Story and photos by Jan Sturmann

And the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and constrain them to come in, that my house may be filled.

Luke 14:23

GOD TOLD OWEN Bias to become a street preacher in 1974. The command came as he was hammering out a dent in a car at the body shop he owned in Pasadena. "Can I at least finish this car?" Bias asked God. God said no.

Five days a week for the past 18 years, Bias has sat on a folding chair at the corner of Powell and Market Streets in San Francisco, where the tourists queue up to catch the cable car. He dresses impeccably in a suit, hat, and tie. His sign proclaims the evils of prostitution, masturbation, sex before marriage, and bestiality.

When asked how people respond to his message, he says, "Some are open, some not, some don't care, and so it should be."

Bias takes no donations and believes all God's work should be done freely, lest the message be compromised. "But how do you support yourself?" I ask. "That's not a problem. The Lord takes care of my needs. The trick is to put all your trust in the Lord, never waver, never doubt."

• • •

In hedonistic San Francisco, where God is long dead, or at best a groovy pink light surrounded by incense, the prophets and preachers of old still roam. God personally singled out these people to go out on the streets and save souls, or so they believe. Theirs is no Unitarian God of rainbow colors and love, acceptance, and nonjudgment. Theirs is predominantly an Old Testament God of vengeance and wrath who demands obedience.

Where Powell Street angles into Market is the best place to find them. They mingle with the tourists and the buskers and the hustlers and Joe the hot dog vendor.

They each have their routine, perfected over years. Some preach from a two-foot ladder and wave a white Bible. Some stand and hold a simple sign. Others hand out flyers, belt out songs from a squawking amp, or walk around with a sandwich board like some character out of Alice in Wonderland.

This is all Wonderland when you drop below the surface of sun and bustle. The streets become a stage for miracles, revelations, and prophecy. Here Jehovah sits sternly on righteous shoulders, and the devil shimmies in the shadows.

Here people are divinely touched or completely nuts. Here brave soldiers of God wrestle lost souls from the claws of damnation, and loggers of the Lord drive wedges into hardened hearts so the good word can enter. Despite a thousand daily rejections and seldom a soul saved, they preach on, sustained by an inspiration incomprehensible to mere secularists.

• • •

Jose Rodriguez wears black cycling gloves to stop his hands from blistering as he spins the sign that reads, "Jesus Christ Loves You." He stands in the dense crowd where the Powell Street BART Station passengers emerge blinking into the sun.

"I don't believe in going to church or reading the Bible. I can't explain why not. All I do is convey this message," he says, pointing up at his sign.

For four years he's been doing this, silently proclaiming his faith. He doesn't invite conversation, doesn't try to explain or convert, and has no literature to hand out. "If a few people read and understand this message, that is enough."

Standing close by, wearing a "Jews for Jesus" T-shirt, Chad Elliot flips out pamphlets with the flair of a casino croupier. He won't let me interview him and says I have to go through the group's media director. But as I write down the director's name, he tells me he's been doing this for five years.

"I like to connect with people," he says, "share the message. That's my food." And you can see it in his eyes. He's pumped and excited and can't wait to be done with me and get back to handing out flyers. "But this is hard work," he says, "I don't know how people can hand out porn-show flyers 12 hours a day."

Nearby, outside the Gap store, stands Sabra, a fellow Jew for Jesus. She's new at this, has only been on the streets for a month, and is as skittish as a cat around my questions. I back off and watch from a distance as she works the shoppers. The mottled sun shimmers across her pale skin, as perfect as a polished statue's.

Frank Chu stalks past, hunched and determined as a ferret, with his sign held high like a battle banner. On it is a message about intergalactic mass murders, treason, and 30 spinning galaxies. Camera bouncing against my chest, I catch up with him outside a McDonald's.

He's a fixture at almost any San Francisco protest or gathering, proselytizing his enigmatic faith, as much a cultural and political icon as a religious one but occupying a unique place in the pantheon of street preachers.

"I'm famous," he says, "been on all kinds of TV shows."

I ask him what his sign means. As he explains the hidden workings of the universe and something about Bill Clinton and a secret cabinet, his eyes dart and peer behind large dark glasses and his hands flutter like a drunk-steered UFO. Words fly from his spittle-flecked mouth in manic bursts of intergalactic complexity.

Ten minutes later I still don't have a clue about what he so urgently believes. As he poses bravely for his picture, I look past my distorted reflection in his dark glasses and try to comprehend the mind that compels this man to walk the streets of San Francisco for five years with such fervor.

In Pioneer Square, I cross paths with Frank Warner. His sign reads, "Jesus, Forgive My Sins." He was the homecoming king in high school and is tall, fit, and good-looking, with tiny ears as delicate as shells. As we talk, the downtown wind pushes his sign like a sail. He keeps it steady with baseball player forearms.

As he changes hand positions, I glimpse the name JESUS tattooed on each callused palm. "I had it done when I became a Christian at 19." The letters are starting to fade. He plans to get them redone soon.

The church doesn't like what he does, proclaiming his faith out here on the streets. "But if Jesus were alive today, this is what he would be doing," Warner says. "And that's what I like about America. I can still express my conviction, and however strongly others disagree with me, I do not fear being locked up."

Yet every time he goes out among the masses, he prays for courage. He needs it. After we finish talking, I walk behind him and watch as people argue, shout insults, and jeer as this man tries to jolt them out of their hedonistic pursuits. He walks steadily through their midst, seemingly unafraid. Maybe his prayer for courage gets answered.

• • •

A voice cuts through the city like a serrated knife edge dragged across the scalp. It's high-pitched, inhuman, chilling, and compelling. I follow the sound to the source and find a large, middle-aged man preaching in a clot of uncomfortable tourists. They squirm like skewered snakes and walk away shivering. Four cops move in and shoo him away for disturbing the peace.

And that's Bruce Butler's intention: to disturb the peace.

In a voice now as mellow as a good malt whisky, he tells me, "When cops stop me preaching, bad things will happen in that area." The police have asked to see his I.D., then ordered him to move on countless times.

Twenty-five years ago, God needed an oracle, and Butler volunteered. "Prophets are the only ones with this kind of voice. But when you become a prophet, you know you won't have a pleasant death." And he lists gruesome examples of how prophets have died.

But how does being an oracle work? "God's thoughts become my thoughts; my voice becomes His. God's message is like a river; I just let it flow."

Just then a group of Hare Krishnas chant past us. Without hesitating, he steps into their midst, and his voice slashes through their singing like a blade. "Behold the worshipers of idols, who pray to false gods! Know that the only way to God is through His son, Jesus Christ! Those who refuse Christ as their personal savior will be cast into the fires of hell. Repent! Repent!" This is the voice of Moses on the mountain, John the Baptist in the desert, and Jesus in the temple.

The Krishnas scurry through a red light and resume their singing safely on the other side of the street. Butler walks back to me, composed and cool, and we resume our conversation about his preaching in Israel, the Central Intelligence Agency running tests on oracles ("I'm the best they've ever had"), assassinated presidents, earthquakes, and predicting 9/11 the day before it happened.

I snap a few pictures, wish him well, and chase after the Krishnas. His voice haunts me still.

• • •

A homeless man stands on the corner of Market and Fifth Streets. Off his thin shoulders hangs a black leather jacket with "Ezekiel 8:18" and "Isaiah 36:12" painted in white letters on the back. Last week God told Willie Davis to show the world these verses.

"My assignment is to stand on the corner and wait till someone asks me what they mean," he says. He pulls a battered Bible from his back pocket and flips to Ezekiel 8:18 and begins to read the pen-marked page. "Therefore will I also deal in wrath; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ear with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them."

He looks up at me gravely. "God is pissed. You can tell."

He finds Isaiah 36:12. "Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, to eat their own dung, and to drink their own water with you?"

For 15 years, Davis has spread God's word, sleeping in homeless shelters or on the streets. He has never read the Bible all the way through. "No need," he says. "God tells me what to read."

To demonstrate, he goes into a trance, rolls his eyes, twitches his head, then thumbs rapidly to another verse – "Check this out; it's going to blow your mind" – and reads a few more verses. "Hear how it rhymes. God's a rapper, no doubt about it."

And so it goes, for several more cycles of eye rolls, head twitches, and rapid flipping, always with a hand-rolled cigarette glowing between his fingers. From what God tells Davis to show me, the Almighty is indeed quite upset.

When I leave, he hugs me tenderly.

• • •

Up a few blocks from Powell, past the chess players, a young man in raggedy clothes kneels in a doorway and prays. He prays with his whole body, hands clasped, eyes scrunched, lips moving. As sunburned tourists and hustlers obliviously walk by, he rocks back and forth, makes the sign of the cross, and talks to God.

And I, a voyeur, watch this most private act, so publicly practiced, and long to know what he prays so fervently for. After five minutes, he gets up and, still tranced-out in prayer, stumbles up the street.

Around the corner a thin man with a glass of beer balanced on his head walks rapidly past me. I ask if I can take his picture. "Sure," he says, introducing himself as Ron Divino, street artist, and posing with the refracted sun shimmering golden across his scalp.

"Let me show you something," he says and kneels on the sidewalk. From his pack he pulls a full Coke can. He rolls it between his hands, then tries to balance it at an angle along the curb edge. I kneel down with him, and as people swarm past and buses buffer us with their slipstreams, it's just him and me and this can of Coke in a bubble of intention.

What he attempts looks impossible, and I lack all faith. For two, three minutes, his hands coax and coax the can to balance, and the wind's not helping. But he's all there, a magician, a man of faith, totally focused. Then suddenly he leaps back, and the can stands balanced at an impossible angle on the curb of this city. A little miracle to behold for a few seconds ... before it topples over.

He stands up, eyes glowing, and I ask Divino why he does this. "It's my way to give back. Each little balancing act is a seed of enlightenment, a surprise, a metaphor that there is a center of calm in this world."

Amen.

Freelance writer and photographer Jan Sturmann's work can be seen at www.albinocrow.com, where a version of this story first appeared.