‘Heartbreaking’—Pastor Addresses Response to Clip of Baptism He Stopped After Man’s Shocking ‘Jesus’ Claim

Whitmore asked the man to leave the room and continued the service, leading a prayer in which he acknowledged Jesus’ authority over and separateness from believers and prayed against any demonic presence that might be at work.

“I was shocked,” Whitmore told ChurchLeaders, “because…every time [prior to that], [the man] was very sincere in who Jesus was. And of course, I can’t read his mind, but he now publicly answered the questions [in] the first person.”

Whitmore said that he and others spoke with the man for 45 minutes to an hour right after the baptism incident, gave him a ride home, and tried to follow up with him afterward. “Tried to counsel him, tried to encourage him afterwards,” said Whitmore, “but he was extremely dogmatic about not being anybody else other than Jesus himself.”

Whatever people think about how he acted, the pastor said, “I did what I believed the Holy Spirit wanted me to do at that moment.” 

The pastor mentioned that the church had made the video showing the baptism incident private, not out of a desire to hide anything, but because “we just don’t want somebody that’s going through a crisis to be belittled in the public.”

“We have different people from every walk of life that come into our church,” he explained.

Regarding how the man is doing now, Whitmore said he had been in the dark until about a week ago. “We tried to reach out to him over and over again after it, to just kind of follow up with him, with no contact,” he said. “He did have a run-in with the police and ended up killing somebody in a car accident and got convicted, just sentenced a few—I think it was a few weeks ago.”

Addressing online discussion about the baptism incident, Whitmore said, “What breaks my heart is nobody knew the context.” Instead, people freely offered their opinions without understanding the situation. 

“That’s probably what breaks my heart the most,” he continued, “is not what they’ve said about me but that the disunification of the church of Jesus Christ is on display for a non-believing eye to see.”

“In my opinion, it breaks God’s heart,” he added, referencing Jesus’ prayer for unity.

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Whitmore believes “the church has a lot of healing to do. We’ve got a lot of stuff that we got to work on, and in order for the church of Jesus Christ to be on display with love and gratitude and towards the gospel, we’ve got to get our act together.”