You may have seen Daniel Rosenblit's van cruising by the beach in Fort Lauderdale, or parked next to him as he preaches on the streets of Broward county. The large cargo van has the paradoxical phrase "Living Martyr" on the side.
Recently Broward Sheriff's deputies charged the Living Martyr, a Lauderdale Lakes resident, with misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Rosenblit, who has a loud, scratchy voice and a potent biological aroma that can sometimes offend the senses of strangers, has been a street preacher in Fort Lauderdale for nearly seven years, telling people about his plan to unite all monotheistic religions (something similar to Reverend Moon's ideas a few decades back) and save the world. He says he intends to use a spiritual defense against the charge.
So far, nobody has ever won a pot possession case using a spiritual defense. "I'm gonna be the first," Rosenblit says. "It was God's will for me to get busted for possession."
On his usage, Rosenblit says, "Smoking pot helps me communicate with God. It bumps you up. It breaks you free of your limited thinking. Everyone in the church should be smoking pot and doing mushrooms. It makes us fools before God, able to receive His message better."
Rosenblit actually has an entire web site dedicated to "entheogens," psychoactive substances used for spiritual purposes, where he makes the case, using personal examples, for getting high for God. Among other things, he says on the site:
Many believers say, "I don't need a substance to hear from God". But, just as some people who desire to physically outperform themselves do so with the use of steroids, the use of entheogens does the same thing to one's prayer life (but unlike steroids, with only minor harm to the body, but with fantastic gain for our eternal soul!) Just as consuming spinach gave Pop-Eye supernatural strength, in a similar fashion my prayer-life gets a big boost when I am under the influence of an entheogen.
He says his belief system came straight from God, inspired by the years he spent preaching in the red-light district of Amsterdam. His plan for unifying all religions, he says, comes from a combination of Reverend Moon's ideas and the work of Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition. He thinks conservatives and Republicans have given up on minorities--"minorities have higher birth rates and black people vote monolithically for the Democrats, which by the way destroys democracy."
You can read even more of the Living Martyr's ideas here.
