortion. Also it didn’t state anywhere that the adulteress was pregrant, and her curse of infertility was not an abortion, since you need a baby in the womb in order to murder it.

At the end of 40 mins, phone lady and I shook hands and she said she wished there more Christians like me. Not tooting my horn, but Steve and I do get this often. People just aren’t used to being able to have reasonable conversations with Christians (because the reasonable ones will hardly go out), especially on the streets. We’re out there, but we’re a rare breed. We still disagreed in the end, but had a really fruitful discussion where I was able to even swing in the gospel by using the Catholics as my scapegoat, hehehe. Speaking of, afterwards they all surrounded me (like I had just won a championship) in awe and disbelief that while I was reading Romans 1, God had stopped the mouths of both those ladies. I love you Catholics, and that’s what happens when you use God’s Word rightly interpreted. You guys are so close, yet so far away. Drop the works-righteousness, dumbing down Christ, and all your trinkets, saint worship, and man-made traditions, etc, and you’ll be good. I really do love chatting to you guys about the gospel though! I was clueless as a Catholic. Thank God he sent a gospel tract my way. Otherwise I may still be in the dark. And yes, tracts really do work despite popular belief.

As I made my way back to the car, Tigger kept calling after me. I just said, “Are you going to back up your claims?”. “No”. “Well it’s no use trying to have a conversation with you then. Maybe next time.” As I went up the hill to see how Steve and our friend were doing, I saw her accost another poor young dude, who was shy. She can yell, but as soon as the sword of God’s Word comes out, or she’s held accountable for her claims, she’s gone.

Okay 4.5 pages, but what an adventure, eh? Now that baby is a bit older and we had that initial outing, we’re going to try and go once a month again, which is what we were doing pre-baby. Please pray, pray, pray. God can shut these mills down anytime, but he is keeping them open for now, I believe as part of his judgement on our society in the US/West. Until he decides to close them, God calls us to fight with our weapons of Bible, prayer, and mouth. 🐘

*Photo by the hubby aka Steve