Perhaps the greatest missionary ever known, The Rev. Ernest Warshaw, arrived at  Landover Baptist Church in a casket earlier this week. Two of his trusted African servants delivered the coffin to Church authorities. "He made the Apostle Paul look like a  sissy pre-schooler," Rev. Smith remarked as he identified the body. Smith was told that the corpse was found floating in the Amazon river, covered with poison arrows and blow darts. "If Ernest had made it through alive, he would have gone back to win the souls of those jungle bastards who did this!" Pastor Smith exclaimed. 

Rev. Warshaw had not been seen for nearly 3 years. The last anyone heard, he was somewhere in the Congo.  His controversial method of  'salvation by any means necessary' had bagged him more souls than any man alive. It was said that his presence would send a chill down the spine of any native tribesman, the world over.  Captured and left for dead nearly 15 times in his life, Rev. Warshaw always made it out alive, and returned to win the souls of those who had wronged him. 

Some of Rev. Warshaw's methods are questionable in many Christian circles. He has captured and tortured many a man in his day, but never left them dead without hearing a confession of Christ.  He spoke 14 known languages, 27 tribal dialects, and has translated the book of Leviticus and Romans into 24 native tongues. Pastor Smith noted, "Ernest was a one on one evangelist. He used to get you cornered, and get up in your face, even if you were already saved, he had a way of making you think you weren't''.  I personally confessed Christ over 12 times in his presence." 

He last spoke at Landover Baptist in May of 1992. He had a prosthetic arm that replaced the one he lost in San Salvador. He spoke to a paying congregation of 2,000. During his sermon he recalled his captivity in the African nation of Mauritania. He talked of  being jailed for burning copies of the Koran to cook his nightly meals of monkey meat and lizard tails. While undergoing torture, he was nearly burned alive by the Mauritania secret police before he turned the situation around and had his aggressor's head in the oven. "His hair was burnt off his head, and his ears were gone" Warshaw remembered, "I let him go when he confessed Christ. The son-of-a-bitch was lucky I was in a good mood!" We remember his words well because after he made that statement, he told us that "we were probably more concerned that he just said the words 'son-of-a-bitch' than we were about all those sorry bastards out there who never heard the Word of God." Rev. Warshaw's platinum bust is a capstone marker in Landover Baptist's hall of Christian Greats. 

Sunday services will be combined with Rev. Warshaw's funeral next week. His dying wish was that no minorities be present at his burial. He spent his whole life winning their souls, and wanted to be free of them for good, his last day above ground.