THE head of the Seventh-day Adventist church here on Sunday urged members of the church not to cover up acts of crime, whether they are committed in or outside of the church, by failing to report them to the police.

“Don’t steal, don’t kill, leave other men’s wives alone, leave the little boys and girls alone; don’t abuse them, and if you catch a deacon doing it, let the next person to know be the policeman, not the pastor.

“And then we can all go and visit him in jail and pray for him, bringing him soap, and water, and food. We must do the right thing,” said president of the West Indies Union (WIU), Derek Bignall.

He was speaking at the National Arena where the East Jamaica Conference hosted the 16-LB, 66-language travelling Bible as part of the Follow the Bible campaign.

“No Seventh-day Adventist should ever go to jail. The only Adventist who should be in prison are those who we converted in prison or if you’re a prison warder, but you mustn’t leave from inside here to go down there unless you’re going to minister to them and go back to your house,” the pastor said.

Asked whether any member of the church was implicated in any act of wrongdoing, or whether he was speaking of a specific incident outside the church, Bignall said his remarks were not based on any particular incident.

“It is something I’ve said before,” he said. “Members should understand how serious this thing is. We are law-abiding people so we must stop covering up evil. We’ve got to stop this low-life living,” he told the Observer.

He, however, made reference to the police constable who was killed in front of his house two Fridays ago on Fisher Road in Mandeville — the seat of the WIU.

While addressing the gathering, he said: “The Seventh-day Adventist church in Jamaica condemns the ruthless killing of the 11 policemen slain this year and demand that as people of the word of God, when we know these people…,” trailing off before he could finish.

Later, he told the Observer: “The murder of that policeman last weekend, I don’t know him but it has hurt the core of me. By killing a policeman you are attacking the symbol of the security of the land. What message is that sending? That you’re bringing down law and order, you’re going to cripple security in this country. Something serious has to be done to put a noose on this lifestyle.

“Can reading the Bible change it? Yes, it can, because man is redeemable, man can repent, man can change, man can be re-born,” he said.

Although the minister batted for reporting crime to the police, he criticised those members of the force who betray the trust placed in them by citizens. He related a story about owners of illegal guns who were reportedly searching for the people who had found their weapons and reported the matter to the police.

“Now, how could those people know who reported it? We need some police who you can tell and nobody else knows but them and you. That’s how we’re going to help uncover crime,” he said.

In his short but wide-ranging delivery, Bignall said the Bible had best practices for every area of life, including debt management. He attacked Charles Darwin’s evolution theory and said the Ministry of Education should do more to push Creationism. He also said families were spending too much time using the Internet and watching television as opposed to reading the Bible.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Delroy Chuck, who represented the Government at Sunday’s event added: “If we read the Bible, I am confident that we could get more and all Jamaicans to care for each other and we could have a better Jamaica.”

Follow the Bible is an initiative of the Adventist world church. Its objective is to generate deeper interest in reading the Bible. At the core of the campaign is a travelling Bible which has each of its 66 books translated into a different language. Its journey started in 2008 in the Philippines and will culminate in July next year at the church’s General Conference session in Atlanta. It arrived in Jamaica — its 112th stop — last Friday and visited each of the three counties, the Arena in Surrey being last on the list.

The Bible left Monday for Caracas, Venezuela, extending a six-continent, multi-country tour that has already included places like Denmark, the Netherlands, India, Australia, New Zealand, Romania, Korea and Costa Rica.

“The reason this Bible is going around the world is to tell people to fear God. Give glory to God, the hour of judgement has come, worship God who made heaven and earth, love God, love your fellow men,” said Bignall.