Anyone remember seeing "John 3:16" signs at sporting events?

[slacker00]

Hey, does anyone remember seeing "John 3:16" signs at sporting events? I remember seeing these during basically every NFL game on tv maybe 25 years ago, but I don't see these signs so much anymore. What's the deal?

[Nicky Santoro]

yeah, i remember that too.. it was a guy with a big rainbow afro holding up a sign behind home plate. i never understood that.

[bigboydan]

You mean Rainbow man?

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[Chi_archie]

People are beating up all those "shove it in your face Christians"

[pico]

John 3:16 (New International Version)

16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

why do people hold the sign up at sporting events? no idea. maybe jews control the media and doesn't want to broadcast false god's message.

[daggerkobe]

Last I heard, he was in jail.

[Chi_archie]

For God so loved the Touts, that he gave his one and only son, Jesus Christ, so that whomever believes in him shall no die but have everlasting life...

[daggerkobe]

Rainbow Man, once ever-present, shows his dark side
Rollen Stewart, the wig-wearing self-promoter who showed up at major athletic events through the 1970s and '80s, is serving time for hostage-taking, which he says was attempt to warn the world of coming Apocalypse.

May 19, 2008 --- Jerry Crowe

IONE, Calif. -- For more than 10 years starting in the late 1970s, Rollen Stewart was the nation's most celebrated sports fan, a wig-wearing, wigged-out self-promoter who showed up at virtually every major athletic event worldwide and always managed to plant himself smack-dab in front of a television camera.

He was known as the Rainbow Man, for the multicolored Afro wigs he sported, or Rock 'n' Rollen, for the party vibe he exuded. Later, after finding religion, he morphed into the John 3:16 guy, for the Biblical messages he espoused.

He says he drove about 60,000 miles a year to attend events, and he got more TV face time than the network announcers who sometimes left him tickets.

He found fame, as planned, simply by showing up.

But the fanatic who was always there, Stewart says, really was no fan at all.

"I despised sports," he says.

Stewart is 63 now, no longer wears an Afro or any other type of hairpiece to mask his baldness and last attended a sporting event about 20 years ago.

Serving three life sentences for hostage-taking, he has been imprisoned since 1992. The punishment was the result of a bizarre incident in which an armed Stewart locked himself in a hotel room near Los Angeles International Airport and kicked off an 8 1/2 -hour standoff with police, demanding a three-hour, televised news conference to air his views. Earlier, he had driven two day laborers to the hotel, both of whom escaped, and encountered a frightened housekeeper who locked herself in a bathroom.

Currently serving time at Mule Creek State Prison, about an hour southeast of Sacramento, he has been denied parole three times in the last six years, most recently in March, and does not believe he will ever be set free.

"Jesus will come back before I get out," Stewart tells a visitor from Los Angeles, his startlingly blue eyes revealing little emotion. "To justify their own unbelief, they use me as a scapegoat so they can sleep at night.

"But they've still got their Rolaids next to the bed."

Stewart says his "final presentation" in 1992 was mistimed -- the end of the world was nigh, he believed -- but otherwise does not regret his actions.

"It was a crime to prevent a greater harm," he says, explaining that it was his duty to warn the world of the coming Apocalypse. "If somebody's standing in the way of me going into a burning building, I'm going to knock them on their butt."

As Stewart reveals in "The Rainbow Man/John 3:16," a 1997 documentary by filmmaker Sam Green, his views were not always so extreme, nor his actions threatening. When Stewart, a former marijuana farmer, initially conceived the Rainbow Man in the late 1970s, it was to draw attention to himself.

In Stewart's autobiography, Green's film reveals, the author writes, "Instead of going to Hollywood and waiting in casting lines for years, I would be world famous overnight . . . and have complete control over my life."

He carried a battery-powered TV to see where the cameras were pointed, sneaked into the best seats and positioned himself for maximum exposure.

Stewart, however, tells a prison visitor that he is a "very quiet, shy person," adding matter-of-factly, "The Rainbow Man was not me; he was a character."

In order to play him, he says, he needed to be stoned.

"Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," he says. "That was my thing."

In time, though, Stewart says he wearied of "chasing the Hollywood high," though he continued smoking pot. Nor did his unusual fame endear him to Hollywood. A beer commercial was about all he had to show for his efforts at self-promotion. In January 1980, after attending Super Bowl XIV at the Rose Bowl, Stewart says he was mesmerized by a TV evangelist and found Jesus.

Making his way through an estimated 80 rainbow wigs -- "They got dirty, and I told people it was my real hair," he says -- Stewart continued crisscrossing the country into the late '80s, this time showing up at sporting and other news events wearing T-shirts and carrying sheets touting Bible passages, most frequently John 3:16. "Sports was only a vehicle," he says, "because to a lot of people, that's their God."

Nine times out of 10, Stewart says, he wrangled free tickets. But as Stewart's act grew stale and less fun-loving, TV tried to limit his exposure.

As veteran announcer Brent Musberger told ESPN several years ago, "I know directors who threatened to kill the guy in their anger in the truck because he would get in behind very dramatic shots and the eye, as you watched the screen, would be attracted immediately to this wacko."

The late '80s brought the end of the Rainbow Man. Stewart's car was totaled, his money ran out and his wife left him, saying he choked her because she held up a sign in the wrong location. "No one can meet my standards," says Stewart, who has been married four times, "but I don't recall ever hitting her."

Homeless and living in L.A.'s Skid Row, he hatched another, more sinister character. Targeting churches, religious broadcasters and newspaper offices, he set off a string of stink bombs to warn of the world's impending doom.

That led, finally, to his standoff with the LAPD.

In prison, Stewart says, "They say I'm a threat to society."

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message552668/pg1

[Chi_archie]

why is that 90% of famous "Christians" are wacko and have more darkness then light?

[Willie Bee]

I think that Rainbow Man eventually had a son who went on to become a solid college quarterback for some team in the Sunshine State.

[Chi_archie]

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me..

[fiveteamer]

That story seems made up.

unreal.

[jackpot269]

I remember it from, and guess most that do is from Monday Night Football it was on there ever week when the whole world just had 1 NFL game to watch!!!!!!!!!1

[slacker00]

Thanks daggerkobe. So it was only one guy? I remember seeing it practically every game I watched on TV as a kid. He must've been a real wacko to go to all of those games. I thought maybe it was a trend that fizzled, or maybe people were just becoming less religious or maybe the networks were becoming more sensitive to religious messages or whatever. Wacko or not, plenty of people got his message!

[slacker00]

Check it out, Tebow is sporting "John 3:16" eye paint right now.

[yisman]

I remember that at WWF wrestling events, when it was still the WWF.

That's not sports, but it's on TV.

[seaborneq]

Check it out, Tebow is sporting "John 3:16" eye paint right now.

I saw that too. Maybe he posts here when he is not in the phone booth.

[nosniboR11]

or maybe he is a Christian, he will pray for you also

[yisman]

he always wears that crap

[MickChunky]

I remember seeing it a lot at golf events