Part horror act, part sermon

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007 | 7:33 a.m.

The kind of black and white headdress Yasser Arafat wore pops up from behind two men sitting on a plane.

"Praise Allah!" shouts the man wearing the kaffiyeh. Then he blows up himself and the plane amid screams of terror.

Satan appears post haste, dressed in a black suit. Everything turns the color of flame.

Asking no questions, four demons surround the bomber's body and drag it off to hell, a room of black walls, deep red inside and exploding with smoke.

The audience claps and whoops with glee.

The scene occurs halfway through " The Judgment: A Revealing Drama," a play presented this week by the Potter's House Christian Fellowship, a church on Sahara Avenue.

Purposely scheduled around Halloween, its goal, director Sam Bakke said, was "to scare the hell out of people so they go to heaven."

The play fits with what Craig Detweiler, director of the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary, calls "fear-based evangelism ... a recent phenomenon."

Detweiler said the play is "rooted in the same tradition as hell houses " -a kind of "haunted house" that Pentecostal and Baptist churches stage nationwide at Halloween, a practice pioneered by Jerry Falwell in the 1970s.

Bakke said his church staged the same play four years ago. About 45 church members are involved in the multimedia production, which includes video and took about a month to stage.

The church distributed 3,000 tickets to the event across the valley, purposely leaving out that the play was at a church.

"A lot of people have preconceived notions of churches," Bakke said. "We give them tickets and hope they come."

But Detweiler, whose institute studies God in popular culture, questions the focus on fear. He points out that the Christian roots of Halloween are in All Saints' Day - which offers "so much good to celebrate."

"I don't understand why we want to dwell on fear and loathing in Las Vegas," he said.

For about 115 people in the church's auditorium Tuesday night, fear was for the taking.

There are shrill skids of car crashes. Dry pops of pistols. High screams of anguish. Dead bodies piled up in scene after scene.

White is for angels and heaven. Black, for Satan and hell.

One angel keeps the book on the lectern with the names of true believers.

They step up to the podium and disappear behind the gold curtain, on their way to heaven.

The Muslim is the only one who doesn't get to consult with the angel.

Each time the angel locates names of the deserving, he raises his arms, provoking more applause.

Others are pulled offstage, into the black, smoky room of hell.

Despite a mother's teary plea - "God wouldn't ever take me from my baby!" - a family is divided. The daughter ascends, the mother goes down. The devil mocks a child's voice, whining, "Mommy ... "

He's not short on insults, telling a girl who heads to hell for her clubbing ways to "shut up, smut."

Lucifer also jests, commanding his demons to take the same girl "where all the hot guys are."

After that scene, a little girl in the audience cried. Her mother took the girl's hand and left.

A few dozen children and some infants watched the play.

Sixteen deaths and nearly 90 minutes later, it end ed.

A young man named Curtis Corrales, saved seven years ago, stepped to the stage.

"These are not our scare tactics to try and get you to join our church," he said into a microphone. "It's documented ... It's in the Bible. Hell is a real place, just like Las Vegas. We're not trying to scare you, we're trying to inform you."

A call was made for those who want ed to accept Jesus. A half - dozen came forward.

A man named Abad Martinez approache d a reporter to ask whether he' d accepted Jesus. The man spoke of an East Los Angeles youth, "lots of women ... a needle in my arm." Then he was saved.

Martinez sat near the front during the play and covered his 2-year-old son's eyes whenever Satan bounded on stage. Why did he do this?

"He was scared," Martinez said.

"A lot of people were."