That's their answer when asked why they stand on an ugly stretch of sidewalk in front of a Rite-Aid every day, why they brave cold and rain, why they try to save people they've never met.

"I was brought here by drugs in '84, and when I got free from it, he helped me, and he said, 'Go spread the word,' and that's what I did," said Frank Barrett, 54, who can be found at 8 a.m. weekdays on Broadway near Federal Street.

Barrett organizes a nondenominational, unofficial ministry that almost every weekday in Camden since 1984 has distributed slips of paper with two short verses from the King James Bible.

The elderly with canes and teenagers with iPods, city workers trudging to their cubicles and junkies waiting for another fix have all come to rely on this daily dose of biblical insight.

"It keeps me thinking about the Lord and all my little blessings," said a smiling but tired-looking Portia Clark, 52, who lives in a tiny room down the road. "Right now, I don't have a penny to my name, but I'm alive."

Barrett and his partner in ministry, Bob Mackes, who relieves him at 9:15 every morning, are so well-known that they don't push the papers in people's faces like sidewalk solicitors. They stand against a barren wall and people come up to them.

Some say "thanks" or "God bless"; many don't say a word.

Just as he does most days, Scott Buckingham, 46, took the slip of paper from Barrett on Monday morning. He read it, thought about it, and tucked it into a pocket on the right sleeve of his jacket with another verse he had picked up a few days earlier.

When the pocket is full, Buckingham dates the pieces and stores them in a box at his makeshift home in the corner of a parking lot on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

"I'm homeless out here, so it gives me a little enlightenment," he said, holding the verse, Philippians 4:13.

Megan Lyons, 28, took it a step further. She said the little slips of paper played a small role in giving her the inspiration to stop walking the streets, doing drugs.

"I think they should get paid," she said of Barrett and Mackes. "These guys are great. They're just doing this every day because of faith."

Even now, sober and working as a waitress at a diner, Lyons says the papers make her feel better when she's having a bad morning.

"It makes you smile that someone cares about you," she said.

Her piece of Scripture this particular morning read: "Whereas I was blind, now I can see."

"It's true," she said. "As a young person you know everything, and then you get older you realize you don't. It's life."

The white slips are for English speakers; the yellow ones are in Spanish. Hundreds of people pass by daily to pick up their Bible verses as casually as train conductors take tickets from passengers.

"And they get something different every day," Barrett said. "They complain if they get the same Scripture. You've got to mix it up."

Sometimes the men, neither of whom are ordained preachers, will help people interpret the passages, which can sound esoteric.

Other times, Mackes will pull out a religious song book and serenade the busy street.

Of any place in Camden, one of the most destitute and dangerous cities in America, this stretch of Broadway has a particular need for a little love from a higher power.

It was once the main commercial spine of the city, filled with shops and movie theaters, but now most of the storefronts are abandoned. The most action on the block is where the men are stationed, near the Walter Rand Transportation Center and RiverLINE train stop.

Nearby are city and county courthouses, government offices, and social-services buildings. Those who pick up a piece of Scripture could be on their way to a probation officer or to make a child-support payment, or to face a judge on a misdemeanor drug charge.

"Some people say it's good luck. It's not good luck. It's the word of God," Mackes said. "Our job is to tell you about it. It's His job to save you."

The prophets are beginning their 25th year handing out what they estimate has been more than a million Bible verses. Most of that time their little operation has run all day long - dozens of pieces of paper every hour, eight hours a day, five days a week, with a rotating cast of four.

Today, there are only three, working from 8 a.m. to about 1 p.m. In addition to Barrett and Mackes, a county welfare worker passes out the papers on his lunch break.

The verses are printed on a machine donated by Grace Episcopal Church in Haddonfield. A Cherry Hill member of that church keeps the printer at his home and does the printing and cutting free of charge. Sometimes he hands out the Bible slips near City Hall in Philadelphia.

Barrett provides the paper. His business, Frank's Home Repair, is successful these days, and he owns a house in Haddon Heights. But he knows what poverty is like.

He lived in a shelter in North Camden from 1984 to 1990, he said. He then lived for a few years in an old gym shower room at Cathedral Kitchen in exchange for working as the kitchen's maintenance man.

Barrett soon fell in love with one of the kitchen's Friday-night volunteers. They've been married for 10 years.

Barrett has a close-cropped beard, conservative compared to Mackes' scruffy, long facial hair. The only uniform they wear on the street, at least in winter, are knit caps with Jesus featured prominently on the front.

They see themselves as messengers of Jesus, and recipients call them that, too.

When they can, they give out a spare dollar. They offer crackers to those who say they're hungry, and Barrett distributes 50 lunches across the street on Sundays.

"I guess I never did put much back into the community when I was small," said Barrett, who grew up in Camden. "The Lord turned my life around, and this is what he wanted me to do."

It's little surprise, then, that Barrett's favorite Bible verse is Romans 8:28:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.