Fox News had an interesting story about how a former member of the Latin Kings Nation is now preaching the gospel and serving God.
Having just served a lengthy prison term, Andy “Rebirth” Pellerano became a Christian after surviving a near fatal drug overdose.
Today, he is not only preaching the Gospel, but also sings and in 2018 won Nola Gospel Rap Artist of the Year.
In an interview on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Pellerano explained how his gang life started.
“I was around 14, 15 years old and I let five grown men jump me so I could be their friend, as I like to put it,” Pellerano said. “So what would I have to do to keep that friendship? And it led to a first-degree attempted murder, three counts of aggravated assault, one count of aggravated criminal damage. It was gang-related. I was 16, I made 17. I was charged as an adult.”
But a close call with a drug overdose resulted in him starting to go to church, and ultimately transformed his life.
Pellerano remembered waking up in a hospital bed with an IV in his arm and a police officer at the foot of his bed.
Pellaromo said he faked being asleep because he had drugs on him.
He noticed almost immediately that he wasn’t handcuffed to the hospital bed, and when the police officer was briefly called away, Pellerano decided to make a run for it.
“I made it through one door, but the other door, they have to buzz you out,” Pellerano explained. “And it brings me to the scripture that God will close doors no man can open and open doors that no man can close, and I thank God for that closed door because I needed to get caught.”
According to Wikipedia, the Latin Kings official name is the “Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation,” and it “is one of the largest Caribbean and Latino street and prison gangs” in the world.
In an article for the New Yorker, L. A. Kaufman says the gang incorporates a religious element which includes a “unique mixture of intense discipline, revolutionary politics and a homemade religion called ‘Kingism.’”
“Kingism is a blend of tribal gang rhetoric and religious mysticism. As one member put it, the Manifesto is ‘considered our Bible’, and reading it is to go ‘from the darkness to the light,’” Wikipedia adds.
Even one of the gang’s symbols, a five, or three point crown, is referred to as its ‘sacred crown.’
It has been suggested that at least one of Jesus’ disciples, Simon the Zealot (Matthew 10:4, Acts 1:13), was a former member of a violent revolutionary group in Roman times called the Zealots who called for the overthrow of the Roman occupiers.
