YNOT – A six-story-tall statue of Jesus outside an Ohio church was struck by a lightning bolt and burned to the ground Monday while the Hustler Hollywood store nearby went unscathed.Although officially entitled “King of Kings,” the wood-and-styrofoam representation of Christ was better known as both “Big Butter Jesus” and “Touchdown Jesus,” the latter in reference to the way the figure’s arms extended heavenward. Following the lightning strike and fire, all that remains of the statue is a twisted steel framework.
The fire also damaged a part of Solid Rock Church’s amphitheater, but no one was injured in the blaze that attracted crowds while the structures burned.
On Tuesday, local residents and curiosity seekers arrived to pay last respects.
“God struck God. I like the irony. Jesus struck Jesus,” Dawn Smith, 25, told the Dayton Daily News. “I had to see it. What else are you going to do on a Monday night?”
Erected in 2004 between the church and pond in order to evoke the impression Jesus rose from the water — which earned the statue a third nickname, “Drowning Jesus” — the figure reportedly cost church founder and former horse-trader Lawrence Bishop $250,000. Bishop told the Associated Press he intended for the much-larger-than-life representation to help and inspire everyone who looked upon it.
A similar lightning strike amputated an arm from a 33-foot-tall marble Jesus statue at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colo., in 2007. The nuns who oversee the shrine cautioned observers not to draw religious conclusions from the “freak act of nature.”
