Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind, and his church’s Easter service on Sunday was no exception. In fact Locke felt like it was a perfect opportunity to tell the “sheep” in the congregation to “take them stupid masks off!!!”
Preaching a sermon titled “Signs of a Lukewarm Heart” to a packed crowd outside under a large tent, Pastor Locke spoke on Isaiah 53. He said the people the prophet was talking to were like our culture of chaos and confusion today. The Tennessean pastor said, “The whole world can reject Jesus. The world can say that we have lost our mind and that we have gone stark raving crazy for being in a tent with this many people with no masks and no social distancing and having our church open and preaching the Bible.”
While boldly preaching the gospel and calling out other preachers who waste their platform by staying silent about the truth of the Bible, Locke shared that he is scheduled for “a lot of interviews coming up.” He said he would give them up for five minutes on The View with Whoopie Goldberg. “I’d give up CNN, I’d give up NewsMax. I’d give up Fox. I’d give up all of them for five minutes…Man, me and Whoopi got some stuff to talk about on TV. Just one time can one of us preachers say ‘Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father.’ “
After joking he wasn’t going to get political anymore, Pastor Locke started to read Isaiah 53:6 where God’s prophet says “All we like sheep…” Then he couldn’t seem to help himself and said “It’s interesting that God calls us that. Not much has changed…has it?” Sarcastically the pastor recalled how the government a year ago told churches they couldn’t meet on Easter or they “would kill everybody.”
Locke, whose church never shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, said, “We ain’t killed nobody yet…by the way.” Saying the media infuses fear tactics and must know Isaiah 53:6 because “they know people that are ignorant of Scripture willfully will obey any ridiculous mandate that the media gives them because it makes them feel better about themselves.”
“They will roll up in tanks…they will drop down from helicopters, and I promise you it won’t be a dozen police out there from Wilson County and from Mount Juliet,” a reference to the officers who greeted him as he rolled into Global Vision Bible Church’s parking lot Sunday morning. “It’s going to take the entire United States military to roll up into this parking lot and tell us that we can’t worship Jesus…that we got to shut our church down…that we can’t preach…we can’t pray…you have lost your mind if you think I’ve given into that…We are staying open forever,” he said.
The pastor recorded a video on his Facebook page last year which received over 238k reactions and over 192k comments where he explained passionately how he felt about wearing masks, calling them “gags” and “idols” and “the dumbest thing that has ever been created by humanity.” He shared in the video that he feels masks have divided the body of the Lord Jesus Christ so it wasn’t a surprise that during his sermon Locke told his congregants to “take them stupid masks off!”
Locke said, “Unless you’re under a doctor’s orders and a few of you are. Take them stupid masks off when you come to Global Vison [Bible Church]…There! I said it on Easter….Take them stupid masks off!”
“Call me crazy?…You can pull in the parking lot wearing two masks in a car by yourself [and you] call me crazy?” The pastor clarified the kind of crazy he was talking about saying, “That’s crack smoking crazy is what that is.”
Closing the service Locke gave an altar call telling everyone they have a “choice today…You can declare Jesus Christ as Lord of your life right now because you want to. Or you can declare Jesus Lord of your life in the day of judgement because you have to…but make no mistake: You will call Him King of Kings and Lord of Lords one day, there is no doubt about that fact.”
Watch the entire Global Vision Bible Church service here.
