With Christ and a cross, a man spreads his message
When Arthur Blessitt's doctors told him he should avoid heavy lifting because they suspected he had a brain aneurysm that might require surgery, his response startled them.
When Arthur Blessitt's doctors told him he should avoid heavy lifting because they suspected he had a brain aneurysm that might require surgery, his response startled them.
"I said, 'But I'm supposed to leave next week, carrying a cross across America,' " Blessitt told his doctors at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in California.
"I was lying in the hospital bed and made a decision. I'd rather die in the will of God than live outside of it. I said yes to carrying the cross for the will of Jesus. I said yes, and I felt great."
That was in 1969. Blessitt has been walking ever since, carrying a 12-foot wooden cross during his 40-year, 38,102-mile journey.
"I realized that the circumstances [his health] did not alter the call that God gave me to cross America. You go where you're supposed to go, one step at a time.
"I'm still alive at 68 and I feel great. I think Jesus did it."
A documentary about this man and his journey opens in theaters across the country today. "The Cross - The Arthur Blessitt Story" is produced and distributed by Gener8Xion Films, which also produced "One Night with the King" in 2006. Matthew Crouch, whose parents founded Trinity Broadcasting Network, makes his directorial debut with "The Cross" and is also one of the film's producers, along with Stephan Blinn and Richard J. Cook.
"The Cross" combines archival film of Blessitt's travels captured by various videographers plus 165 hours of interviews, edited into a 93-minute documentary.
Blessitt's spiritual journey began in the late 1960s, when he was dubbed "The Minister of Sunset Strip." He worked out of a Hollywood coffeehouse, preaching to hippies, Hell's Angels and Black Panthers.
His call - he refers to it as the "eternal rush" - came in September 1969 when he was proselytizing in Garland, Texas.
"I knelt by my bed and prayed. And at 5 a.m., in my little motel room in Texas, I felt Jesus speak."
The message? That he should walk, carrying a wooden cross, to show people the love of Jesus face to face.
Before he could begin, he was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, but that didn't deter him. He set off from Hollywood on Christmas Day 1969, headed for Washington, D.C. He carried the 12-foot wooden cross that had hung on the wall of his "Jesus" coffeehouse.
The following year, Blessitt carried the cross across war-torn Northern Ireland, starting him on a journey that would eventually take him to 315 nations, territories and island groups. He's walked through 52 war zones, deadly jungles, past firing squads, and even gained permission to enter North Korea.
His ability to enter the most inaccessible places is proof, he said, that the world is open to his message.
"I love, accept and connect to people of every nationality and religious group that has gathered around the cross," said Blessitt in a phone interview last week. His journey has reinterpreted the semiotics of the cross, he said. Instead of carrying a message of fear, it became a sign of love. "The best meets the worst and there's hope. I find the world desperate and in need of hope."
Among his most stirring experiences was carrying the cross to the Great Wall of China, across the Panama and Suez canals, and meeting Yasser Arafat. That moment was captured by CNN's Peter Arnet.
Once, Blessitt said, two women from Papua New Guinea walked two days to see the cross, and they reached him just as he was about to leave. The women burst into tears when he reassembled his cross for them.
"They are the most beautiful women. That's real love. It doesn't get any better than that.
"It has been the most fantastic journey in the history of the world," Blessitt he said. "I feel more excited about the world now than in 1969. The people in the world have been wonderful."
And he's not ready to stop walking, either. Blessitt would like to visit the Pygmies of Western and Central Africa, Bushmen of Southern Africa and the Aboriginal people of Australia.
"I love the simple primitive people of the world, and should God be willing, then I would love to go to those very remote places." *
Gener8Xion Entertainment's documentary "The Cross-The Arthur Blessitt Story" is showing at select theaters, including AMC Franklin Mills 14, UA Riverview Plaza, Regal Marketplace in Oaks, AMC Plymouth Meeting 12, and AMC Neshaminy 24 in Bensalem.