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Today’s Blog Post
The following text arrived by way of email.
It arrived yesterday from my friend Brian Stiller.
Brian and two other Ministers went to see another
Minister in Florida that has been causing great harm to the church. What the
other Minister did was broadcast world wide, which then angered the Islamic
People in many countries. Following that anger the Islamic People then began
murdering Christians and destroying churches.
You guessed right… the other Minister was the whacko, Rev. Jones, the
dude who burned the Quran.
I am so ashamed of what this man is and what
he has done.
To the Islamic People who read my Blog from
time to time, I want to assure you that all Christians are not like Jones. We are deeply ashamed of this man and wish we
could stop him.
~ Murray Lincoln ~
May 1 2012 – Email from Brian Stiller
"Mr. Braveheart? Florida Pastor threatens to burn another Quran"
We drove up to the Dove World Outreach Center, a non-nondescript church tucked away off of a main road in Gainesville, Florida.
Eventually, the locked doors opened and we were led past a sanctuary, filled more with furniture than church pews, up the stairs to a sparsely furnished office: desk, sofa, two chairs and a movie poster of Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
We met Pastor Jones, a tall man, around 60, bearded and sitting at his desk with army-type boots, blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a gun hanging from his belt. Wayne Sapp, his assistant, was alongside wearing blue jeans, a black Harley Davidson T-shirt emblazoned with "I Don’t Do Fear," and a very obvious gun clipped to his belt. He stood, legs apart and arms folded, as if on guard, for the duration of our 90-minute conversation.
Jones, told us that after spending 30 years in Cologne, Germany, he returned to the US to find his beloved America awash in moral corruption, weakened by a failing Church, diminished by a gutless government and overrun by Islamic clerics and their threat of Sharia law. He says he felt “God spoke to me,” about defacing Islam, desecrating its Qur’an — and doing what he could to “wake up America.”
Our visit was the day before he planned to burn another Qur’an, a follow-up to what he had done months earlier, an event he publicized online resulting in the burning of churches and the killing of his fellow Christians.
Operating under Stand Up America Now, is an organization whose purpose, according to its website is "is to encourage Americans and the Church to stand up."
Jones concedes this had nothing to do with Christian love or evangelism, but are “acts of resistance or revolution.”
Because love and evangelism were weak, “unable to make a dent,” Jones believed it was time to cause a stir. He says that he had no idea of the public interest in the public burning of Islam’s holy book: “I didn’t realize it would create such a stir.”
But he took that very stir as a sign: “God wanted me to get involved.”
Jones is disarming, articulate and interesting. He is a surprisingly good listener, gentle in his response to tough questions. He openly acknowledged that his actions were bizarre. He admits no guilt that what he did caused both harm and killing of Christians (those he readily admits are his brothers and sisters).
Four of us drove north from Orlando, including Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and Daniel Ho, pastor of a Malaysian Methodist Church.
It was a tough, no-holds-barred conversation.
The dialogue was respectful, direct and civil.
The focus was on biblical values and caring for consequences of Christians in other lands.
Jones' confusion over love for America — as he thinks it was and should be — and the Gospel were obvious. While clearly declaring himself a Christian, he no longer believes loving others is a fair and workable strategy.
“We would not have beaten Hitler if we had just prayed,” he said.
Jones is disarming, articulate and interesting. He is a surprisingly good listener, gentle in his response to tough questions. He openly acknowledged that his actions were bizarre. He admits no guilt that what he did caused both harm and killing of Christians (those he readily admits are his brothers and sisters).
Four of us drove north from Orlando, including Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and Daniel Ho, pastor of a Malaysian Methodist Church.
It was a tough, no-holds-barred conversation.
The dialogue was respectful, direct and civil.
The focus was on biblical values and caring for consequences of Christians in other lands.
Jones' confusion over love for America — as he thinks it was and should be — and the Gospel were obvious. While clearly declaring himself a Christian, he no longer believes loving others is a fair and workable strategy.
“We would not have beaten Hitler if we had just prayed,” he said.
It is time, in Jones' view, to move past praying and acts of kindness,
beyond trying to win people to faith.
Militia-like, he views the “weakness” of churches
and government as being complicit in a conspiracy to degrade America.
Gun-toting pastors seem a logical extension of his
strategy to bypass those unwilling to “stand for America.”
“Would you be willing to come to Malaysia and look
into the faces of my family and tell them why you burned the Qur’an, if your
action caused my death?” asked Pastor Ho. Jones had no answer.
Asked if he had ever met a Christian from a
Muslim-dominated country, he laughed. When asked if he ever had concerns over
what his actions and words did to Christians in such countries, he avoided the
subject.
Pressed to line up his actions with biblical
values and the call of Jesus, he referred to Abraham and Moses, examples of
“biblical characters that have done crazy things.”
“God told me to do it,” is his central mantra.
Our group pressed him with his own logic: if his
end game was to get the attention of the American government, why not do some
outrageous act that would really get them to listen?
And if he wanted to point out the errors of Islam,
why not go to an Islamic country and burn a Qur’an there?
He laughed and said, “They’d kill me.”
We pointed out that what he was doing was
cowardly. We reminded him he was standing behind the defenses of free speech
laws, knowing that what he is doing may very well get others killed. We told
him that if he really wanted to show courage, then go to where his
actions will get him killed. Then you’ll be courageous," one of us said.
"But what you are doing here is gutless.”
His response? “Yes but I’d be killed.”
Geoff Tunnicliffe closed our meeting with the
story of William Wilberforce, who chose to give his life to end slavery.
In the recent movie, Amazing Grace, a government
minister rose in the British parliament, after the passing of anti-slavery
legislation and said in effect: "When we think about heroes our minds go
to people like Napoleon. Yet when his head lay on a pillow at night, he dreamt
about death and violence. Mr. Wilberforce when your head lies on the pillow
tonight, you will think about those you had part in freeing across the world."
At our meeting, Geoff asked Jones to be that kind
of hero.
We doubt if he will meet that challenge.
PS
He did follow up with his threat the next day.
What does one make of such a character? Hyper
nationalism linked to religious fundamentalism drives people to do what neither
their faith nor true national heritage allows. Its synthesis creates a
different rational and emotional construct, pressing and permitting behavior
that is internally logical to the group but destructive.
How redemptive was the moment? We confronted
twisted logic and perverted values. Inverted by his life and experience,
here was a man who confessed to the same Jesus and same Bible as we four, yet
galaxies away from the central life of Jesus.
The world is bizarre, allowing minds to
compartmentalize so that collateral damage has no emotional effect, seemingly
touching no part of their feelings about others. It is all about themselves and
their belief: “God has called me.”
Brian C Stiller
Global Ambassador
World Evangelical Fellowship 
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