Someone loaded up a trailer with Bibles, parked it so as to partially block the entrance to a church in Tennessee on Easter Sunday.
The trailer load of "hundreds" of Bibles was deliberately set one fire around 6:00 a.m. Sunday, investigators told The Tennessean.
The Wilson County Sheriff's Office said the trailer had been left at the intersection of Old Lebanon Dirt Road and Chandler Road, according to the outlet.
Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church said it had been left "in front of an entrance."
Locke posted pictures of the trailer to Facebook Sunday morning.
"It was quite the scene to wake up to on my first morning, back from Israel," Locke wrote.
The Mt. Juliet Fire Department put out the blaze after being called to the scene. It was then determined to be in Wilson County's jurisdiction, and the sheriff's office took over, WKRN reported.
"According to the WCSO, specific details about the incident will not be immediately released in order to 'uphold the integrity of the investigation,'" WKRN reported.
"However, deputies ensured citizens that 'the safety and security of our residents remains our utmost priority,'" the outlet continued.
"It was 100 percent directed at (Global Vision Bible Church)," Locke told The Tennessean. "It blocked the entrance to our campus and the fact that it was an entire load of Bibles is rather conclusive proof that is was most assuredly directed at us.
"It did not, nor will it stop us. It was cleaned up in time for people to drive into the parking lot. We had a full house and a marvelous service."
Locke's church has held events in the past in which written material believed to be connected to witchcraft or other occultic practices, similar to the way in which the early church at Ephesus destroyed many valuable books related to the practice of "magic arts."
"And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver," Luke wrote in Acts 19.
Various analyses of that passage have placed the value of the books burned in Acts 19:19 in the neighborhood of five million U.S. dollars in 2024. The 200 or so Bibles burned on Sunday were probably valued at less than $2,000.
"If you think Christianity is not under attack more than ever before in the United States of America, you have not been paying attention," Locke said, according to the Tennessean.
He added that, whatever the motivation of the Bible burners, it likely had the opposite effect.
“What people think many times is going to stop us, really just encourages us, in a weird way, to know that we’re doing what’s right,” he added, according to WKRN.
