Jacob Simmons and his fiancee, Gentry Lee Sutherland, said they bought some pictures from Walmart on Sunday, June 12.It's just like in Scripture - "...and on the third day, he arose again, and ascended into Commerce..."
The following Wednesday, the couple had just come home from a church service when Simmons spotted the receipt on the floor of Sutherland's apartment. He says the receipt had changed. "I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and it was like it was looking at me," Simmons said.
Just to be fair, let's leave aside uncomfortable questions like "could they find a more redneck religious icon than a Walmart receipt?" and move on to the more interesting questions. Like "Why did Jesus choose to appear there?"
Why would Jesus, much like an anal-probing alien, choose to appear in South Carolina, the colostomy bag of America?
Could it be because Simmons and Sutherland are an unmarried couple cohabitating in a single apartment, and Jesus wanted them to know that they're going to hell?
Was He just trying to pass along the message "Yo, hick! Can you clean this pigsty? I've been laying here for three days!"
Perhaps it was a marketing ploy by Walmart: "I'd come back from the dead for savings like these! Even if they are destroying the economy!" (And really, this is sheer genius as advertising goes: it's a ploy that will go over big in the Bible Belt.)
But to be honest, I think that Mr Simmons has misidentified his picture. Because really, it looks more like Charles Manson to me.
But I'm pretty sure that this miraculous appearance doesn't mean "Go start killing everybody in the neighborhood (or as they call it in South Carolina, "urban beautification"). Jesus has been aggressively marketing Himself of late, appearing on telephone poles, rocking chairs, and even some crackhead's cell phone.
I'd say that for answers, we should turn, as we always do, to that other bearded guy in robes.
