CHAPTER 15: I SAW THE SIGN

“GREG, I HAVE A LITTLE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT for you,” Timo told me one night at Youth Ranch. A slight, knowing smile played across his dark, thin, chiseled face as he watched for my reaction.

“Timo” was Tim’s nickname. He was one of the infamous Sanchez brothers who, at different times, worked with Yankee to pull off Youth Ranch. Both Timo and his older brother, Kenny, the bus driver, had committed their lives to Christ as a result of Yankee’s Youth Ranch ministry in Arvada. Both of them had a passion to reach and disciple teenagers in the same way they had been reached and discipled through Yankee’s ministry.

Neither Timo, Kenny, nor I was from Arvada —a middle-class, mostly white suburb northwest of Denver. The three of us hailed from the rougher, tougher urban core of the metro area, giving us a special affinity beyond our common faith. This affinity extended to the Archuleta and Martinez siblings as well. It was urban grit combined with a passion to reach the lost that made our unity something special.

“Every soul is precious,” Yankee preached. “In Luke 4:18, Jesus said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.’”

In Yankee’s experience, poor kids like me generally responded to the gospel more readily, so he focused much of the church’s outreach efforts on the apartment complexes, trailer courts, and cracker-box houses in the roughest parts of the city. The poorer, more marginalized, and more oppressed someone was, the more open they tended to be to the good news of Jesus.

That’s how Yankee saw it. That’s how I saw it. That’s how my family saw it.

Jesus’ message and mission unified us all. On the streets —before trusting Christ —my uncles would have seen the Sanchez brothers as enemies. But in this church, after Jesus, we all were united together in the love of God for the cause of Christ.

As a middle schooler, I was increasingly attuned to the Italian/Hispanic racial tensions that simmered in my old neighborhood, often to the point of boiling over. So the change in Uncle Jack’s and Uncle Bob’s attitudes toward their Hispanic brothers and sisters in Christ grabbed my attention like a flashing neon sign. It occurred to me that perhaps Jesus’ message was the key to obliterating racism.

But even more attention-getting than my uncles’ striking shift in attitude was the fact that many of the youth group leaders who impacted me spiritually were Hispanic —including Timo.

Although Timo was barely out of high school himself, his passion for sharing the gospel was uncontainable. And he had a plan for kindling that same kind of passion inside me.

“What homework assignment?” I asked, sighing. As a twelve-year-old attending Yankee’s little Christian school, I had my fill of books to read and papers to write. Arvada Christian School was way harder than the public school I had previously attended.

“I want you to go to the mall this Saturday night and sit on a bench in the busiest part,” Timo said.

“Okay . . .” I said hesitantly, expecting him to deliver some sort of punchline where the joke was on me.

But Timo wasn’t joking. “I want you to sit there for thirty minutes and watch people.”

That sounds kinda creepy.

“And as you watch them,” Timo continued, “I want you to put an imaginary tag on their foreheads that reads ‘Bound for Hell.’”

Okay, that’s not creepy. That’s just weird.

When Timo saw my face twist into a question mark, he said, “People who die without responding to the gospel spend an eternity in hell. Jesus described hell as a place of eternal darkness, suffering, and regret. So I want you to take that in. As hard as it may be, I want you to watch people for thirty minutes and imagine them being separated from God in hell forever, without hope of escape.”

As a result of all those Sundays I’d spent attending my grandparents’ Baptist church, hell was always hovering over my head like an axe of guilt ready to drop. So Timo’s words stirred something down deep inside me. But I wasn’t quite sure what.

“Will you take this challenge, Greg?” Timo asked. It felt like his narrowed eyes were peering straight into my soul.

“Yes, I will,” I declared, ready to take the dare. My family would never back down from a challenge, and maybe I had some of their hutzpah after all.

When Saturday night rolled around, Ma dropped me off at the new Westminster Mall, which pulsated with people on Friday and Saturday nights. It was the new weekend gathering spot for teenagers looking to flirt, play video games in the arcade, and sometimes fight. Ma assumed I was there to hang out with friends.

The mall, which still smelled of new construction, spilled out in four directions from a central common area that featured a large, sunken, rectangular pool, which served as the hub of the mall’s foot traffic. I made a beeline for this gathering spot. Settling in on an empty bench, I took in my surroundings.

Over the pool hovered four multicolored, five-foot-tall hot-air balloons that gently rose to the ceiling and descended back down to the water beneath, guided by a single wire. In front of the pool, ascending stairstep levels of seating served as a social gathering spot for families, couples, and teenagers. The seating area provided a respite in the midst of the noisy, crowded shopping craziness. It was a place to sit, relax, and catch your breath while watching the mesmerizing mini hot-air balloons float up and down. Occasionally someone would approach the pool’s edge and toss a coin in for good luck.

It was time to begin my homework assignment. Looking down at the cheap Timex watch strapped to my wrist, I noted the time.

As I turned my gaze from the balloons to the people, a flush of nervousness swept through me. What if the people I’m watching notice me watching them? They’ll think I’m some kind of weirdo. So I tried to look like I wasn’t looking by casting occasional averting glances around me before nervously averting my eyes —no doubt making me look even more suspicious.

This is super awkward. Still, I have an assignment from Timo, and I said I’d do it. So I stuck with it. After a few minutes, my tween awkwardness began to fade. I looked more intently at the people walking by.

A mom holding a J.C. Penney shopping bag was being pulled by her preschooler toward the Orange Julius shop. My mouth watered at the thought of the best smoothies ever.

A young couple slowly strolled toward me hand in hand, almost floating in their own world. They headed toward the jewelry store. Maybe they were looking at engagement rings.

A tall, acned teenager with greasy, shoulder-length hair walked past in a long black trench coat. If I wasn’t from North Denver, I would think he looks scary.

But that cocky voice of bravado inside my head didn’t really sound like me. It sounded like my family BC (before Christ). Deep down inside —if I was honest with myself —my voice wasn’t confident or courageous. It was intimidated and confused. My fatherlessness had left me insecure, with a gaping hole in my heart. That doll Uncle Dave had given me years ago still haunted me. All those hours spent cowering behind the couch or under the sink while Uncle Bob ranted and raved had left me spooked and scarred. All my run-ins with death had left me full of questions about life and God’s purpose for me. Despite my faith in Christ and my all-night talk with Kenny on the long bus ride to Florida, I still had no clear idea who I was or what purpose God had for me.

But this homework assignment was helping me to find a different voice —my true voice —a voice of purpose and potential.

To quiet the confusing, conflicting voices in my head, I sent up a quick, silent prayer. Father, help me see people like you see them, like Jesus sees them. As weird as this exercise feels, God, help me to see the sign.

Immediately, Matthew 9:36 —a memory verse —popped into my head: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Had the Father given his Son the homework assignment of watching people too? Timo had told me to visualize the sign “Bound for Hell” on each person. But when Jesus saw the crowds, he didn’t just see the hell they were headed to but also the one they were going through right at that very moment. He saw them as “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

I thought back to the one time I’d seen a sheep without a shepherd. I was seven years old. Grandpa and I were fishing along a mountain stream when Grandpa sent me up through the woods to the Ford F-150 truck to get some more fishing tackle.

Across my years of camping with Grandma and Grandpa, they’d repeatedly warned me about the many different kinds of dangerous wild animals that roamed the Rockies. So as I set off on my solo trip back to the truck, I was nervous about encountering a bear or a mountain lion whose open jaws could swallow me whole. I tentatively made my way through the pine trees and up the steep hill. But when I climbed the final embankment before my last push to the road on top, I was shocked to encounter a different kind of animal. There in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains was a little lost lamb.

The lamb froze in fear, and so did I. Within a second or two the lamb snapped to, turned, and ran. I knew this lamb was not supposed to be running loose in the wild. It would soon be a victim of one of the same fanged predators I’d been taught to fear. So in a spurt of rare “courage,” I chased it, hoping to catch it and take it to my grandpa. He’d know how to help it. Grandpa knew everything.

But the little lamb ran surprisingly fast, and it quickly disappeared into the forest. I stopped and sadly turned back toward the truck. Even I knew that poor little lamb would likely be dead soon.

Lambs really are defenseless. As my thoughts shifted back to the people walking past me at the mall, I sensed what my memory verse was talking about. These people —like that little lamb I’d encountered in the mountains —would someday die. Some sooner, some later. But eventually all of them would die. And once they did, it would be too late to save their lost souls from hell.

My mind drifted back through my own close calls with death —my slit wrists from the window accident, my ruptured appendix, the dog attack, plus I’d recently had one more brush with death. Now I was up to four near-death experiences in my short life.

The grim reaper was like an aggressive salesman who repeatedly knocked at my door, trying to close the deal. On each of these occasions, my hand was on the doorknob, ready to let him in, when God intervened to chase him away.

As I sat there on the bench in the mall, with thoughts of death and dying swirling around me, I thought about my most recent run-in with the grim reaper.

We were living in our apartment in a low-rent district in the suburb of Westminster, the same one where Doug had been arrested. Ma had moved us there to be closer to her work, but now that Grandma and Grandpa’s house was farther away and Doug was gone too, serving his six-month stint in a mental institution, I was a latchkey kid for a few hours every day after school.

On this particular day, I had let myself in our apartment door and shed my backpack to the floor.

Should I watch TV or just start doing homework?

The TV beckoned. I was crossing the room to switch it on when I first saw the culprit in a glass bowl sitting right in the middle of our kitchen table.

Ma didn’t keep a ton of candy around the house, but somehow one lone piece of hard butterscotch candy had escaped everyone’s notice. Without thinking twice, I unwrapped the candy and popped it into my mouth.

But it didn’t land in my mouth. Instead, it hurtled past my mouth and straight into my windpipe. In that moment, everything stopped —including my breathing.

It felt like someone had taken a pair of pliers and completely cut off my air supply.

I couldn’t gasp.

I couldn’t wheeze.

I couldn’t breathe.

Ma wouldn’t be home for hours. Panic hit me like the bloodstained baseball bat we kept behind the door.

I rushed toward the phone to call 911. But wait, I thought. Even if I call 911, I can’t say anything with a butterscotch candy lodged in my windpipe. Surely they won’t send help if I can’t tell them what’s wrong.

What about the next-door neighbors? If one of them is home, they’ll help me!

I ran out of our front door and knocked furiously on the neighbor’s door.

Nobody was home.

I was getting light-headed. What are my other options? Run to the street and wave a car down!

So that’s what I tried. But no cars were coming.

Panicking, I literally ran in circles. It’d been at least a full minute since I’d taken a breath. I was close to blacking out.

If something doesn’t happen quickly, I thought, I’m going to die a very embarrassing death —death by butterscotch candy.

But wait —I haven’t knocked on the door of the One who can actually save me!

So I stopped running in circles and knocked at the door of heaven in prayer. God, if you don’t show me what to do right now, I’m going to die. Please show me what to do.

While I have never heard the audible voice of God, in that moment a thought was planted in my ten-year-old brain.

Stand on your head.

Instantly my heart was calm, although my head was feeling lighter and lighter as my body’s oxygen level moved lower and lower.

But right there, on the little grass patch in front of our apartment building, I bent over, put the crown of my head onto the ground, placed my hands flat on the grass, and pushed my feet into the air.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll soon be unconscious. And then I’ll be dead.

But as soon as my body went perpendicular, my windpipe unkinked and gravity did its work. That troublesome oblong piece of yellow butterscotch candy came sliding out of my windpipe and landed back in my mouth.

Coughing and wheezing, I collapsed on the ground and spit the mucous-covered candy into my hand. As I sucked huge breaths of air into my oxygen-depleted lungs, my brain and body kicked back into gear.

Sitting up, I looked at the slimy candy in my hand. You almost killed me! Then in an act of revenge, my open mouth met with my open palm and I crunched down hard, finishing the piece of candy that had tried to finish me.

As the traumatic memory faded, my thoughts snapped back to Westminster Mall and the people walking past me. I had eluded death four times because God had saved me. As a follower of Jesus, I didn’t have to fear death. But I thought, I’ll be in heaven when I die. But what about all these people around me who don’t have this same hope of heaven? Are they ready to die? How many brushes with death have they had? And when they do inevitably die, will they be in heaven or in hell? What will hell be like for them? Is Timo right? Will it be eternal darkness, flames, torment, and regret?

The veil over the eternal was thinning for me.

One by one, I looked at the people walking by. They’re like sheep without a shepherd. For the first time, I saw the sign —“Bound for Hell.”

I saw it on the heads of the three Pomona High School football players strutting by in their letter jackets. I saw it on the forehead of that tall, scary-looking teenager who was on his second circuit around the mall.

I saw it on the forehead of every person who passed by me.

And with that sign, I saw the flames. I saw the pain. I saw the hopelessness. Eventually, I closed my eyes, but I continued to imagine that sign on the heads of the people I heard walking by.

After several minutes, I opened my eyes. They stung from the salty tears that poured down my cheeks. As I wiped my face, my heart was fully broken.

Looking at each passerby, I imagined the hole in their soul that they were trying to fill with more, with bigger, with better —with something, with anything other than the God who loved them.

How sad they must feel when they lay their heads down on their beds each night! I thought. Or maybe they don’t feel it. Maybe they just sense the slow pain of meaninglessness that’s eating away at the fabric of their souls one day at a time.

I looked down at my watch. More than thirty minutes had passed. My homework assignment was complete.

Then I knew why Doug was so passionate about reaching lost souls. I knew why Yankee fearlessly reached out to my family with the gospel so many years ago.

Their mission was to rescue the lost at any cost.

Could this be the reason God has spared my life again and again? I wondered. There was something about this mission that resonated with me on a deeper-than-I-had-ever-felt level.

My brushes with death had brushed me up against the eternal. Now I had peered into the abyss, and it had changed me.

“Hey, Timo,” I said the next day at church. “I did the homework assignment. I imagined the ‘Bound for Hell’ sign on people’s foreheads for thirty minutes at the mall last night.”

“And?” Timo asked.

“It worked,” I said simply.

The Lego pieces were beginning to click into place in my soul. But there was still a piece missing, although I hadn’t realized it until Ma sat me down and told me a story.