Sermon Central
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What Happens When We Learn About A Really Bad ... PRO
Contributed by Sermon Central on Jun 18, 2007 (message contributor)
What happens when we learn about a really bad guy repenting? It happens all the time in prison ministry, yet many of us think those people aren’t worth saving. They had more chances than most of us are willing to give them, yet God hasn’t given up on them.
Jeffrey Dahmer was a convicted murderer and cannibal who cooked and ate his victims. You don’t really get much more heinous than that. He was awarded 16 life sentences. While in prison, Dahmer met with Roy Ratcliff, a minister with the Church of Christ in Madison, Wisconsin, and turned his life over to Jesus Christ. He was baptized in prison, knowing that he would never leave prison alive. He had nothing to gain in this life, but everything to gain in the next.
We may scoff at jailhouse conversions, but within months of Dahmer’s baptism, people noticed a Christian spirit in him. His father and pen pals noticed the difference, and his father, who had left the church, has since been restored as a faithful member. Dahmer’s younger brother also had a conversion experience of his own.
Dahmer was killed in prison by a fellow inmate a few months after his baptism. At his memorial service, along with his own family and several Christians, two sisters of one of his victims attended, having grown close to Dahmer’s family after their brother’s death.
That may have been Dahmer’s last chance for repentance, and he took it. But many of us think he shouldn’t have been given another chance. He didn’t deserve it. And that’s true. He didn’t deserve another chance. But neither do we.
Jeffrey Dahmer was like that fig tree that provided no fruit during his life. But he was given one more last chance to repent, and he took it. The fruit of Dahmer’s repentance included bringing at least two people to Jesus and helping to heal the painful wounds left by his transgressions.
How many of us can claim the same? God chose to work through him. God chose to work through David Berkowitz as well. The Son of Sam killer who murdered six people in New York City in the late 1970s was involved in the occult and Satan worship.
Ten years into his prison sentence, Berkowitz met a man named Rick in the prison yard who told him about Jesus. He explained that no matter what a person did, Christ was ready to forgive him if he would turn away from the wrong things he was doing and put his faith in Jesus. Rick gave him a Gideon’s Pocket Testament and Berkowitz prayed to Jesus later in his cell, pouring out his heart to Jesus.
This was in 1987. Since then, Berkowitz has refused to be considered...
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