Jail Ministry Quotes

Like many others who have gone into prisons and jails with us, Chuck and Carol Middlekauff demonstrate what our ministry is all about. We train Christian ‘teammates’ to share the good news and love of Christ with ‘the least of these’ so they can continue to do it with others they encounter as they go along. In this book, Carol has written the stories of some of those encounters so you can appreciate how easy it is to tell people about Jesus. It happens when you realize God does all the work, and all you have to do is show up. I hope you will be encouraged by reading the book and then join us soon for a Weekend of Champions to find out for yourself.” Bill Glass, retired NFL all-pro defensive end, evangelist, founder of Bill Glass Champions for Life prison ministries, and author of numerous books, including The Healing Power of a Father’s Blessing and Blitzed by Blessings

Gazans hypothesized that the brutality of the offensive was a tactic to force them to turn against Hamas. In many instances this worked, particularly when Hamas showed its own merciless face. Under the heavy toll of bombing, Hamas used the chaotic environment of war to settle its own political scores and carry out extrajudicial assassinations of its domestic enemies, including members of Fatah who were held in its jails, as well as suspected collaborators or informants for Israel.40 More disturbingly, in the early days of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas’s Ministry of Interior called on citizens not to respond to evacuation orders by the Israeli army, asserting that these were only issued as a form of psychological warfare to create panic.41 Many in Gaza criticized Hamas, not least for its role in dragging the coastal enclave into another conflagration. Others were critical of Hamas’s governance record and its authoritarian streak.

Ludendorff was arrested on the spot. He was contemptuous of the rebels who had not had the courage to march on with him, and so bitter against the Army for not coming over to his side that he declared hence forth he would not recognize a German officer nor ever again wear an officer’s uniform. The wounded Goering was given first aid by the Jewish proprietor of a nearby bank into which he had been carried and then smuggled across the frontier into Austria by his wife and taken to a hospital in Innsbruck. Hess also fled to Austria. Roehm surrendered at the War Ministry two hours after the collapse before the Feldherrnhalle. Within a few days all the rebel leaders except Goering and Hess were rounded up and jailed. The Nazi putsch had ended in a fiasco. The party was dissolved. National Socialism, to all appearances, was dead. Its dictatorial leader, who had run away at the first hail of bullets, seemed utterly discredited, his meteoric political career at an end.

For he says, 'In an acceptable time I heard you, and on a day of salvation I helped you.' Look: Now is any acceptable time. Look: Now is a day of salvation.–Providing no stumbling-block in any matter, so that the ministry should receive no censure, but instead commending ourselves in everything as God’s ministers, in immense endurance, in afflictions, in necessities, in narrow straits, in welts, in jails, in riots, in labors, in sleepless nights, in days of hunger, in chastity, in knowledge, in magnanimity, in honesty, in a holy spirit, in unfeigned love, in a discourse of truth, in God’s power; by righteousness’ armaments, on our right and our left, through glory and dishonor, through censure and praise; as both deceivers and truthful men, as both unknown and fully known, as both dying and–see!—we live, as both chastened and not put to death, as aggrieved yet ever rejoicing, as destitute yet enriching many, as both having nothing and possessing all things. (2 Corinthians 6:2-10)

This is why the apostles get jailed or stoned or hauled before various proconsuls and vice-whatevers. Not because they’re advancing some kind of propositional argument, but because they’re subversive storytellers with a disconcerting penchant for altar calls.

When we asked him why he was so dedicated to reconciliation and to being willing to make concessions to his opponents, he did not hesitate to say that it had all been due to the influence and witness of the Christian churches. This was echoed by Tokyo Sexwale, the first Premier of the leading industrial province of Gauteng, when he too came to greet our synod as it was meeting in his province. Clearly the Church had made a contribution to what was happening in our land, even though its witness and ministry had been something of a mixed bag. Presumably without that influence things might have turned out a little differently. It could also be that at a very difficult time in our struggle, when most of our leaders were in jail or in exile or proscribed in some way or other, some of the leaders in the churches were thrust into the forefront of the struggle and had thereby given the churches a particular kind of credibility—people like Allan Boesak, formerly leader of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, Frank Chikane, former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Peter Storey, former head of the Methodist Church, Beyers Naudé, the most prominent Afrikaner church dissident and also a general secretary of the SACC, Denis Hurley, formerly Roman Catholic Archbishop of Durban, and leaders of other faith communities who were there where the people were hurting. Thus when they spoke about forgiveness and reconciliation they had won their spurs and would be listened to with respect.

Some would say it’s your duty to be used by the Ministry!” “Yeah, and others might say it’s your duty to check that people really are Death Eaters before you chuck them in prison,” said Harry, his temper rising now. “You’re doing what Barty Crouch did. You never get it right, you people, do you? Either we’ve got Fudge, pretending everything’s lovely while people get murdered right under his nose, or we’ve got you, chucking the wrong people into jail and trying to pretend you’ve got ‘the Chosen One’ working for you!

The intersection of faith and human rights provided Carter with some of his most gratifying moments in office. In 1979 Carter and Brezhnev completed what Carter described as a “highly emotional” prisoner swap, trading two Soviet spies being held in the United States for four dissidents in the USSR, including three Jewish refuseniks and Georgi Vins, a Russian Baptist pastor jailed in 1974 for conducting an underground ministry in the Soviet Union. A mere four days after he was transported from prison in a Siberian cattle car, Vins joined the president in Plains for church. “Up early to prepare my Sunday school lesson, from 1 Kings 21—about Ahab, Jezebel, and Naboth,” Carter wrote in his diary. “Since Georgi Vins is with me, the parallel between this lesson and his persecution in the Soviet Union was remarkable.” Vins, sitting next to Rosalynn in the pew, pulled off his shoe, lifted the inner sole, and showed her a small, wrinkled photograph of Jimmy Carter he had kept in prison.

It’s a life or death thing, society, and I think people mainly do recognize that, and the people who deny it are stupid fuckers, I say this unequivocally. Ignorant fools. That kind of stupidity should be put in jail.

I have a ministry where I go into prisons and jails full-time. But I’ll be honest with you; I’m a preacher, and I’m filled with the Holy Spirit, but God told me I had a spirit of gluttony on me. That is why I began this fast. I didn’t ask for God to open doors; I told God I was sick of the spirit of gluttony cheating me out of the spiritual things God had for my life and locking doors and locking finances and locking everything else that God has for me.

God customizes deserts for each of us. Joseph’s desert is being betrayed and forgotten in an Egyptian jail. Moses lives in the Midian desert as an outcast for forty years. The Israelites live in the desert for forty years. David runs from Saul in the desert. All of them hold on to the hope of God’s Word yet face the reality of their situations. The theme of the desert is so strong in Scripture that Jesus reenacts the desert journey at the beginning of his ministry by fasting for forty days in a desert while facing Satan’s temptation. His desert is living with the hope of the resurrection yet facing the reality of his Father’s face turned against him at the cross.

There is about to be a hearing to authorize your arrest." "But we're in a police station." "Yes. We were allowed into the building just now and told there is going to be an off-site session of the Khimki court." "This can't be happening," I say. "The head of the Khimki police department is applying for you to be placed under arrest for a month." "Well, who are they?" I ask, indicating the people in the chairs. "These are 'the public,' I have no idea how they got in." I notice "the public" are all glum middle-aged men who avoid my gaze. "You have to be joking." What is happening is impossible even by the standards of Putin's courts. I was formally put on the wanted list for failing to register with the criminal division while undergoing treatment in Germany after being poisoned. I was required to report there twice a month under a sentence that had already been declared unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. In theory the Simonovsky District Court, which has jurisdiction over my place of residence, can decide whether to turn my suspended sentence into a custodial one on the grounds of my failure to attend. It has done just that more than once in the past after I was detained for participating in protest rallies. The argument was that this too was a violation of the conditions of my suspended sentence, which required me to "behave well and not break the law." Hearings of this kind are needed for intimidation, and to remind me that I can be thrown in jail at any given moment. Until now, they have invariably concluded with a warning: "Okay, we're not going to jail you this time, but this is your last warning." At least those proceedings had the formal appearance of a court session. There were summonses, dates of hearings, opposing sides. The criminal division would demand I be jailed and say how terrible I was. We would dispute that. But what was this? A law court in a police station? And anyway, what did the head of the Khimki police precinct have to do with me, and what right did he have to demand I be held under arrest for a month?"... I leave my cell in a police station for a meeting with my lawyer, only to find I am in a court, complete with its own fake public and fake journalists. When the judge comes in, I yell at her, "Are all of you out of your minds? What's going on? Who are these people, and how come they knew about this trial before I did?" "These are journalists and members of the public, and this is an open trial." At this moment, beautifully timed, we hear people in the street chanting, "Free Navalny!" and "Let us in!" "Right now there are members of the public down there. Let them into the trial," I say. "Everybody who wished to attend has been admitted," I'm told. "You can hear yourself, they are shouting 'Let us in!'" "People have been standing there for several hours, and no one is being allowed in," Olga says. "I waited there myself for three hours and was admitted only a few minutes ago. And I found out that there was to be a trial three minutes before it started." "Everybody who wished to attend has been admitted," the judge repeats. "You have said this is an open trial. I demand you admit the journalists. There are dozens of them." "The trial is open. Applications were received from the press service of the Ministry of the Interior and from . . ." -she names two pro-Kremlin publications. "Nobody else expressed a wish to attend the trial." "Nobody else knew anything about the trial!" I say. "Our trial is open. Any media organization could submit an application, but they did not wish to," the judge says.