Walking in the Footsteps of David Wilkerson

by Charles Simpson

  Mike quickly intervened, telling the guy that I was a tourist. With a very thick southern accent, I slowly continued, “But ain’t this Cohen’s Optical? I was just gonna ask Mr. Cohen if he knew Madelyn.”

  The bored clerk decided to play around with me, asking, “And who is Madelyn?”

  “Madelyn Cohen lives in the Bronx, in the same apartment building as Mike’s father. Y’all don’t know Madelyn?”

  The clerk and a few other co workers who joined the unusual conversation broke out in seemingly endless laughter. Afterward, a lady who must have been the manager of Cohen’s Optical said to me, “Cohen’s Fashion Optical was founded by Jack Cohen in 1926. We now have quite a few stores in several states. There are thousands of Cohens in New York City. The chances of Jack ever having met Madelyn are about a trillion to one.” They began hysterically laughing again as Mike pushed me out the front door. I was in a different world than down south. If there were an eyeglass place in Cleveland, Tennessee, with the same last name of a neighbor, the chances of their being related are at least two to one. I was unable to explain that to Mike.

  One evening, Mike went somewhere on his own. I decided to go back up to the rooftop of his father’s apartment building. Mike had shown me previously how to unlock the roof door. We had spent time looking over “the hood” (short for neighborhood). I wanted to venture out into the dark city at night and explore that strange world, but Mike said it was too dangerous. Even two of us walking together at night would be too risky. On that isolated roof, I felt safe. I could see the post office where the notorious killer Son of Sam had worked. A few blocks away was Lincoln Hospital. I listened to the ambulance sirens as they approached one of the busiest emergency rooms in the country. Then I heard a police siren down the block. It started to die down, drowned out by a fire engine a few blocks away. Then another ambulance, a police siren a mile away, another fire truck nearby. For the next hour, I stood there startled that the sirens never stopped. What kind of place was this? It was said that the Bronx was burning, and I believed it. The slum landlords were having their own buildings burned down so they could collect the insurance money and get out of there. Fear suddenly gripped my heart, and I wondered if I’d ever get out of that surreal asphalt jungle alive. I recalled and recited aloud to myself the words I had heard from an anointed sermon: “Because they were sold out to God, they were given supernatural courage!” “Oh Lord,” I fervently prayed, “I surrender my entire life to You.”

  Mike’s dad took a turn for the better and was grateful to be back home in his little apartment. One rainy Sunday before going out for a full day of preaching engagements, Mike asked me to stay home and keep his dad company. Miguel and I decided to watch West Side Story on his small black-and-white television. The movie ripped my heart to pieces. It put names and faces on all the New Yorkers for whom I had been praying since I first saw Reality of Life Ministry’s slide presentation in Tennessee. Who wouldn’t feel for Tony and Maria? Their unsuccessful attempts to build a happy life together in the midst of the gang culture in the Big Apple were so heartbreaking. No wonder West Side Story won more Academy Awards than any other musical film in history. I tried hiding my tears from Miguel, but he was crying harder than me. It was the hundredth time he’d seen it, and only my first. He took a few tissues and then handed me the box. After it was over, he quickly turned the channel to some sporting event. Clearing his nose, he seemed to immediately forget all about the movie. Not me. I would never be the same.

  I decided to fast and pray the next day, interceding for all the real-life Tonys and Marias I saw while Mike and I prayer-walked the streets of the Bronx and Spanish Harlem. I cried a lot that day. I wept over the lost, cried for Miguel, and also wept with gratitude that I was not a lost soul in that wicked city. That evening, Mike and I were invited to a Spanish pastor’s apartment. We were to discuss rearranging his calendar to accommodate Mike’s change of schedule. When we arrived, we found his living room filled with members of his church. They were the sweetest New Yorkers I’d ever met. We joined them in exuberant singing as they alternated between Spanish and English songs. After a long time of singing, the pastor jumped to his feet and asked if anyone wanted to testify. A lady next to me, with her hair in an extremely tight bun, stood up and shared in very broken English. She was grateful that her “Niño” in prison wrote her, saying he finally accepted the Lord. When she sat down, I stood up suddenly and shared how grateful I was that the Lord saved me. I hoped and prayed and believed that God would use me to win souls for His Kingdom. The words and the tears rolled out of me like a river. I could have stopped them, but I knew the anointing of the Holy Spirit was upon me, so I continued speaking for quite a while. It wasn’t until I sat down that I realized many others were weeping and praying. Some had even sunk out of their seats onto their knees. I turned to Mike and whispered, “I hope I didn’t go too long.”

  He smiled affectionately, slapped my knee, and simply said, “No, you didn’t.”

  At the end of the meeting, the pastor made a beeline right to me. I was thinking, “Oh no! Maybe I did testify too long and he’s gonna rebuke me as only a New Yorker can.”

  Instead, he extended his hand and gave me a vigorous handshake. He said, “Young man, I have to go out of town next weekend, and I’d love for you to preach for me in my church while I’m gone.”

  In shock, I looked over at Mike, and he was smiling real big. He was nodding his head up and down a number of times. It finally registered in my frozen brain. “Uh, sure, Pastor. I’d be honored.” Maybe I should have said, “You’ve got to be kidding! Surely you have the wrong guy. I’ve never preached a sermon in my life.” I frantically began preparing one in my head, right at that moment. I thought about it on the ride home. I spent every spare minute the following week either working on the message, praying about it, or worrying about it.

  Before I knew it, I was in his small church, being introduced to the congregation by one of the deacons. I preached my heart out. I preached all my sermon points, threw in everything I knew about Christ, looked down at my watch and was horrified to see that I’d gone only eighteen minutes! I kind of started over from the top and changed a few phrases so people wouldn’t think I was being redundant. I looked down again and noticed I’d gone only five more minutes, a grand total of twenty-three minutes—way too short for a Pentecostal service. I paused and bowed my head and silently prayed, “Lord, what should I do now?”

  The sweet Holy Spirit said to my trembling but listening heart, “Give an altar call for those who would like to get saved today.” I was about to argue with those promptings because the smiles of encouragement on all the people’s faces were a pretty good indication that those folks were already saved—and probably had been for a lot longer than me! I simply obeyed. I said that Jesus was there at the altar, ready to forgive and give a new life to anyone who would repent and call upon Him. Then I noticed a young man standing at the entrance of the front door, listening intently to my every word. He slowly made his way down the aisle. Gasps of “Thank You, Jesus” and “Hallelujah” could be heard from the stunned congregation. The young man, apparently a local gang member, came to the altar, fell to his knees, and began crying like a little toddler. Three deacons and I walked over to him as the pianist played some soft background music. The young man looked up at me with tears and snot running down his face and said, “What do I do now, Preacher?”

  I didn’t plan on this happening so I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I don’t know.” I had been so focused on planning the sermon, I didn’t even think about the altar call. But, thank God, the deacons knew what to do, and they led him in the sinner’s prayer as I went and sat down with Mike on the front row. The whole church was thrilled beyond measure, but none more than I. Except perhaps the young man who accepted Jesus that day! “Lord,” I quietly whispered as we sang a song of rejoicing to conclude the meeting, “this is what I want to do with my life.”

  One evening, while visiting an o
ld friend of Mike’s, I was sitting on a large windowsill with a panoramic view of most of the South Bronx and parts of Manhattan. Everyone else was in the kitchen. I was alone in the living room—a rather large one for the Bronx. I was somewhere between daydreaming and praying when all of a sudden I had a vision of my last moments on this earth. I began soaring through the clouds into Heaven. I heard a voice say, “Look down.” I thought about Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back, so I didn’t look down. A gentle inner voice said, “I want you to look back for just a moment to see from where you will leave this world.” I looked down and saw New York City below me, quickly fading out of sight. I knew the gentle voice was the Lord’s, and He was saying, “This is your new home, Charles. This is your mission field.” Instantly, I knew that my visit to this city was more than just a temporary stay.

  Mike came into the room and told me that Miguel had just prayed with him over the phone for the first time ever and had accepted Jesus as his Savior.

  “Wonderful!” I joyfully exclaimed.

  “I hope he meant it,” Mike slowly commented with urban pessimism.

  When I arrived back home, Miguel was sitting at the kitchen table with a strange snicker on his face and a brown paper bag in his hands with that hidden bottle inside. I grabbed it out of his hands and said, “Didn’t the doctor tell you one more bottle could be the death of you?”

  “Well, why don’t you just pour it out into the bathroom sink for me then!” he yelled back as I stomped out of the room with it. I marched to the bathroom, and as I poured the junk down the drain, I noticed it smelled a lot more like Coca-Cola than alcohol. I looked inside the crumpled bag, and sure enough, it was a sixteen-ounce bottle of Pepsi! “You owe me a Pepsi,” Miguel laughed, “and an apology.”

  “I’m sorry,” I humbly and quickly replied.

  “I know you care deeply about me, Charles. And I know that God cares. I believe in Christ. I really do. But remember, things are not always the way they seem.”

  Those were the last words I heard him say. When Mike and I returned the following evening, we found him lying unconscious on the living room floor. The paramedics said it looked like he died of a massive heart attack a few hours before they arrived. Mike didn’t sleep much for the next few days. He was busy making arrangements and calling Puerto Rico and other places, trying to track down relatives. He didn’t eat much, either. I was concerned that the death of his father had totally broken his heart. At the dreary funeral, he was coughing his head off because a bad cold had set in. For days afterward, he would lie on his dad’s bed, staring at the walls, coughing. He wouldn’t eat, and he wouldn’t go to the doctor. He wouldn’t answer the phone. When I answered it for him, he wouldn’t talk to anyone. I repeated to him over and over the last conversation I had with Miguel. I tried to convince Mike that his dad really did believe in the Lord at the end. Even that didn’t seem to help.

  With Mike lying in bed all day, all I could do was sit in the living room and pray. The more I prayed, the more it dawned on me that Mike was in severe danger. I called the guys in Tennessee. Pete answered and listened carefully to me. He then said, “Charles, the enemy is trying to take Mike out. Such a creep, kicking him while he’s down.”

  “What should I do, Pete? Should I call an ambulance?”

  “An ambulance? Is he that sick?”

  “Pete, he’s as pale as the bedroom walls, hasn’t eaten in days, and won’t take any medicine. I don’t think he wants to get better. I don’t think he wants to live anymore.”

  “You’d better call an ambulance, Charles. But before you do, pray for him.”

  “Pete, that’s all I’ve been doing for the past few days.”

  “No, Charles. I mean really pray for him.” I agreed, hung up, and walked into the bedroom, asking Mike if I could pray for him. He muttered something unintelligible so I took it as a yes. I grabbed his cold hand, fell to my knees, and prayed with all my might. Tears came from deep within my soul. I then felt a strong and evil presence in the room with us, and it occurred to me that Mike was in a spiritual battle for his life. I remembered reading somewhere that intercessory prayer can be a combination of beseeching the Lord and rebuking the enemy. Those words suddenly took on real meaning for me. I stood to my feet, still holding on to Mike’s hand as though for dear life. I felt like if I let go, he’d drift away like an unanchored canoe. I then rebuked the enemy in Jesus’s name. The change was dramatic and instant. Color returned to his face.

  He opened his eyes, said a soft, “Thank you very much,” and dozed off into a peaceful sleep.

  Mike awakened a few hours later. He was completely well and back to his old self. He called his wife, then Angel, and then Pete. He told them that he had felt like he was slipping into eternity. Way off in the distance, he heard my prayerful voice asking God for mercy and rebuking the enemy on his behalf. Mike told everyone on the other end of the phone line that he was so glad he brought me with him to New York City. That day the Lord called me into an intercessory prayer ministry!

  A few days later, Mike treated me to lunch at a great Puerto Rican restaurant. Once we were stuffed to our gills with chicken, rice, beans, sweet bananas, and flan, he changed gears and got really serious.

  “Charles, I’ve been prayerfully thinking about something for a few days. I know it seems crazy, and it’s certainly not what we planned. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t feel peace about. But it’s something we need to consider. You know my father’s apartment is where I stay when I come up for my outreaches. The apartment was free for him because it came with his building superintendent’s job. Would you be willing to take over his job and live in his apartment, at least for a little while? I’m sure we could get Pete to come up and be your roommate.”

  “Mike,” I tried to interject, but he just kept talking over me.

  “We could try it for a little while, and if you want to go back to the farm, maybe we could eventually let Pete take the super job. My uncle works at the superintendents’ union office. He says he can work something out for us. The job also comes with a salary. The apartment has that small backyard, and a full basement, and…”

  “Mike, Mike, OK! No need to convince me. The Lord spoke to me a few days ago and told me that this is my new home. He’s expanded my mission field from Miguel to all the Tonys and Marias in this city. God has called me to be a missionary to New York City!” I shared with him the vision I had of looking down upon New York on the day I die. I told him about the way West Side Story tore my heart to pieces, and the nudging I felt every time I saw the ministry’s slide presentation of the hurting people here, and what God spoke to me after watching The Cross and the Switchblade.

  Mike asked, “Are you afraid of living here in the city, Charles?”

  “On my own I would be. But for those who are completely surrendered to God, He gives supernatural courage.” Mike was pleasantly shocked at such an answer coming from a young, skinny teenager from Tennessee. No need to tell him that my answer actually was a quote from a David Wilkerson sermon. I was experiencing it for myself. Just as true as when it was first preached by David Wilkerson, God was giving me supernatural courage.

  3

  “God is raising up believers to follow in our footsteps.”

  MIKE SOON LEFT TO GO BACK TO THE MINISTRY HEADQUARTERS IN TENnessee, and Pete had to first tie up some loose ends before he could join me. I then decided to read The Cross and the Switchblade, the copy Mike had once given to his dad. I opened it up to the title page and read the cursive script: “Papi, The same God who changed me and the people in this book wants to change your life also. Your loving son, Mike.” Angel told me months ago that the book was so much better than the movie. I quickly discovered how true that was! I couldn’t put it down. I took it with me everywhere I went.

  While reading the book on a subway train to Manhattan, the Lord spoke to me in an amazing way. I got on the number 5 train at the 149th Street Station, l
ocated at the busy Hub. As the 5 train headed into Manhattan, it shifted directions from going basically east to west in the Bronx to going north to south in Manhattan. While in this transitional tunnel, the long turn is quite noticeable. The noise of the squeaking wheels filled everyone’s ears. Those around me seemed oblivious to it, but the piercing noise sounded like those wheels were screaming. I even wondered if those wheels were about to fall off. I opened the paperback book I simply couldn’t put down and continued from chapter 14, where I had left off a few hours earlier:

  One morning, just after I had stepped off the ferryboat at the foot of Manhattan, I walked down the stairs to the subway that would take me over to Brooklyn. The subway at this point makes a great loop, and in the turn, its wheels scream piercingly. This place will always have a special meaning for me. Because it was there, among the screams of the subway, that I suddenly saw my old dream take on substance. It sprang full grown to mind. The house I had dreamed of—we might call it Teen Challenge Center—would be located in the heart of the roughest part of the city.4

  I closed the book and started weeping as the manifest presence of God fell upon me. I read again:

  The subway at this point makes a great loop, and in the turn, its wheels scream piercingly. This place will always have a special meaning for me.5

  Suddenly, the turn of the 5 train that I was on was completed, and the wheels stopped screaming. “Lord,” I prayed. I was about to continue my prayer with, “Lord, whatever could this mean? What are the chances of my reading this for the first time, reading it at the exact moment I experience the same sounds, caused by essentially the same thing?” My prayer didn’t even get that far. When I simply whispered, “Lord,” with my eyes closed and tears streaming down my cheeks, His presence upon me intensified. The Holy Spirit spoke gently and clearly to my heart, “You are to follow in the footsteps of David Wilkerson.”