Famous TV personality Dog the Bounty Hunter shared his personal testimony of how he came to know Jesus Christ while incarcerated. Dog, whose real name is Duane Chapman, partnered with the God Behind Bars organization to spread the Gospel to those facing jail time like he once did.
The famous TV bounty hunter noted that he grew up around “murderers” which negatively influenced him from an early age. Illustrating his rough upbringing, Chapman said, “You know, I grew up a killer.” He added, “I grew up with murderers. I grew up like that. Hey, I changed my life in Jesus.”
As a result, Chapman found himself getting involved with the outlet motorcycle club, the Devil’s Disciples. Recounting a harrowing experience, he said, “At a very young age, I joined the Devil’s Disciples and became Sergeant of Arms. I would shoot up whiskey in my veins so that I’d get crazy mad. So I would walk up to somebody and just throw them down. Three of my brothers pulled up to a house to buy dope one night, and my friend took a sawed off shotgun unknowing to any of us and went in and tried to rob the guy. My brother ended up shooting him in the shoulder.”
Following the shooting, Chapman and his accomplices all found themselves facing murder charges. “We run off! I got up in the morning, and I heard the radio, ‘Duane Chapman is being sought for the shotgun slaying massacre,’” he said. “A jury came out and convicted all four of us of homicide.”
As Dog the Bounty Hunter sat in prison he called out to God, only to realize how his life had gone wrong as his life of lawlessness and crime had caught up to him.“I was looking at the death house. So, I was asking God when I went in, why am I in here? You know that I did not commit this,” Chapman said.
Speaking to him through the word of God, the Lord convicted Chapman of his sins. “And God said, ‘Well, every single brick that’s in the area that you see is a law you broke and you didn’t get caught.’ And then all of a sudden I hear this voice in my mind, ‘You shall reap what you sow.’ There was one Bible in there. I opened the Bible, and it said, ‘Lovest thou me, feed my sheep.’ Instead of doing five years in prison, I did only 18 months,” he added.
Now Chapman goes to prisons spreading the good news of Christ. “I’m now going to prisons, and we are now bounty hunting souls for Jesus Christ,” he said. In a previous interview, Dog touched on his his faith journey has led to him to witness with other people enduring rough times in their lives. “My journey has built faith,” he told the Christian Post. “I’ve been through some terrible stuff, but it builds faith when you can look back and tell other people ‘Look, I’ve been there done that. Here’s what you do.’ And then they do it. I love sharing my testimony … so others don’t have to go through it.”
Featured image credit: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate Airman Dominique V. Brown (RELEASED), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dog-Chapman_(cropped).jpg