Blood of the Lamb

The blood that was shed in the Temple Baptist Church spread in a widening stain through Lebanon, Tenn. last week; nobody seemed able to talk about anything else except the Rev. Randy Pike's "special service."

Henry Randall Pike, 28, helped found the Temple Baptist Church in Lebanon (pop. 9,000) two years ago, and built it up to an average Sunday attendance of about 140. When Baptist Pike hit on the idea of his "special service," he enlisted some men from his congregation to build a cross about five feet high and to buy a newborn lamb. His sermon was called "Watching Christ Die," and its text was Matthew 27:36 ("And sitting down they watched him there"). After he had finished preaching that night, the lamb was brought in and wired to the cross. Then the lights were turned out, a man of the congregation slit the lamb's throat, and the lights were turned on again. About 40 people came forward "to rededicate themselves and to confess Christ."

Almost everybody in his congregation thought it was a wonderful experience, says Baptist Pike. "I felt just like I was at the Crucifixion," said Chicken Farmer James Jackson, 32. But others wanted to call in the A.S.P.C.A., and some threatened Pike with physical violence. Said the Rev. Othar O. Smith of Lebanon's First Baptist Church: " 'Repulsive' would be a very descriptive word for it."

Last week Pike struck back in an open letter to the Lebanon Democrat: "The little lamb some are so upset about certainly served a better purpose of dying on that cross than by being shipped to the slaughterhouse and there made into lamb chops for somebody's oven ... If some of the people who are so zealous to avenge that lamb were concerned over their own lives, and sin, and soul, and the Bible truth that you saw at Temple Baptist Church of how Christ died, we could have a great revival in this city . . . We shall have another special service Sunday night, Feb. 28, at 7:30. Don't miss it."

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