Shas­tri Boodan

Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tists are call­ing for more prayers to fight crime and en­gen­der uni­ty amongst the Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

Arch­bish­op Glen­roy An­tho­ny Jack, head of the Na­tion­al Evan­gel­i­cal Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Faith (NESB) in To­ba­go, made the call yes­ter­day as he said he sup­port­ed the re­cent as­ser­tion made by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher that di­vine in­ter­ven­tion was need­ed in the crime fight.

“Prayer makes the dark­est cloud with­draw, and what she said is cor­rect. We are not on­ly fight­ing a nat­ur­al fight, we are fight­ing a spir­i­tu­al war and be­cause we are fight­ing a spir­i­tu­al war, every time we turn in the night, in the day, we ought to pray. Prayer climbed the lad­der Ja­cob saw, be­cause prayer be­comes a lad­der, as­cend­ing to God and God hav­ing re­ceived it, there­fore, now sends down to earth the peace an­gel that starts to bring peace and the peace starts when we start to pray and we con­gre­gate in our var­i­ous church­es and we cry out to God and God will hear us,” fol­low­ing an Ec­u­meni­cal Ser­vice by the Mt Zion SB Church at Hope, To­ba­go, where that or­gan­i­sa­tion com­menced Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions.

In his ad­dress to the gath­er­ing ear­li­er, Jack asked the con­gre­ga­tion not to judge oth­ers on their past ac­tions but what they do in the present. He gave the ex­am­ple of Saul in the Bible, who went from be­ing a per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians to be­liev­er.

“There is some­thing in the past that brought the in­di­vid­ual in for­ward mo­tion and the for­ward mo­tion is some­thing that we need to take now in our lives in or­der that we would not make a mis­take or a mis­take as we did in the past. We are ask­ing God to hold our hands and, there­fore, he hold­ing our hands would al­low us to walk in di­vine or­der.”

Bish­op Marslyn Har­ris spoke of the his­to­ry and strug­gle of the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist. She praised for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day for grant­i­ng the Shouter Bap­tist a pub­lic hol­i­day, which is cel­e­brat­ed on March 30 an­nu­al­ly.

“We must give ho­n­our where ho­n­our is due. We had a son of the soil who was a PM and a Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son, we had Patrick Man­ning, all passed, and gone, but it was (Bas­deo) Pan­day who was used as a tool of Almighty God to grant Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist a hol­i­day,” Har­ris said.

Har­ris called on Bap­tists to make their voic­es heard on na­tion­al is­sues.

“When I look at the state of my coun­try to­day and I watch the young peo­ple to­day and I hear the roar of the crime to­day, I want to know where Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist is to­day. There was a time when Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists opened their mouths and talked and the whole na­tion got qui­et.”

She al­so called on par­ents to play an ac­tive role and en­sure their chil­dren get clos­er to God.

Bish­op Hu­bert Mor­ri­son mean­while called for uni­ty in the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Church. He said many church­es are sprout­ing up but there is a need for all to get un­der one um­brel­la so they can be prop­er­ly recog­nised by the state.