Patheos.com, by Hemant Mehta: Right-wing pastor Perry Stone, best known for checking his phone while speaking in tongues, spread two separate lies last night [March 17th] about the coronavirus in what can only be described as an attempt to take the mantle of Jerry Falwell (the dead one) and Pat Robertson as the most cringe-worthy Christian in America.
During last night’s prayer service—which he shouldn’t have had anyway because of how many people are in one place—he blamed the coronavirus outbreak on legalized abortion and marriage equality:
“So why is there a reckoning? I’m gonna explain it in these simple terms. There’s a reckoning because the courts of the land passed a law to take an infant’s life—that it was okay—and for marriage, that we have known it, to be changed into something we’ve never known.
“And both of their laws, biblically, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, are what God calls an abomination… There will be a time when the Lord says ‘Enough is enough.’”
Keep in mind that red states and theocratic countries have all been impacted by the virus. The…Pope can’t even hold public services anymore, and the Catholic Church is no champion of women’s rights and LGBTQ equality.
So he’s lying. Falwell and Robertson blamed 9/11 on those two things as well. It didn’t go well for their reputations. Today, Stone is just one of a large handful of Christians saying the dumbest things in the midst of a disaster.
But it got worse. He suggested in the same service that blue states, which oppose Trump, are at greater risk of devastation:
“Isn’t it strange, also… We know that coronavirus will go to West Virginia sooner or later—maybe it won’t; it’d be really weird if it never did—but people are praying, and they love God up there, but isn’t it strange that the state that voted Trump in by 68%—the biggest state that voted in him—has no virus?”
…Besides the fact that West Virginia now has a confirmed case, the reason it “avoided” the virus for this long was because of a lack of testing, not because people weren’t affected by it.
“We’ve only had 84 tests in my state” as of Monday, said Joe Manchin, the state’s senior US senator.
“I have over 720,000 elderly. I’ve got over 220,000 that are critically ill under 60 years of age,” Manchin said. “If you put all this together, of the 1,800,000 people (living in West Virginia), I have over a million that could be absolutely, totally devastated by this virus if it hits.“God isn’t rewarding a religious state. If anything, West Virginia will eventually suffer more because it’s led by the Republican Party.
This is idiotic thinking under the guise of religious goodness. Perry Stone’s ignorance is going to give people false comfort and possibly put them in a position to get or spread the virus. He doesn’t care. As long as it puts him in the spotlight.
Our Comment:
A movement with similar rhetoric to that of Perry Stone is going to be what results in the establishment of Sunday laws and puts Sabbath-keepers in the limelight as “law breakers.”
Prophetic Link:
“Yet this very class put forth the claim that the fast-spreading corruption is largely attributable to the desecration of the so-called ‘Christian sabbath,’ and that the enforcement of Sunday observance would greatly improve the morals of society.” The Great Controversy, page 587.