This is a must read–about one of Britain’s most dangerous convicts coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Mr. Taylor’s story exemplifies God’s hand of mercy upon even those that we consider the worst of the worst. Praise God that He saves sinners like Mr. Taylor, you, and me!
SHANE TAYLOR was one of Britain’s most dangerous convicts until a rare trip out of his prison cell led him to God.
One day he accidentally found himself in the prison chaplaincy where a Christianity course was taking place.
He admitted: “One of the lads said, ‘You get free chocolate gateau and biscuits,’ so I said, ‘Put my name down’.”
Shane, inside for a series of brutal stabbings, railed against the teachings at first.
He said: “I thought there’s no chance for me, I’m going to hell — but then I was hearing stuff like, ‘Jesus died for sinners’.
“I’d quiz it, saying, ‘So if I’ve done this I can still go to heaven?’ and they’d go, ‘If you repent’.”
Then, while attempting his first prayer, he had an experience which would leave him with unshakeable faith — and change his life forever.
Shane, 33, said: “I asked the prison chaplain, ‘What do I say?’ and he said, ‘Just let it come out of your heart’.
“Then I started praying: ‘Please God, if you are real, come into my life because I hate who I am’.
“I started to feel an energy in my stomach, which raised up until I just burst into uncontrollable tears.
“From that moment on, my life changed.”
Within weeks of that experience in 2006, Shane was out of segregation and working in the trusted position of chaplaincy cleaner.
He said: “Nobody could believe it.
“Some of the inmates would mock me but I was not bothered.
“I would just run about preaching about Jesus because I was so happy.
“I used to get called Dot off EastEnders every time I quoted scripture.”
Shane Taylor before he went inside SWNS
Eight years on and now a free man, the married dad-of-four visits the institutions which held him to convert other offenders.
In segregation units, the only human contact Shane got was a hand pushing food through a hatch to his cell.
Or, if it was shower day, six prison officers kitted out in full riot gear.
At that time, before he found God, the thought of getting out and killing them was what got him through.
He was once one of the six most dangerous inmates in Britain. But as Shane sits in his family’s neat front room, filled with children’s books and religious DVDs, bar his vast build, it’s hard to imagine he shared a prison wing with Britain’s most notorious prisoner Charles Bronson.
Brought up in Peterlee, County Durham, he committed his first crime aged ten.
He smashed open a phone box to steal the coins.
And Shane’s life soon disintegrated into a tale of violence, burglaries, drugs and intimidation.
He said: “I used to carry a whole pack of kitchen knives and if anyone said anything I would run up to them and stab them. People fear people who would hurt you badly or even kill you — that is what I wanted.”
In 2000, aged 20, he stabbed a man through the head following a fight.
The blade exited through his victim’s eyebrow.
While on bail, he stabbed another man through the chest after a row over drugs.
After being arrested for attempted murder, his charges were dropped to wounding with intent. Shane was given four years and nine months. Four years were added to his sentence in July 2002 when he smashed the bottom of a coffee jar and used it to stab two prison officers at Holme House prison in Stockton-on-Tees in the north east.
Shane said: “It was straight off the Cat A van, into the segregation unit. I was put on the ‘Ghost Train’.”
Shane Taylor is now a happy family man.
This, Shane explained, is when high-risk inmates are continually moved from one maximum security unit to the next and kept in almost constant segregation.
Over the following five years, he was “ghosted” to 13 high-security prisons.
Shane was released in 2007, just over six-and-a-half years into his eight-year, nine-month sentence.
The first thing he did was join a church where he was then living — in Eston, Middlesbrough.
The following year, he met his wife Sam, 24, with whom he now has four children — Angel, five, Grace, four, Isaac, two, and 12-week-old Jacob.
Shane said: “Religion is my life now.
“Without it, I’d be back in prison or I’d be bringing my kids up in the wrong way.”
He now works for the William Wilberforce Trust, a religious group which helps support ex-offenders who have become believers.
Shane said: “Two weeks ago, Holme House prison asked me to come in as they want to work alongside me.
“I even met up with one of the prison officers I attacked there. I said, ‘I’m sorry’.
“He just said, ‘I accept it, I’m glad you’ve changed your life around’.
“When you are walking down the street, you are always that scumbag.
“But in the church they look beyond that.
“They don’t see a violent criminal any more.
“But it’s much more than that — I want people like me to experience what I have.
“It won’t just stop you going to prison, it changes your life.”
Link to article (I must warn you that while this testimony glorifies God, the website that published it does not–it’s a gossip driven site).
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