An American missionary kidnapped in front of his family and church congregation last week was rescued Tuesday amid a hail of police bullets.
Josh Sullivan, a Baptist pastor of a small church in South Africa, was “miraculously unharmed” after a specialized police unit raided a property where his abductors held him, according to NBC News.
Three kidnappers were killed in a car as they fled with Sullivan is inside, but the clergyman was not injured. And his family is praising God for his safety.
“A sad situation but I’m so thankful my son is home alive and safe,” Sullivan’s mother, Tonya Morton Rinker, wrote in a Facebook post.
“Thank you Lord!”
The saga began Thursday when armed men took Sullivan from his church while he was preaching in the town of Motherwell, outside the city of Gqeberha, on the country’s Indian Ocean coast.
Among the congregation were Sullivan’s wife, Meaghan, and the couple’s children.
When Sullivan’s home church, Fellowship Baptist in Maryville, Tennessee, near Knoxville, spread the news, social media witnessed an outpouring of prayer for Sullivan’s safe return.
Others also posted about it:
PRAY
American Pastor Josh Sullivan Kidnapped at Gunpoint, Thousands Rally in Prayer https://t.co/QXb1fGIsH7 pic.twitter.com/Ycw190fL6u
— CBN News (@CBNNews) April 14, 2025
On Tuesday, that return took place.
According to The Herald, a local newspaper in the Gqeberha region, police had received information about where Sullivan was being held.
As they approached the home — about 14 miles from the site of the kidnapping, according to NBC — the officers saw a vehicle with men inside. When the men in the vehicle spotted the officers, they opened fire and attempted to flee, The Herald reported.
“The officers responded with tactical precision, leading to a high-intensity shoot-out in which three unidentified suspects were fatally wounded,” police spokesman Lt-Col Avele Fumba said, according to The Herald.
It wasn’t clear where Sullivan was in the vehicle, but the fact that he was inside it while three men were killed by flying bullets, yet remained uninjured, had his mother ecstatic with gratitude.
“PRAISE GOD FOR HIS GRACE AND MERCY,” she wrote in another Facebook post.
And she was not alone.
Amazing! Praise God!
— Duff (@dgh5391) April 16, 2025
All Praise and Glory to God!
— capitalT (@omniveracious) April 16, 2025
Thank God!
— Kate Sullivan (@sulliv50474) April 16, 2025
Naturally, with leftist contempt for Christianity rampant in the modern culture, cynics and critics of sometimes-dangerous missionary work chimed in, too.
And according to NBC News, Fellowship Baptist said it “had faced growing questions, including what it described as ‘malicious and hateful’ messages about why it deploys missionaries.”
But the messages on Wednesday were overwhelmingly thoughts of gratitude for Sullivan’s safety.
“Miraculously unharmed, he was immediately assessed by medical personnel and is currently in good health,” Fumba said, according to The Herald.
