July 30, 2018
Pastor Mike

Dear all, just a word of thanks for your prayers and concern for us here in Redding; we sure need it.

The update we have on the fire is that it is now around 17% contained, but at the same time it is still spreading southward on the west side of the Sacramento River and has completely surrounded Whiskeytown Lake. I think there are around 700 firefighters [12,000 firefighters battling ALL California fires] from all over trying to fight this blaze and not many of them are used to the terrain and temperatures that exist in the area. It’s cooling down to 109 degrees today and the humidity is going up so that helps. Now there are over 38,000 people that have been evacuated and the fire has modestly grown in the last day to only 95,000 acres. Many have had to drive down to Roseville just to find a motel room. So far 640 [700 homes] structures have burned, many of them homes, with around 4,500 structures threatened.

Photo: A Cal Fire firefighter waters down a back burn on Cloverdale Rd. near the town of Igo on Saturday, July 28, 2018 during the Carr Fire.

We can’t see where the fire is at because the smoke is so thick. We did last Thursday night when we came out of Bible class and looked westward and there was a tremendous wall of red and columns of smoke heading right toward the city. Fortunately it only hit the outskirts of town destroying several subdivisions, but the main downtown, including the church, was spared.

The scene was absolutely apocalyptic with the sirens blowing, the fire trucks, (over 100 of them [150]), racing and this huge wall of fire coming toward Redding. I think it was the fire tornado, which went over 5,000 feet into the air, that caused the flames to jump across the Sacramento River and head up toward the Quartz Hill area.

I can’t remember all the different areas that were evacuated and burned, but there were many. Hwy 299 from Redding to Hwy 3 up by Weaverville is closed now, French Gulch and the town of Keswick are burned out, Igo and Ono were evacuated, the Veteran’s Cemetery was spared, but the Vietnam Memorial Bridge they say has been weakened by the fire, Winn-River Casino was evacuated, some gas stations are out of gas, also some fast food restaurants ran out of food. The town felt like a ghost town when we had to take our son, Matt, down to the Bus Station to leave for Portland Saturday night. The trains weren’t running through the area and the same thing for flights.

What they’re concerned about is that if the fire shifts and starts blowing from the north, it’ll turn around and start heading down the west side of the river into other communities and jump the river and then start back up northward on the east side of the Sacramento. They’re not getting much use out of the big 747 borate bomber, along with the others, becaue of the poor visibility.

Many are saying, including me, that this is the hand of God on Redding because of the people’s, (Christians), negative volition toward Bible Doctrine, which has been growing steadily. When Redding was a small town of around 10,000 people there were Bible teaching churches all over the area; we were known as the Bible Belt of California. Now they have dwindled to nothing and we’re around 100,000 people. Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are not considered to be Bible teaching churches. Redding has the largest concentration of witches in the area, it has the biggest Christian cult here, the infamous Bethel Church with its “Spiritual School of Ministry" with over 2,000 students that teach people how to have a spiritual awakening of the Kundalini spirit, which is actually a Hindu demon, and all other sorts of negative volition in the area.

There was a scene where thousands of cars were fleeing the fire, which reminded me of the final day when people will be trying to flee the wrath of God and the eternal fires of the Lake of Fire, but there will be no place for them to run to, no place for them to hide, no one to help them because they have rejected the Savior, Jesus Christ. It is my hope that the tens of thousands who have moved here from other places will wake up and make their peace with God; I hope that they will understand the warning lesson of this fire, that is obvious to all, but I regard this only as an optative mood!

Once again thanks from me and our small church for your prayers and concern. Mike.