If You Like This Photo, You're Going To Hell

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Mar 28, 2012 10:00PM

Chicago's street preacher. Photo by Maasai Amewa.

This is the street preacher, who stands in front of the Old Navy in downtown Chicago listing off the items that will send you to hell. If you run down the street naked, if you crossdress, if you smoke, if you basically do anything... you're going to hell. Someone named Maasai Amewa posted this on Facebook.

The man's name is Samuel Chambers, and the Tribune interviewed him in 2004. God told him to come to Chicago, and he started preaching on the corner of State and Madison almost 35 years ago. He says he is "out from 12:30 or so until 8:30 or nine o'clock, 6 days a week, sometimes 7."

Chambers, who is a youthful-looking 66 and believes himself to be a saint ("I'm sanctified; that's what it's all about"), realized his calling at age 13 while growing up in Mississippi. "God revealed himself to me in dreams and visions. He told me to declare his word among the people," he said one recent afternoon. He was sitting in a nearby park as a wrathful looking storm approached. When asked to put his preachings in a nutshell, he said, "People should obey God and stick with the Scriptures" (which, according to Chambers' interpretation, imply that women were put in the world to bear children, obey men and keep their yaps shut, but that is neither here nor there).

Thanks for the tip, Karl!