In 2008 Anne and I relocated to Springfield, Massachusetts, with the intention of leaving the culture-war battlefield on LGBT issues to launch a more traditional inner-city mission to serve the bottom strata of society in one of the most depressed and decrepit population centers in the country.
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Summer 2011 was exactly halfway through our first seven years, and it was at that biblically significant three-and-a-half year mark that a powerful supernatural event occurred, one I will share publicly for the very first time today.
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Court Square is the symbolic and spiritual heart of the city. It was therefore greatly disturbing to me when I reached the end of the path at Main Street and discovered an official "Gay Pride" banner hanging from the lamppost in the same place and manner as the annual Christmas banners. I was deeply vexed in my spirit, because this was to my knowledge the very first time Springfield had allowed such a display – indicating that the historically Catholic city had succumbed to the LGBT Borg and had chosen the path of defilement instead of Christian redemption.

At 4:30 p.m. that very day a massive tornado touched down in Westfield and carved a 39 mile path of destruction through West Springfield, South Springfield and several towns eastward. It barely missed the Old First Church, but ripped through the rest of Court Square right where the offending banner had hung. The way I see it, God tore down that particular flag Himself.

Significantly to us, the tornado came right to the edge of our designated "Redemption Zone," turned south along its western border, then continued east along its southern border. There was damage only at the far southwest corner of our prayer-covered mission territory. One of our ministry staff standing on the back porch of the third floor of our church building actually watched the monster bear down directly at him from the west and then turn away south and then east.