Favor and
Flak
You therefore must endure hardship as
a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 2:3
But Michael didn't want any part of San Diego.
Why not? Don Abshere wanted to know. He was becoming restless. The long drive to Point Loma was irksome. Some Orange County musical groups were asking for Don. The Keelings on the other hand needed someone to take over the Bible study.
No, thanks. All of Michael's interests, his home, his family, his work, his friends, his church, and his future were in Orange County. Maranatha! Music was expanding all over the place. There were problems, but nothing that San Diego could help solve. It was too far away, and the group was small. Let someone else do it.
Michael was putting in a lot of time on the road with the musical groups, traveling as far north as Washington state. On weekends we was teaching big Bible classes in Palm Springs. To add San Diego to his itinerary would mean that his young and growing family would lose out on a daddy already away too much.
Yet the appeals from San Diego were insistent. Attendance
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was growing. Would he help organize a church? No. Not now. But he would pray about it.
Finally, in June 1974, Michael capitulated and told Abshere, "All right. God has been on me about this. I'll drive down and teach the Gospel of Mark on Monday nights. Sixteen chapters, sixteen weeks. Then I'm coming back to Orange County to stay. O.K.?"
The first group met for study in the Keelings' home, and 12 people showed up. Monday was not a good night. But by the time Michael reached the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the number had swelled to 75, almost all being under twenty-five years of age. He decided to experiment. After a Maranatha! Music concert he often felt frustrated because the testimony time, when he was supposed to speak, was so brief. Some of the San Diegans had been asking about the musicians; and he decided to bring them south, not for a concert, but to provide musical highlights to a Bible study. This would avoid the stigma of "gospel entertainment." So Point Loma Junior High's auditorium was rented, and 150 people showed up; another similar event was held the following week, and 300 turned out. Then on the next Monday evening 90 people jammed the Keeling living room to hear not music, but the thirteenth chapter of Mark.
Obviously it was time to move. Accommodations were found in Balboa Park's Hospitality House, where there was seating for five hundred. Michael finished teaching the Gospel of Mark, but no way could he stop. He opened the Book of Revelation, and each week the crowds increased as the word spread. Here was a young guy who had something. He was saying that Jesus was more than a carpenter and was describing what the Bible had to say about the way things were going. He had a terrific sense of humor. The music was out of this world. Everything about it was captivating. God was doing something
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unique in San Diego! And they turned out in Balboa Park by the hundreds.
And yet the offerings barely paid for the gas from Orange County and a burrito and Coke for the teacher.
A fairly convincing sign of divine approval in evangelistic work is the rise of opposition. One Monday night when Michael was about to start preaching from Revelation in Hospitality House, Don Abshere (who decided to come back to San Diego) whispered to him, "The ushers tell me a man sitting in the back row has a .45 calibre pistol in his waistband. I've called the police." In a very short time four police officers quietly entered the room where the meeting was being held. While Michael kept on explaining about the seven vials and the plague of hail, one of the officers leaned over the shoulder of the armed man and snatched the pistol out of his belt, after which the man was escorted from the room. Perhaps a dozen people noticed the incident.
At one Hospitality House gathering a man high on "speed" began uttering loud curses at Michael. When the ever-vigilant Abshere asked him to leave, he refused. Don then picked up the man bodily and carried him out of the room, while his charge jerked at the red beard and walrus moustache. But after he got him well out of earshot, Abshere sat his man down and talked to him about Jesus.
One time Abshere, Michael, and Don Schock were driving from Costa Mesa to San Diego in a Dodge Maxivan, singing songs about Jesus, quoting verses, and thinking about how God had been blessing His own work. In four months, attendance had jumped from 12 to 150. That night they had rented Point Loma Junior High's auditorium for a special rally and anticipated a packed meeting. As they passed the San Onofre nuclear plant a highway patrol car cut across the divider and began following them. Soon a second patrol car drew abreast of them and
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then slowed after making eyeball contact. By the time they reached Del Mar two other patrolmen were following them, one on a motorcycle. Red lights began to flash and sirens to wail. After Michael, who was driving, pulled over, a loudspeaker barked, "All right, you in the green van, I want hands in the air." And four officers leaped out with shotguns.
Michael glanced in the side-view mirror and saw that the motorcycle policemen had his pistol pointed at his head. Again the speaker barked: "All right, I want the passenger in the front seat to get out first." That was Don Schock. He found himself facing one of the shotguns. "O.K., now we want the driver out." But Michael's seat belt was fastened. How could he keep his hands up, unfasten his seat belt, and get out of the car? The pistol was still pointed at him. Only two weeks earlier a driver involved in a Newport Beach holdup had his head blasted off by a police officer who thought the man was reaching for his gun when he was unarmed.
"Get out of the car, driver!" the loudspeaker repeated.
"I've got my seat belt on!" yelled Michael, as Abshere tried to explain his dilemma to the officers.
"O.K., we want the other passenger out." Abshere got out, after which an officer approached the driver's side, kicked the door open, and said, "All right, take your seat belt off, but keep your hands where I can see them. Then reach for the glove box and get me your I.D. and everything else in there." Michael obeyed, keeping one hand in the air, and was then escorted with the others to the rear of the van, where the officers surrounded them and began holstering their guns. They were smiling.
"What's this all about?" demanded Michael. They still had their hands on a squad car.
"Mistaken identity. Four guys in a green van just like yours robbed a tire store back there in Dana Point, and we
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had an alert that they were headed this way. You fit the description, long hair and all that. We figured the fourth guy was lying in the back with the money and the tires he stole; and as soon as we came up, he would jump up and start shooting. We're really sorry."
"Are you kidding?" said Michael indignantly, pulling out his ordination card. "You could have blown my head off!"
That night Michael related the incident to several hundred people gathered at the rally in the Junior High auditorium. He added, "You never know. I pointed out to one of the officers the sticker we had on our back window. It said very plainly, JESUS IS LORD. I told him I thought that might have tipped them off that we were O.K., but he replied they had been fooled that way before!"
