Cops, Criminals, and Christ
"Cops, Criminals & Christ" is a podcast delving into the intertwining worlds of law enforcement, crime, and faith. With Dale Sutherland, a former narcotics Sergeant turned pastor, it features gripping narratives and candid interviews exploring behind-the-scenes work of life undercover, as well as the transformative power of faith in the lives of both cops and criminals. Tune in for compelling insights and real-life stories that challenge, inspire, and reveal God’s grace available through it all, at the hands of its host and Dale’s daughter, Kristen Crew.
Cops, Criminals, and Christ
Lon Solomon’s Radical Journey: Jewish Hippie to Jesus Follower
Dale Sutherland interviews longtime friend Lon Solomon in a powerful episode sharing Lon’s radical transformation from Jewish drug dealer and Woodstock hippie to devoted follower of Jesus and megachurch pastor. Discover how an encounter with Jesus changed his life forever and why it’s never too late to find hope and redemption.
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Well, lon, look, it's great to hear from you, great to see you again. Good to see you, brother. So tell me this how does a Jewish drug dealer end up a preacher?
Speaker 2:It's very simple you meet Jesus Christ and he changes your life Back to those days you were how old and you started selling drugs.
Speaker 1:What were you selling and how did you get into it?
Speaker 2:Well, I was in a college fraternity when I was doing a lot of heavy partying and drinking. And then in 1968, drugs made its appearance on the campus of University of North Carolina, chapel Hill, and a couple of my fraternity brothers started smoking marijuana. And they said, can we, you know, can we kind of turn you on to this? And I'm like, sure, why not? And so I, just in the spring of 1969, I started smoking a lot of dope. It was easier, you didn't feel as bad the next day, you weren't hungover, you didn't vomit, so it was a. You weren't hungover, you didn't vomit, so it was a lot nicer. And you still got high, yeah.
Speaker 2:So then I went up to New York in the summer of 1969. And I worked up there as a waiter in the resort hotels in the Borscht Belt, okay, you know, in the Catskills, okaycht belt, okay, you know, in the, uh, catskills, okay, okay, at the jewish hotels, ah. And and while I was up there, uh, some of the other waiters, uh, gave me lsd for the very first time, huh, and gave me hashish for the very first time and some other drugs, psilocybin and mushrooms, and on and on and on. And then they said, hey, man, at the end of the summer, august 1969, there's this really great music festival that we're having just down the road here. I'd never heard of it and I said what is it called? And they said woodstock. And I'm like what, whatever? And they said you want to go? And I said yeah, sure, why not? So we all quit our jobs middle late August and we went to Woodstock. I actually bought a ticket to Woodstock. They were $24 for the three days, $8 a day. I actually still have that ticket, do you?
Speaker 1:really I do. I bet it's worth a bunch of stuff. I bet it's worth a bunch of money.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know how much money it's worth, but it proves I was there, yeah, and so then I really, I mean, drugs were just rampant. And so these New York contacts I'm getting to the answer to your question. So these New York contacts, I'm getting to the answer to your question. These contacts I made in New York began selling me dope and I would bring it back down to Chapel Hill and I would split you know, carve it up the hashish, or split it up, you know, the marijuana and whatever the LSD, and sell it, mostly to my fraternity brothers, most of whom I turned on to dope, but also we would sell it in general. Anybody wanted it. And that's how I put myself through.
Speaker 2:My last two years of college was selling dope. We also had a friend that used to travel over to Amsterdam a couple times a year and bring a ton of it back in his jacket, in his overcoat I mean, they didn't have any dogs then, none of this nonsense and so he'd just walk in the country with enough hashish in his coat to make all of Libya high, and then he'd sell us a couple of pounds of it and we'd cut it up. And that was how. That's how it was.
Speaker 1:And you did all right. You made some money doing it.
Speaker 2:I made a lot of money until I almost got arrested. That ruins everything. I know you guys. You got you cops ruined all of them. I mean I had. They came to my door.
Speaker 2:We were living a little bit off campus and they came to the door one morning early and banged on the door and they said we have an arrest warrant for Lon Solomon on dope charges. Is he here? Well, I was there. I was back in my bedroom with enough hashish and everything else lying around I'd still be in jail today and I looked out the window to see if I could jump. We were on the second floor but it was only about 20 feet but they had policemen and dogs all around the house.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, the guy that was sleeping out in the living room was sharp enough to say let me see the warrant. They had a search warrant and he looked at it and he said I'm sorry, this is the wrong address. It really was the address you have on the search warrants for the house next door and that was true. That's the only reason I didn't get arrested. They went next door and busted the guys next door whom we had sold the dope to no seriously and took them, handcuffed them and took them to jail Really and by the time they got back with another warrant I'd cleaned my room out. I mean, that's how close. That's how close it was Now did you then?
Speaker 1:you left North Carolina. After this, you finished your degree Well.
Speaker 2:I was just reading the Bible and coming to Christ, right around the time they pulled that search warrant deal, okay. And it was really like the Lord was saying to me okay, pal, because I'd kind of given my life to Christ. It's like he said okay, buddy, this is over, we're through with this. And it was a real shot across the bow. And then, yeah, so then I stopped using dope and stopped sleeping around and stopped drinking and I mean, the Lord really cleaned me up, but it was his power. You know, I would say to him Lord, I don't know if I used to always say I could stop using dope whenever I wanted to, but I don't really think I can. But if you give me the power, I'll stop.
Speaker 2:And that was the last day I ever touched dope. I did the same thing with alcohol. Look, I'm not saying everybody gets clean like that. But that's how I got clean. Sure, but that's how I got clean. And then my, the guy who had led me to Christ several weeks later, said you know what? Because I told him about almost getting arrested. He said you know what? You're never going to amount to anything for God if you stay in Chapel Hill. All your old drug buddies are here, your girlfriends are here, your drinking buddies are here. You need to get out of this town and start fresh somewhere. And so I took his word for it and I sold everything I had and I took my dog. I had a 85 pound German shepherd, I took my dog and off we went hitchhiking around the country.
Speaker 1:And you were hitchhiking around the country and you were hitchhiking. Now you got to understand in today's current world. I tried to explain to my grandkids the other day what hitchhiking was and they just couldn't quite get the concept. So explain to our younger audience what that meant to hitchhike.
Speaker 2:Well, it meant a lot different in 1971 than it means today. I mean, back then hippies were everywhere and if you had long hair and were hitchhiking, they would always stop and pick you up, and it was a much safer world back then than it is today. So you stand out on the street or on the internet with your thumb out, like this hitchhiking, and if somebody sees you and wants to pick you up, they'd stop and you'd run up to where they pulled over and hop in the car. Now, because I had a dog too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how'd that go?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, one guy told me I said oh, I jumped in the car. I said because it was summertime, it was hot. I said thanks so much for picking me up. Man, he goes. I didn't stop for you. I felt bad for the dog. That's a true story. I went, okay, well, stopping, and then he would wake up and usually we would jump out of the car. But it was good to have him, because once or twice I got picked up by people who it was clear we're gonna didn't have the best intentions towards me.
Speaker 2:One guy down in South Carolina, I remember. I won't go into all the details, but I just said to him. I said you see my dog back there. If I give him the right word, he will rip you to shreds, man. And he said really. And I said, noah sick. And he went, started growling at this guy.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great, I mean this was a big dog, yeah, throwing his teeth, and the guy said okay, okay, and he pulled over and let us out of the car. That was it. So Noah was good to have along, yeah no, kidding, sheesh.
Speaker 1:how far did you go? How far did you go? How far did you go?
Speaker 2:We went all the way up to Canada, wow. And then I hitchhiked down to Atlanta where my folks were living, and then we didn't go too far west Well, mostly up and down the East Coast. Wait, and you're just sleeping outside, yeah, yeah, if you can't find, if there was no place inside, I had a sleeping bag on my knapsack. We'd just go off on the side of the interstate and I'd throw my sleeping bag down and he'd lie down next to me and we'd go to sleep.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I mean it was, it was. But you know the really cool thing about that Dale is out there on the road. I had nothing but the Lord. There was nothing. I didn't have any money, I didn't have any gun, I didn't have any protection other than my dog. I didn't have anything and I just had Jesus. And it was amazing to see how, when I just trusted him, how he took care of me, I never missed a meal, never got hurt. Six months hitching around like that, I mean it was great for later in my Christian life where I really believe Jesus is all you need, because for all those months Jesus was all I had.
Speaker 1:And he took care of me. Now let me ask you this. This is a weird question what skills did you use drug dealing that you later used in ministry? Any of those skills, or any of those things that made you good at one, made you good at the other?
Speaker 2:Oh well, you know I learned how to sell and you know how to close a deal. And you know I don't mean this wrong, but when we're preaching the gospel we're offering something to people and then we're trying to close the deal with them and get them to make a decision. So those were good skills that I learned out on the road. I learned to be resourceful. I learned if it didn't look like plan A was going to work, forget plan A, just hop to B, and if B didn't look like it was going to work, hop to C. And you know a Z is a long way down there. So you got a lot of plans you can try and you need that in ministry. Sometimes things just don't work exactly the way you planned. So you got to be flexible. You got to learn to think outside the box. You got to learn to think quick on your feet. You know when you're out there on the road. So those were, those were all some but.
Speaker 2:But also when I was in high school, I was, I acted in plays, you know, like the drama club, and I learned and a lot of the skills that I learned there. Now, I was not a believer. I had no idea I was ever going to be preaching a believer. I had no idea I was ever going to be preaching. But learning to project your voice and how to do motions on stage and how not to turn your back to the audience, and all these little things that we learned, all were wonderful when I got into preaching on a stage. You know, it was great to already know all that stuff.
Speaker 1:So you go from now? Oh, we left out that you were Jewish, grew up in a Jewish family. Yeah, you got this drugs, you got this other kind of, I don't know. I don't know that you're an atheist, but you are far from anything spiritual like that, right, right. So where were you Jewish? How did this affect your Jewishness? I mean what? You grew up Jewish?
Speaker 2:Well, you know we were culturally Jewish. Yeah, we weren't Orthodox. I mean we, you know we celebrated the high holidays and my mom lit Sabbath candles, but we didn't have a Bible in the house, we never prayed. So we were we weren't real, real observant Jews. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I had my bar mitzvah, did you, yeah, yeah, but I had my bar mitzvah, did you, yeah, yeah. And then when I was in this drama club, when you weren't on stage doing your lines, you know, we'd all just kind of sit and talk out of the audience. Yeah, and this girl, one of the girls in the drama club, one of my fellow students, said, you know, she started witnessing to me and telling me about.
Speaker 2:Christ, yeah, telling me I was going to go to hell, and she kind of scared me. So the next time I saw the rabbi at synagogue I said to him Rabbi, can I ask you a question? He said yeah. I said do Jews go to heaven or hell? And he said, well, where is that question coming from? And I said, well, I got this girl in my school who's telling me that, as a Jew, if I don't believe in Jesus, I'm going to hell. And he said oh, no, no, no. He said all Jews go to heaven. I said really no-transcript. So that pretty much ended me going to synagogue. No need to go. I was so boring, I was like, why am I going? So then, for years I didn't have any spiritual input at all. Nothing. Years I didn't have any spiritual input at all, nothing, I mean, all I was about was drinking and smoking and gambling and partying and doping.
Speaker 2:But in 1971, when I turned 22 years old, vietnam War was going on. Man, I mean hot and heavy. And I was about to graduate from college. Yeah, and they sent me a draft notice. This was the first year where they used the lottery and I was number 38.
Speaker 2:So, baby, I was in trouble and they took me over to Durham to get my physical. I stayed up all night before my physical. I smoked dope, I drank myself silly and I decided that I'll go over there and my blood levels will be so nuts that they'll say you're 4F, we don't want you. And that didn't happen. So then I requested to go in and see the psychiatrist there and I talked to him with the nuttiest, craziest stuff I could say and he looked at me and took this big old red stamp and stamped my form and I thought hot dog baby. And he looked at me, handed me my form and he said son. He said you may not want to go to vietnam, but you're not crazy. He said now get on out there and get back in line. So I passed my physical with flying colors. I was like oh my gosh and I you know people getting killed over there oh, they were getting killed.
Speaker 2:They were getting killed, bad, over there, yeah, and I was iA army infantry. Guess where I was going? That's right. So I started thinking about God and I started thinking about death and I started thinking about what am I going to do with my life? I don't have any marketable skill, so know what am I? And so then I started on a search for God. Wow, and I read Eastern religion. I thought maybe that's where it was. That didn't help. I tried going back to Judaism, met with the campus rabbi. That didn't help. I tried. I joined the Hare Krishna, you know, with the orange robe. I didn't help. I tried. I joined the Hare Krishnas, you know, with the orange grove. I didn't know that I did for a while. But I had two problems with the Hare Krishnas. Number one I can't grow a ponytail. My hair grows out like my big afro, but it doesn't grow long.
Speaker 2:So I couldn't grow a ponytail. And the second thing is, Dale, their food is awful. I knew you didn't stand that. It's food, it's awful. It's awful. I hate butter. And all their food was loaded and I thought you know what? I can't join these guys. I'm going to starve to death if I join these guys. So I got rid of them and finally, dude, I was out. I didn't know what else to try. And that's when I met, not a month or so after that, when I came to the point of just saying, God, if you're real, I don't know how to get to you. And I met this guy on the street, you know, handing out tracts, booklets about the.
Speaker 1:Lord, so you're just walking across campus or near campus.
Speaker 2:I'm walking down Franklin Street dude with my dog. I tripped out on LSD Saturday afternoon and my dog gets in a dog fight right in front of this guy standing in front of this Econoline white Ford van. He's got scripture written all over the side. I mean, he's the weirdest man I've ever seen in my life, right, and he got in a fight right in front of it and this man helped me pull him off this dog that he was absolutely killing. And I looked at him.
Speaker 2:And what do you say to a guy like this? I don't know. I said thank you, thank you, and he looked back and he said you're welcome. And I said got to you. And he looked back and he said you're welcome. And I said got to go. And he goes, ok, and I'm telling you, dale, the interaction was not 20 seconds. But I walked away and I said to myself you know what that guy's got, what I'm looking for. No way I knew it. I looked against. It gets me goosebumps.
Speaker 2:Now, when I looked in his eyes, I knew he had what I was looking for. I don't know what you call it. You call it a sense of peace, you call it wholeness, healthiness, you call it spiritual rebirth. I mean it was the Holy Spirit shining through this guy that I'm sure he wasn't aware of, right? But man, it hit me and I thought I got to go back and talk to this guy. He whatever I'm looking for, this guy's got it and and it was a huge, made a huge impact on me because I had begun to wonder if anybody had what I was looking for. And I went back and we struck up a little friendship and he shared the Lord with me and at the end of sharing the Lord with me, one day, about a month later, he said now would you like to receive Jesus?
Speaker 2:Well, there's two problems with that, dale. One, I didn't even know what that meant. I know what receive means, but when you put those two words together, I don't know what that means. Receive Jesus, okay. But my second problem was I'm Jewish and I said to him oh man, I said I don't even know for sure what you're talking about, but I'm Jewish. Jewish people don't do this. And he said of course they do. And he told me about all the apostles being Jewish and about Jesus being Jewish and all the early church. I didn't know any of that and I said really are you kidding. And he goes no, I can show it to you right here in the Bible. And so finally I said all right, well, look, man, it's been nice talking to you, but I'm no, I'm not ready to receive Jesus. So then he said well, if I give you a Bible, will you read it? And I'd never owned a Bible. My family never owned a Bible. I'm a drug dealer. Drug dealers don't own Bibles. What guys did you raid when you were a cop?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, you didn't own a Bible.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, okay. So I said, well, sir, I don't have any money to pay you. He said, well, I don't want any money. And he opened up the back of his Econoline van. He had a big box back there full of brand new leather-covered Bibles, in cellophane no less, and he said I'll give it to you if you promise me you'll read it. So I said Okay. So I took it home, put it on my nightstand and I thought, all right, you know what? I don't know anything about the Bible. I don't know if it goes introduction, main body, conclusion, anticlimax, if it's an anthology of poems. I don't know what this thing is. So I thought, okay, I'll start at the beginning. So I read in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I thought, all right, I can deal with that. And then I read about Adam and Eve and how Adam ate from the tree and I thought you know what? Without a doubt, this is the stupidest man that ever lived. How could he do something like that? Only one thing in the whole world.
Speaker 2:You're not allowed to do this idiot does it? What a clown. And then I got to so-and-so begats, so-and-so begats, and I thought, oh my gosh, how long does this last? So I said, all right, all right, enough of the old, I'm going in the New Testament because that's where Jesus is. I knew that much.
Speaker 2:So once again, I started at the beginning, the Gospel of Matthew. And you know, I read the Sermon on the Mount and I was blown away by this Jesus person. The way he could use words. He could say more in one sentence than professors I'd had could say in a whole semester. I couldn't get over him. And then I got to Matthew 11, where Jesus said come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. You'll find peace for your soul, soul, dude.
Speaker 2:I put the book down and I said out loud bingo, bingo. That's exactly what I'm looking for, and I couldn't have even put it in words that well. And so I got on my knees, which I'd never done before Jewish people don't get on their knees to pray Got on my knees and I prayed this prayer. I leaned, I was pray oh, not on my knees and I prayed this prayer. I leaned on my bed with my hand.
Speaker 2:I said OK, god. I said, you know, I'm not really sure you exist. And I said and this Jesus character man, I am really confused about him. I said but you know what, god? My life is not worth a plugged nickel. I don't even know why I get up in the morning. I have no peace, I have no rest, I'm miserable. I have no future. They're about to send me to get killed in Vietnam. God, listen, here's the deal. You invite me to give you my life and you'll give me peace and rest and you'll run my life. So here's the deal, god I'm going to give you my life for one month. I'll go where you want me to go. I'll say what you want me to say. I don't know how you're going to tell me, but whatever you tell me to do, I'll do it. And at the end of that month, if you haven't given me this peace and this rest, then I reserve the right to take my life back. But if you give it to me, you can have my life for good. Amen.
Speaker 2:Now, dale, that's probably the worst salvation prayer I've prayed in all history and I bet God up in heaven hit Gabriel on the ribs and said, gabriel, we got to help this poor guy down here. This guy needs serious help. But you know, I thank God for 1 Samuel 16, 7,. Man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord sees the heart. And I believe God looked past that prayer and said you know what Horrible prayer. But the guy is serious in his heart. Well, you know what Horrible prayer. But the guy me is serious in his heart. Well, you know what I'm going to tell you within a week or less.
Speaker 2:Man, I knew something had happened inside of me that had never happened before. And you know, the major way I knew is I had a conscience. All of a sudden, I used to be able to do the most horrible things. If I told you some of the things I did, you would have trouble believing Some of the things I did. I'd be in jail for today. I did horrible things and I never thought a thing about it. Man, I didn't have a conscience. I could do the worst thing in the world and sleep, just. And all of a sudden, after I prayed this prayer with God, little things that never bothered me. My conscience was just driving me crazy and I knew that wasn't me. So I got back on my knees about a week later and I said all right, god, a deal's a deal. Yeah, you know, I I believe that Jesus is who he said. I'm willing to give him my heart and my life, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:I'm willing to go where you want me to go and do what you want me to do, and I don't know what you can do with a hippie would air out to his shoulders and love beads and tank top, bell bottoms and goatee and motorcycle boots. But I'm yours. Ideal's the deal, lord, and I'm in it. And that was 54 years ago. Wow, hard to believe. Huh, wow. And the Lord's never let me down, brother. That's the best decision I've ever made in my whole life.
Speaker 1:So we got a bunch of guys that listen to this that are in jail now. They're in jails all across the United States drug dealing, murder, assault, thievery, stealing, whatever. What do you think? What would you tell them?
Speaker 2:Is there any hope for?
Speaker 1:them. Is there any chance that they have? And I know you've talked to a lot of people that have been incarcerated over your life in ministry, but what would you tell these fellows?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I did jail ministry for years when I was a young Christian and I would tell your friends exactly what I told the inmates at the jail Montgomery County Jail where I did Bible study every week with them. I tell them you know what? It's never too late to turn to God. It's never too late to make a U-turn. I don't care how bad you think you are, you can't be worse than me. I don't care how many awful things you think you did. You can't do more awful things than I did. Stealing, did it. Cheating, I did it. Forcing my girlfriend to have an abortion against her will. I did it. Doing some illegal things with young girls. I did them Name anything you want to name buddy and I did it. And if I wasn't past God forgiving me, then you're not past God forgiving you. I don't care how bad you've been. A lot of people say I'm too far gone for God to forgive me. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:This week I'm preaching on the thief on the cross and for those of you who don't know the story, jesus is hanging on the middle cross. There's a thief on one side and a thief on the other side being crucified. One thief starts railing on Jesus and said why don't you get us down and feel the Son of God? And the other thief says wait a minute, stop it. We're here legitimately. We are thieves, we deserve this, but he's not. And then he turned to Jesus and said Lord, when you come into your kingdom, please remember me.
Speaker 2:Now, what did that thief do? Number one he took responsibility for his sin. He owned his sin. Number two he admitted it was wrong. He repented of it and said we're here legitimately. What we did was wrong. And then turned to Jesus and said Jesus, I'm going to depend on you plus nothing, to get me into heaven. I'm going to depend on you plus nothing to get me into heaven. I got no good works to offer you. I got no money to offer you. I got no religious activity to offer you, jesus, all I got is you, and I'm just going to depend on you and throw myself on your mercy. I take responsibility, I repent of it and I throw myself on you, jesus. And Jesus said to him today, not tomorrow, today, you will be with me in paradise.
Speaker 2:Today, now that thief didn't have time to get down off the cross and go get baptized. He didn't have time to go down off the cross and go do a bunch of good work or sing in the choir or teach Sunday school. He didn't have a chance to go down off that cross and even pay back the people he had stolen from. Those are all good things, but he didn't have the time to do that. He's about to die and Jesus said all those other things are nice, but, baby, all you got to do is do what you did. You own your sin, you repent of your sin and you throw yourself on me for mercy and what I'm doing here for you, paying for your sin on the cross.
Speaker 2:So let me just say, if you're out there in jail, friends, that's all you got to do, that's all I did, it's all the thief on the cross did. And don't you worry about what other people tell you about being. You're not worthy. Of course you're not worthy. The thief wasn't either. You're too bad. No, no, no. The Bible never says that. The Bible, as long as there is breath in our body, says that the Bible, as long as there is breath in our body, god's willing to forgive us and give us a second chance. So don't be afraid to turn to him, like the thief on the cross did.
Speaker 1:Amen. And did you? You know there's so much for your life to you I mean those of you who don't know Lon tens of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands have heard his story and heard him preach and he's changed lives, both from evangelistically which I think is your deep heart desire, but also disciple people through the word of God. For as a pastor and Hebrew teacher and everything I mean you've been going 54 years really. I mean you had a little time where you learned, but after that you went into the ministry effectively pretty close after that, right, yeah, I have been in the ministry over 50 years, praise the Lord.
Speaker 1:And still now you preach online, yes, and tell us about Not a Sermon, just a Thought.
Speaker 2:Well, I preach online in something called live with lawn. Okay, and all of your friends in jail can get. Get that. It's a live sermon every sunday.
Speaker 1:Yeah just go to youtube.
Speaker 2:Lawn solomon okay, youtube and lawn solomon and hit the search button, yeah, and it'll bring up the most recent message. You should also go back, yeah, yeah, listen to the old ones, but Not a Sermon. Just a Thought was an idea the Lord gave me back in the 80s to go on secular radio in Washington DC here, not Christian radio, but secular radio, rock stations, country stations, news stations, you name it, all these stations and do a little one-minute ad for the Lord, not for church. Never mentioned church, about coming to church, and this wasn't about church, this is about Jesus. And I would record them and then we would buy advertising time on the radio and run them. I'll tell you one of them real quick. I have 46 seconds.
Speaker 2:Okay, you can check out whenever you like, but you can never leave. Hi, this is Lon Solomon, and those words, of course, come from the Eagles song Hotel California. Now you know, hell is a lot like the Hotel California. Now you know, hell is a lot like the Hotel California. You can check out whenever you want, but you can never leave, and hell is a terrible place. So how do you fix this problem? Well, you fix the problem, my friend, by never going to hell in the first place, and the way you do that is by trusting what Jesus did for you on the cross, shedding his blood to pay for your sin as your hope of heaven. Jesus said, he who believes in me has eternal life. Not a sermon, just a thought Wow, that's one we actually did. How?
Speaker 1:many cities are you in? Where are you around?
Speaker 2:Well, right now we're doing two cities every quarter. We just finished doing Las Vegas and Minneapolis Great, and we go for three months and we buy $50,000 worth of radio ad time secular time and we run we've got a couple hundreds of these not a secular time and we run. We've got a couple of hundreds of these Not A Sermons and we run them on their second. And then we move on to two new cities. We've done Portland, san Diego, la, new York, seattle, dallas, austin, atlanta, yeah, and so you know, in DC people heard not a sermon for years and years and years, for years. Yeah, but these folks have never heard it. That's right. And we get some people writing us in and going thank God, we love you on the radio, keep doing it. And then we get some really nasty ones. Some people aren't too happy, oh baby. So keep doing it.
Speaker 1:And then we get some really nasty ones. Do you Get some? Some people aren't too happy.
Speaker 2:Oh baby. One guy wrote in because I had sung. I've been cheated, been mistreated. When will I be loved? You know the famous song done by the Everly Brothers? First, yeah, but anyway. And then I did another sermon and he wrote in and he said for the love, this is what he said in the email for the love of humanity, please stop this man from singing, for the love of humanity, and anyway. And then people write in and say all kinds of nasty things about us. And we got a bomb. I got a bomb threat a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Jeez, this is what you get for preaching the gospel in America.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know what, Blow me up, I'm going to heaven. You know what? Blow me up, I'm going to heaven.
Speaker 1:I'm good, blow me up, I'm fine 54 years of ministry, dedicated all my daughters. I was thinking about that before we got on the phone. And everybody in this city, where we live in DC, when I was a policeman and everything they all knew not a sermon, everybody, I mean. I'd bump into people at the store. They'd say where am I? And I wouldn't get out in my clan. They'd say, oh, is that that Not A Sermon guy? So they didn't even all know your name, but they knew you're the Not A Sermon guy. Yep, that's true, right. Every time you go out to eat or anywhere, people knew that it was really a big impact, I think.
Speaker 2:Well, people would know by my voice. Sometimes, brandon, I'd go out to eat and the waiter would come up and go are you the not a sermon radio? And I'd go yeah, so, because my voice is kind of a little unusual, yeah, so, hey, you know what man? It was such a privilege to serve God. I went to college to be a chemist, a research chemist. Yeah, I got my undergraduate degrees in chemistry. College to be a chemist, a research chemist. I had my undergraduate degrees in chemistry. But once I got saved dude, all I wanted to do is tell people about the Lord so that he could change their life the way he changed my life. Because that was my message you give your life to Jesus, he will change your life Because he did it for me. And that's the bottom line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean, how else do you explain a retired drug cop talking to a retired drug dealer? But the mercy of God, you know, he changed our lives. He changed our lives. He changed us from the inside out. And so now we're two old men preaching the gospel, still trying to reach as many lost people as we can before we go. Am I right?
Speaker 2:brother. Hey, you're right man, in my younger days I'd have steered clear of you baby, but hey, we're brothers in the Lord now that's right, things are different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really fun. Well, praise the Lord. Can I pray? Will you pray for us? Actually, lon, sure, I'd love to it's been so long.
Speaker 2:I'd love to Thank you, dear Lord Jesus. I thank you so much for my brother, my good friend, dale, and I thank you, god, for how you've used him in such a mighty way, first on the police force there in Washington and then in ministry, with high schoolers and adults and junior high schoolers. And, lord, the number of lives he's touched has been phenomenal and I'm so grateful for him, grateful for his family, lord, I'm grateful that we became friends 50 years ago at Barcroft Bible Church. He was a teenager, I was a seminary student doing my internship there, and we got to know each other. And, lord, I always knew you were going to do something important with Dale, because he had such a heart for you, and so thank you for him, pray for his ministry, that you'd bless it and provide. And, lord, just thank you for the privilege you've given the two of us to live our lives, for you to serve you unabashedly, unashamedly, lord. What a privilege, since we can't go back and do it again. What a privilege, and we thank you in Jesus' name, amen, amen.
Speaker 1:Well, brother, it's a blessing.
