Hundreds of inmates have accepted Jesus into their lives with 130 being baptised inside two of America’s most notorious jails following outreaches by prison ministry God Behind Bars. It took the Gospel inside California’s oldest prison at San Quentin and the biggest maximum security facility in the US — the Louisiana State Penitentiary which holds 6,300 convicted criminals
The ministry reported that following preaching, praying and worshipping at San Quentin, “hundreds were saved amid scenes of crying and rejoicing.” Eighty of them went up front to be baptised. “This was late in the evening, the prison lights were on. Everyone was happily soaked in mud as man after man came up to get baptised! Revival is happening,” ministry leaders proclaimed.
There was a similar ‘revival’ at the massive Louisiana prison known as Angola because it’s on the site of a former plantation of the same name which was worked on by slaves from the African nation of Angola. 1,000 men and women heard the name of Jesus, with many of them bussed in from prisons across the state.
God Behind Bars posted: “They haven’t done something like this for YEARS! We worshipped, we called on heaven, we wept, and JESUS CAME! Hundreds gave their lives to Jesus. Over 50 men were baptised! God just filled this prison rodeo arena with His presence. We will never be the same.”
It also thanked Christian artist Lauren Daigle and posted photos of her online as if she had performed for the prisoners. She has previously joined a God Behind Bars outreach inside Angola where she sang and preached messages of hope to women inmates. The singer is due to tour Australia next month.
God Behind Bars says it works to reach more than 2.3 million people in the US prison system. “We create satellite campuses in prisons and our whole mission is to introduce inmates to Jesus,” Director of Innovation Isaac Holt told CBN News.
Founder and CEO Jake Bodine told the Christian broadcaster CBN News he started the prison ministry in 2009 with the mission to “reach the least of these,” and it has since blossomed into a revival-type movement at correctional facilities across the country.
“I was 20 years old and began to see so many of my friends getting arrested. I felt the Lord’s voice in my heart say: Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? I knew that my only response was: Send me, I’ll go. From that small yes, God has done more than I could have ever imagined. 72 prison church campuses have been launched all over the United States,” Jake Bodine recently shared on social media.
“We have seen almost 1,000,000 salvations, over 10,000 baptisms! Jesus gets the glory, it’s all about Him. Just remember, your seemingly small YES to God, can go farther than you could ever imagine. Give God your YES!” he declared.
In 2021, the ministry released its PandoApp – a faith-based app that gives prisoners access to worship music and sermons on a tablet. Now more than 550,000 prisoners have been given the tablet.
CBN News writes: “The ministry’s goal to win souls for the Kingdom of God is exploding into an ongoing outreach that is providing hope in a dark place, a message of redemption to the broken, and true freedom to those who are bound.”
Jake Bodine told inmates: “Faith in Jesus isn’t a magic genie that is going to make everything disappear. The difference is that from this moment forward that no matter what you face there is a God that loves you. There is a God that is with you. It doesn’t matter what the world says we are. It matters who He says we are.”
Photo: Facebook – God Behind Bars
