Imagine waking up in the dead of night to your dog barking, only to find armed men outside your home, one trying to breach your door with a semi-automatic rifle.
That was the horrifying reality for Christian author and apologist Larry Alex Taunton on Mar. 17. He came terrifyingly close to shooting a police officer who was attempting to enter his rural Alabama home — all because of a fake 911 call, part of a disturbing trend known as “swatting.”
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As reported by The Christian Post, Taunton is just one among a growing list of conservative commentators who have been targeted in recent weeks.
These false emergency calls are not harmless pranks; they’re calculated attacks meant to provoke fear, chaos, or even deadly confrontations. In Taunton’s case, nine police cars surrounded his gated community, officers in full tactical gear. “Thank God the door was locked,” he said, acknowledging that a fatal encounter was just moments away.
/**/But for Taunton, this wasn’t just a political hit job — it was spiritual warfare. He boldly declared, “These are demonic strongholds, and we wrestle not against flesh and blood.”
He believes the attacks stem not only from his public stances on Israel, Ukraine and U.S. government corruption, but from his exposure of deeper evils like human trafficking and terrorism, activities he says are tied to USAID. “This really comes down to not just political agendas… There’s greed involved here… To me, it’s the most desperate measure of all when you resort to violence.”
His ordeal is a sobering reminder that evil doesn’t always wear horns and carry a pitchfork — sometimes it dresses in suits, hides behind bureaucracies and manipulates people to silence truth-tellers.
When someone like Taunton says this is a spiritual battle, we ought to listen. As Scripture tells us in Ephesians 6:12, our fight is not against flesh and blood, but “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
Swatting is more than harassment. It’s a symptom of a deeper darkness — one that fears truth, hates righteousness and will do anything to silence the voices exposing it. But as believers, we are called to stand firm, armored in truth and faith, unshaken even when the darkness knocks at our door.
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James Lasher is staff writer for Charisma Media.
