I’ve never understood the people who want to test God.

You know who I’m talking about.

The cultists who think God is going to protect them when they take up arms against federal agents.

The mountain preachers who will pick up cottonmouths and rattlers and sway around the altar just daring God to let one of those serpents strike.

Likewise, I just don’t get those who demand that they go to church at a time when a pandemic is raging and spreading among groups and killing people just like them.

This isn’t supposition. It’s fact.

We’ve already seen the virus rip through a small community near Madisonville and spread its deadly tentacles across the state after a religious revival near Dawson Springs.

God wouldn’t dare harm the people who came to worship him.

That was what they thought.

So far, 54 people have tested positive for the virus because of that revival. Six people have died.

The vast majority of churches see the danger in this and have locked their doors.

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Catholics have shuttered their naves. The Archbishop has taken to holding Holy Week services and Masses at a nearly empty Cathedral of the Assumption and broadcasting them on WAVE television.

Southeast Christian Church is streaming its services over the internet.

So are many other churches in the state.

A handful of churches, however, insist on putting their congregants at risk.

And not just their parishioners.

Their parishioners' families.

The checkout clerks and the baggers where their parishioners and their families shop for groceries.

They are endangering the doctors and nurses who will treat their parishioners when they fall ill. And they will.

And they are endangering the funeral directors their families will come into contact with after they surely die.

These aren’t churches. They’re doomsday cults.

They're trying to hasten the Last Judgment. The Day of Reckoning.

The End of Days.

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They’re putting their members and others at risk for some silly, selfish reason that is clear only to them. If these people truly believe God, they won’t do this.

Don’t believe me, check the Bible. Matthew 4:7 says "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."

God is letting good people suffer and die right and left.

More than 95,000 have died worldwide. The virus has taken nearly 17,000 lives in the United States and it's killed 79 in Kentucky. More will die.

If these preachers won’t tell their people to go home, Beshear needs to step in.

Beshear has already sent some of them an official “We can’t be doin’ that” order. He can’t shy away from the next step.

He needs to padlock the doors of the churches before members show up on Easter Sunday or he needs to send in the National Guard to take over the churches for use as makeshift field hospitals or morgues. (Even if we likely won't need them unless these churches keep meeting.)

Or he needs to arrest the pastors and have police in the churches’ parking lots on Easter morning telling those who show up that they can’t get out of their cars and must leave.

Beshear has taken tough, aggressive measures throughout this crisis and because of that, we haven’t seen the growth of the virus here like they have seen in some states and fear in others. He can’t blanch now while we’re still thought to be two weeks from the virus’ peak in Kentucky.

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We wouldn’t stand around and let Jim Jones’ cultists drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. We ought not allow our citizens to fall victim to misguided preachers who think showing up at church during a pandemic is more important than life itself.

Go ahead and keep holy on the Sabbath but do it at home.

Oh, and leave the snakes in the woods.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.