Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

We are doing something sacred’

Only 15 minutes before, a local television crew had been pounding on the locked front door of the House of Deliverance Church in North Las Vegas, chasing news that the congregation was hunkered down inside, awaiting the Apocalypse.

After the cameras were gone Thursday afternoon, the door opened and a lone parishioner came out - on his way to fix a flat tire.

Squatting and sweating as he hunched next to an SUV, the man (who wouldn't give his name) said the news media had it all wrong: Yes, they're shutting themselves in. No, they don't know when they're coming out. Yes, they have enough food inside to last for some time, and no, it's not a cult.

"This is an average shut-in. This is something that churches do every day," he said. "It's just religion. It's not special, it's not personal. This is about us right now. We're just trying to find God.

"It's nothing like a Jim Jones thing. People can come and go as they please. We're not in there trying to kill each other. That is ridiculous. Ridiculous. I don't know anything about the end of the world. The pastor never prophesied nothing."

Church members have mostly been shut inside their church - in an office complex off Craig Road - for the past 10 days. They have whitewashed their windows and are communicating through a crack in the front door, begging off outsiders who knock with clipped insistence that they are too busy praying to talk.

By the time people started calling North Las Vegas police last week, concerned about family members who refused to come out, local news stations were on the story and reporting that church members had barricaded themselves inside in preparation for the end of the world - specifically, in the form of an earthquake at the end of the month.

"Whoever told that lie - it's all been misunderstood, slandered all over the place," Pastor Betty Smith said. "This is something innocent that has been turned into something crazy. They are in here because they want to be. Nobody is hungry, nobody is going to kill themselves. We are doing something sacred."

The pastor said she has been in shut-ins that lasted for months. She isn't sure how long this one will last, with camera crews flashing lights in the windows, reporters staged outside, broadcasting live.

"I'm sure the Lord is going to tell me to just end it," she said, referring to the shut-in. "But I'm not going to do that because that is what (the devil) would want."

Standing in the parking lot Thursday, a second church member, who also wouldn't give her name, called the shut-in a "deliverance." She said there are fewer than 30 people inside, considerable blankets and bedding, and "more than enough food for everybody - enough to last a long, long time.

"We're praying nonstop. We're waiting for a word from God."

And once that word comes, the two anonymous church members agreed, they'll leave. Neither would speculate when that might happen.

"How can you pray with all this noise?" the man asked, having hooked his flat tire to a portable pump. "Everybody's tapping on the windows. We're trying to pray, and the phone keeps ringing and ringing."

Since Aug. 31, North Las Vegas police have visited the church several times. Without probable cause, however, police officers were forced to communicate with church members through a locked door, like every other outsider, police spokesman Tim Bedwell said.

On Tuesday, however, a sergeant was permitted to enter. He confirmed nothing illegal was going on, Bedwell said, and so the police are backing off.

"I think family members are concerned with the principle for them being there, and that is not within the purview of the police department," Bedwell said. "They have the right to not talk to their family members if they want. There are children inside, but they aren't being held against their own will or kept from anyone."

A man who works in an office park near the church said that he has seen people come and go with supplies.

Doris Sanford wants her family out. For more than a week now, Sanford says, her granddaughter, 21, and 2-year-old grandniece have been inside the church. When family members went to visit, the granddaughter greeted them only briefly before going back inside.

"Everybody tried to talk to her, but she ran back up into that church like a little mouse," Sanford said. "She just looked at me and nodded her head and said, 'I love you.' "

Sanford saw her granddaughter married at the House of Deliverance Church and has photos of Smith with the young couple at the altar. She learned of the shut-in from her manicurist, who is friends with another church member. Sanford doesn't know whether her granddaughter has quit her job.

"Since this all happened, how do these people expect to go to work and keep a job and feed their family?" she said. "We on the outside want to know."

Said Smith: "If some people took off jobs to seek (the Lord's) faith, that's not illegal. What we are doing is nobody's business but ours."

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