Ring of Déjà Vu from 7 Church Blazes

Since we have been tracking the coverage with the church fires that have taken place in East Texas, I wanted to share with you this article in which a pastor remembers the past when there were more than forty suspicious fires that took place in the 1990's.  Please continue to keep this situation in your prayers.

The East Texas arsons have left Nelson, 58, shaken by a strange sense of déjà vu.

In June 1996, the Lighthouse, founded by his father, was wrecked by a deliberately set fire — the first of more than 40 suspicious blazes that roared through the Hunt County city of 25,000 before year's end. The Greenville fires, many of which hit minority neighborhoods, coincided with an alarming rash of church arsons across the American South.

Almost 300 houses of worship — about 40 percent of them African-American — were targeted nationally in 1996. Authorities arrested 199 people — Anglo, black and Hispanic.

In Texas, the state fire marshal's office helped local fire departments investigate 16 church arsons, although the number of such cases handled solely on the local level is unknown. The National Coalition for Burned Churches counted more than 40 suspicious church fires throughout Texas that year.