ABOUT FAITH & FREEDOM

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

Seattle Street Preacher Arrested for Reading the Bible

Print Friendly Version of this pagePrint Get a PDF version of this webpagePDF


Seattle police arrested a street preacher on charges of being a risk to public safety for reading his Bible aloud at a public park near an LGBT pride event.

Has it come to this? 

Naked, confused people running through the park celebrating, with pride, their sexual behavior---in front of young children, being protected by the police, while a Christian reading his Bible was arrested. 

Be informed, not misled.

Matthew Meinecke, who identifies himself as The Seattle Preacher on Twitter, was surrounded by Seattle police officers as he was reading his Bible and was subsequently arrested and fingerprinted at a police station before being released.

“SPD has enough resources to send 10 police officers to arrest a preacher reading his Bible in a public park. Because it's such a horrible crime now!” Meinecke wrote on Twitter, posting a video showing his arrest.

A police officer can be heard in the background saying, "So at this point, we can no longer stand by. The risk that you pose for public safety by remaining here can be mitigated if you leave. It's your last chance."

Does this mean that if people hate you enough for what you believe and/or say out loud "you" not they must be removed to mitigate a public safety risk?

Consider where that can go regarding freedom of religious expression. If a large group of  LGBTQ+ activists decided to attend a small church and disagreed with what the pastor happened to be preaching about that particular Sunday, could the police be called to remove him to "mitigate the public safety risk " if the activists threatened to begin breaking things and hitting people?

Meineche told the officers "I don't want to leave because I'm not in danger."

He told journalist Jonathan Choe with the Discovery Institute, "I was in the Seattle Center, reading the Bible, not aggressively preaching, not stirring people up, not anything. People began throwing things---vandalizing property. I think about 10 police officers showed up."

He told the police, "Your job is not to silence me and move me. Why are they so offended by words? I just believe in using the Word of God."

He also posted a very disturbing video of that group seizing his Bibles and ripping the pages out while shouting, "Get to (expletive) out of here! Get your holy water off my ovaries, (expletive), (ex[pletive), get the (expletive) ---out."

Another person shouted at him, saying "Forget about your imaginary fairy in the (expletive) sky."

Meineche explained he wasn't trying to anger the police because he loves the police and has actually preached to them before.

Pointing to his heart, he continued, “So if those words are so offensive then the problem is here. The problem is in you.”

“Meanwhile we have a bunch of naked people walking around over here, not even 200 feet away,” he noted. “Naked grown men around little children.”

In a video, Meinecke stated, “We’ve got a city full of crime. We’ve got needles all over the place. Lawless homeless camps everywhere. We’ve got assaults. We’ve got broken glass. We’ve got Antifa running the place. But they’ve got time to send in ten police officers to arrest a street preacher reading his Bible in a park.”

Yeah, I don't understand it either.

It reminds me of a similar account in the Old Testament, regarding the prophet Jeremiah.

Chapter 36 begins with this: "And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Juda, that this word came to Jeremiah from the Lor saying, "Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee..."

Jeremiah was faithful to the Lord's calling on his life and began to write under the inspiration of the Spirit of the Lord. His writings along with others are what we know as the Old Testament.

Through a series of events Jeremiah's writings eventually were read to the king.

It was winter and the king was sitting in his winter house with a fire in the fireplace.

Verse 23 tells us that when Jehudi read the word of the Lord to the king, he began to cut out the pages with his pen knife and toss the pages he did not agree with into the fire.

The king was furious over the word of the Lord. God hid Jeremiah and his scribe from his anger, and Scripture tells us that after Jehoiakim the king had burned the pages of God's Word, the Lord directed Jeremiah to write the words again. He did and Scripture was preserved...in fact, Scripture tells us he added a little more like words to the second scroll.

As history and tradition are being eroded and canceled in our culture today, so is the Bible. The Word of the Lord.

I'll be talking more about that this morning on the radio. Please join me.

Here's how. 

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful. Be Faithful.