Pastor urges anti-vaxxers ‘search your consciences’

A Pastor is questioning the conscience of those persons who are wielding influence over others to prevent them from taking a COVID-19 vaccine, contemplating how many deaths these persons could be responsible for. 

“….I feel that we need to accept some responsibility for what we are doing or not doing,”  Pastor Douglas Neverson of the Kingstown Evangelical Church said, while speaking on the WE FM programme “Issues at Hand” last Sunday, October 24. 

The pastor highlighted a story in 1 Kings,  Chapter 13, wherein a young man believed the lie of an older prophet and was persuaded to disobey instructions that had been given to him by God. 

The consequence was that the young man was killed by a lion on the road. 

When the older prophet heard about the incident he said “Oh that’s the young man who disobeyed God, and who died in the road,” Neverson recounted. 

“…It struck me that there was a sense of callousness about the influence he had wielded on this young man, and the consequences of that influence.”

“It struck me that that is exactly what we are doing. Persons who are in whatever sphere they are, whatever their knowledge or lack thereof, whatever their motives who are perpetuating these myths, lies, and all the other things that causing people not to take vaccines…”

The pastor said he does not believe that most who have not taken a vaccine up to this point are ‘anti-vax’ but that some are completely hesitant, and some “…have been influenced by people that they respect, by people that they think know, by people that they think what they are doing is right, and to a certain measure by fear.”

 Citing the death toll, Neverson addressed the influencers, noting, “I wonder how many of those deaths that you may have been responsible for by the influence you have wielded; how do they impact your conscience?”

“…there is somebody out there who is just listening to you guys, who is listening to you to make a decision and you are saying to them ‘Don’t take the vaccine’. They die. They carry the Covid home, their grandmother dies, their father, their child dies. How does that impact you? Do you ever feel a twinge of conscience that you are responsible for that decision?”

The Pastor said he has strong feelings on the matter “because it grieves me to think that so many of these persons have died because somebody told them it was best not to take the vaccine.”

“…If that is not grievous, I don’t know what is. If that’s not a problem, I don’t know what is. And if this morning I could in any little way serve the consciences of somebody to think about what they’re doing, I hope this works.”

He said that as it concerns religious reasons, he would understand this, but has not come across any such reasons in his studies. 
Some persons have expressed the view that they are protected by the blood of Christ. Neverson said he has heard all of this but, “God has given us common sense.”

One of the programme hosts commented that He has given Science as well. 

“…God has given it all to us, and I ask myself, are we insulting God when we throw those things aside and talk the foolishness that we are talking?” the pastor queried. He appealed to those who believe themselves to be strong as they are taking their vitamins and doing everything to keep their body in good health that they should also “Just think for a little bit that there is somebody who may be next to you physically, somebody who is in your house, some child in your schoolroom when you go back to school, some person somewhere who is not as strong as you”, and who may contract Covid easily, but not be able to fight it off and die. 

In the end, he stated “More will die, many of them, most of them will die because somebody influenced them not to take the vaccine. Let us consider our responsibility and let us consider whether or not we are prepared to deal with those kinds of consequences. I just want to encourage us in St Vincent to do what is necessarily…, what is appropriate, what is absolutely necessary.” 

 St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has been experiencing a spike in COVID-19 cases since towards the end of September and up to last Tuesday, 64 people had died with 52 of them succumbing since the onset of the spike.

The health authorities have revealed that the majority of deaths are among the unvaccinated.