Yes, Toomer’s Corner in Auburn, Alabama is “sacred ground” for many. It’s where university fans have gathered through the years to celebrate athletic victories, typically accompanied with a toilet-paper rolling of the oak trees growing there. Football wins garner the biggest crowds, but other sports teams have their Toomer’s moment as well, including the golfers, who were 2024 NCAA champions. (In 2013, a rabid Alabama fan spiked the ground around the trees with poison, and they had to be removed. But now, the transplanted, new oaks are flourishing as they push toward the stature of the old ones.)

But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m referring to the very ground on which this brother is standing. He’s handing out gospel tracts to those who’ll take one. It brought to mind, 1 Corinthians 6:19, where Paul asks, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the holy spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” So, we might say this fellow is a temple standing on the Temple Mount. He’s a long way from Jerusalem, but he has made his little patch of sidewalk Holy Land, consecrated to the Lord’s service.

And no, he’s not on a mount. Indeed, Toomer’s Drugs sits on level ground, cattycorner from the University, which lies just across the intersection of Magnolia and College. The school is spoken of as “on the plains,” a far cry from the topography you find, for instance, at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green (her teams known as the Hilltoppers) and the University of Kansas in Lawrence (whose cheer is “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk,” tied to the limestone-rich geology of Kansas, including Mount Oread on campus). Actually, the Auburn expression derives from a poem by Oliver Goldsmith, wherein he speaks of a deserted village in Ireland named Auburn. Be that as it may, the corner sits on level ground.

Though most folks passing by this fellow declined to take his tract, he persisted cheerfully, and I was happy to encourage him and receive his handout. And he kindly received my own little gospel presentation, crammed with tiny font on the back of my “business” card. It reads,

                                                                                                              The Gospel

God is perfect in love, justice, knowledge, and power. Though made in His image, we are corrupt. Our sin wrecks our lives on earth and our prospects for heaven. But in love, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to provide the way of forgiveness and salvation. Born of a virgin, Jesus lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial death on the cross to pay the penalty for sins for those who accept His gift of eternal life. He was buried, rose from the grave on the third day, appeared to his disciples, and now reigns in heaven, where He claims those who have turned to Him in repentance and faith. He’s given them a new heart, and it clearly shows. The Holy Spirit counsels, encourages, and equips them for fruitful service. They’re not perfect, but they’re His forever. Jesus is coming to earth again, and, in the end, all will admit that He is Lord. The lost will do so bitterly. The saved will proclaim it with joy.

And now for his handout. Here are selections from his witness, typed and copied on black and white paper, trimmed to size by hand:

I plead with you to stay away from hell!! More people believe in heaven than in hell, but hell is a literal place. There can be no heaven without a hell. Jesus spoke more about hell than He did heaven and He described it as a real place. He used vividly descriptive language when He spoke about it. Hell was never intended for humans but was a place of eternal punishment prepared for the devil and his followers, the demons (Matt 24:41). The Bible describes hell with words that simply cannot be imagined: fire and brimstone, furnace of fire, judgment by fire, etc.

 

Who goes to hell? Rev 21:8 describes who goes to hell: “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, etc. will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” A critically important word in this list is “the unbelieving.” Who are the unbelievers that go to hell and suffer eternal punishment? (John 3:18b)  . . . .

 

If you are to be a faithful prophet in a nation in decline and crisis, you must expose false religion, where it exists. I have been accused through the years of being intolerant, and I accept that as a compliment of course. Do you watch things that you shouldn’t watch on television and laugh about the very things that God hates?

 

Why am I a Christian? Because there was a time in my life when I prayed and asked Jesus Christ to come into my heart. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. Turning away from sin and a hatred for the things that God hates, and a love for the things that God loves. It’s a time to be reaching men and women and children with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s a time to be living righteously.

I had some writing to do that morning in the Auburn University library, and this fellow helped prepare my heart for the task. A divine appointment in my book, devotional material in the flesh. And in the Spirit.