‘Madman’ shoots up home of Pastor Greg Locke with one of his children inside

( Christian Post )

Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church in Mount Juliet is praising God for protecting his family after a “madman” allegedly unloaded a barrage of bullets into his home with one of his children inside.

Wilson County Sheriff's Office Capt. Scott Moore told The Tennessean that the shooting, which is being investigated, resulted in no injuries and they haven’t arrested anyone in connection with the incident. Moore said deputies responded to Locke’s home at around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday and found 30 to 40 shell casings around the house, the garage and a vehicle.

Locke called the security footage of the shooting at his home “truly horrific” in a statement shared on Instagram with photographs of the scene.

“It’s 2:00am and for the last 3 hours our home has been a full blown crime scene. According to the security cam footage, we pulled into our driveway exactly ONE MINUTE after a madman unloaded an entire magazine of bullets from an automatic weapon into our house, garage, and my truck,” Locke said.

“The sound on the video is truly horrific. Detectives will still be here for a good while tonight. Only one of our kids was home and thank God not in the same area of the house. As you can see in the last pics, one of the bullets cut through the headboard of our youngest daughter’s bed and lodged in her pillow.”

He said he and his family had to be escorted to a hotel by security after the shooting and cited Psalm 91 in referencing God’s protection.

“We are all being security escorted to a hotel tonight. We have no further details. The only detail that matters is that Psalm 91 is true, and GOD PROTECTED US IN UNIMAGINABLE AND SUPERNATURAL WAYS,” he noted. “Please pray for the Locke family tonight.”

Locke, who began sharing content on his Facebook page in 2015, became an overnight conservative star after he posted a video on Facebook on April 22, 2016, criticizing Target for its then-new policy of allowing men to enter women's bathrooms and dressing rooms.

He is also well-known for his outspoken opposition to abortion and Planned Parenthood. 

In the summer of 2023, months after revealing that he got too involved with politics to the point where it was overshadowing his ministry, Locke, announced that he scrubbed thousands of videos with billions of views from his Facebook page to minimize some of the “collateral damage” they caused.

“We took [down] thousands … of videos, took about three or four days, deleted every one of them,” Locke told his congregation in a Sunday message posted on Facebook. “All of them, all the rants. Not because what I said was wrong, but because when I became a man I put away childish things. And I've learned to say things better.”

He then promised that his focus would be on Jesus, and he would stay away from politics.

“I promise you, my word will be for Jesus, not for any candidate. It just won't. So some of you are going to [have to] get past, or at least if you're going to stick around, you're going to have to get past the notion that, because we're coming into an important year, that I'm about to amp things up,” he said.

“I am, but I'm not amping it up on politics. I'm not. I'll still spit in the face of Planned Parenthood and call out baby butchers. I'm not going to compromise to the alphabet community,” he added. “I'm [not] going to lay down the sword. I'm just going to be more meticulous and specialize at who we swing it at.”

WHO IS GREG LOCKE?

Tennessee preacher Greg Locke says demons told him the names of witches in his church

( Elizabethton Star ) Feb. 17th, 2022

The offering was over and the worship team at Global Vision Bible Church had just finished singing “Oh How I Love Jesus” when the Rev. Greg Locke began telling his church about his conversations with demons.

Those demons, he said, had revealed the names of a group of “full-blown, spell-casting” witches who’d been sent to infiltrate Global Vision, a nondenominational church east of Nashville, Tenn., where Locke is pastor.

“To God be the glory, I lie not,” he told the congregation at Global Vision on Sunday (Feb. 13), which was meeting in a packed tent on the church’s property. “We got first and last names of six witches that are in our church. And you know what’s strange, three of you are in this room right now.”

Locke told the congregation that he’d gotten the names while casting a demon out of a woman who had recently begun coming to Global Vision. The preacher, known for his sensationalist sermons about politics and COVID-19 skepticism — went on to describe the exorcism in detail, quoting a demon with a scruffy voice who accused worshippers at the church of being witches.

Two of the witches were in his wife’s Bible study, said Locke, who warned the alleged witches not to make a move during his sermon. He then retold the New Testament story of Jesus casting a demon out of a man and into a herd of pigs, turning it into an extended monologue about witches in the church.

“You so much as cough wrong and I’ll expose in front of everybody under this tent, you stinking spell-casting, pharmakeia devil worshipping and mongrel,” he said, using a Greek word that sometimes describes those who practice witchcraft or sorcery. “You were sent to destroy this church.”

In recent years Locke has used his sermons to attack LGBTQ people, accuse Democratic politicians of child abuse, spread claims about election fraud, denounce vaccines and claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax. During Sunday’s sermon, he blamed witchcraft for an outbreak of illness in the church.

In recent months, vaccine skeptics have claimed that pharmaceutical companies were practicing sorcery by creating the vaccines, because of the resonance with pharmakeia. That led to a surge in searches for Bible verses in 2021, according to Christianity Today, and warnings from pastors and Christian celebrities about the spiritual dangers of the pharmaceutical industry.

Locke, who recently held a book burning of Harry Potter novels and other “satanic” works, also said “trouble-makers” in the church had brought the witches to Global Vision to lure church members into adultery.

“WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THAT!!“ Locke wrote in his email.

Mehta said that he’d tuned into Sunday’s sermon because he suspected Locke would be discussing the book burning. In recent weeks, he said, Locke’s sermons have turned from politics and COVID-19 to warnings about witchcraft and Freemasons. Mehta suspects Locke, who has been banned from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, will eventually turn to some other hot-button topic.