KILLING CRACK ADDICTS WITH THE CROSS

The World is Doomed – Interview with a Pastor with a crack-rehab centre shaped like Noah’s Arc Sargento Isidorio is an evangelical pastor and a politician. Once a corrupt gay policeman who reveled in sex and drugs it all stopped when he found God. He then opened a massive rehab center for crackheads in the shape of Noah’s Arc with a huge florescent ‘Jesus’ sign while also kitted out with a fine swimming pool and other gizmos. The rehab houses over 900 addicts but uses contentious methods. The press generally refer to Isidorio as ‘the nutcase deputy” but his rescue numbers are the highest in the region. He lives in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. I interviewed him over the phone. These are his words: “I decided it was better to be a nuthead than a robber. I come from a poor family and grew up in a favela in Salvador. After I joined the police in 1981, I began going out a lot, drinking and getting involved with the wrong crowd. You start with a few beers here and there and without realizing it you start hitting the cachaça 51 (popular local spirit) and anything that comes your way. I started behaving pretty sordidly; sleeping with men, smoking crack, losing my dignity. The devil got into me. Dictating what I would do in the evenings. To earn money on the side, I abused my authority as a policeman and even had a whole kidnapping thing going on. It was a steady earner. But the trick was to not get cops involved or killed…to try and keep it as clean as possible. No killing, but tormenting people into giving you all their money. My own brother stayed in that world. He’ll forever be a vagabond and a bandit, a black sheep that lacks strength of character. You can ask anyone you like but I have never visited him in prison. The police never discovered my real identity. It was only when I gave myself to God that I exposed all my ills. It was God who laid down the path to righteousness and liberated me from all the addiction and sodomy. Today I live with my wife and kids in the Doctor Jesus Foundation Center that I opened 19 years ago. We help all kinds of people rid themselves of addictions. And it’s free! Aside from working as a state deputy, I’m pretty much here all the time…on Xmas day, during Carnival, Saturdays and Sundays… because if it wasn’t for God I’d be dead. That’s the truth and I’m here to make that difference. People say you can fight drugs using other drugs, saying that that’s compassionate. But how immoral is it to give out clean pipes and clean syringes so that the addicts continue abusing! The righteous path is facing the truth. Only truth can rid you of the polyps of self-abasement. You can’t present people roses without telling them of the thorns they may face along the way. And that’s what we do. Jesus walked for 40 days and 40 nights to face his destiny. Here we do it for 10 days, max. We force people to refrain from consuming anything apart from the occasional glass of water. Some people do it for more than 10 days. I ask them to pray and seek help from Jesus. Doctor Jesus. There is no other way to cast the devil away. But it is a choice. It is too easy to blame demons. “Oh It wasn’t me it was the Devil. I rob and smoke cos Im a demon.” No you let yourself entered the Devil’s kingdom and let the snakes prostitute your life away. Addiction isn’t the Devil. Too much freedom is given to the weak. Too much freedom has our youth disrespecting parents and essential morals. People have to start taking responsibility and knowing their limits. Not allowing God into your life is your own choice. Nowadays families are all deconstructed and torn away from God. Cheating on your wife is commonly accepted, men sleep with their daughters behind closed doors, while an entire nation is hooked on soap operas on Globo TV that are basically prostitution schools for the masses. And yes the state’s also to blame. Brazil today has 2 million crack addicts and no ministry that takes public security seriously. We have an un-federalized police force that is easily corruptible. Corrupt coronels and corrupt politicians that give us false ideals that unsettle the natural order: women marrying women, men with boys, spiders with spiders. If you mess with nature, you mess with God. Things are going to get worse. Already the alarm bells are ringing. We have failed God. Hark the origins of the prophecies. Prepare for earthquakes, wars, cyclones, tsunamis, illnesses, cancer and aids. I can assure you that everything that was written in the good Bible will take place. But we won’t see the clouds opening with Jesus smiling with open arms. No, humanity will vanish. The final judgment will come. And only the good lambs will enter the palatial mansions of heaven. The rest…the rest will cinder in the fires of hell on earth.”