The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina grabbed headlines in mid-October when it announced a "Halloween Book Burning." It was going to be anything but your typical book burning, assuming there is such a thing.
To be sure, they planned to burn heavy metal music and smutty movies. But they also had country, gospel, and Christian contemporary music and videos about Jesus in their crosshairs. Most shockingly, they said that they would burn all non-King James versions of the Bible -- aka "Satan's bibles."
They also announced a long list of "Satan's popular books written by heretics" which would be burned. And to top it all off, they offered "fried chicken, and all the sides."
But when the big day came around, a combination of rain, protesters, and a state law against burning paper all conspired against them. Here's what happened:
And here, in their own words, is what Amazing Grace said about their quote-unquote book burning:
We wanted to say that the Book Burning was a great success[.] We wanted to thank all the Bible doubters who prayed for rain with us. All the protestors and media got wet; we were inside where it was nice and dry[.] We are not glad people got wet, we are glad that His Word was honored. Some have written praising God that he intervened and stopped the Book Burning because of the rain, protestors, and state laws about burning paper. Nothing was stopped. Our goal was to destroy garbage as noted below, and we did just that. We didn't care how it was destroyed; only that it was destroyed. These same people must have never heard about "Paper, Rock, & Scissors." Scissors cut paper, and paper tears real easy. We destroyed everything as planned. Praise God! God answered every prayer that everyone prayed, but they don't like the answer.