APRIL 13, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE
Guess God’s Not So Big After All: Bishop Gerald O. Glenn, a popular Virginia pastor, is dead from COVID-19 only weeks after preaching a sermon proclaiming “God is larger than this dreaded virus.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:
Bishop Gerald O. Glenn, pastor of New Deliverance Evangelistic Church and a leader in the Richmond-area faith community, died Saturday from illness related to COVID-19.
NBC-12 reports:
On one of the holiest days of the year, The New Deliverance Evangelistic Church tragically announced on social media that its founder, Bishop Gerald Glenn, died over the weekend.
Social media posts from the bishop’s family indicate that he died from coronavirus.
In a defiant March 22 sermon, delivered well after national guidelines for social distancing had been issued, and just one day before the state officially banned gatherings of 10 or more people, Bishop Gerald O. Glenn minimized the dangers of COVID-19, at one point telling his gullible congregation and anyone else watching the televised sermon:
I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus.
Less than four weeks later Bishop Glenn was dead from the “dreaded virus.”
God was nowhere to be found.
Mar-Gerie Crawley, the pastor’s daughter, is now urging everyone to stay at home and observe social distancing guidelines, noting:
It becomes very real to you. I just beg people to understand the severity and the seriousness of this, because people are saying it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone around us.
Better late than never.
Bishop Glenn is not the only religious figure to minimize COVID-19 only to die from the virus weeks later. Landon Spradlin, a Virginia pastor who claimed the “mass hysteria” around the coronavirus pandemic was part of a media plot against Trump, has also died from the virus.
Bottom line: Bishop Gerald O. Glenn, a popular Virginia pastor, is dead from COVID-19 only weeks after preaching a sermon proclaiming “God is larger than this dreaded virus.”
