Randy Carl Russell: Pentecostal Preacher, Terroristic Threat

Randy Russell: It's not known which chapter and verse he was preaching from

Last Wednesday, Randy Carl Russell, the 52-year-old pastor of the Weches United Pentecostal Church in Grapeland, called a fellow holy man in Silsbee and allegedly told him of his plans to kill someone who lived in the home where his daughter was staying in Kirbyville. The incident report also stated that Russell had kicked his daughter out of his flock for good. Never again, Russell told the Silsbee preacher, could his daughter worship the Lord in his presence.

At some point police got involved, because when Russell showed up at his daughter's lodgings on Friday, deputies were there to turn him away. And then he came back and drove around the house in a way that was apparently interpreted as menacing, because later that day a warrant for his arrest was signed. On Friday night, cops from Jasper and Houston counties arrested the preacher at his Grapeland home. After a night in jail, Russell was charged with making a terroristic threat, which is a third degree felony in this case.

(On a side note, haven't hellfire and brimstone preachers been making terroristic threats on God's behalf pretty much every Sunday ever since Jonathan Edwards and his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?)

Given that this story originated in a Deep East Texas media outlet, you'd expect the comments to come from macho readers siding with the father trying to rein in his wayward daughter.

That is most definitely not the case here. People who claim to know the man say the daughter's only mistake is in not running far enough away.