Amid the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, right-wing pastor and radical conspiracy theorist Rodney Howard-Browne held services at his The River church in Tampa Bay, Florida, on Sunday, where he encouraged congregants to greet one another by shaking hands because, as he said, “we’re raising up revivalists, not pansies.”

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne is not about to cancel church or prevent congregants from shaking hands because they are not a bunch of “pansies.” pic.twitter.com/C36kBIEWqF — Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 15, 2020

Howard-Browne, who was among evangelical leaders who laid hands upon and prayed over President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in 2017, dedicated most of his Sunday sermon to mocking fears about the spread of the coronavirus and calling it a “phantom plague” designed to terrify people into receiving vaccines that will kill them, which he claimed was all part of a plan laid out in a 2010 document called “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” produced by The Rockefeller Foundation and Global Business Network.

Howard-Browne said he doesn’t know anybody who has been infected by the coronavirus, nor does he know anybody who knows anybody who has been infected, which he cited as evidence that the entire thing is nothing more than a globalist plot to shut down churches.

“It’s been weaponized to instill fear into people because what they want to do is change the way the world functions, really forever,” he said. “All these churches that are allowing themselves to come down to 250 [congregants], guess what? When you try to meet again, you ain’t gonna be able to meet again. They are going to keep you at 250 because you gave up ground. You gave up ground. Whatever ground you give up because of fear, you will give up permanently.”

“Because the climate change narrative for global governance failed,” Howard-Browne continued, “they are using the World Health Organization to then come in and take over the control of nations and then they are going to bring in vaccines … There’s going to be forced vaccines, which they can kill off many people with vaccines. It’s about population reduction because there are too many people on the planet, but with the correct vaccines we can shoot them and then they can die.”