An Apache Prisoner Finds Freedom

An Apache Prisoner Finds Freedom

By Allen Early

I was born on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. My parents raised me in the traditional ways of our Apache people, and we worshiped at a place we called “holy ground.” My mother was a member of the Snake Dance. My father came from the Bear Clan. He was a messenger—whenever there was a dance or ceremonial, he would travel to let people know. He could cover hundreds of miles in a day and still be back home in the evening. He told me that it only took a couple of hours because much power was used to shorten the distance. I grew up seeing how powerful it was to worship in the way my family taught me.

When I was a teenager, I was sent off the reservation to a boarding school in Tucson. It was there that I began to drink and to run around and get into trouble. I learned how to fight with a long piece of chain and where to stab someone with a knife. I spent time in juvenile detention and county jail before finally being expelled and sent back to San Carlos. There were no higher grades for me, so I was sent off to school in the bordertown of Globe. I had no intention of going to class, so I roamed the streets and got into more trouble. I would come home drunk in the middle of the night and fight with my family. Sometimes I would give my own mother a black eye.

Soon I was facing felony offenses. I had been sent off of the Apache Reservation many times for fighting with knives and with guns and for stealing cars. One day I found myself in the San Carlos Apache Tribal Jail. My friends and I planned our escape by having a hacksaw blade smuggled in. It took us sixty-two days to work our way out that time. Ten different times I escaped from jail. Once I walked right through the front office and got away and escaped. I was free for a year that time. But when I came home to my mother, someone saw me and informed the police.

Each escape added more jail time that I had to serve. I couldn’t rest while I was running from the law, and I didn’t have any peace. Freedom felt temporary. They eventually caught me and took me back to jail and put shackles on my legs. Everything was taken from me, leaving me to sleep on the cold, concrete floor in a solitary cell without even a blanket. There was only a small hole at the door where food was brought to me. After some fifty days in isolation, I was at a desperate and hopeless point in my life. I was used to getting away with things. I had assumed that I would be out again soon, but something was different this time— nothing worked out, and I never got out. I commanded things to happen with the traditional power I had been taught, but it didn’t work.

One day, I heard singing down the hallway of the jail. It was a song called “Jesus Paid It All.” Hearing this song made me sit up and listen to the church service. The preacher was another tribal member who shared his testimony of getting saved in jail. Later on—on a Sunday morning—this Native Christian explained the simple meaning of these three Bible verses:

He explained that God loved me and cared about me—Allen Early! He explained that Jesus suffered on the cross for my sins many years ago so that He could help me and give me eternal life today.

…He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. –John 5:24

I had already attempted to hang myself four times. Each time, prisoners who had been told to watch me kept me from taking my own life. But as I listened to the preaching outside my lonely cell, the Holy Spirit began showing me my sinful life and the cruel things that I had done to my family and others. The preacher told of his own past life on the reservation. His story was much like mine. He said that he had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior in a jail while he was awaiting trial for armed robbery. He asked God to forgive him and asked Jesus Christ to come into his heart (Romans 10:9-15). The Lord completely changed his life and made him a different person. That really hit my heart and gave me hope.

…I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep. –John 10:10-11

I learned that Jesus died on the cross for my sins— in my place! I began to understand that only Jesus had the power to change my life and to make me a new person (II Corinthians 5:17-18). I got down on my knees in that dark cell and did just what God’s messenger, somewhere down the hall, was encouraging the other prisoners to do. I prayed, “Jesus, I am a sinful man, but You can save me. I am a dangerous man, but You can change me. Forgive my sin and cleanse me with Your blood today, and I will serve You.”

I will never forget the joy of having the weight of all my sins lifted. My bitterness and hatred melted away as God did a work in my heart. For the first time, I felt truly free—sitting right there in that jail cell! I was given a Bible and instructed to read the Gospel of John all the way through—which I did… over fifty times. Many areas of God’s wonderful plan became clear to me during this precious time.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. –John 14:6

But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. –John 20:31

Several months later, I was brought before a federal judge. He had a file with all of my criminal offenses sitting on his desk. But he had also heard that I was now a Christian, and that my attitudes and actions had been transformed. He asked me if what He had heard was true. Then he told me that he had the au­thority to send me away forever. Instead, he tore up my records and threw them into the waste basket. He told me that he wasn’t a Christian, and asked me to pray for him.

I was unshackled and released that day—223 days after finding true freedom in Jesus. I walked outside and headed for home. Looking back at the jail, I re­membered that my Heavenly Judge had done the same thing the federal judge did. God tore up my sin record and set me free!

Before long, I knew that the Lord wanted me to attend Indian Bible College in Flagstaff, AZ. It was hard…really hard. I had many problems, but God helped me—day after day and problem after prob­lem. In His perfect timing and grace, the Lord allow-ed me to become a teacher at my alma mater. God has completely forgiven me. I no longer have a criminal record in Heaven. My family knows that Jesus is real because of what He has done in my life (Psalm 40:1-4). I now serve the Lord as His messen­ger, sharing the news that Jesus is the only way!

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. –John 8:36

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus…Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. –Romans 8:1-2

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