Evel's Greatest Leap

Spirituality Column #46
September 25, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Evel’s Greatest Leap
By Bob Walters

Motorcycle stunt daredevil Evel Knievel’s heartfelt baptism into Christ on Robert Schuler’s Hour of Power television program recently was remarkable.

The event, first aired last spring, took place April 22, 2007 during Sunday services at the famed Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. I heard about it over the summer, and the program re-aired Sept. 15 & 16.

This wasn’t about Schuler, TV evangelism or non-immersive / non-liturgical Baptism. The 69-year-old Knievel’s stunning testimony – plain, clear, resolute and urgent – was about Christ and brought the 3,000-seat Cathedral service to a halt. It inspired hundreds in the audience to come forward and be baptized.

We Christians have our own language about these things, so when I say “the power of the Holy Spirit moved” inside that church that day, it’s not code. Watch the video and those baptisms, and feel what happens in your heart. You’ll understand what that phrase means.

Anyone – but especially those of us who have lived part of our life “believing in God” but not quite figuring out the power of Christ, not quite understanding Christ as God and Man, not quite thinking we needed to be “saved” from our sins, not quite getting the phrase “I am a sinner,” not quite accepting who Jesus is or what He means to us, not quite believing – will recognize Knievel’s words as humble, honest, heartfelt, sincere, persuasive and totally, immaculately, divinely true.

Bob Schuler, Robert’s son who is now the Cathedral’s senior pastor, followed Knievel by wondering aloud, citing the Holy Spirit, who else in the building desired baptism. Hundreds lined up at impromptu stations at the front of the church and, one at a time – believing that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and trusting Him as their Lord and Savior – accepted Christ and were baptized.

Schuler canceled his sermon.

This is worth watching. Show the online video stream or DVD (Knievel’s Leap of Faith, hourofpower.org, $20) to your Bible study, small group … or most importantly, to someone who knows more about Evel Knievel than they know about Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows the Indiana collector who owns Knievel’s helmet from the failed Snake River Canyon jump in Idaho Sept. 8, 1974. After the drag chute opened on the launch ramp, I think now we know why Knievel’s head wasn’t still in it.