One can’t help but wonder what type of penalty the good mayor would like to impose upon free speech that he considers “annoying,” said Carl Gallups, who pastors a Baptist church in Florida, much larger than Harrington’s but similar in theology.
“I find it amusing that the ‘progressives’ are always screaming about bullying and tolerance, so here’s an American pastor who has a reader-board on his property with a message that states nothing but clear, 100 percent biblical truth and his First Amendment rights are summarily dismissed by haters who are calling him a ‘hater,'” said Gallups, author of “Be Thou Prepared” and “Final Warning.”
“The hypocrisy is astounding,” he said.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Trespassers sneaked onto the church property at night and re-arranged the letters on the marquee from “God’s holy book” to read “God’s holy boobs allowed” and “Lady Gaga is our God.”
Pastor Michael Harrington of Belmont Drive Missionary Baptist Church.
The anonymous trespasser left a note saying he (or she) would be back if the church dared to put the sign back up. “Stop with the offensive signs. I will continue to change them if you do not,” the note said. “Also go research the Muslim religion. You are WAY OFF!”
The pastor and his church stood firm and did not buckle to the bullying tactics of the mayor, the media or the protesters.
Critics point out that at the same time the Oregon liberals are giving a small-town pastor hell for posting a sign on his own church property, Muslim groups are plastering the roadsides in several states with billboards promoting their faith targeting Christians and Jews. Some read “Find Jesus in the Koran,” while others talk about Islam being the “religion of peace,” a blatant lie exposed by even a cursory inspection of the historic record, Gallups said.
Atheist groups have for years been posting billboards along America’s major highways questioning and criticizing Christianity without controversy. Yet when someone put up an “anti-Islam” billboard in St. Cloud, Minnesota, the owner of the billboard space got a call from someone at Catholic Charities who told him to take it down and cancel his contract with the advertiser or face a lawsuit, WND reported in February.
“You don’t see any protests when it’s Christianity being bashed. How come they can put those things up but this Oregon pastor can’t put a factual, biblically based sign up on his own church property?” asks Pastor Shahram Hadian, a former Muslim who came to the U.S. from Iran and operates the Truth In Love ministry based in neighboring Washington state. “And I’m so glad, thank God, that he’s not backing down.
“People are hungry for some courageous pastors,” he continued. “They’re like an endangered species. Can we find a courageous pastor anywhere in America? That’s I think why people are so fired up about this, is we’re actually finding one who will take a stand.”
There has been much support for the pastor’s actions. Fellow Christians from other congregations came and held a joint worship service at Belmont Drive Missionary Baptist recently.
“But what’s not being reported is the threats and the signs being altered,” Hadian said. “If they were defacing a mosque’s reader-board that would have been all over the news, and you probably would have had Obama out there with the Department of Justice filing hate crime charges.”
But this seems to be the norm with the leftists, Gallups said.
“Why is it OK for them to attempt to bully this pastor into silence? It’s not,” he said. “The pastor is right in what he is doing and I applaud him. People of God all over this nation should come to this pastor’s defense, publicly, before we lose everything. The church has been asleep and lukewarm far too long.”
After watching the video of Harrington explaining his ministry, Gallups said it’s clear the pastor is not a hater of Muslim people.
“He is simply speaking to the truth of Islam, according to their own writings and teachings, and comparing that with the biblical truth,” Gallups said. “There is a difference between being kind, loving, and helpful to individual people and still speaking truth about universal issues. I practice this principle all the time in my own ministry.”
The Word of God is clear, he said.
“In the last days, before the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, truth would be ‘thrown to the ground,’ and deception would rule as the order of the day,” Gallups said. “It appears we are getting very close to living in a worldwide deluge of that biblical and prophetic truth.”
Hadian says if the tide of rising political correctness is not soon reversed, the U.S. could be headed for even darker times.
“It sickens me that Christians are capitulating to this,” Hadian said. “And to me it’s just a pattern where we’re following exactly what happened in 1930s Germany when churches were getting in line to carry the water and follow the mantra of the Nazi Party.”