Pastor who wanted to be raptured or die in church suffers fatal heart attack near pulpit

 

For at least the last five years, Pastor Robert Lee Hamilton Sr. of Golden Gate Cathedral Church of God In Christ in New Albany, Mississippi, has been telling his family and parishioners that he wanted to be raptured or die preaching the word in church.

On Sunday, the beloved father of six got his wish. He suffered a “massive heart attack” after preaching an “eerie” sermon on holiness and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital at 1:17 p.m., according to his son Norman Hamilton, who was present at the time. 

Pastor Hamilton was 84.

“He’s been speaking this, and it’s been his testimony for at least five, six years or more. He said, ‘If I don’t get raptured in church … I want to die in the pulpit while I’m preaching the word.’ That would be his way to die, and that’s what God did,. 

“He said, ‘I don’t want to be at home, I don’t want to be at the hospital. If I die, I want the Lord to rapture me, but if not, I want to die in the church preaching the word.’”

A week earlier, the church that Pastor Hamilton had led for more than 45 years had done a presentation about heart disease awareness.

“Dr. Smith told us ways we can be more active and how to prevent Heart Disease,” the church noted in a Facebook post on March 1.

Around the same time, Hamilton said his father had appeared “kind of weak.” Since he had never known his father to be a sickly man, his death on Sunday was shocking.

“He was great strength all my life that I’ve known him. Never been to the hospital or anything, never been sick. He got into the church yesterday, feeling good, speaking, and he sat down at the pulpit in his chair around about 1 o’clock. [Then], he looked up to Heaven like he looked up to the sky, and he died; like he had a massive heart attack right then and there,” Hamilton said of his father.