You know that whole thing about beating swords into plowshares? Yeah, well Pastor Robert Brooks of the Victory Baptist Church in Orem, Utah isn’t down with that. You have to be a pretty hardy type to move deep in the heart of LDS country to establish a Baptist church anyway, so the former police officer was more than up to the task when a drugged up would-be church invader made an assault on the door over the weekend . . .
But Brooks wasn’t just defending some pews and a few hymnals. The house of worship is also where he and his family live. So when he heard a ruckus late Friday night, he went to investigate. We get the story from ksl.com:
“He was at this door trying to beat into it and pull on it, and I came around the corner (and) was standing down there in the parking lot addressing him,” Brooks said.
But Austin Stokes would not respond to the pastor’s commands to stop, so Brooks pulled his gun.
That’s when Pastor Brooks aimed a frickin’ laser beam at him.
“The only thing I actually heard him say — when he saw the laser — was ‘Oh, no,’ and then he began to comply,” Brooks said. “I didn’t know what he was, I didn’t know what he was capable of doing and I knew with family downstairs, I wanted to keep them safe.”
Guess the sight of a laser fixed on your sternum tends to focus the mind no matter what chemical accelerants are pumping through the circulatory system. Stokes is now spending a little quality time in the local graybar hotel, but Brooks is taking a Christian attitude toward him.
Pastor Brooks says he didn’t bring up the incident during his sermon on Sunday, but again said he welcomes the suspect or anyone else having difficulty in their life, to join with him here.