Right-wing pastor Rick Joyner posted a video on Facebook today in which he blamed yesterday's mass shooting at a high school in Florida on the removal of prayer from public schools and declared that only the church is equipped to close the "gate of hell" and make this nation "completely free" of these kinds of attacks.
"There is good spiritual evidence that the Columbine shooting in Colorado years ago opened a gate of hell into our country," he said. "Gates of hell are access points, they are doorways through which hell gains access to our lives, our families, our churches, our communities. In this case, I think it has been the whole country ... When there has been a breakthrough of hell into society, only the church has the spiritual authority to shut that gate of hell."
"When prayer was removed from our schools, I believe that was the beginning of the gate of hell, many gates of hell, that are destroying our youth, our families," Joyner continued. "That had provided a hedge of protection for our students ... When prayer was removed from school, we basically said, 'God, we don't want you in our schools.' He said, 'OK.'"
"He left and the devil filled the vacuum," Joyner said, adding that only spiritual people are able to see that this shooter probably had "serious demonic problems" and are equipped to deal with the issue.
"Let's shut the gates of hell through which this is getting into our society," he said. "That doesn't mean that we will be totally free of it, but I believe there is a [chance] we could be. We could be completely free of this kind of thing, God will provide watchmen on the walls who will see this kind of thing coming."
