As the U.S. Justice Department considers filing federal hate crime charges, Dylann Roof, 21, faces nine counts of murder in a South Carolina state court, where he could be sentenced to death for the massacre. The nine people were attending a prayer meeting June 17, at an historic AME church in Charleston, when Roof opened fire. Roof sat with them for a while before opening fire. He reportedly said, “You are raping our women and taking over the country,” as he shot them.
The FBI says there is a “high degree of certainty” that Roof was racially motivated. Apparently, he posted a racist manifesto online prior to the shooting. The person controlling the website, tried to make it anonymous after the attack.
The body of Clementa C. Pinckney, pastor of the church and a state senator, lay in state in the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia for public viewing.
Meanwhile, the campaign to remove long-venerated Confederate symbols from public grounds gained momentum. Robert Bentley, governor of Alabama, ordered Confederate flags removed from the state capitol grounds.
“Justice Department and F.B.I. officials agreed that the Charleston shooting was so horrific and racially motivated that the federal government must address it, law enforcement officials said. South Carolina does not have a hate crimes law, and federal investigators believe that a murder case alone would leave the racial component of the crime unaddressed.”
“This directly fits the hate crime statute,” one law enforcement official said. “This is exactly what it was created for.” Federal and state prosecutors could both bring charges, and in such instances, they typically coordinate so one case does not undermine the other.
Roof wrote a 2,500 word screed on his website in which he said, “I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.” The site also had a picture of Roof holding a confederate flag among other racially charged photographs.
The confederate flag is a symbol to many of racism and has been the subject of a groundswell of calls for its removal from public places. State leaders in Mississippi are also under pressure to remove the flags.
A week of funerals is scheduled in Charleston.
Satan loves racism, for it stirs the deepest fears and fosters the most heinous crimes. While ever Satan is permitted to manifest his power, racism isn’t likely to disappear. It is continually promoted and encouraged by many factors and will only lead to further violence.
“We are living in the midst of an “epidemic of crime,” at which thoughtful, God-fearing men everywhere stand aghast. The corruption that prevails, it is beyond the power of the human pen to describe. Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery, and fraud. Every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, of indifference to human suffering, of brutal, fiendish destruction of human life. Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide. Who can doubt that satanic agencies are at work among men with increasing activity to distract and corrupt the mind, and defile and destroy the body?” Ministry of Healing,
pages, 142 and 143
“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Genesis 6:11
Jesus’ followers who show love and kindness to all amid the hatred and violence will hasten His return.
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