GO-SIN-NO-MORE

FROM VOODOO TO JESUS CHRIST

This is a story of Divine Forgiveness and Intervention that rocked me to my core as a Man and especially as a Christian. It expanded any concept that I had assumed about God's actions. It left me realizing that I knew nothing. I never again tended to place God in a box. God does what he wants to do. In the grand scheme of things we can only attempt to understand in retrospect.

I was a Sergeant Supervisor. Why should I have to guard a prisoner in the Lake County Jail? Why was I being pulled in from police patrol to do an assignment in the jail, the first in over 10 years? His name was A. Coleman.

I didn't want anything to do with A. Coleman. Coleman was a Serial Killer. He was the worst murderer that a particular county in Indiana had ever known. He was currently under Death Penalty Sentencing in Ohio and Indiana. Ohio got to kill him first. He had raped and killed small children, men, women, and the last person that he killed was a woman taking him to church. A nationwide man-hunt was launched in the the summer of 1987. He left innocent bodies wherever he went. He was finally captured in Chicago. His grandmother reported to the press that he was using Voodoo to escape capture. The Chief ordered me into his office to explain my new assignment to me. "No one wants to guard him," the Chief explained. "I don’t know why, but our guys keep answering his questions about Jail Security." "I think that he is planning an escape." "I want you to watch him." I can’t say that I was flattered. I remembered what his grandmother had said about him using Voodoo to evade capture. I suspected that he was also exorcising this evil power on the jail guards, and this is why they feared him, and this was how he extracted unauthorized security information from them. "He must be something to handle," I thought. I had met a male witch a number of years previous when I worked in the steel mills. I remember how reprobate he was, and how he stated that he wanted to go to Hell when he died because he wanted to be with Satan. He was completely serious and I must admit intimidated me a little because he was such a dedicated evil person. He also looked very normal from the outside except, perhaps, for his eyes. His eyes were very black and penetrating. He had used them as a source of power. I had tried to witness to him of Jesus Christ. He hated the word Jesus and hated me for using it. The witness did little good that I could see. He had chosen his path and his god.

I didn't know what awaited me with Coleman and I thought that maybe God was arranging an appointment. But I didn't want anything to do with this appointment. I wanted nothing to do with A. Coleman, Torturer, Rapist, and Murderer of Children and Women. But I was stuck.

I relieved Coleman's Police Guard outside Coleman's jail section. The Spanish Officer was afraid and visibly shaken. I asked him what was wrong and he refused to answer. Coleman was housed alone in a 10 cell section of jail. He was separated from the officers by a 10 foot tall section of bars, running the length of the jail section. The path on the other side of the bars was called the Officer's Catwalk. I entered the Catwalk and noted that Coleman's cell was open to his side of the Catwalk. He was lying on his bunk, and when he noticed that a new Officer was guarding him, he slowly emerged from his cell and approached the Cat-walk bars to speak to me. As he approached to face me on the other side of the bars, I stepped back to keep from being grabbed. It did not surprise me, when I saw his eyes. They were the same eyes from years before, but darker, more ominous. His entire being and countenance was dark, almost like a shadow. He was the closest thing to pure evil that I ever sensed in a Man before, and immediately something began to well-up inside of me against what I was seeing. Without speaking, I looked into his eyes and thought, "The Blood Of Jesus." He recoiled away from the bars as if he had just been firmly slapped. His eyes then remained focused on his feet instead of on me, and he quietly spoke. "I've never had anyone like you guard me before." And then, almost immediately, he began to talk about his life and his present concerns. He talked of how he had been raised by his grandmother, without a father. He spoke of how his grandmother had raised him to be a male witch, and the power that could be obtained from that. He had lost faith in Satan because of his current situation. "Satan promised me everything,” he said. "He gave me nothing." He had believed in Satan's provision for his life as much as I did God's, in mine. He had no trouble believing in Satan's existence.

Being totally alienated from God, he did have a problem not in God's existence, but rather with the thought of any interest that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would have in him. Personally, he didn't seem to hate God, but he had no concept at all, of how to reach him. It was then, that I began to realize, that in many ways we had been raised in a similar fashion, but unbelievably, he had never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He then stated a simple fact to me. "I know that they are going to kill me for the things that I have done. My only concern now is where my spirit or soul will go when I leave my body."

I found myself wishing that He had not stated this one thing because now I fully realized why I was guarding this most evil of all men. Did God seriously expect me to lead this man to Jesus Christ? Was God waiting to forgive this man for all the murder of innocents and mayhem that he had committed? Why would God do this? Slowly, haltingly I said, "Did you know that God will forgive you for everything that you have done wrong against him or everyone else?" He looked at me stunned. "Even Murder?" he asked. "Yes,” I replied. He didn't speak for a long moment. He just stared at me, searching my eyes for the lie that most surely must be there. This dark, evil man that had inflicted unspeakable horror on his fellow man, and whom most assuredly had it inflicted upon him from a child was now attempting to comprehend the simple profound fact that the Almighty God of Heaven and Earth might possibly forgive him.

I broke our silence by stating, "He loves you so much that he came to the earth in the form of a man to be tortured and murdered, nailed to a wooden cross as a blood-sacrifice for your sins." Sin is wrong-doing against God and his laws. Murder, is breaking one of his laws." I could see that he got it.

Now, I must point out now that this wasn't me speaking. I don’t know where these words came from, but I believe that the Holy Spirit tailor-made these words for A. Coleman, and used my mouth to say them. Now I was done. I had been obedient to God, and I had no intention of going any further, to see this man saved. Deep in my heart, I felt that this person had to be placed in Hell. He was simply "Too Evil" for heaven and besides, "What Mercy had he given the children, women, and men that he had butchered, in his satanic murderous rampages?" God had opened a door, that he would not allow any man to shut - least of all me.

With surprising, child-like innocence he asked, "What do I have to do to be forgiven?"........."You simply ask,” I replied...... “His name is Jesus."

"What do I say?" he asked. "Have any preachers come to see you since you have been locked up?" I inquired. I knew that a Jail Ministry was in place and that preachers made frequent rounds of all the prisoners in the jail. "Yes, he replied, but they won’t talk to me, they just drop Christian Magazines and leave." Interesting, I thought, they must not want to see him "Get Saved" either. "Look in the magazines for a prayer called the Prayer of Salvation, I replied. Just say that prayer." He ran to his cell and scooped up a handful of Christian magazines and started desperately leafing through them, attempting to find the prayer that I had described. I stood for a moment and watched him. I slowly realized that in those contemporary Christian magazines, the Sinner's Prayer for salvation wasn't in any of them. It was then that God spoke to me, in what I can only describe as an audible spiritual voice. I recognized it to be an Eternal Command, quiet and yet firm. It would be remembered and accounted for, in Eternity. "You lead him in the prayer. That's why you are here."

I was through fighting God. "It's not there," I said. Come here and I will lead you in the Prayer." Coleman dropped the magazines on the floor of his cell and walked to me. I summoned him to the end of the catwalk, as far away from the hallway as possible. The catwalk bars still separated us, but I was still leary of him. For this reason, when I told him to bow his head and repeat the words I said, I remained looking at him. This is how I witnessed with my own eyes, the unexpected physical transformation that was about to occur. The prayer was simple. "Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that you are the Son Of God. I believe that you suffered and died as a sacrifice for my sins. I ask you now, to forgive every sin or wrong thing that I have ever done. Wash me clean in your Blood. I now surrender my entire life and everything that I am, to you. I will live for you and place you first in my life. Teach me how to live and when I die, take me to heaven to live with you forever." Coleman said the Sinner's Prayer and meant it with all of his heart.

What I witnessed next, I had never seen before, or since. Coleman began to glow with Light. I observed a spiritual transaction occur. The dark shadowy countenance of his face and body dropped away, and when he finished his prayer and raised his head, I can only say, that I was now observing a new creature, a creature of Light! His very skin color seemed to change from a deep black to a lighter shade. I cannot do justice in writing of what I witnessed. I can only attempt to place it into words. Coleman felt his salvation too. He became very excited. He leaped, he ran up and down the catwalk, he laughed, full of Joy. "I can't believe how I feel!” he exclaimed. “I feel so light!" as he tapped his chest excitedly. Over and over, he cried for joy! He rejoiced in his Salvation as no man I had ever seen before. There could be no denying it. The Holy Blood of Jesus Christ had washed him clean. Coleman had just gotten saved. "I have been looking for this all my life!" he shouted excitedly.

In this most Holy of Moments, I found myself on the verge of tears. Indeed, a different form of transformation was occurring in me also. "Why would God do this for me?" he asked. Before I could begin to attempt any answer, he answered his own question. "I know,” he exclaimed, “When I go to prison, and men in prison see that God has forgiven me, then they will know, that he will forgive them. If God will forgive me, then he will forgive anyone."

Well, there you have it. When I left that cell block that day, I left something behind. Never again to this day have I ever challenged God's work. This one experience gave me a glimpse of the most profound significance of the Work of The Cross. Truly God loves sinful man and is not willing that any would perish. No sin is too heinous for God, no man so lost that he can't be rescued, if he will only sincerely reach up to the Cross of Jesus Christ. I stand in awe of this one concept of God. I remain completely in awe.

By Brother Donald

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