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August 20, 1995 - The Night America Bombed Westboro Baptist Church With An IED (Improvised Explosive Device) In A Cowardly Move To Stop WBC's Anti-Gay Gospel Preaching - Thereby Bringing Down The Unmitigated And Irreversible Wrath Of God Upon This Evil Nation, Manifesting Itself In The Daily Bloody IED-Deaths Of American Soldiers In Iraq And Other Places. (See Documentation below).

"For a fire is kindled in mine anger, which shall burn upon you."
(Jer. 15:14b)

Thank God for the bombing of WBC!
Luke 6:22,23.

Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) had been faithfully preaching for four years when a local whore stepped forward to run for District Attorney on a platform that she would shut down our ministry. She was elected and immediately began filing criminal charges against our members until the number of charges filed by local authorities exceeded five hundred. By August 20 we had just completed four weeks of back-to-back trials in Emporia, Kansas, where venue had been changed to. The local authorities in Topeka – from the police to the prosecutors, to the elected and non-elected officials in every branch and every level of city, county and state government – were encouraging crimes and malicious prosecutions against members of WBC.

They were working hand-in-hand to establish a zeitgeist so that every piece of filthy scum was encouraged to come to the pickets and attack us physically and verbally, being assured of three things:

  1. There would be NO consequences to them criminally.
  2. One or more members of WBC would be prosecuted.
  3. There was a support group in town called Concerned Citizens of Topeka established to fight against the religious ministry and message of WBC by providing legal and financial support to anyone who attacked or accused us. That group would provide an attorney for the attacker to help navigate the process of prosecuting WBC members – pro bono!
Crimes against WBC members were a regular (almost daily) occurrence. The local newspaper was printing daily stories, editorials, and letters to the editor to demonize, vilify and marginalize WBC and her little flock of slaughter.

In spite of and through it all, these faithful souls hit the streets every day “going forth and weeping, bearing precious seed,” (Ps. 126:6), knowing the promises of God to sustain us and keep us were good and faithful promises.

Against this backdrop, it was after 11:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 20, 1995, when this story unfolded. I had just put my sleeping 4-day-old baby into his bassinette. He was moderately jaundiced and was therefore sleeping hard and having difficulty waking up even to eat. I went down the hall to check on the other seven children, six of whom were having a sleepover on the floor of their oldest brother’s bedroom in the opposite corner of the second floor. Little Grace was sleeping in the nursery with a wave machine going to block out noise. I then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Suddenly a very loud explosion rocked the house; the window to my right rattled. I ran down the hall toward my bedroom and met my husband Brent, who was standing over the baby. He described the blast as having caused a heavy walnut wall hanging to fly out at the bottom at a 45 degree angle and drop back against the wall just over the baby.

I called the police department and spoke with Lt. Bud Brooks. He assured me that they had heard about a blast, but that it was NOT at our house, but a mile away at 21st & Gage. I hung up and told Brent what he said. Brent was looking out the window and pointed to a large plume of smoke that was drifting away immediately North of our driveway. Our bedroom was above the driveway on the second floor. The smoke began drifting to the west.

I called back to the police department and again spoke with Lt. Brooks. I asked how we could have a plume of smoke drifting away from our house if the explosion was at 21st & Gage. I was again assured that no explosion was close to our house. We went down the hall and checked the other children, then grabbed some flashlights and went outside. We noticed that our 12-passenger van light was on. It shortly went off, as though someone had exited the van (the way a dome light will stay on a period and then shut off automatically). We were met by my dear friend and brother Tim, who had heard the blast and come out with his own flashlight. Tim lives two doors north of our house and had looked out his bedroom window to see the same plume of smoke drifting away from our driveway and had come to investigate. Other neighbors to the east and west and in the next block were out in the dark looking to see what the blast was about. Shortly Tim and Brent found the place where the IED had exploded. The smell of burned blast powder was strong. There was a series of holes in the stockade fence to the north of the driveway and to the south of the fence. The blast had been mostly absorbed by the 12-passenger van. The van had small holes and ripple marks, with a lot of paint missing. The cement was black with burn marks. The blast had rocked the van with such force it caused the dome light to come on.

I called Lt. Brooks for the third time and told him about the blast site. He sounded very distressed, knowing the implications of the information I was giving him. He knew this was a hate crime, and he felt the pressure to cover the facts immediately. He said he would send an officer out.

The officer arrived shortly after my call to Lt. Brooks. Typical of the Topeka Police Department staff, he had a hostile attitude, and tromped through the crime scene like an untrained oaf. I questioned whether he should be doing so, and he responded with a grunt. Knowing we had to engage in self-help – as usual – we did our own search. In the darkness we found many large and small pieces of orange plastic. After pointing out this evidence to the uncaring officer, he took the evidence and left. Not a word of concern or any assurance the criminal would be found.

Monday morning we were up early; a review of the yards for two houses to the north and across the street to the west turned up more large and small pieces of the orange plastic, some as far away as a football field. We also found the wall hanging had been blown off the wall on the first floor in the dining room that was next to the driveway. Television and radio news reported that the blast did not target WBC, and that other explosions were reported Sunday night as well.

The next several days we were interviewed and questioned endlessly by the local Fire Marshall. There were questions put to us suggesting we might be responsible for the bomb. All efforts were directed at making us appear culpable. So, the church offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the truth. By Wednesday we had solid information and proof about who had done it; there were three men involved.

Brent and I were called down to the Fire Marshall’s office, where we dragged ourselves with baby Gabriel, tired and weary. I sat answering questions until it dawned on me that those Fire Department officials and ATF officers were NOT investigating the bombing, but instead focusing on my brother Tim and suggesting that his proactive efforts may somehow be improper. (Tim, with experience and training in such matters, had collected physical evidence and questioned possible witnesses – all of which pointed to the obvious fact that WBC was the target and the other explosions were “tests” performed in safe areas. He did so because no such effort was being made by any law enforcement agency at any level of government.) Their language was vague and unnerving, clearly calculated to trouble us and leave us without relief. They also made sounds suggesting the offer of a reward was improper (though it is a common technique in crime-solving).

In my post-partum fog, I detected threats in their questions. My husband and I began to realize what was going on at about the same time. I told them that we were done with them, because it was bad enough that they focused their investigation on pretending we had done wrong, and clearly they were not going to give us any help. Their bizarre effort to find wrongdoing in our actions was the final straw. Brent made it clear their actions were, predictably, wrong, and we got up and left.

See the newspaper articles and transcript for additional information and facts, to complete this story. It’s a testimony to the outrageous abuse of power that the government of Topeka has demonstrated toward WBC since the first day we held up a picket sign on the street. We have turned the other cheek, ducking and dodging around them, by grace, growing stronger and more courageous. Their cowardly acts were always meant to stop us; God used them to strengthen us. Every player in this disgraceful event will stand before God on the Judgment Day and account, in the minutest detail, for his or her role. It will be a great day of reckoning. Recompense is already unfolding at the hands of the Iraqi insurgents. It was not our place to seek revenge, but rather to step aside – keep ourselves focused and on message – and let God deal with the dastardly deeds of law enforcement, prosecutors, media, the fire marshal, and others who had a hand in this most unsavory affair.

This event will go down in eternity as evidence of the vicious hate of this community toward the Saints of God. It is a manifestation of their years of hostility and persecution, and proof positive that Topeka is Satan’s seat. It symbolizes the reaction of this entire nation to our street ministry of hope, grace and love. We warned this nation for over a decade that if they did not repent, and stop institutionalizing the sin of sodomy in every aspect of society, God would punish them. They responded by attacking us with an IED, in the most calloused fashion. The response of government at every level – after we put every agency on notice up to and including the President of the United States – captured the hatred of this nation toward the messengers of God. (Can you imagine what would have happened if it had been a black church, or a synagogue, or a mosque? The government knows how to deal with church bombings). It is perfectly fitting for a just God to avenge his little Saints by using IEDs – something unheard of in this generation until a few months ago – to destroy the fruit of America.

"Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence." Amos 8:1-3.

This record was given by your faithful servant Shirley Phelps-Roper.

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