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NEW YORK CITY (EAP) -- An 82-year-old Brooklyn man died from laughter yesterday after being told that the Earth and our universe are less than 7000 years old during a church service conducted by a visiting pastor. Pastor Jonathan Verncast who was temporarily filling in for pastor George Beneggin at Kingswood Episcopal church said that he didn't intend to kill anyone with his sermon, and considers the incident as a "mysterious work of the Lord." "I didn't mean to make anyone laugh, and my deepest sympathies go out to the widow and her family," Verncast said. "My husband was a geologist and spent his career studying rock formations which he said were millions of years old, and he started giggling and finally broke out into uncontrollable laughter when the pastor started talking about how the Grand Canyon was formed only 5000 years ago during Noah's flood," said Louise Elderberry, wife of George Elderberry who was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics who failed to revive him. "He started slapping his knee and elbowed me, then broke out into full-scale laughter. His face turned red at first and then blue, and he looked like he was having trouble catching his breath. He then clutched his chest and fell right out of the pew onto the floor," she said. "It was probably a heart attack brought on by the heavy laughter that killed him," said Larry Goldstein, attending physician at Mercy Hospital where Elderberry was taken by ambulance. "I'm a doctor, not a geologist, but even I know that the Earth is way older than 7000 years," he said. "He was laughing so hard that some of the other people around him started laughing out loud too," said Rolena Washington, who was sitting in the pew behind the Elderberry family. "My husband and I couldn't figure out why he was laughing so hard," she said. Verncast said that he was just filling in for a few weeks while the regular pastor was on vacation, and that next week's sermon will be on something less likely to cause potential laughter. "It will most likely be something about love and kindness and nothing to do with geology," he said. |