On June 12, 2016, Angel Colon was among 53 wounded and 49 murdered in the Pulse nightclub by lone gunman Omar Mateen. Having pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Mateen walked into the club around 2 a.m. and began firing an AR-15 assault rifle.
In a Facebook interview conducted by Jeffrey Mccall, founder of For Such a Time Ministry, Colon said he prayed for forgiveness as Mateen was standing behind him preparing to shoot. “[Mateen] didn’t shoot me quick, he gave me a few minutes, and at the moment I started to do a prayer, and I started asking God for forgiveness, I started asking God please forgive me for everything I did, please. I’m sorry.” Suddenly, Colon changed his prayer. “God, You promised me that I have a calling. You promised me that I have a purpose. You’re getting me out of here alive.”
Colon had accepted Christ as a youth before straying into homosexuality. Struggling to walk again in an Orlando hospital, he struggled through Satan’s attempts to keep him in sin. “It was still a battle at that moment, because now the enemy is putting everything in your head,” he said. “The enemy was way harder (after) I decided to change my life. It’s a big process.
“People always ask that question, ‘Well, are you straight now, because you go to church, because you’re so close to God.’ [What] I tell them is I’m not gay, I’m not straight, I’m a son of God. And the only lifestyle I promote is faith, nothing else.”
Angel Colon now ministers to those who have left homosexuality.
In 2009, Southern Baptists passed a resolution that proclaimed “that those who practice any unbiblical sexual behavior can be forgiven and changed, as the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘… some of you were like this, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).”
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Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ general assignment writer/editor.
Original article entitled, “2 Pulse massacre survivors in ex-LGBT Freedom March”.