JACKSON, Miss. — Nearly 1,400 people heeded evangelist Rick Gage’s appeal to commit their lives to Christ in a Mississippi crusade attended by some 17,000 people over four days.
The evangelistic crusade concluded Wednesday night with an estimated 10,000 people packed shoulder to shoulder in an open-air amphitheater just outside of Jackson.
Gage, head of GO TELL Ministries in Duluth, Ga., said more than 2,000 people made decisions for Christ during the crusade. Of those, 1,354 made salvation decisions.
“We saw an incredible move of God throughout this whole campaign,” Gage said Thursday. “Anyone who says evangelistic outreach events don’t work anymore just needs to talk to the folks in central Mississippi.”
In the days leading up the event, Gage presented the gospel in Mississippi prisons, seeing hundreds of inmates turn to Christ.
In one local high school, Gage said he had heard that young ladies created a prayer station in a restroom where they gathered to pray for classmates who didn’t know Jesus as Savior.
“These kids are on fire,” he said.
Gage credited Jackson-area church leaders for the success of the crusade. He said churches from a variety of denominations worked together to prepare for and promote the event.
“They also had a prayer team bathing this crusade in prayer for months and months,” he said. “They had people in private prayer room praying throughout the crusade.”
It was Gage’s second major crusade in the past two months.
Gage, known as the “small-town Billy Graham,” wrapped up a four-day event in Baxley, Georgia on September 21. Some 10,000 people attended that event with more than 1,600 making commitments to Christ.