German SWAT raids pastor, busts his nose

By Sandra Marroquin —

At dawn, masked officers blew the door off Pastor Alexander Epp’s home, stormed inside with machine guns and beat him to the ground.

As blood streamed from his broken nose, he cried out, “Jesus, help me.”

One officer allegedly replied, “Jesus is not going to help you.”

The raid shocked the city of Duisburg, Germany. Cops stormed the house based on a single tip from a disgruntled former church member that the pastor possessed and illegal weapon.

Vera Forum Church members say that the broader context is one of deep suspicion against Christianity in their community.

“It seems now like a big um project just to intimidate us because we are the the biggest and fastest grown church here in Duisburg,” said Walter Epp, the pastor’s son.

But if intimidation was the goal, it backfired. The negative publicity has turned into positive publicity as new visitors stream to the church.

Originally from Russia, Alexander Epp immigrated to Germany in the 1980s as a truck mechanic. He felt God move on his heart to open a church for Russian Germans. He called it Vera, which means truth in Latin.

The church thrived. When they wanted to build a church building, they hit road blocks with City Hall. The soil was contaminated, they were told, and would need expensive remediation.

The church prayed, consulted another soils expert, and the land was declared free of contaminants.

They couldn’t get a bank loan. So church members began funding it themselves.

“We always say, ‘Come to our building, touch it, and listen to the story of how it was built. Then you’ll believe,’” Epp said.

It seemed like city officials took a dim view of the church and threw obstacles at them, denying them permits and the like.

But the police raid was off the charts.

When 80-100 masked SWAT officers stormed his home, Pastor Epp thought they were criminals, not cops, so he tried to defend himself.

“I thought they were criminals,” Epp said. “When I was beaten and thrown to the ground, I never thought they were the police.”

That’s when a cop busted his nose.

His wife was traumatized by the events and needed medical attention.

Pastor Epp was cuffed and hauled off to the church with the cops, where they busted down doors and ransacked the place. After searching his home and church and finding nothing (no weapon), they released him with only one charge of
resisting an officer (he thought they were robbers).

The police and city officials never apologized for the raid, nor have they remunerated for medical bills or damage done to the two properties.

Here’s an irony: Epp, being from Russia, never faced such persecution from the KGB, the communist secret police famous for persecuting Christians. When he lived in the Soviet Union, he had no problems; he came to the West and in the land of freedom, he had problems.

Today, Vera Forum has services held in both Russian and German, a country where only about 5% of people attend church.

After the police raid, church growth skyrocketed.

“We always had problems, and I kept asking God, ‘Why?’” Epp said. “But I think it was all part of God’s plan and that we wouldn’t rely on ourselves, but on Him.”

Sources: CBN