The Cross and the Switchblade

  We were very proud of Ralph. He went off the needle for over a year. He left New York and went out to California to live, and all that while he was clean. Then, he came back and paid us a visit. He was all right for several days, but I noticed a despondency settle over him whenever he returned to his old neighborhood. I learned that his friends were taunting him about the needle. Ralph was being tempted again.

  And then he fell. He made contact, went up to his room, and stuck the needle in his veins.

  Five times, before Ralph received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, he had tried to pull off drugs. Each time he was so disgusted with himself after falling that he started to drill more heavily than ever. Now he had been off over a year and was drilling again.

  But a strange thing happened this time. The shot did not have its usual effect. The next day Ralph crept into the center and asked for me. When he came into my office, he closed the door.

  “Something funny’s happened, Davie,” Ralph said, after he finally found courage to tell me what he had done. “After I got through drilling, it was like I hadn’t had anything at all. It wasn’t anything like what I’d felt before. I felt something else, though. I suddenly had this strong urge to run to the nearest church and pray. That’s what I did. Davie, this time I didn’t feel disgusted like before. Instead of going from bad to worse, the temptation went away.”

  Ralph came back to us humbled and fully aware of the fact that the baptism had made him Christ’s in a special way. He couldn’t get away from Him even when he tried.

  Certainly we could not claim a magical cure for drug addiction. All we could say was that we found a power stronger than narcotics. That power was the Holy Spirit, who, unlike narcotics, captured our boys only to liberate them.

  We had much to learn about what this religious experience could and could not do in unhappy lives. Every day we made new discoveries.

  One day Linda and I were sitting in my office discussing these things and wondering where they might lead us. I was aware that there was one name neither one of us was mentioning: Maria.

  “Do you think Maria could ever receive the baptism?” I asked. I saw in Linda’s eyes that she wondered the same thing. Maria had been on heroin for years. The last time she had come in to see us, neither Linda nor I thought she had long to live.

  We prayed for a miracle in Maria’s life. Both of us nursed the dream of guiding her into the baptism there at the center. But it wasn’t to come that way. One day, we got a telephone call from Maria, and she was in Reverend Ortez’s church.

  “Reverend Wilkerson!” she nearly shouted into the phone. “I got wonderful news! Last night I received the Holy Ghost!” She could hardly talk for excitement, so I asked her to put Reverend Ortez on the phone. He described the event, and I could just see it: Maria walking into the church; Maria working her way through other men and women until she found an empty chair; Maria listening to the preaching and hearing the altar call; Maria going forward. I could even hear her voice, so husky the last time she visited us, now begging the Lord to send His Spirit to dwell in her.

  I could see her sink to her knees and feel the hope in her heart as warm hands were laid on her head. Then the soft, melodic, bubbling language that she did not understand, coming from her own throat, the sign that prayer had been answered. Reverend Ortez was jubilant. “We’ve all waited a long time for this, haven’t we?” he said.

  “Indeed we have. It’s another victory.”

  Nevertheless, I was filled with apprehension. I knew that when Maria got angry, she went back to the needle.

  One evening, late, Maria stepped off a bus on a street in Manhattan, near her old turf. From out of the shadows stepped three girls.

  “Hi, Maria.”

  Maria turned. She recognized the girls as members of the old gang. She greeted them warmly. In the dark behind them, she recognized, too, the form of a boy.

  “Say, Maria,” one of the girls said, “we hear you’re off H. We hear you’ve got religion now.”

  “That’s right,” said Maria.

  “Well, now, ain’t that just wonderful? You’re not having to spend all that money on heroin. I wonder if you’d lend a couple of friends a dollar or two.”

  Maria knew what the money would go for. Many were the times she had sat in a darkened room with these same girls, twisting a belt around her arm and pumping a syringe full of heroin into her veins.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Not for what you’re going to use the money . . .”

  Maria never saw the blow coming. A girl’s fist plunged into her stomach. Maria doubled over. Her first instinct was to fight back, and Maria had been known all over the area for her fierce fighting. But she stood there, hands at her sides. Like the first day when she passed her test for the presidency of the club, Maria took punishment without resisting, without whimpering.

  But this time Maria was praying.

  She was praying, too, when the knife went into her side. She was praying while the threesome leaned over her prone body and grabbed her purse and ran, laughing, down the street.

  After a while, Maria stood up, slowly. She made her way home somehow. Johnny helped her take off her bloodstained clothes and examined the wound. The knife had pierced her flesh close to the ribs, but the wound wasn’t deep, and Johnny didn’t think it would be serious.

  What he did worry about was Maria’s emotions over the incident. What would happen to her now? Far too often he had watched his wife come along the road to recovery, then slip when something made her angry.

  But that night, after she had bathed her bruises and put bandages on the knife cut, Maria fell asleep with the peace of a child.

  Maria paid us a visit at the center a few days after her beating. She walked in with the black and blue markings of her bruises still livid.

  “They messed me up a bit, Reverend Wilkerson. But I prayed and the Holy Spirit was with me.”

  I looked at Linda, who was as astonished as I at the change. “That’s all we need to know,” I said.

  The next time I saw Maria, she and her family were on their way to Puerto Rico to attend a Spanish training school to equip the couple for full-time work with the church. Johnny stood proudly at Maria’s side. Their three young children hung shyly to her freshly starched skirt, and they were clinging to a mother they were beginning to trust. Maria’s hair gleamed in the sun, and her hands hung relaxed at her side.

  As I watched this family, I found myself repeating the words of Jesus, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

  23

  For most people in Brooklyn, the morning of August 28, 1961, was just another bright, hot summer morning. But not for us at the Teen Challenge Center.

  At noon we were supposed to hand over a certified check to the holders of our second mortgage. The amount needed was $15,000.

  “How much money do we have in the bank?” I asked Paul DiLena.

  “I don’t even want to tell you.”

  “How much?”

  “Fourteen dollars.”

  I had been counting so much on another miracle. Somehow in my heart I had confidence that we weren’t going to lose the center, and yet here we were at our deadline and there was no money.

  Noon came and went, and still there was no miracle.

  I had to ask myself serious questions about my own confidence. Had I expected too much of God without doing enough myself?

  I spoke to Julius Fried, our attorney. “Could you arrange for an extension?”

  Julius spent the afternoon poring over documents, and when he finished his day’s work, he announced that he had succeeded in getting an extension.

  “They’ve agreed to wait until September tenth,” Julius said. “But if the money isn’t in their hands by that time, they will start foreclosure proceedings. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m going to pray about it.” Julius was accustomed to the praying ways of the center, but at that moment I think he wished
for a director who was more practical.

  That afternoon I did something rash. I called all the young people together, gang members, drug addicts, college boys and girls, staff members, and told them that the center was safe.

  There was a great rejoicing. “I think we ought to go into the chapel and thank God,” I said.

  So we did. We went in, closed the doors, and praised the Lord for having saved this home for His use. Finally someone asked, “Say, David, where’d the money come from?”

  “It hasn’t come in yet.”

  Twenty-five frozen smiles.

  “But before September tenth,” I said, “the money will be in our hands, I’m sure. By that date, I’ll have a check for $15,000 to show you. I just thought we ought to thank God ahead of time.”

  With that I walked out.

  September first came. With every passing day, I spent time on the telephone, seeing if I could find the solution to our problem. Every sign pointed to His wanting us to continue our work. The summer had been good. Our records showed that 2,500 young people all over New York had turned their lives over to Christ. Hundreds of boys and girls had poured through the center on their way to new jobs, new outlooks, new lives. Twelve were actually preparing for the ministry.

  “It all started with that picture in Life,” I said to Gwen one night.

  “Isn’t it strange that you’ve never been allowed to see those boys from the trial?” she said.

  It was strange. I had written, and telephoned, and knocked on doors for nearly four years. But, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I was never allowed to work closely with the very boys whose tragedy had brought me to New York in the first place. Perhaps, when the boys were released from prison, I would be allowed to tell them about the concern that was still on my heart for them.

  There was a boy, however, from those very first days in New York, whose life still touched mine: Angelo Morales.

  One morning Angelo came to visit us. Together we relived that first day when he bumped into me on the stairs outside Luis Alvarez’s father’s apartment. Now Angelo himself was about to graduate from seminary. He, too, would be working with me at the center.

  “If there is a center, Angelo,” I said, sharing with him our financial problems.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Angelo asked.

  “Yes. Get into the chapel with the others and pray. While you are praying, we’ll be on the phone.”

  Every member of our board was busy making telephone calls to old friends of the center. Help came in, but never in the quantity needed to meet the $15,000 note on September tenth.

  Among the telephone calls was one to Clem Stone’s office in Chicago. Harald Bredesen placed it, admitting openly that he was a little embarrassed. Clem had already been more than generous with the center. We tried to keep him in close touch with the progress of our work at all times, not just when we needed money, but I suspect that when Clem heard a call was coming from the Teen Challenge Center, his natural instinct would be to place a protective hand over his wallet.

  It was Clem’s son whom Harald reached on the telephone, September eighth. They had a long talk. Harald told about the work that had been accomplished already, and he thanked the Stones for their part in that. Then he got to the point.

  “We’ve got to have $15,000 by day after tomorrow,” he said, and he explained why. “I have no idea what your position is at this moment. I’m certainly not going to ask for a decision while you’re on the telephone. But talk this over with your father. Tell him thanks for what he’s already done to help. Then let’s see what happens.”

  September the tenth arrived.

  The morning mail came—envelopes from children sending in their coins.

  “Thank You, Lord,” I said. “We couldn’t do without these.”

  The morning chapel service began. Everyone prayed and sang. Here and there I heard our young people thanking God for sending us the check for $15,000.

  In the middle of the service, I was called to the door.

  It was a special delivery. I looked at the postmark: Chicago, Illinois.

  I opened the envelope, and inside was a certified check for exactly $15,000.

  I couldn’t talk when I took that piece of paper into the chapel. I stood before the fireplace with its sheaf of harvested wheat in bas-relief on the mantel. I held up my hand for silence, and when the room was quiet, Paul DiLena handed the check to the young boy nearest me.

  “Pass that around, will you please?” Paul said.

  The canceled check, which Clem Stone now has in his files in Chicago, tells a mute story of the wonderful leading of God among young people in New York City. It is properly endorsed, properly deposited.

  But if you look closely at that check, you will see that it is stained—grubby, really, from having passed through the hands of two dozen youngsters who had learned what it is to believe. Perhaps there are some tearstains on it, too. Tears of gratitude to a God who moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.

  For decades Reverend David Wilkerson was known for his work among teen gangs in New York City. His book The Cross and the Switchblade has sold millions of copies worldwide and was made into a feature film. He authored more than forty books and was also the inspiration behind Nicky Cruz’s book, Run Baby Run. Reverend Wilkerson passed away in 2011.

  Elizabeth and John Sherrill met as young people on board the Queen Elizabeth and were married in Switzerland. Together they have written more than thirty books, including The Cross and the Switchblade with David Wilkerson, God’s Smuggler with Brother Andrew, and The Hiding Place with Corrie ten Boom. The Sherrills’ writing has taken them to five continents, reporting the Holy Spirit’s awe-inspiring deeds into the 21st century. John Sherrill passed away in 2017.

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