(OPINION) Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who was recently arrested on the airport tarmac upon his return home from a trip to the U.S., has issued a warning to Americans: “You’re next.”

According to the Christian Post, The Canada Border Services Agency arrested the pastor last week for two outstanding warrants — one for not wearing a face mask and another for holding a church service in June. He has an upcoming court hearing on Oct. 13, where a judge will decide whether he’ll be sentenced to 21 days in jail for “contempt of court” for holding worship services in violation of lockdown restrictions.

“If they came for me, be sure of it, they’re coming for you as well,” Pawlowski, who serves as pastor of Street Church and Cave of Adullam Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, told Fox News in an interview. “What they’re doing today is identical to what I remember growing up,” added Pawlowski, comparing the measures taken by law enforcement officials to enforce COVID-19 restrictions to the actions taken by authorities in his native Poland when it was under communist rule.



Fox News reported: “You’re next,” he said. “If they came for me, be sure of it, they’re coming for you as well.” He called the individuals who arrested him “masked gangsters,” that he “couldn’t even consider them officers of the law.” Pawlowski, head of Calgary’s Street Church in Alberta, Canada, first gained international attention when he confronted local inspectors on Easter after he said they entered his church without a warrant.

The inspectors were there to ensure the church was abiding by COVID-19 guidelines, which called for an indoor maximum capacity of 15%, social distancing, and mask-wearing. “Get out of this property,” he shouted to the police during the confrontation. The pastor proceeded to call the police “Nazis” and “Gestapo,” referring to Nazi Germany’s secret state police.

“Nazis are not welcome here,” he shouted again. Pawlowski told Fox News in April he was raised under Soviet communism in Poland. “It was a disaster,” he said about his childhood. “Police officers could break into your house five in the morning, they could beat you up, torture, they could arrest you for no matter what reason they would come up with …

So, it was like a flashback when those police officers showed up at my church. Everything kind of came back to life from my childhood, and the only thing I could do is to fend off the wolves as a shepherd … We as lions should never bow before the hyenas, and that’s what they’re right now.”