More than 300 men from churches across South Carolina who gathered Feb. 4-5 for the Salt & Light men’s ministries event at White Oak Conference Center heard a presentation from Army Lieutenant General (ret.) Jerry Boykin.
“If you are a man of faith, now is the time to be a witness, because your faith is under fire like it has never been before,” Boykin said. “God loves the warrior, and we have to be warriors,” he said. “The threat our nation is facing in radical Islam is the greatest threat we have faced going all the way back to 1775.”
Now an ordained minister, author, and conference speaker, Boykin was a member of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. He participated in the failed 1979 attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran, led the Delta Force into battle in the invasion of Grenada, accepted the surrender of Manuel Noriega in Panama, and battled Muslim warlord Osman Atto in Somalia.
“Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, but when the ACLU has more influence on our society than the church, we’re upside down,” he said. “Some decisions have to be made soon, and I’m calling all of you to action.
“Everywhere I go, someone always comes up to me and says, ‘Okay, I’m tired of all of this, when do we take up arms against our government?’ Well, the answer is, we don’t take up arms against our government. We use the constitution that has been provided for us, and we pray,” he said.
Boykin said the conflict is a spiritual one, and the weapons for fighting it are not carnal, but spiritual. “Don’t give up on America, pray for America. I’m asking all of you to pray for America for 10 minutes every day, beginning with this prayer, ‘God, please forgive us for what we have done,’ ” he said.
Salt & Light participants also attended a wide variety of breakout sessions during the event.
“There were just too many good choices and not enough time in the day to be part of all of them,” said Jack Widua of Sardis Baptist Church in Swansea, who said he attended sessions on “From the Man You Are to the Man You Want to Be,” “Intercessory Prayer Ministry,” and “The Husband’s Role in the Marriage.”
Franchot Parnell, of Greenwood’s South Main Street Baptist Church, called the conference “enlightening and inspirational.” “The testimony of the former death-row inmate was very meaningful to me,” Parnell said. – SCBC