The legendary Republican operative, targeted Saturday night by vicious graffiti spray painted all over the outside of the Mount Juliet’s Global Vision Bible Church, to The Tennessee Star he is not afraid to show up to speak at the church Sunday as invited.
“First of all, it’s disgusting,” said Roger J. Stone, who has been a friend and political advisor to President Donald J. Trump for more than three decades. “The idea of attacking a house of worship? But, if people thought this would intimidate me and I would not witness for Christ, they really just don’t understand.”
Among the things the vandals wrote on the outside walls of the church were: “Titus 1:16,” “Repent,” “Stone and Locke will burn in Hell,” “FU” and “Fascists Beware.”
Stone said he was on a conference call for Evangelists for Trump, when he shared the story of his recommitment to Jesus and that led to the invitation to the suburban Nashville church.
“I told the story of my own redemption—my own decision to reaffirm my belief in Jesus Christ to be reborn and to put my entire ordeal of the Mueller witch hunt in the hand of God and to pray for a solution,” he said.
“I gave powerful testimony on this conference call and Rev. Greg Locke contacted me and asked me if I wanted to speak at his church,” he said.
Stone describes his recommitment to Christ
The moment of his awakening came at the Jan. 18 revival held in Boca Raton, Florida by Rev. Franklin Graham as part of his “Decision America Tour, said Stone. Boca Raton is near his Fort Lauderdale residence made famous by the FBI’s pre-dawn raid and arrest of Stone carried live on CNN.
The author and political operative said his friend Pastor Randy Coggins encouraged him to go and he arranged for Stone to have a private audience with Graham.
“My life was really in turmoil,” he said. “It was clear to me that I was being railroaded by a politically-motivated prosecution—the charges against me were nonsensical.”
In the beginning of his legal entanglements with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Stone was accused of being a courier between WikiLeaks and the 2016 Trump campaign. This was woven into the subtext that Stone knew that the Russians had supplied WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee—thus: Stone was working for the Russians.
In the end, Mueller had no evidence for any of this chapter of the Russian Collusion Hoax, including the fact that there is still no evidence linking the Russians with emails stolen from the DNC. Stone was convicted of process crimes unrelated to any underlying crimes.
“I was angry,” he said. “I was frustrated. I was worried about who would take care of my wife if I was unfairly incarcerated.”
Stone said he met Graham’s father Rev. Billy Graham twice. Once he saw the elder Graham at a tent revival in Bridgeport, Connecticut with he was 12-years-old. The second time was when in the 1970s, when he was working for President Richard Nixon.
“I consider Billy Graham one of the greatest men of the 20th century, so I was eager to see his son,” he said.
During his private meeting with the younger Graham, Stone said the minister gave him sound advice that was the exact same advice he had received from other preachers and his priest at his own Catholic parish, where he continued to worship, but it was different coming from this man of God.
“I really took Reverend Graham’s advice to heart and that very day, I stood in a field in Boca Raton with 400 other sinners, confessed my sins, got right with Christ,” he said. “It was like a weight had been lifted off me.”
Stone: “God delivered me from my persecutors.”
The Boca Raton revival was on a Saturday and that Monday morning, the story broke about at least one juror in his trial having a deep animus for Stone, he said.
That story caught the attention of Trump, who ramped up his support for Stone, and who eventually commuted his sentence and made him a free man. “It was an act of both mercy and justice to spare me from almost certain death in a COVID-19-infested prison.”
It is this testimony that Stone said he is going to give at the Global Vision Bible Church Sunday.
“I really believe God delivered me from my persecutors,” he said.
“Nobody beats the feds,” he said.
“I don’t care whether your problem is alcohol, drug abuse, or family problems or health problems or financial problems,” he said. “I am living proof that God will help you if you will pledge to walk in his way.”
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Neil W. McCabe is a Washington-based national political reporter for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. In addition to the Star Newspaper, he has covered the White House, Capitol Hill and national politics for One America News, Breitbart, Human Events and Townhall. Before coming to Washington, he was a staff reporter for Boston’s Catholic paper, The Pilot, and the editor of two Boston-area community papers, The Somerville News and The Alewife. McCabe is a public affairs NCO in the Army Reserve and he deployed for 15 months to Iraq as a combat historian.
