Controversial pastor says victory over cancer was a fight with Satan

A RELIGIOUS extremist has spoken for the first time about how he defeated cancer claiming the ordeal was a fight against "Satan".

Pastor Jack Glass, 67, who has waged war against everyone from Billy Connolly to the Pope, claimed his lung cancer fight was the toughest battle of all.

Mr Glass was stunned when he was first told a persistent cough was caused by lung cancer despite being a non-smoker and teetotaller all his life.

Doctors who first diagnosed the disease gave him just a 6 per cent of survival.

Speaking for the first time about his illness in a BBC Scotland documentary, Mr Glass described his belief that the tumour was the result of personal attack on him by Satan.

He said: "The doctors didn’t give me much hope. It was a large tumour in the lungs, with little chance of survival.

"I just had to assume that if my ministry was still useful to God, then this must be an attack by Satan on my body.

"The devil would not pay as much attention to me, to try and discourage me, if I wasn’t doing something useful for God.

"So the cancer comes from Satan - it is Satan who puts this filthy disease in people."

Dismissed as too extreme by the Rev Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, Mr Glass founded the hardline Zion Baptist Church in Glasgow’s south side in 1965.

Over the next 40 years, his fierce campaign against the Pope’s visit to Scotland in 1982 and his picketing of comedian Connelly’s early gigs have caused controversy.

His opposition to homosexuality, Catholicism and abortion in a series of hellfire and brimstone sermons saw him branded a bigot.

But even the intense chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments couldn’t silence the preacher, as he went straight from his hospital bed to protest outside a concert by the US rocker star Marilyn Manson at Glasgow’s SECC.

Bearing placards, Mr Glass and his small band of followers clashed with teenage goths outside the venue before being removed by security guards.

It was, he believed, yet another triumph against Satan.

He said: "We are trying to influence the young people of Scotland away from the Satan of Manson.

"To see some of the displays by the young girls going topless, their language and so on, it just proved my point. Manson’s behaviour is influencing them."

A year after the cancer was found, Mr Glass, who didn’t miss a single Sunday service during his illness, was given the all clear.

As he preached at a service of celebration before his packed church, his voice burning with the anger that has been his trademark, he declared: "I’m really rejoicing today.

"I really believe it is an amazing miracle. I think the devil suffered a tremendous defeat. I’ve lived to see the devil run away.

"I’m like Lazarus, who rose from the grave. Jack Glass is not dead yet."

Despite his image as a man who speaks his mind, Mr Glass, who lived in Glasgow before moving to a bungalow in Killearn, Stirlingshire, 20 years ago, shows concern over his public image.

He said: "People have never found out the real Jack Glass.

"All the protest, the preaching and days of prayer over the years was to try and capture the soul of Glasgow for Jesus Christ. But people have never understood me in that light.

"So I’ve captured the national spittle. I’m described as an extremist, a bigot. But I don’t hate anybody."