In 1963 when David Wilkerson wrote The Cross and the Switchblade we thought he was in touch with God. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of that book.

I started to flip the page over. But as I did, something caught my eye. It was the eyes of a figure in the drawing – a boy. He was one of seven boys on trial for murder. I held the magazine closer to get a better look. The artist had captured a look of bewilderment, hatred and despair in the young boy’s features. Suddenly, I began to cry.

“What’s the matter with me?” I wondered, impatiently brushing away a tear. Then I looked at the picture more carefully. The boys were all teenagers. They were members of a gang called the Dragons. Beneath the picture was the story of how they had been in Highbridge Park in New York when they brutally attacked and killed a fifteen-year-old polio victim named Michael Farmer.

The story revolted me. It literally turned my stomach. In our little mountain town, such things seemed mercifully unbelievable. Yet I was dumbfounded by the next thought that sprang into my head. It came to me full-blown, as if from somewhere else: Go to New York and help those boys.

The thought startled me. “I’d be a fool to do that,” I reasoned. “I know nothing about kids like these. And I don’t want to know anything.”

It was no use. The idea wouldn’t go away. I was to go to New York. And I was to do it at once, while the trial was still in progress.

The book is credited with bringing many thousands to Christ. The movie that followed has been viewed by an estimated 50 million people in over 30 languages in 150 countries, according to World Film Crusade. They also report that it is one of the most viewed films in the world and is credited with drawing millions to Christ. Over the years that followed Dave Wilkerson founded Teen Challenge, World Challenge, pastored Times Square Church — see biography.

Today he cries out — in anguish. Listen.