Piper in Prison

John Piper left the ETS meeting in New Orleans on Wednesday to go and preach to the inmates at Angola prison in Louisiana. Louisiana is my home state, and Angola is infamous here. As Piper notes,

“This prison is the largest maximum-security prison in America. It is one of the most famous prisons in the whole world. It has only murderers, rapists, armed robbers and habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences. Ninety percent of the inmates will die here.”

As I said Louisiana is my home state, but I did not know about the wonderful, redemptive work that is going on there until I read Piper’s report. Piper writes about his experience here, and I recommend that you read it. Here’s a piece of what Piper preached:

“For 90% of you the next stop is not home and family, but heaven or hell. O what glorious news we have in that situation. And believe me it is not the prosperity of Gospel. Jesus came and died and rose again not mainly to be useful, but to be precious. And that he can be in Angola as well as Atlanta. Perhaps even more.”