'Touchdown Jesus' Burns to Ground As Porn Shop Goes Unscathed

The "Touchdown Jesus," a six-story tall statue (also known as "Big Butter Jesus") outside an Ohio church, was torched by a lightning bolt late Monday night and completely incinerated. In a demonstration of God's keen sense of irony, the "Hollywood Hustler" sign at a nearby porn shop was left unscathed, .

Today, all that remains of the wood and styrofoam statue, formally known as "King of Kings," is the steel framework, which now resembles a bent and twisted field post.

The fire spread to the Solid Rock Church's amphitheater but no one was hurt. Onlookers watched the flames on Monday night and came by to pay their respects on Tuesday.

"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?"

The statue, called the "Touchdown Jesus" for the way its hands were raised in the air, was built in 2004 between the church and a pond to make it look like the massive Jesus was rising from the water, lending it yet another affectionate nickname, "Drowning Jesus." Church founder and former horse trader Lawrence Bishop and his wife paid $250,000 for the statue in an attempt to help people, according to the Associated Press.

A similar incident in 2007 ripped the arm and hand off a Jesus statue at a shrine in Colorado. The nuns at the shrine said the bolt was a freak act of nature and warned people from gleaning any religious significance from it.