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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 at 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 support an armed populace in the interest of peace and nonviolence.

Although he finds many of those verses in the Old Testament, he also cites such New Testament passages attributed 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 churches 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 difference 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 specifically 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 hearing 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 ownership, 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 National 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.”

The Rev. Bryan Sharp will speak at 7 p.m. Monday on “Does the Christian Have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?” for a Patriotic Rally at Northwest Baptist Church, 3906 West Alexis Rd.