Everyone has heroes, or at least people they greatly admire. David Wilkerson was one of mine, along with John the Baptist and a few others. So I was deeply saddened when my daughter called to tell me he had been killed in a car accident. Of course, there was the sweet knowledge that he was with the Lord, but there was also the bitter reality that we no longer had him here on earth.
His passing brought back a flood of memories. Back in 1980, I screened the movie The Cross and the Switchblade at our church. It was based on his best-selling book, and starred Eric Estrada (from the television series “CHiPs”) as Nicky Cruz, the hardened gang member who mocked the naive country preacher who had come to his rough neighborhood.
I loved the way Wilkerson trusted God and went to New York, gave his shoes to some hoodlum, and ended up walking around the city in his socks. He epitomized the love that each of us should have for the lost. I decided there and then that I had to fly David Wilkerson seven thousand miles to New Zealand for a series of meetings.
New Zealand is about 16 hours ahead of New York, so I climbed out of bed at 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning to put in a long-distance call to the United States. After about forty minutes of complications, I finally got through to the church and was disappointed to hear a busy signal. FULL POST 

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