Pastor Bill Wilson, founder and leader of Metro World Child in New York, says it’s time for Christians to stop the talk and start walking the walk for Jesus. Believers, he says, need to start taking risks to help and serve others, even if it means the cost of their own lives.
There is little doubt that the 73-year-old Wilson has taken those risks in his ministry. Last week, through contacts he has acquired over the years, he flew to Haiti with the intention of negotiating with the terrorists that have been holding 16 American missionaries and one Canadian missionary hostage for a couple of weeks. He met with some of the kidnappers from the 400 Mawozo gang, who are demanding ransom of $1 million per person to try to negotiate the missionaries’ release.
During the brief meeting in a village north of the capital, Port-Au-Prince, Wilson encountered a lack of mercy and saw a Haitian woman slain right before his eyes. He was also struck on the head by the butt of a 12-gauge shotgun by one of the kidnappers.
Metro World Child, established in 1980, has catered to the needs and has ministered to the people of Haiti since the early 2000s. Knowing the terrain of the country well was one of the reasons why Wilson ventured there without fear.
After the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise in September, Wilson says law and order has been non-existent in Haiti and the situation there has become extremely hazardous, especially for Americans. His first job there, he said, was to find out if the missionaries were still alive.
Wilson was unable to obtain that information and, with no regard for his own life and a CIA agent, one of his government contacts, by his side, he was on the receiving end of a lot more than he bargained for.
“The thing in Haiti has just been a free-for-all. It’s just nuts,” Wilson said in an exclusive interview with Charisma News. “Through my contacts, I went there and met with them, and I immediately said, ‘Look, we need to know if these people are alive.’ So, one of the kidnappers starts screaming and cursing at me. I kept telling him, ‘Listen, we need more than this.’ So, then he yells at a guy in a hut, behind where we were talking, and they pull out this Haitian woman and they macheted her breasts off right in front of me. She’s bleeding and screaming. The tough part was when I was leaving, she was crying to me, ‘Help me. Please don’t leave me.’ It’s very frustrating because you’ve seen so much over the years with these kinds of things.
“So, I said, ‘Look, go ahead and kill me if you want, but if you do, you are going to have the weight of the U.S. military down on you and you won’t have to worry about getting any money. That’s when he took the shotgun and caught me in the head with it. My CIA guy took me by the arm and just said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to go.’ And that was it.
“So, we went back to Port-Au-Prince and I stayed for a couple of more days and then I got back here stateside. That was it, the long and short of it. I’ve been through things like this before. Members of the State Department are in Haiti, along with the FBI and my CIA contact, and none of them get along at all. Things like this are all just very political. We have no idea of whether these people are dead are alive.”
Wilson said he was “pretty sure” the Haitian woman who was macheted could not have survived.
In his 50 years of ministry, Wilson has had a gun pointed at his head more than a few times. He has also seen others murdered before his eyes. It has happened within the confines of the United States in Brooklyn, where Metro World Child is located, and in other foreign countries.
A contact of Wilson’s in the United States in California helped Wilson set up the meeting with the kidnappers in Haiti. It’s the same contact that helped Wilson become a part of a rescue effort in 2014 when more than 270 girls were abducted from a school in Chibok, Nigeria.
During that rescue mission, he again encountered a great deal of horror, including the decapitation of a woman with a machete.
It is experiences like those that give Wilson no hesitation to put his own life in danger. It is the heart of Jesus to save the lives of people in peril.
And it’s that heart, Wilson says, that all Christians must develop, now more than ever. He says we must follow John 15:13, which reads, “Greater love has no one that this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
“When you’ve done this for 50 years, you see things and this is why I get so frustrated with church people,” Wilson says. “It’s a lot of talk, but when the fat hits the fire, it’s just talk. We don’t need a description of Jesus. We need a demonstration. I’ve been riding that horse for years to get things done. Whether it’s our New York team, our UK team or our Pakistan team, these are unique people who don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. We don’t give ‘no’ for an answer. You’ve got to do something and there’s got to be a price that’s paid.
“When that guy hit me with the butt of that gun, I didn’t know what was going to happen. But my whole life has been prepped for things like this. After all of this years, God has led me all around the world and to the places to do the things we’ve done. What’s that old song that we used to sing say?:
Oh to be His hand extended,
Reaching out to the oppressed.
Let me touch Him, let me touch Jesus,
So that others may know and be blessed.
“This is not a game. Things like this are real and we’ve got to understand that.” {eoa}
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