Preparing for the Unexpected Security and Survival in Missions Part 2. On the 25th of July 1993, St. James Church of England was attacked in Cape Town. It was a dreadful terrorist atrocity at St. James Church of England which left 11 people dead and 50 wounded. At about 7.30pm on Sunday night, 25 July 1993, while a congregation of about 1,400 listened to a hymn of worship in the largest evangelical church in Cape Town, a group of Apla terrorists, that's Pan-African Congress terrorists, trained in Libya, burst into the church and opened fire with automatic weapons. I noticed the handle of the side door facing the congregation turn and then the doors were kicked open. He said one witness, a black man wearing some kind of overall was standing in the doorway. He was carrying an assault rifle. As he stepped forward, he raised the rifle, cocked it and fired it on full automatic directly into the congregation. Another eyewitness described it this way, I saw this man kick open the door next to the stage and holding his rifle from the hip, he opened up spraying bullets across a wide arc into the packed congregation. But before he even opened fire, two other black men who seemed to be wearing some olive green uniforms, lobbed two hand grenades into the center of the church. And by the way, the winter hand grenades looking like this alone, they'd strapped nails all around them to increase the fragmentation. There was this trail of smoke from the grenades and a few puffs of smoke from the first shots fired. The grenades were still in the air when the firing started. This is the way the church was built. You've got the side hall, you've got the old wing, which is the old church. This is the main church, the stage. Here's the parking area. They parked over here. They entered in this side door. The main door could be seen to be a back door. That's the foyer. And, in fact, my father normally would sit here in his chair, if he was still alive at that time. He was in a wheelchair. They normally had the wheelchair people here. Our man, Charles van Beekhuis, my deputy at the time, was sitting at the back of the church right here, next to this back door. and so he had about 50 yards to fire back at them. As I dived under the pew for cover I heard two grenades explode, I looked up and saw pews sticking up in the air, the firing went on for quite a while and then suddenly everything was quiet. For many years Frontline Fellowship took the Gospel to the war zones but on Sunday the 25th of July 1993 the war zones came to us. Our mission headquarters was just a few metres from St James on the very same road Third Avenue in Kenilworth. Several of our co-workers were actually members. Both my brother and my father were converted at St. James. I'd just begun singing with my daughter, Andrea. I was about to pray with her, putting her to bed, when the phone rang and I heard Marco Thomas tell me, Peter, it's the worst nightmare. St. James has been attacked by terrorists. So as I sped to the church, my mind reeled with implications and I thought of the many friends there and prayed for them. And before I'd even reached the church there was vivid memories of the splattered churches and scenes of massacres that I'd seen in Angola, in Mozambique. And above the roar of the air was wailing sirens of convoys of ambulances and police and fire engines all converged upon 3rd Avenue St. James. Flashing lights and flashing lightning lit up the scene of dazed survivors fleeing the church, weeping, churchgoers praying in the rain, frantic relatives searching for loved ones, particularly as the children had all moved off across the road to the children's centre just before the attack took place. So there's people separated and children trying to find their parents, parents trying to find their children. The tiles in the foyer were smeared with blood. Inside the church, this is the scene that I saw, several bodies lying on the bloodstained carpets. Shrapnel scarred pews, some wooden pews were overturned. There was a hole in the floor where one grenade had landed. Prayer books, music sheets, welcome cards, Bibles were strewn amidst the pools of blood. The ceiling was pockmarked with shrapnel. Rescue workers were trying to move swiftly and efficiently to carry wounded out, caring for them inside the church, people carrying on stretcher waiting ambulances. They were even using broken pews to carry out people who weren't enough stretchers. Pockets of Christians sat or stood holding hands and praying. This man lost his wife, Myrtle Smith died. That's Lorenzo Smith. The police moved pretty swiftly to clear the sanctuary of all but the emergency workers. Sholburn is sitting right at the back of the church there. It gives you a bit of a perspective of the distance he had to use to fire a Stubnose 38 to hit the terrorist at the door who was machine-gunning the congregation. People started being separated for eye-witnessing. You can imagine the chaos trying to organise 1,400 people, of which 50 were seriously injured, 11 were dead, and a whole lot of other people were traumatised. I located several friends and began to help serve tea to survivors and only later as I began to get the different testimonies of those involved did the full scale and horror of the attack really strike me. Mrs Marika Ackerman was shot in the chest at close range. She was the first one to be shot. She is in the very front row. She died about 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital. Marika twice triumphed over cancer. She had started an outreach centre to Khayelitsha. She had initiated an outreach centre to Russian seamen passing to the Harbin Capes. In fact, many of those seamen were there in the church and many of them became casualties too. 17-year-old Richard O'Kill instantly died from a bullet through his head as he flung himself across his two young friends, Lisa and Bonnie, to shield them from the line of fire. They survived, but he did not. But his first instinct was to rescue them. 21-year-old Gerard Harker died instantly. He saw a hand grenade land in the aisle, and you saw how broad those aisles were. and he immediately recognised a lot of people are going to die from this and he flung himself on the grenade and he took the full impact of the grenade in his body. Of course he died instantly but he saved the lives of a lot of people. A police spokesman praised the selfless action of Gerard Harker and said his act of sacrifice undoubtedly saved the lives of many but he didn't hesitate, I mean at that moment he got a second to decide what to do. Greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends. One of the victims crippled in the attack was Dimitri Makagon. This has got to be the most heart-rending case of all. He lost both his legs and one arm. The grenade landed in his left and he survived, but he lost both legs and arm. His right arm had to be amputated. Both his eardrums burst. He was only 23 years old. He was a seaman to raise money for his wedding. Well, the church flew after his mother, his fiancée. They started a fund for them. and he started over and it's an extraordinary testimony. A reader provided them with a home. Gillian Schoenbroecker narrowly escaped death and a piece of shrapnel pierced her lung and artery. Her feet were badly damaged but she sang a hymn to encourage her friends as she lay bleeding on the church floor. Several survivors expressed their amazement that more people had not been killed, and the police investigators agreed. The M26 fragmentary hand grenades had been attached to tins of nails to provide extra shrapnel. If Gerard had not covered the one grenade with his body, many more would have been killed. And if another member of the congregation had not shot back, wounding one of the terrorists, then many, many more would have been murdered. You had five terrorists, they each had assault rifles, with five to six magazines, with 34 rounds in a magazine, or more. They each had four to six grenades. Two grenades were thrown, one magazine was fired. Imagine if all five terrorists had come to bear, and if they'd used several magazines and several more grenades. In fact, they were meant to have a crossfire, But because it was a cold evening, the deacon had locked the one door at the back, which was right next to where Charles was, and Charles heard the door rattling just before the attack, and he almost got up to open the door because someone was trying to get in. He wondered why the deacon wasn't opening it. The deacon was so caught up by the singing, and he didn't turn around and open the door because someone was rattling on the outside to open it. I mean, there's a lot of things that could have been worse. After grenades explode, one of our frontline missionaries, Shaal, returned fire with a snub-nosed .38 revolver, wounding the terrorist who was firing at the congregation. Now Shaal had considered beforehand what to do in this event. You see, you can't start to think, when the crisis occurs, what am I going to do? You've got to have already worked out your plan before the crisis occurs, because when a crisis occurs, your first reaction is numbness. You've got to know your plan. Because of some devotions we'd had, I challenged our folks, and Charles said in his book, Shooting Back, The Right and Duty of Self-Defense, that as Peter had challenged us at the mission to think through scenarios and given stories about the church being attacked in Mozambique and Angola, he had thought many a time he'd sit in St. James and think, what would I do if St. James were attacked now? What if they attacked through this door? What if they attacked through that door? What if this happened? What if that happened? And one thing he thought is, the biggest danger is I don't want to accidentally shoot one of our own people. So the danger-friendly fire was something he had to overrule. So the first thing he said is, if they attack, I drop to my knee, draw my revolver, lean on a pew in front, so that there's no danger of me accidentally firing low. Because everyone should be going down if I've got a clear shot with my both hands together, locked on, I'm going to fire from a kneeling position, leaning on a pew, which is what he did. and 38 snub-nosed revolvers, a small barrel, it doesn't have much range, you would think, but at 50 meters he took out the terrorist at the front door, wounding him in the hand and forcing them to withdraw their attack. The shooting stopped, the attackers neatly fled, Charles then pursued the terrorist in the parking lot. Now, what they would have expected is him to come through this door, because they entered through this door, and they would have seen holding an automatic rifle under the tree by the parking area, levelled, waiting for the people who attacked fleeing out the door. So Sean recognised, because of his military training, you don't go the way they expect, so he kicked open this door, ran to the side and from the cover of this wall fired at them again. And that sent them really running. Which is the correct thing, you don't go through the door they expected. If there's only one door, go out the window. As they fled in the getaway car, it sped into 3rd Avenue and they'd stolen a car and Googled it and said this is the route they used to the Church of Kenilworth and we were in that very same road just up here at 93 3rd Avenue at our mission headquarters. When the police later recovered the terrorist getaway car, the bloodstained seats indicated that at least one of the gunmen was wounded and the DNA helped them secure the conviction. and they finally got three of the terrorists locked up but Desmond Tutu released them all under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. However, they're all dead or in prison again because they then got into more trouble, they killed one another one way or the other, they got involved in more robberies and so on and so forth, so justice got to be done ultimately. Here you can see one of the bullet holes of Charles in the getaway vehicle and of course the Argus put news on all this the very next day. The very next day in on the front page Desmond Tutu was condemning Shaul for what is he doing having a gun in church. The bishop went out of his way to attack the person who prevented the terrorist attack going further and who saved lives. He didn't seem to have the same condemnation for the ones that attacked the church. He said it's just not on having parishioners coming to church with a firearm. Well what do you say about people attacking churches and machine gunning them? If you compare the St. James Massacre with similar atrocities in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, it becomes apparent that many more people would have died if Shahal had not fired back. An official commendation by the Police Commissioner, General Akko, stated, on 25 July 1916, Charles Adrian van Beek endangered his own life in warding off the attack perpetrated on the St James Congregational Kenilworth. His action in pursuing the terrorists, the suspects, on foot and returning fire, preventing further loss of life, won the suspect, was wounded in the incident and was later arrested. Investigations later showed that the Upland terrorists had planned to, immediately after attacking St James, attack nearby Christchurch Kenilworth, which is not even a kilometre away. And that would have caused even more loss of life. And they intended to bar the doors and set the place on fire and leave it with the people, you know, many more to die burning inside. That was the plan in both cases. One person with one snub-nosed revolver with five bullets in it stopped an attack. Stopped two attacks and saved a lot of lives. Hundreds of lives, probably. The resistance experienced at St. James by Charles shooting back and wounding one of the attackers convinced Upler to cancel the attack on Christchurch. which was one of the most vibrant churches in Cape Town at the time. St James and Christ Church together formed the two most vibrant churches in Cape Town at the time. They weren't just attacking any churches, they were attacking the most prominent, effective, evangelistic churches there were in Cape Town with evening services. In numerous reports on the St James Massacre, the questions have been asked, who could possibly want to attack a congregation of Christians worshipping in a church? And what could anyone hope to accomplish through such senseless slaughter? And to these questions we need to add, how should we as believers respond to such terrorist attacks? When I saw the shocking scenes at St. James Church, it immediately brought back similar bloody scenes flooding back into my mind, as someone who spent most of his life serving persecuted churches and war zones. Over the last Well, now it's more than 35 years of missionary work. I've personally come across many similar atrocities, particularly in Angola. At Chilisa Evangelical Church in Angola, Cuban troops shot 150 Christians in one church service. In Rwanda, I've walked knee-deep in corpses. Nigeria, churches being attacked. In fact, in five years, 1,000 churches were attacked by Muslim terrorists in Nigeria, in five years, with 17,000 Christians killed. in five years, just in northern Nigeria. In Sudan, a lot of churches have been attacked. Mozambique, many. I've documented that in the killing fields in Mozambique. Many churches. There's so many cases that I documented and I saw. And then in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, many Mishmis were murdered. Thirteen Mishmis and their children murdered in June 1978 at Elam Mission Station. And they were pacifists. Pacifist Pentecostal British Mishmis. New Adams Farm in Zimbabwe, in 1987, 16 missionaries and their children were murdered by Marxists in Zimbabwe. Lovely people, dedicated to helping the Christians in Zimbabwe. Why would you want to kill such people? Understand communism hates Christianity. Communism hates God. These people hate the work that these people do. And the fact that they were pacifists didn't make them non-targets. It made them even more attractive soft targets because they wouldn't fight back. beautiful mission station at New Adams Farm, destroyed in 1987. We knew some of these people. And the testimonies of how they prayed before the slaughter. This is the funeral service. And it's a terrible thing when they target the most innocent and helpless and generous people of all. We've had Bob Scott here, who wrote the book on saving Zimbabwe about the New Adams Farm massacre. And so with what has happened with the attacks on the church in Nigeria, Nigeria must have the highest number of attacks on churches in the world. Why so much in Nigeria? Let me tell you, it's because you've got the biggest confrontation in Islam and Christianity in the world. Nigeria was a majority Muslim country which is now a majority Christian country and the Muslims are furious and the church is being attacked on churches which are predominantly Muslim converts. It's mostly, it's all in Northern Nigeria actually, and it's churches of people from a Muslim background, what we call Muslim background believers, that are being targeted. Islam is losing the war, and these terror attacks are their desperate reaction to the fact that they're losing millions. Millions of Muslims have turned to Christ in recent years, and this is the reaction. You may recall, if you were aware of what was going on 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, there weren't that many attacks on churches. That was a rare event. Why is it getting so intense now? Because we've never before lived in a time when so many Muslims are coming to Christ. We're living in the greatest time of harvest of Muslims turning to Christ in history. This is their counterattack. This is why churches in Sudan have been bombed. Hundreds of churches in Sudan bombed. Why? In Sudan, more Muslims are coming to Christ than anywhere else in the world. Hundreds of churches have been attacked in Egypt. Again, the church in Egypt is dynamic. It's powerful. Ethiopia, Eritrea, churches in Somalia were all destroyed by 1993. You see, Satan isn't going to bother to persecute a weak, need-compromising church. I mean, why bother? They're doing Satan's work already. But a dynamic church that's growing, well, they could easily be a target. Armenia. Armenian Christians attacked up in the country of Armenia. That's in the Corpatius Mountains where Noah's Ark is. You could relate literally hundreds of similar atrocities against Christian churches worldwide, now in Iraq, Syria. The fact is churches are often the target of Muslim extremists and Marxist terrorists. What is the aim of the persecutors? Not to kill Christians. Sending believers to meet the Lord in heaven hardly achieves the purposes of evil. No. The aim of persecution is to shock Christians into fear and inactivity, to paralyze and neutralize the Church. It's a desperate attempt by a defeated enemy. They know they're losing the battle. Islam can't beat Christianity. They're trying to use violence to stop us evangelizing. to get us to stop standing firm for Christ, to try and intimidate us into silence and compromise, if they can. Only if you give in to this fear, only if you allow yourself to be intimidated into silence and compromise, does the enemy achieve his objectives. Now this should encourage us not to betray the faith for which the martyrs have died. The only appropriate response to massacres like this is to be faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and His word, the Bible. That is what Christians have done through the centuries. We dare not allow the fear of man to divert us from fulfilling the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself, making disciples, teaching obedience to all things the Lord has commanded. Should any crisis or tragedy, we need to turn to God and cast our burdens and frustrations upon Him in prayer. I tell you, I wept more over the St. James Massacre than any of the other atrocities I've seen in my life. I don't know why it affected me so much more. I've seen worse in Rwanda and I've seen much worse in Nigeria and Sudan, Mozambique and Angola. But it was so close to home. It was in my town. It was in our street. It was in our neighborhood. It was a church where my brother and father had been converted. There were so many of our friends there. St. James' attack really hit our mission hard. We all were wriggly throughout the day, just breaking down tears. It was just overwhelming. their impact, how dare they, their outrage. I remember Charles saying to me, you know, God forgive me Peter but I get so angry when I think of what those people have done. I said God forgive you if you don't feel angry. There's something wrong with you, you need a heart transplant. If you don't feel angry about people attacking innocent women and children in a church sanctuary during a time of worship, then you need a heart transplant, maybe a brain transplant too. I mean, what a foolish thing that the amounts of people who came out after it saying, you know, oh, people came up to Charles and said, Charles, how would you feel if you'd actually killed that man? So I said, great. I was crying because I'd lost, I'd run out of bullets. He said, I'm sorry I didn't have a magazine, you know, fed weapon and had a few spare magazines. All I had was a revolver and the five shots and I snubbed his revolver. He said, and people are horrified. Do you mean you would have... been happy to have killed him? Yes! I mean the goal was to stop the terrorist attacking my friends and neighbours. Well of course Shaul wanted to stop them and he was the only man in that church who was armed, prepared and had a plan. Maybe some others were armed. But here's the only one who actually responded. He had a plan, he was prepared, and the moment the attack happened, if he had waited a few minutes and worked out a plan, hundreds more would have died. If you listen to the recordings, the church service was being recorded. Just about 5 seconds into the attack he fired back, which is pretty good. Charles at the moment burst in and I started shooting, he thought it was a church play because the youth group would do strange things, you know. And he said when he saw a piece of somebody's skull with hair attached to it flying through the air and splinters from the puce, he suddenly realised it was a real attack. You can't do that in a youth skit. It took him just a few seconds to realize, this is real. But instantly then he responded. So it's about five seconds for the first shots of the enemy to call Charles' response. Which isn't bad, considering. But we can get it better. We can respond quicker than that. If we practice, actually. How did we respond? I mean, I've had people say to me, how do you handle it? How did you handle seeing what you saw in Rwanda and Mozambique? And I said, praying the Psalms. writing the books, speaking up for them, ensuring they didn't die in vain, making sure that we exposed the enemy, trying to make sure it didn't happen elsewhere, defunding Filimo, getting Norway and America to cut off their funds for Filimo and Mozambique through the in the killing fields of Mozambique. Senator Jesse Helm read my whole report into the Congressional Record and got America to defund this communist government in Mozambique, and that really stopped the persecution dead. I mean, there were things we did for getting prisoners out of jail, making a difference. OK, we can't save everyone, but we can save some. We can't get all the prisoners out, but we can get some of the prisoners out. We can't save every church, but we can save some. But doing something practical, that's how we've handled it. If I wasn't doing anything, if I went back after what I saw in Mozambique and never went and did anything, then I think I would have nightmares, guilt, huge depression, but I've done everything I could. And that's how I can live with it. Charles can sleep well at night because he did what he could at that day. And he saved lives. Although, as he said, he deeply regrets it, not having trained more, not having more ammunition on him. He didn't even have spare ammunition in his car. He had those five rounds and he shot them all. And the terrorist fled and he thought, I don't have one round left. he's walking around with a swab in his hand saying all he can do is throw this at somebody now. Many survivors of similar atrocities have found tremendous strength and comfort through praying the Psalms. That's what I learned also from Richard Wilmbrot, Tortured for Christ. One verse in particular stands out. Jesus said to her, I'm the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies. One Ukrainian seaman Demetrev Vladimir testified how Maritza Ackerman had led him to Christ. I've been a seaman for 28 years and never in this time have I met such a warm and kind-hearted person as Maritza and Darvi Ackerman. I met Maritza in October last year, my first time in Cape Town. Maritza gave me some papers to read about the Lord. Before that I was an atheist. Maritza invited me and my crew to church and our attitudes changed as we began to read and discuss the Bible. Just three weeks before the massacre, 72 seamen, Russian seamen, had made public commitments to Christ. Maritza's favorite verse was Philippians 3, verse 10. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and a fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death. That was her chosen favorite verse, which is preached at our funeral. Other members of the church share these testimonies. Possessions and position are no longer important to us. These things last only for a short time. When we keep our mind in God, God keeps our mind at peace. God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. On the Order of Service bulletins handouts at the main funeral service on the 29th of July, the passage was quoted, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any past will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Such traumatic experiences remind us of the reality of the spiritual war in which each one of us is involved. There is a life and death struggle between the kingdom of God and the force of Satan. Outside of man, outside of Christ, man is desperately wicked. But it is a point of unto man once to die and after that comes the judgment. God is just. He will ultimately reward the faithful and he will punish the wicked. That is a tremendous encouragement to people who suffer. We need to live our lives daily for the glory of God to the fullest. We don't know which will be our last day. you only have one life and it will soon be past and only what's done for Jesus Christ will last so with that kind of introduction we need to consider church security I would say every church today needs a security ministry if it's a small church maybe just a security deacon but you need to have at least one person preferably a team and the bigger the church or mission the more the team who thinks security Nigeria has now church security because how can they not? They've had so many attacks. And let me tell you Nigeria, the biggest churches are the biggest targets. They have driven in like this church here that drove a suicide bomb car right into the church on Sunday morning so that it literally exploded at the pulpit area, on the stage area. This is a car that landed against the stage area of a mega, mega church, this church that we're talking about here. That's the kind of thing they do. Sometimes it's a small church. These churches tend to get a firebombing attack. You see these windows? One thing you can do with the windows is put mesh over it. Mosquito nets. That's good, because the old mosquitoes are there too, to keep up the mosquitoes. But if it's a strong type, it can keep a petrol bomb or a grenade out too, which will bounce back. There's some simple things we can do to improve security at some churches. Security gates, slam-lock gates, things like that. This has taken Egypt. Christians whose churches have been burned down by the Muslim Brotherhood. There has been a dramatic increase in attacks on churches. But notice that deaths involved in incidents have not increased as sharply as the attacks because many more churches have been taking precautions and their response times have been better, getting fire brigade, getting armed response teams. Now, are there biblical principles for defending the innocent? Yes. Deuteronomy 22 verse 8, you must build a parapet around your roof. Why? They had flat roofs and people used the flat roofs for entertainment. But of course somebody could accidentally fall off the roof. So you build a parapet around it. Just like putting a fence around your pool to protect from someone who can't swim wandering in bags and then drowning. So also, as John was mentioning about the goring ox, if you've got an ox that's dangerous, you must make precautions because any of your property, you're responsible if that caused damage. So if I park my car and don't put it properly in safe with the handbrake on, or in park as the case may be, and the car rolls down the road and runs over somebody pushing a tram or causes damage to somebody's property, I'm responsible. Now the fact is to say, well you know the handbrake was loose. Well it's my duty to fix the handbrake or put a brick or two behind my wheels. I mean there's all sorts of things you can do, but you're responsible for your property. Even if you didn't foresee the damage, you should be responsible with your property. And that also includes your home and your church. 1 Timothy 5 says, if any man does not make provision for the members of his own household, he has denied the faith and he's worse than an infidel. So if I, as a father, fail to make provision for the protection of my children, because providing education, accommodation, food, love, spiritual guidance is not enough if I don't provide protection. I mean, what good is everything else if we don't provide protection? Because that's pretty serious. And as I said at our security workshop at the mission, at the camp, Any man who doesn't fight to protect his young is worse than an animal, because there's not an animal on the planet that I'm aware of that won't fight to protect his young. So there's something radically wrong with these Christians who don't believe in fighting to protect their members of their own family. Shame upon them. Rescue those being taken away to death. Hold back those stumbling towards the Lord. If you say, behold, we did not know that, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch of his soul know it? Will he not repay each man according to his work? Proverbs 24 makes it clear, God weighs our heart, and if we try to make an excuse why we're not rescuing those being perishing, if we use this for pro-life events, and of course it's valid, it's just as valid if you see an attack coming on a church, like imagine if your home church was being attacked, if you could do something to stop it, and you try to make an excuse, does not God, who weighs your heart, who protects your life, who determines whether you live or die. I mean, this is actually a threat. God's saying, I'm the one who determines whether you live or die and when you live or die. You don't care for the suffering and those being led away to death, those who are innocent. I mean, God's basically threatening you. I'm the one who determines whether you live or die. You don't care about others. Why should I care about you? In Acts 22 verse 25 you see that when Paul was stretched out to be whipped, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned? He appealed to the law and of course it wasn't legal. He used his Roman citizenship when it suited him and it saved him from a flogging, which is an example of use what lawful means you have to defend yourself against attack. There is, and the Geneva Bible notes say, there is no reason why we may not use lawful means which God has given us in order to repel or prevent an injury. In fact, you're obligated to. Do not commit murder, the sixth commandment, if you read the Westminster study notes, the Westminster catechism, you will see how it says that because murder is wrong, everything you can do to prevent murder is good. And it's a breach of the sixth commandment against murder. for you to put any restriction on someone's right or ability to obtain weapons for self-defense and to use those weapons for self-defense. So every government that hinders people's rights to self-defense or obtaining weapons for that purpose is guilty of breaching the sixth command. Jesus in Luke 22 verse 36 said, Now let the one who has a money bag take it, likewise a knapsack, and let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. In other words, don't go in a field without a sword. And this shows that self-defense is lawful and it's proper for people to prepare for their wants, and this includes ministers and missionaries as well. Self-defense is lawful. We read in Exodus 22 verse 2, if a thief breaks into the house that might be struck so that he dies, there's no guilt for his bloodshed. Now that's a thief. It's night time, you couldn't tell. I mean, how can you tell in the dark if he's a thief or he could be a murderer, could be a pedophile, could be a rapist? You can't tell. You kill him. You find out later he wasn't even armed, he was just a thief. There's no guilt. How much more right is it to kill a terrorist, a rapist, a murderer or a kidnapper in broad daylight? So, these are the case laws of Exodus. when Nehemiah 4 when Sanabalt and Tobinah Arabs and Ammonites and Ashtonites heard that the repairing of the wall of Jerusalem was going forward they were angry and they plotted to fight against Jerusalem to cause confusion and Nehemiah prayed to the Lord and said that God is protection against the Danites so to make provision against those who make threats is biblical as shown by Nehemiah 4 in fact he told to fight do not fear them but fight for your family for your wives and your children, your husbands, your wives, your mother, your sister. Protect them. And we read in Jeremiah 3, Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord is great and awesome. Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your homes. There is without a shadow of a doubt a rising hostility against Christians across our country and across the world. Biblical world views are hated. By who? Well, let me think of the people who have given me death threats. Homosexuals, gay, GB, pink, inquisition creeps, pimps, Hustler magazine, amongst others, because of writing our book on finding freedom from what all of you have played, communists galore, Muslims. We have Muslims at this gate giving death threats. I've had Muslims sending us faxes, emails, threatening to have me not just killed but cut up into pieces and fed to hyenas and dogs to eat while alive. And we had a court case over that. and I took these people to court over this whole nonsense and in fact the local police station here said they pray for us every Friday and the station commander instructed me to always be armed, they wanted us to change, for me to change my name, to go into the witness protection program, to vanish off the public landscape and I said I can't do that, we've got a public ministry. He said can you afford bodyguards? I said no. I'll have to be my own bodyguard and say, well, you better always be armed. Watch your back. And the police station is concerned for us. And they've come past regularly to check on us. At one stage, for a year after the death threats, which we got in 2005, they were coming every half an hour, around the clock, just checking up and keeping a presence. And there was no doubt Muslims were trying to get us. Governor Sadat has given death threats. Homosexuals, pimps, pro-aborts, communists, a whole range of secular humanists, atheists and communists want to kill us. Let's face it. They hate God. They hate Christ. And if they hate the Lord, they'll hate us too. Servant is not above the master. So we should understand that churches are now under attack. How many churches need to be attacked? It's even been attacked in our city. It's not just going to stay in Nigeria. in Egypt, Sudan. They're attacking churches in America. It's happened. I don't know if you've heard, but even Youth for the Mission in Colorado headquarters was attacked. There have been a couple of churches where the security guard drilled a terrace before they could kill anyone in the church. A person burst in and started to scream and they've got people armed and ready. I've trained many people in many churches around America for over 20 years in what to do and how to respond and how to prevent these things happening. We've trained security ministries for a whole number of missions around this country and continent because churches have been under attack for a long time and it's increasing. There are churches now that offer shooting ranges. I've been to churches as a guest speaker at the missions and history conferences where they have shooting ranges as part of the church property and churches where they will go after church such as at Joseph's Old Church in Omaha, Nebraska at Dominion Covenants. They took me out for a shooting range straight after our seminar there and there are churches that have got farms, have got training and that's a good idea. What are the contributors to your church's risk level? I mean what chances your church has of being attacked? The bigger the church, the more likely it is to be a target. Muslims particularly like to attack the biggest church in town. So the biggest are a big threat. Which is why Uncle Erlo called us way back in the early 90s to train this security team. Uncle Erlo had so many death threats it was just not funny. Especially in the 90s. Massive amount. The chance of KSB being a target was huge. And in fact a lot of the people were attacked and some of the people got ambushed and had multiple bullet wounds all around them. Survived, incredibly. But they shot back. Your location and accessibility of your church. The closer your church is to major roads and freeways, like that was the thing with St. James, it wasn't that far from major freeways for them to get away. If you are publicly a gun-free zone, they are ecstatic. Terrorists and criminals prefer soft targets. Unarmed targets, much better. Criminals prefer gun-free zones. Makes their work environment safer. Your public position, if you are against Islam or sodomy, meaning the gay, GB, pink imposition, homosexual gender, if you actually believe in the Bible, your threat level has just gone up. If you don't have a visible security presence, your threat level goes up. In Nigeria, there are many churches that have now sandbagged positions with machine gun nests outside the church. No jokes. And they even have metal detectors, wands, cars get parked a distance away, they have concrete blocks preventing any cars approaching close to the church. That's normal now in many parts of Nigeria. Rate of attacks on churches in the area should get you to really be concerned, that's why Nigerians ask us for advice and security, because they know about it, the Egyptians know all about it. A few points, do you know in Egypt, no church was attacked for a long time, because Mubarak, the previous head of Egypt, had soldiers outside every church in the whole of Egypt, 20 fires a day. And after Obama and Clinton as Secretary of State overthrew Mubarak in the 2011 so-called Arab Spring, and the Muslim Brotherhood were brought to power with American aid, they then attacked hundreds of churches, killed vast amounts of people, because all the soldiers pulled off the security details on the churches. We've got the same thing now going on in Syria. The present Syrian government is secular, they protect the churches, they've got soldiers outside the churches, and the American government under Obama for the last eight years has been supporting the terrorists, such as ISIS, who are attacking the churches. So you've got the ridiculous situation now in Syria, where the Russians are supporting the churches, and the Americans are supporting the terrorists attacking the churches. That's what's been happening in the last eight years under Obama. I'm looking forward to that changing. Level of cultural hatred towards Christians? There's a lot of hatred towards Christians in the Muslim world, in the communist world, and in the homosexual world, in the humanist world, and in Hollywood. What's the motivations of attacks on you? Ideology, like secular humanism or communism. Religion, like Islam. Revenge, such as you just won some Muslims to Christ. The local imam got converted. They want revenge. And who do you blame? The local church. Death Wish? We had death threats. I remember Sean taking a telephone call from the editor, publisher of Hustler magazine. He said he was going to pump hundreds of thousands of rounds into investigating to find every bit of dirt and skeleton in Peter Hammond's closet. He was going to destroy Peter Hammond. It's going to dedicate its life to the destruction of Peter Hammond because I'd bought out the book Finding Freedom from the Pornography Plague and we'd launched Operation Clean Sweep and we actually persuaded 8,000 shops in South Africa to no longer stock pornography that had been stocking it. So, Hustler was so angry they published a front page attack on me. Peter Hammond, blue-eyed, Bible smuggler. And they had a whole page attacking me in the editorial. You know, basically you want to spit in my grave and all that sort of thing. You know, the hatred that some people have towards people like Taron who make a stand against abortion or pornography is huge. And you could just carry on. There's lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of other things you can say. But how many churches need to burn? It's not hundreds, now it's thousands. So what kind of threats are there? Bombers can come with a car bomb. How easy is it for a car to access your church? You'll notice our extraordinary security measures at this mission and why we've got such strong gates and the lights and cameras and everything else. It's to prevent a person driving a vehicle. But even if they do, we've got the kind of windows that can withstand a truck bomb. Even a truck bomb from eight feet will be ineffective against our windows. We are told. But they've got a vest, could wear a suicide bombing vest, they could carry a bag which they're going to throw for mass casualties. Then you get active shooters, they're going to come with weapons. Then you have assassins who aim to kill one person. You get kidnappers, you get arsonists. Why you need smoke detectors, armed response, and things like this. and fire extinguishers and fire drills. And then there's armed tides robbers. This is a new problem. It's not going to be a problem in our mission because we never take up an offering. But big churches like Raymond and so on, they've had armed robberies during Sunday morning worship, after offerings taken, because they've taken more money than some shopping centres. I mean, it's a big haul. It's bigger than a bank robbery in some cases. If you head to a megachurch at Sunday, in fact, they found, his people, one of the biggest megachurches in Cape Town, one stage, they found the head of security was stealing the church blind. The head of security was actually They got just home and they found all these tithing envelopes and so on, piled there, you know, open. I mean, this man had been, yeah, make no mistake, stealing from churches, big business. I'm just forgetting the amounts, but I think according to Operation World and Patrick Johnson, each year, theft from churches, within churches and ministries, is over 20 billion US dollars a year. 20 billion, with a B. not Zim Dollars, American Dollars. So theft from missions and ministries is colossal. Don't think they won't come in church and steal it. In fact, the church we were going to in Pylons, they had a month's worth of their offering stolen. And it was announced in church that the treasurer had been robbed in Howard Centre, taken to the bank. A month's worth of tithes and offerings. When I spoke to the posthus, I was shocked. I hadn't heard of anything like this happening at Howard Centre. And I said, why did this happen at Howard Centre? And he said, well, actually, she wasn't robbed. It was one of her relatives at home, but we just said that to cover up for the treasurer. So now it's not just theft, but inside theft, and then there's lying from the pulpit and a Sunday morning worship service to cover up the inside theft. And that's just what we know. Then of course you get child molesters. Do you know in America one of the big problems they've now got is because they have children's church and all the kiddies go off to a separate area and then they've got the babysitting things and they've got the baby sections on. You've got people coming to take the child who aren't the parents. Kidnaps that have now got very serious receipting, identification measures. Some of these churches are huge, they don't even know everyone. In a small church, everyone knows one another. In a huge church, this can happen. They've had children kidnapped on Sunday morning from the church creche. And then you have divorces where there's custody issues and the husband comes or whatever and takes the child out while the wife is in the worship and next thing you've got lawsuits and the church being sued because they let this man who had no right to take the child away. These things can happen. Can you see why today every church, even a small one, should have a security ministry? Big churches better have a big security ministry. And then you get hostile reporters, bloggers, character assassins who set up whole websites to attack people. The more prominent they are, the more websites are dedicated against them. There's websites dedicated to attacking church leaders who died a long time ago, like Martin Luther. James Kindy had who knows how many. James Dobson was averaging six death threats a day. at the height of his work in Focus Family. Why? Why James Dobson? He's about as nice a person as you can think of. He made a stand for marriages between one man and one woman for life. That's enough to get every homo in the business hating the poor guy. He had six bodyguards, two on duty at any one time. They had a homosexual lunatic burst into the foyer of focus on the family and shoot up the foyer. Now they had an armed security guard who responded quickly. I was there shortly after, they showed me the bullet holes all over the foyer area. Focus on the family! I mean this is about as tame as it gets. I wouldn't even call them vaguely seriously extreme at all. Then you get disruptive individuals, the people who trespass. I don't know if you might have seen the, shortly afterwards at the Strange Fire conference, some prophet stormed into John MacArthur's church, denouncing him and disrupting churches. John MacArthur didn't seem too bothered, but it's a big church. They had their ushers come and usher this man out. But this can happen. We've had our conferences where we've had people try to hijack our conference during Q&A time, not shut up. And I've on a number of occasions had to say to some of my people, like, remove those individuals. You've got to do that. There's people who will not shut up and you've got to physically, bodily carry them out and lock them out. These things can happen. May not happen all the time. So how do you identify a threat? Well, is he a stranger? And if he is known, are there any known concerns? I mean, there's some people you know that this person is just a troublemaker. Is the person armed, openly or secretly? Can you tell if a person is armed or not? What does non-verbal communications tell you? Why is he here? You can ask a person. What are they carrying? Are they doing something unusual? Are they wearing baggy clothes, carrying a large heavy bag? That could be a bit strange, especially in summer. Why is this person wearing a big overcoat? Do they have anyone with them? Wife and kids would look reassuring. Two or three other scary looking guys may look suspicious. Someone dressed like this, don't let them in. Yep, I wouldn't let these guys in either, I think. If they're wearing rags over their heads or balaclavas, that's a pretty good sign that they're up to no good. Carrying things like this, probably don't have any good intentions at all. But there are ways of spotting how a person walks You can tell if a person's wearing an ankle holster, a belt holster, a shoulder holster, the way, if they're running, how they will tend to conceal or hold their weapon so it's not jostling around too much. You can see the bulges. There's different ways how you can see a person adjusting where they might have a weapon. You should be able to. My wife's often been tickled about the fact that she can ask me, does the person have a wedding ring or engagement ring, and I have no idea. I never notice. Well, didn't you notice where they're wearing a wedding ring engagement? Nope. But I could tell you if a person's armed, what they're armed with, and if a flag's upside down and a hall full of flags. I mean, those things I notice. I can notice immediately who's armed or not armed in any room. But if they're wearing a wedding ring or what their shoes wear, who knows? So we all notice what we are looking for. But if you're in the security ministry, your job is to look for. Indicators if the person's armed or not. Now being armed doesn't mean he's a bad person. It's just you need to know who's armed and who isn't and to be able to respond accordingly. There's all sorts of ways of identifying suicide bombers. Loose clothing, bodies disproportionately larger than their head or feet, of course they're wearing a whole lot of explosives around here, you should be able to tell. There's a robotic walk, stiff movements. There's the way how, of course, if they're wearing a backpack that's harder. There's a sort of tunnel vision, they get very fixated, they might even be on drugs. No response to a call. But there's different ways. You can also bump into people to sort of test if they're armed and things like that. So, different scenarios. Look at the church like this. Target. There are no ends of entrances and exits in the average church. So, I mean, if you consider the church, Okay, there's your worship service area. So, you could have attack teams attacking from all kinds of ways. From the front, from the back, from the side. There's many churches that don't lock their doors during the worship service. That's changing. There's many parts of the church. I mean, there's the children's centre, there's the creche area that you need to consider. There's some churches like this, the older style, it's a little bit harder to get it. We've put in now these elevators and so on but you've got to see are the side doors protected? Is their deacon responsible for looking out the front door? With the parking areas you've got multiple areas to think about because normally there's three or four entrances to the average church. very hard to control. Now in this mission you can see we're pretty concerned about controlling access and we've got security gates over each door for good reason. I mean missions are more targets than even churches. But access here is more limited. Very few churches have secure perimeter, exterior perimeter, internal perimeter, including ability to seal off different areas with sliding doors and what have you. But consider you've got these churches that meet in a shopping mall for example. Very simple, one entrance. There might not even be a back exit. So you're very weak. Now, an unknown person. Make eye contact. You might even sort of frisk them by bumping into the person, as you can sometimes tell. Ask them questions. Be friendly, but I mean, you can pretty quickly tell do they have friends in the church, where they live, what's the purpose of the visit, what are they doing, where they work, where they worship. You can find out before the person even gets into the sanctuary. You can delay them, engage them in conversation, you can even ask the person to wait here, usher them to a seat near a trained person who knows how to restrain them if they start to do something. You can cause for help. There's a whole bunch of things. You can monitor someone who looks suspicious. I mean, how many suspicious people are there in an average congregation? Well, in a big church, a lot. Which means you need a bigger security team. You can, if you have reasons of suspicion, ask them to leave, accompany them off the property or initiate a lockdown. We've had here at the mission when an entire crate of beer bottles, or maybe a couple of crates, were smashed right over the front area of the driveway. Completely, we couldn't drive in and out without going over hundreds of broken glass pieces. And so one of our other missionaries and I, we put on a bulletproof vest, put our jackets over, went outside. swept everything up, got it all out, I mean hosed it down, and then we saw for several months our security signs would be ripped off. And so we drilled them in, then they were harder to rip off, but they would get ripped off readily and we were going through a stage of replacing these almost weekly. Then they never bothered again. It was like they were testing our reaction. And then there was a time of a vehicle parked right outside and a chap was Well there were two of them, brand new twin cab Bucky pickup truck hood up looking spotless vehicle, might have just driven off the shop floor and they're both on their cell phones and they're both looking right down our driveway, the hallway. They parked right on the other side of the road and they were on their phones and they were plainly observing us. We called the local police, Rondebosch police came and asked them what's going on, they disappeared very quickly. We had some folks out here parked right just outside the entrance And when I got, again you know you used to check around in the chamber, vests on, jackets over, walked outside, may we help you, oh we've run out of fuel, told where the nearest petrol station is and they just bit very quickly off that without having gone to get extra petrol. I saw for a while going home on the common, on both sides, it'd be a Mercedes and some Muslim-looking person with a newspaper on his cell phone watching everything I was doing, and, you know, again phone the police, they came, spoke. We just had to show we were alert, we were responsive, and they stopped us after a while. Our police station told us that the order went out in all the mosques in Cape Town, just leave Peter Hammond alone, he's giving Everything you do, it gets published, you're just helping the cause of the Christians. We're not doing our cause any good, just leave them alone. And because we've published everything, like Slavery, Terrorism and Islam, 1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition, 4th edition, and I put the details, and I even put in the, we put on our website the death threats, everything. So we turned everything they did against us, instead of an intimidation, we turned it to counter-propaganda to embarrass them. Until I realized after a while, not a good idea. Now where did I learn this idea from? My friends in East New York. Paul Negrut and Nick Grubieca of East New York in Romania, they said to me, Peter, when a communist take over your country, the last thing you can do is afford to go in the shadows. If you go in the shadows, they'll kill you, they'll disappear, no one will ever hear from you again. You've got to keep a high profile, you've got to have a lot of overseas contacts, and you've got to publish everything they do. That way, if they try to remove you, like Richard Wilmer, they couldn't get rid of Richard Wilmer easily, because he had published too much. They had to put him into exile, because he was too well known in the West. A whole lot of other people just disappeared and died, because they weren't known. And they had a whole lot of ways of doing that too. So our friends in East New York told us, before 1994, how to deal with these sort of people. Have you even practiced a lockdown at your church? Or your mission? So, if things become violent, If shots are fired, what's the first thing you need to do? The non-combatants in a church situation need to get on the floor. In this mission, they first must lock off, seal off the different offices and so on, and then get on the floor, phone for help and so on. Security Team A moves towards the threat. Security Team B secures the entry points and prepares to support A if they need support. And Team C provides instruction to the body, directs the combatants, not part of the security team, and forms new teams if necessary to coordinate new activities. So, for example, ABCs. You've got your advance team, your backup team, your cover team. ABC. Pink triangle, advance, or red triangle. Blue square, backup. Sort of think solid. Regardless of what's happening, they stay with the main body, they maintain security, provide information, structure the body. So for example, in our mission, we've got our advanced team who will respond to the threat. We've got our backup team who secure this area. We've got our cover team, especially IT, IT officer, we've got close up TV cameras, and they will maintain communication with fire brigade, security company, police, and so on, as needed, and if necessary to us. So, here you've got your church. You've got your three access points. You've got your A, B, C, D. So, in a church, let's assume the pastor's part of the, he's got to provide cover, Congress, you've got someone else's arm ready to provide a cover. You've got your people ready to handle a threat, both at the front and towards the back. He can deal with anyone, say, coming in the back doors. They can deal with people coming in front doors. So in a church, your first response to this is an attack comes, and there's three potential ways in. So the cover team protects the people in the church. You've got your backup team providing backup for the support team who go out immediately to face the threat or to neutralize the threat, as the case may be. And they've got to consider on each side. The teams, there's a big church, so they've got three access points, so they've got to consider securing each of the three access points. And there are different scenarios for this, whether you're going into the parking areas or you're just going to secure the building, as the case may be. This is not unusual, here we are in Kenya. They do have security, because churches have been attacked in Kenya. So they've got to have security. Universities have been attacked. Schools have been attacked. So now it's not unusual to find an African-American church, it's the biggest church in Kenya, having security access, armed guards even, at the gates of a church. This is not unusual, now in Nigeria or Kenya. In fact, in Kenya, they will want you and search you for getting on a bus, getting in a little taxi, getting into, I mean like the size Kombi or bus that we use here, they would want you on getting into them. Going into a little shop, going into church, all of it. So plans are needed, different plans, you've got to be flexible. You've got a low security plan where everything is normal, you've got a medium security plan with a general danger in the area, you have a high security plan when there's a specific credible serious threat against your church or leaders. In 2005 this mission had high security specific credible death threats for Muslim radicals against our mission. That's when we put up extra security, perimeter defense, laminated our windows, organized lockdown drills and so on. So from 2005 we went to a far higher level of protection and that's the year we published Labor, Terrorism and Islam. A lot of threats came and our mission was really under serious attack at that stage. And Our mission base in Sudan, we got bombed, you can see some of the shrapnel in the front, like in our veranda, just reminding you of how peaceful and tolerant Islam is. So, you've got different types of security, you've got your invisible security, they all look friendly and so on, but they can be packing weapons and be able to respond well, they might be veterans of foreign wars for that matter. This is highly visible security, I mean that's sort of, stay away. Our front gate sort of says, go away. So you need to have some elements in your security plans. Where does your main security perimeter begin? No question this mission, we've got a solid exterior perimeter and then we've got an interior perimeter and then we've got extra cordoned off security areas. You've got to have an emergency medical plan. Where's your local hospital? We didn't have to travel far here. Bigger problem when we were in Sudan, we were 16km from the nearest hospital at our mission base in Sudan. but we could get there. Do you know the local nearest helicopter landing zone? If you're in a field that helps, if you want Mission Aviation Fellowship to fly in and help you out, you've got to know your local LZ or landing zone. GPS coordinates always help. You've got to instruct members on arrival or departure procedures. Are visitors allowed? Do you pat people down? Do you check if they're carrying any weapons? Who is final tactical authority during the operations? There should be, in any church or mission, someone who is senior in charge of security. Whether your church continues to operate publicly or whether you go underground during times of high persecution, this is something Christians in Egypt and Syria have to consider now. Some of the churches are only operating without advertising. Others are more open. If you go into a phone book you won't find our address and so on. We can't do that. You'll see we don't put a physical address on our literature. Average church can't do that. They're trying to invite people. They must be open. So you've got to have a balance between security and how you can protect your people. So you need to create a security perimeter and a buffer zone, an entry point. So here we've got an outer security, we've got inner security, then we've got inner inner security as well. If we need to seal off points, our external perimeter's been breached, and even if our inner perimeter's been breached, we still have fallback zones and we can, as you might have noticed, why is there a slam-lock gate in this position? There's choke points and so on. And this is what you've got to think of, an ABC, advance, backup, cover, security team arrangements. We need multiple levels of security for different threat levels. So those are some of the issues when it deals with security. Are there any questions at all? Notice Nehemiah had an armed god, a trained god, an organized god, a motivated god, a vigilant guard who were ongoing, most of them, well almost all the men were involved, and they scaled the threat. They scaled with the threat, they elevated their response. Generally they were overkill, they were very visible because of the threat while they were building the walls around Jerusalem and the threat to the Arabs and so on around. They were very visible, working with a tool in one hand and carrying a weapon in the other basically. Great. As far as I know, concealed weapons aren't allowed in New Zealand. Correct. So if you have a weapon, whether it's a handgun, which is even harder to get hold of, a rifle and such, they are meant to be locked in your gun cabinet. Where you can't use them when you need them. Yes. So you have this. Fortunately, at this stage, we don't have much of a high security risk at all in New Zealand. But that can change. What do you do in a situation like that when your security teams do not have weapons? That's correct. You've got limited options. But you do have options. Obviously the best, quickest way of neutralizing a terrorist threat is with a firearm. That's why presidents like to be protected by people who are equipped with firearms. And it's a bit of a cheat that the people who are surrounded by armed security tell the rest of us we can't have even our own security, which is shameful. But OK, they can train in unarmed combat, they can train in different forms of fighting, they can have stun guns, these sort of electric shockers, I hope that's allowed in New Zealand, because while that means you've got to close quickly to the people, it takes a lot of courage to do it, but nevertheless, if you go, remember the stun gun electric shocker? Does anyone have an electric shocker here? Could demonstrate. So these electric shockers, if you just touch someone, they'll get a shock and jump back. That's not going to stop them. But if you hold that shocker like over the heart for about two or three seconds, they'll probably go unconscious. Don't kill them, just knock them out. If you put on the neck, they'll go unconscious. But you've got to hold it there for about 2 or 3 seconds. So it can't just be a touch. So an effective stun gun electric shocker, the more you go for the neck or the heart area, the more you knock them out. And that's what you want. You want them to be out for a while. But that needs a good 2 or 3 second solid hold. You're keeping your thumb on the button and you're pushing the electric shock in. So the goal is to knock the person out. Of course a very big person, hold it even longer. So, electric stun guns, that's something. They've got these extended batons where you can pull out a little baton and you flicker the wrist and it becomes an extended baton which then you can knock weapons out of people's hands and so on. They use those a lot in, for example, British museums, they're protecting things. They have these What do you call them? You sort of extend the concentratus posture which you concentrate out and those things can break arms if you apply them correctly. So they will aim at elbows and hands and things like this and quickly disarm. Again, that's not as good as having a gun in your hand but it's something. But what you are going to have to have in your churches. Generally speaking I think churches should go for laminated windows. Why? Because in an explosion, fragmented glass does most injuries. Church Street bombing in 1983, more people were killed by the flying glass than by the actual explosion. The explosion created flying glass and all the glass was at that stage non-laminated. There was a huge amount of concertina-ing and guillotine-ing and it was bad. So laminating a glass decreases the chance that a bomb can be thrown through your window, but it also decreases any fragmentation of things flying around. So laminating a glass is more expensive, but it's less likely to be damaged, broken, needing to be replaced. So I think laminating a glass is always a good idea. We do it standard, our vehicles as well as our building. You can also have, if possible, of course you don't want to look ugly, but these sort of slam-lock features in the church in some sections, and I would say the children's creche area is but a must, that you can quickly, if need be, lock down, you slam-lock and move away, and you've made it very hard for someone to get through that solid perimeter. So, a few slam-locks, a few laminated glass things, a couple of arm-trained deacons or elders who have whatever weapons are legal in that area, stun gun, kosher would be my two main choices. Yes, so I mean that's something. Because think of this, if your people are trained in firearms, even if they're not allowed to own or use them, if they disarm someone with a firearm, they can upgrade quickly. a kosher or an electric shocker over somebody who had a weapon, now you disarm them, now you've got the weapon. That's not as ideal as having your own at the same time, but still. Which is why we were trained in the South Korean Army how to handle Makarovs, Tokarovs, RPDs, PKMs and so on, because what if we were in enemy territory and we ran out of ammo or we had to upgrade into using enemy weapons, so I was specifically trained how to handle all the different Soviet block weaponry. that came in so useful so many times. I found SPLA for Lima, you need to often ask me, do you know how to work this weapon or this doesn't seem to work and say yeah well they captured the whole inventory of the Arabs but the Arabs stripped the weapons as they were leaving and threw like the slide here and the firing pin there and they were walking and how do we put this together? Rob and I had great fun for the hour. This goes for this and this goes for that. We assembled the weapons in front of them in double quick time and they were pretty impressed and got them ready to go. We had a case of being in an ambush in Mozambique and the lead escort had a jam. One of the missionaries got up during the firefight and cleared his jam for him because he didn't know how to clear the jam of his weapon. And our missionaries had normally known more about their weapons than they have. So getting the training, even if you don't have the weapon, can still be useful. Somewhere in an attack, the enemy is going to run out of ammo and need to reload. And if you can recognize the sound of when he slides back and you recognize he's needing to reload now, you can take him down. That sort of thing. So, again, it's not as good as what Charles did shooting the guy right at the beginning, but if that's the only option we have, we still must be ready for that too. The other challenge is a mindset. Most New Zealanders are very pacifistic, but look at South Africans, we are too assertive, we are too aggressive. And they constantly point to the 6th Command when you want murder, any violence of what so ever. So that is a challenge. Excellent. That's where you take them. You take them to Westminster, the catechism, the 6th Command. The 6th Command plainly makes it clear that murder is wrong and everything you do to prevent murder is right and anything you do to prevent people being able to defend themselves is a breach of the 6th Command. I mean it's as crystal clear as it comes. You just take them We've got it in the Shooting Back the Rights and Duty of Self-Defense book. It's quoted in detail, but we've got it in others like The Christian at War. And we've got the Westminster Catechisms and Standards reprinted here too, which we should give you to take back. I think going through the shorter catechism and larger catechisms is just excellent. And the Sixth of the Mons is a good place to camp out on this one. Because what they're doing is breach of the 6th Command and not training and preparing to defend the innocent against unjust attacks. Any other comments or questions? I'm just wondering if you could put a safe in a church to hold weapons? That's better than nothing. I mean, look, something is better than nothing. But of course, then you upgrade and you try and improve. But of course, there's nothing better than a weapon on a person at a moment needed. Now, we've got two people from Canada here. Did you not have a Muslim jihadist attacking the Canadian Parliament? a couple of years ago, it was last year, remember that? And what happened? The master at arms of the parliament, he happened to be a military veteran, drew his concealed gun and drilled this Muslim terrorist screaming Allah Akbar before he could get into the main chamber and kill a whole lot of people. Remember that one? And this is the same country that bans people from having weapons to defend themselves. And their parliament was protected by a man who wasn't known to be armed. I think it surprised a lot of people to know that the master at arms didn't just carry the big, you know, the mace which represents the parliamentary thing, because that's what he's known for. He drew a concealed firearm and he drilled this Muslim terrorist before he could make any casualties in the parliament or to him. And I think what a bunch of complete and utter hypocrites, that they won't allow the common citizens the same right of protection that they benefited from themselves. I am convinced that the best weapon overall is the 9mm. 9mm Parabellum, 9x19mm, this is the standard. The whole UN, virtually every army on Earth, virtually every police force on Earth has it. It is the standard weapon. So if you need to battlefield scavenge in any war, virtually everybody you're going to deal with is going to be having 9mm. It's the most popular for the submachine guns, it's in the MP5s, it's all over the place. 9mm is easy because it's ubiquitous. Every combatant out there is using 9mms, whether he's using his Makarov on the Soviet side and Chinese side, through to the Americans. If you want to go to something like .45, which some Americans are in love with, where are you going to replace your ammo? Not even the American Army uses the .45. Nobody, I think the Bolivian Army is the last one on Earth using a .45. So how are you going to get extra ammunition in the middle of a war? So I would say, and also, the other thing about the .45 is, yes it's a bigger punch, but it's you know, after your first shot, your hand's a bit numb and you're not as accurate after your first shot. 9mm is a nice compromise between it's not too much, not too little, it's a good punch, yes you probably need two or three shots to finish it off but the point is it doesn't damage your hand, doesn't stun your hand, you're not numb, you can still be accurate after and you can carry more rounds. seven rounds and that's it because it's a hulking great big monster round and 10mm same sort of problem. So a lot of people are into saying the bigger the better, not necessarily. I'd say the 9mm is still the best and that's why it's used by most law enforcement agencies, used by every special forces unit from the GSG9 to the SAS, they all use 9mm. And if you're talking about which 9mm, there's no doubt that the Glock and Heckler & Koch are the best possible makes on the planet because every special forces unit in the world uses them. And that again is the vote of confidence. If that's what all experts choose, can we really improve them? For a woman, I would recommend a .38 revolver. A .38 revolver is ideal because it's a much bigger round than the 9mm. It's compact in a 38 special which is a 5 round small compact. It can fit in ankle holsters, fit in purses, fit in your body, fit in your belt. And it's very low profile, compact and it's powerful enough and also nothing can really go wrong. You can't have a jamming problem, it's not a problem with magazines, there's no safety catch. It's a very good, straightforward round for someone who doesn't want to be bothered by lots of training. So, for the average man, especially those who've got some military training, 9mm, that's the way. The average woman who doesn't have a lot of military training doesn't want to be bothered by all that .38 Special. And if you're going to be hit by something, you'd prefer a 9mm than a .38. The .38 is a big round. That'll really stop the person, you don't need a second shot for the .38. Again, the difference between the revolver and the 9mm is the difference between a combat weapon, which is a 9mm, and a .38, which is more just a home defence, personal self-defence, using the car to protect yourself from a car hijacker. The .38 doesn't have a great range, but Schaal proved that with the right hands and and steady block that he is using with the pew, he hit the target at 50 yards away, 50 metres. So nobody should sneer at a .38, it stopped the St James Massacre. Yeah so those are the two best, .38, 9mm and you'll find those rounds almost everywhere. So you're not going to run out of ammo in the middle of a war. Which other holster is the best for concealment and for getting it out? Ankle holster or some have these sort of moon bags which you can rip open and take. There are handbags made with panels where you can actually have, you know, you've got your normal panels but there's a side panel where you can pull out your revolver. So there are some women's handbags made for that purpose. There are different belts. I personally prefer having it on your belt where you can access the precocious knees. That's my choice. Now other people have chosen different sides. One time our friend Shaul was ambushed at a place and they frisked him, surprised him and his gun wasn't on his belt where they expected to find it. It actually was on his ankle and as they turned to pat down Uncle Philip, this happened on the GCC actually, Shaul was taking somebody to town, he had to organise a whole lot of things and one of the people with him who was an ex-Akla terrorist, who had actually been the commander who had ordered the St. James attack and he pretended to be converted and he was coming to our camp no less P.A.C. Upload ex-terrorist and so he when he heard Charles was going to town with our brand new Bucky that's a long wheelbase Bucky you're travelling in now but it was brand new at that time we'd just bought that year and he had the passports of all of our participants because we're doing prison ministry and need to go in and get them all scanned for prison ministry to have us pre-approved This chap suddenly said he wanted to lift the shawl and the shawl was about to drop him on the freeway close to Carlita. Oh no, could you just take me in, could you just turn here, could you just turn there? And then when he stopped, as shawl got out, to let him out, gun in his back. Where's your gun? Chuck neatly knew that Charles was searching but Charles' gun wasn't on his belt, it was on his ankle holster that day. Unusual. As he moved to Uncle Philip, Philip stopped. Charles drew out his firearm, fired at the ambusher who was threatening Uncle Philip. And Charles came out of the fire from behind him. This was an ambush organised by UPLA, organised by this chap who had been pretending to be a convert with us. And he is of course going to get all of our passports, he is going to get our vehicle and Charles' gun. I mean, deal, deal, deal. I mean, nice package. But unfortunately they made a mistake and he is concealing in a place they didn't expect. and so he got the drop on it. But when he suddenly came out of fire from two sides he had to do some ducky and diving. But he still got out there with Uncle Philip and our vehicle and I mean praise God that was a second shooting back that saved lives and a lot of problems. Otherwise we wouldn't even have this bucky here for you to drive around in. So any other comments? We're trying to get folks to think about security. And one thing we recommend is under any church shooting situation have a never surrender approach. Have you heard of these school shootings in America and so on, where they walk around systematically. I believe there's a film coming out this year about the Columbine shooting and that brave girl who made the strong stand. But there's only one way to save lives. You attack the person. You dive for them. You attack them. You all rush them. And you should have a code word to initiate a rush attack, but everybody attacks. If everyone's attacking them, They won't be able to walk around and systematically kill everyone. Like at Garissa University, they killed, what, 147 students in one Christian university? Why? They're all laid down, on order. And the Muslims walked past and killed them all. But if they'd rushed these terrorists, OK, some of them would have been injured and killed, but most would not. And the terrorists would have been taken out. So you've got to, and there have been ways of practicing this, but for example, if you want to take someone down, You die for them. Anyone who's done rugby knows how to do this. You get the people above the knees. You take them down just above the knees. You put your full shoulder and everything in. You will bring them down. And if you all pile on top one after the other, you take the weapon away from this person. Instead of all being unarmed victims, if we all attack simultaneously, this is the best scenario in a case where somebody's coming in with a goal of church or school shootings. Blessed be the Lord Morocco trains my hand for war and as you hear it the whole congregation knows you attack you attack the target and you take him down you keep pummeling till he is out of it and you've removed the weapon you've removed the threat and you've neutralized the threat completely and that will save lives I mean why should we all just be polite and standing around and waiting for some guy to go through his alaakbaar and filming cutting somebody's throat one off the other you know that's what these muslims do rather go down fighting if you have to go down at all, but maybe just them will go down. At any rate, the point in my mind is, if we ever have to go, let's go out fighting, taking down as many of the enemies as we can. And that will save lives. But if you do nothing, then the enemy wins the victory. Passivity is not Christian. Passivity is secular humanism. The Anabaptists are not part of the Reformation. They are, in fact, by Karl Marx's definition, the Anabaptists were the first communists. The Peasants' Revolt, which was a bit confused, thrown into the film, the Luther film, as though it all happened exactly at the same time, it was a bit spaced out. The Peasants' Revolt was more in 1525, which is four years after Luther's making a stand against the Emperor and the Pope. The peasants' revolt was run by Anabaptists, who were violent revolutionary Marxists. And the pacifists today, who claim to be dissents of Anabaptists, are dissents of the most violent revolutionaries the Middle Ages ever saw. Pacifism is not biblical. God is not a pacifist. Jesus isn't a pacifist. The Bible isn't a pacifist book. When the Lord returns, he's going to wipe out the armies of the Antichrist. But where do you get pacifism in the Bible? man of God's own heart, the author of the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible. He wasn't a pastor. Where do we get this idea of passivity from? It's not a biblical concept, it's humanism, it's secular humanism, and it's rooted in the goodness of man. People are too good. No people deserve to die. And that's the point. They don't understand the holiness of God, they don't understand the depravity of man, they don't understand the reality of this world. This is not heaven. We're not in heaven yet. You won't need weapons in heaven, but you do need weapons here because you're in a parade world. Calvinists have always held to the fact that because of the depravity of man, we need to be prepared to fight and use violent, deadly force if necessary to protect the innocent from the guilty. Now we're talking about innocent, guilty in a judicial sense. None of us are truly innocent in God's sight, but in a judicial sense on earth, you've got criminals who are guilty and you've got citizens who are innocent. We're talking about legally here, not spiritually. Nobody's actually innocent, in God's eyes. But in terms of a violent attack, you get the innocent and you get the guilty. So, I'm saying that a pacifist, and I respect the Mennites and the Amish for a lot of things, but not on this point. I believe they're wrong on this point. They should be commended on many things, but as somebody who used to be a pacifist, let me tell you, pacifism is not Christianity at a second opinion. So obviously we've got to get our people mentally prepared, emotionally prepared, spiritually prepared, and having archery practice and air rifle practice on a Sunday is very much in keeping with church history. Do you know in England it was the law for centuries that every man had to see that a son from age six had a longbow the same height as a son. each year he had to upgrade his longbow, and they had to practice every Sunday after church. And it was the law in England for centuries, which is why the English beat the French at Tricy and at Agincourt, because Britain didn't have an army, but all their men knew how to use archery, and that was Britain's weapon. And here these great armoured knights of the superpower of Europe, France, fell before the archers of Europe, who were often just simple farmers and longbowmen, but they practiced every Sunday on the village green. archery. And in Switzerland, how did they keep their particular archery, crossbows, now rifles. And in Switzerland, on Saturdays, the hills are alive with the sound of gunfire. Switzerland knows about self-defense and that's why nobody wants to invade Switzerland. Are you out of your mind? Who would invade Switzerland? Army of shops shows on skis. Switzerland doesn't have an army. Switzerland is an army. So, any other comments or questions? I can just show you a few fun pictures of Switzerland as a conclusion here too, which is this is one of my favourite countries in the world. Any country with a plus on its flag is positive. And this is a great flag, great country, great chocolates, great clocks and spectacularly good rifles. Ulrich Zwingli, the reformer of Switzerland. Big Bible, massive sword. In fact I've seen his two swords and his helmet in the Zurich Museum. The Swiss make the best sharpshooting rifles in the world. Their shooting ranges are great. At the First World War the American army had a military intelligence chap evaluate the armies in Europe because America knew they might get involved in this. Here's a report. The French Army practices with their rifles at 50 yard range. 50 yards. That's 50 meters. The British Army trains at 100 yards. The German Army trains at 300 yards. The Swiss Army trains at 400 yards. That tells you, I mean musketry makes all the difference. In other words, the French are going to get creamed. The British are going to lose. The Germans can beat them all, but the Swiss can beat them all. So this is a typical Swiss afternoon. This is what the men do on Saturday afternoon. And by the way if you're a girl in Switzerland and you want to shoot the government will give you an assault rifle and crates of ammunition free every year. They'll keep replacing crates of ammunition for you to do target shooting for fun. I mean What's not to love about a country like Switzerland? That is freedom. At school they teach you how to shoot. They start with air rifles and work up to the more serious stuff. And Switzerland just wins the international shooting competitions. It's just not fair. This is part of their schooling. This is what they do every week. And so it's not unusual to see this sort of sight in Switzerland. And you wonder why they've got the lowest crime rate in the world. They've got these air raid warnings, every home has got to have fallout shelters. Switzerland is the only country in the world that can put 140% of the total population in nuclear bomb-proof shelters and keep them fed for 4 to 10 years in some cases. Extraordinarily well prepared. And, you know, these are nuclear bomb-proof shelters that have all sorts of... whole mountains have been carved out. They've got desalination plants, all kinds of... to clean people off from nuclear bombings and so on. So that mountain might look like a mountain to you, but inside they've got all kinds of bunkers, all kinds of protections and they can hold mountains, haul it out for everything from... I've seen aircraft fly into mountains, I mean not crash, haul the mountain open, jet lands, mountain covers it, trees, rocks. Literally, I mean that's Switzerland. And the Swiss aren't prepared. Talk about prepared. This is the most prepared nation on earth. So here's the principle from Switzerland. Peace through superior firepower. If you want peace, prepare for war. And that's why I think our mission has not been attacked, why we have not had any of our camps or courses attacked, because we train and prepare to defend and are ready to fight. And they know that. And so I think our enemies being the cowards they are, There have been many a time we've been ready for them. Many times we've been trained for them to try. But, you know, it's like with the Swiss. If you want peace, you prepare for war. This is the... I mean, every tunnel is mined and ready to be exploded. If someone attacks, they're ready. This is, you know, your shopkeepers and everything just on their Saturday afternoon practice. As I said, Switzerland does not have an army. Switzerland is an army. And so as Christians we all need to have that same mentality that we are ready to fight. We've got to that stage. Jihad's been declared against us. We need to be prepared for defence. Let no Muslims find us easy targets. Yes. I don't recommend for anyone who is interested in any more information from an expert on self-defense, no-nonsense-self-defense.com. It's run by a certain Mark McYoung, who is a very experienced expert. He advises various special forces and such. And he and his wife have written quite extensively on the topic and the mindset that Jeff developed first. No-nonsense-self-defense. Yeah. That's your score. Good. Thank you. Do you know what Parabellum means? Do you know what Parabellum means? I just know it's a term we use for the 9x19mm round which was first patented for the Luger 9mm, but it's now pretty standard. It means, be prepared for war. Parabellum, oh! Right, that makes sense. Parabellum, prepared for war. So if you want peace, prepare for war. If you want peace, prepare for war. 9mm, Parabellum. That's why they made the idea of peace. You know that Colt made for America the Peacemaker. It was a 45 cal revolver. The Peacemaker. Famously used in the Gunfighter OK Corral. And they have one called the Judge. The Judge. Yes, I can see that that can work too. So, any other comments, questions, complaints, criticisms? Let's pray, perhaps three or four would like to pray. I mean, I've shown some disturbing, concerning imagery, but this is reality. We're living in a world of war against church. This is seriously real, not hypothetical for our friends in the Middle East, especially in Egypt, especially in Nigeria, Northern Nigeria, in Syria, in Iraq. This is a very serious concern for Christians in Northern Nigeria, Northern and Nib mountains in Southern Sudan. So even Kenya, they are facing these kind of attacks. So let's pray for them, but also think how we can prepare and what we can do to alert our people, motivate our people to be more prepared. Because we're not afraid. God hasn't given us a bit of fear. But we need to be prepared. And the better we prepare, the less we'll be afraid. Then we can be bold and say, praise be to the Lord, my rock betrays my fingers for battle and my hands for war. He is my loving God, my fortress that delivers the Gentiles underneath. If we can have this attitude of submit to God, resist the devil, he will free from us. It's a fighting spirit that makes a difference. And the idea is that you'd be like a coiled spring. So if someone tries to attack, you launch out. And you take them down with such ferocity, unexpected energy, and you continue. Once you've committed to attack, you've got to continue until you have neutralized the threat. And this requires energy, but mostly mental and emotional. Physical preparedness helps. The mental and emotional is the most important. That's what Scholl had that night when the church attacked St. James and he was ready to act and he didn't have to hesitate because he really made a peaceless mind as to what was the right course of action in this or that scenario. So when you're on a train, car, plane, you should consider, if this train was to crash, what do I need to do to get out? How would you need? You've got to think your way through the steps before you actually do them effectively. Practical preparedness helps, but mental preparedness is essential. So perhaps three or four would like to pray. Lord God, we thank you for the people that you have raised up to fight against evil in the past. Think for examples like Ulrich Zwingli, that he not only carried the Bible, but he carried the sword, and he sought to protect the people of Geneva from the assaults of the Inquisition and the Papacy. We thank you, Lord God, that as He said, they may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul. We thank you, Lord God, for the fact that you are the resurrection life, that we do not need to fear. We do not need to fear men. We do not need to fear death. We do not need to fear all the forces of evil. We praise you, Lord God, because of who you are, because of what you do, that your victory is sure and certain, and it will be eternal. Help us, Lord God, to be more faithful and effective in protecting your people, keeping safe your children. We ask, Lord God, that if the time comes when we must fight, that you'll make us fast and accurate, we pray to Jesus, Lord. Amen.