QUESTION #1: Why do churches need to consider placing security measures in place?

Answer:

Pastor Bob Burgess:

“… in the Old Testament when the tabernacle and the place of worship was there, this was God’s business. They would have porters who would watch the doors, who would guard the doors. They would even have watchmen on the wall who would announce the stranger that was coming. Nothing unusual.

The church actually got away from that as we know it today. And I want to say that even in the Book of Revelation Chapter 2, when you go look at the very first church that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ writes that tells John to write to at Ephesus, he’s praising them because they’re standing against evil, and they’re vetting those that are coming in under false pretense, false apostles, the whole nine yards there. He’s praising them for that, and then when you get into that fourth church at Thyatira, he’s praising them, but what he’s not praising them for is the evil has come in because they’re letting it in, and Christ is holding them responsible for that to the extent that he says that he would remove their candlestick.

So, I know it’s within our Savior’s will that we as under-Shepherds that oversee the flocks that’s he’s appointed us over, he has put us in a position to lead them, to feed them, but also to protect them to the best of the abilities that he affords us to have. And that’s what we need to understand that if we’re going to preach the word of God and we believe this, we have to realize that evil is not, is not a symptom. Evil is a disease. What this man did in Texas is a symptom of that disease. I don’t like chasing emotional bones. I’m more of a factual kind of guy. When I say that this evil act is a symptom, this man shooting and killing those innocent people in a soft target with no defense, that is pure evil. I agree with that, but the evil existed before he executed that evil wrath. That was a symptom of the evil.

We have to realize that it’s out here. It’s not just realizing when it’s too late and it’s manifested itself. My fellowship with my church family, we can sit down in our fellowship, and we can break bread and have meals together, and they have spoons and forks and knives, and nobody kills each other with them. You go into a prison, and they’ll stab you to death with a spoon. What’s the difference? Is it the spoon and the fork? It is not. The difference is the evil that exists there.

I go outside today where I’m at, it’s kind of cold. I’m not real fond of the cold, gentlemen, but that cold is in absence of heat. We as pastors need to realize what godlessness really is. I don’t expect the world, I don’t expect the politicians, I don’t expect the left, the right, the middle, the fence riders for that matter to understand that. My Bible tells me that the god of this world, small “g”, in II Corinthians 4:4 has blinded the minds of those who are without the glorious light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, simply meaning this: they have no spiritual discernment. We can’t chase this emotionally. We have to look at it factually, and the facts that God gives us through his Word is how we must look at that.”

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