A North Carolina pastor disarmed a gunman with the power of Christ during a New Year’s Eve sermon.
Bishop Larry Wright of Heal the Land Outreach Ministries was in the middle of a New Year’s Eve prayer service when a man entered with a semi-automatic rifle, according to the Fayetteville Observer.
With assaults on churches such as South Carolina’s Emanuel AME Church, Wright had cause for alarm. But the pastor, who is a retired Army sergeant first class, listened to the Holy Spirit instead of his own flesh.
Wright reportedly walked down the aisle in the middle of the sermon and asked: “Can I help you?”
But instead of aiming the rifle at the pastor, the gunman surrendered his weapon and asked for prayer, according to CNN.
“And then I began to minister to him and pray (for) him and talk with him,” Wright says. “… 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. I came down and prayed with him and we embraced. It was like a father embracing a son.”
According to NBC News, the man had the weapon because he intended to rob a bank that same evening.
But God had a different plan.
“He embraced me, and I said, ‘Thank God,'” Wright says. “He said, ‘It could’ve (gone) a whole different way.'”
