Evangelist preaching peace says that guns can
BY JUDY TARJANYI
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

The Rev. Bryan Sharp is a peace-loving evangelist who would rather talk about Jesus than guns.

But when his right to bear arms is being threatened, as he believes it is today, he is willing to be enlisted in the war of words, Bible a the ready.
Dr. Sharp, who will speak in Toledo Monday at a
Patriotic Rally at Northwest Baptist Church, gently takes
aim at those who would seize guns from law-abiding citizens
like himself by pointing to Bible verses that he says sup-
port an armed populace in the interest of peace and non-
violence.

Although he finds many of those verses in the Old
Testament, he also cites such New Testament passages attrib-
uted to Jesus Christ as “When a strong man, fully armed,
guards his own palace, his goods are in peace” (Luke 11:21)
and “He who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy
one” (Luke 22:36).

He is fully aware that many mainline Protestant church-
es and other religious groups have aligned themselves with
the anti-gun lobby, believing it to be in keeping with the
Bible’s condemnation of killing.

But he counters, “Sometimes, a religion may be against
something that the Bible is not against. There is a dif-
ference between religion and what the Bible
teaches. . . . Religion is manmade and scripture
originates from God, so the final authority must be the word
of God.”

That word, Dr. Sharp says, has hundreds of verses
that support him keeping both hunting weapons and handguns
in his home near St. Louis. He locks all his guns up,
except at night, when some are made available because, he
says, “We cannot get criminals to obey a five- day waiting
period before they break in.”

Reared in a gunless and fatherless home, Dr. Sharp,
45, learned to shoot from his older brother, but didn’t
become convinced of the importance of bearing arms until he
began reading the Bible after his conversion at the age of
20.

He also has taught his children, ages 17, 18, and 19,
the proper use of guns. His family includes a daughter who
is a church pianist and two sons who plan to follow their
father in preaching the gospel.

Despite his strong convictions about what the Bible has
to say concerning weapons, Dr. Sharp, an independent
Baptist minister, says his Toledo appearance will probably
be the first time the issue will be a focal point of his
preaching.

“We preachers as a whole have not addressed the issue
as we should have, and there is so much in the Bible that
pertains to it.”

The Rev. Andrew Edwards III, pastor of Northwest
Baptist, decided to invite Dr. Sharp to preach specifical-
ly on the right to keep and bear arms after hearing him
refer to several Bible verses on the subject during a recent
visit to the church.

“He preached on Isaiah 59 and the text verse was verse
14, which says, ‘Truth has fallen in the street.’ It was
just a great message and it just burdened me when he got
done. . . He addressed the gun issue that night, and
we usually don’t hear much said about that.”

Mr. Edwards says he became convinced that he had to
get the message outside the four walls of his church.

“With truth fallen in the streets, people aren’t hear-
ing the truth. They’re just hearing what a lot of the
mainstream media has tried to present.”

Many churches have gone along with this, he says, by
supporting events like the recent Million Mom March against
gun violence. “These are good people, but a lot of them
are just falling in place with the rest of them.”

Even those Christians who support gun ownership, he
says, often lack the information to give them the confidence
to defend their beliefs. “A lot of people don’t know their
Bible well enough to stand upon it.”

In addition to using the Bible to support gun owner-
ship, Dr. Sharp also looks to the scriptures for guidance
when it comes to deciding in which situations gun use is
appropriate. Weapons, he says, are not to be used as an
offensive measure, but may be used for defensive purposes.

Abraham armed his trained servants and the reason he
did that was to defend his family,” he says. “A second
reason would be to defend the defenseless.”

Dr. Sharp says he would use a gun to defend his wife,
his children, and his country, citing I Timothy 5:8, which
says, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and
especially for those of his own household, he has denied the
faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Whether he would defend himself with a gun would depend
on the specific situation, he says. If someone broke into
his house in the middle of the night, he would have to
assume that such a person, having violated the sanctity of
his threshold, would stop at nothing. He would say to the
intruder, “I mean thee no harm, but thou art standing where
I am about to shoot.”

Dr. Sharp says a gun is a tool that should be kept in
the hands of good people. He views the Second Amendment of
the Bill of Rights, which upholds the right to keep and bear
arms, as existing to support the First Amendment, which
preserves freedom of religion, free speech, and a free
press. If one of those amendments takes precedence over
the other, he says, chaos results. “Both must be there and
both must be in the right perspective.”

Dr. Sharp says he questions why a country would fear
allowing its own people to bear arms. “Why would a country
seek to disarm the law- abiding, the wholesome, the gentle,
peaceful people? It seems just to be reasonable, setting the
Bible aside, that if the peaceful, gentle, law- abiding
citizen is armed, he will keep the non-gentle, non-peaceful,
criminal element at bay.”

Because of the strength of the news media, Dr. Sharp
says, people rarely hear the number of times a gun saved a
life, but are always informed when a gun is used improperly
or illegally to take a life. Statistics, he says, show
that more guns are used legally to defend or preserve life
than are used illegally. Studies also show, he says, that
1.9 million violent crimes are stopped in the act annually
by citizens using handguns.

Dr. Sharp says he maintains membership in the Nation-
al Rifle Association, but that he does not seek the group’s
blessing on what he says about the gun issue. “My [source
of] approval is a little higher than that.”

http://www.toledoblade.com/index/index.html