North Carolina pastor convinces armed man to give up rifle in church
Pastor Larry Wright was giving a sermon on the senseless violence in the community when a man walked into his church with a gun...
Pastor Larry Wright was giving a sermon on the senseless violence in the community when a man walked into his church with a gun.
Wright, the leader of Heal the Land Outreach Ministries in Fayetteville, is a retired Army sergeant first class. He saw the man not only had a rifle, but an ammo clip – he knew things could get really dangerous, really quickly. so when he saw the glint of the bullets in the gunman’s hand and saw that, in addition to the rifle, the man had an ammo clip, he knew that things could get serious.
“I’m the first person to see him and when I saw him, I thought it was a dummy gun, but then I saw the bullet clip in his hand and the bullets were shining,” he said.
Wright walked up to the man and said, “Can I help you?” He was prepared to tackle the man to the ground if he had to.
But the gunman’s response surprised them all: he asked Wright to pray for him.
After Wright took the gun and handed it to a deacon, the deacons then came one by one to hug the man. “And then I began to minister to him and pray to him and talk with him,” Wright said.
With twenty minutes to go before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Wright decided to finish his sermon.
“I finished the message, I did the altar call and he stood right up, came up to the altar, and gave his life to Christ,” Wright said. “I came down and prayed with him and we embraced. It was like a father embracing a son.”
As they hugged, Wright whispered in the man’s ear that police were outside because he had frightened many people.
The man then asked to speak to the congregation. He explained that he had come to the church to do something terrible, but God had spoken to him instead.
“It’s so hard to describe, to explain the excitement and love of God in the room. This man came in to do harm and he has given his life to Christ,” Wright told CNN.
The man has since reportedly gone to receive mental help.
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