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Pastor Greg Laurie Discusses What Happened to His Mother after Events Depicted in Jesus Revolution

Pastor Greg Laurie Discusses What Happened to His Mother after Events Depicted in <em>Jesus Revolution</em>

California megachurch pastor Greg Laurie recently opened up about what happened to his mother after the events depicted in Jesus Revolution, a new film about the Jesus movement of the 1970s.

In a YouTube video titled “After Jesus Revolution: What Happened To My Mother?”, Laurie, the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, showed a 1950s-era photo of him with his mom, Charlene McDaniel, played by Kimberly Williams-Paisley in the film.

According to ChurchLeaders.com, Laurie discussed living with his grandparents because his mother — a “dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe” —was “out living her crazy party life.” Although Charlene grew up in a Christian home, she eloped at a young age, became pregnant with Greg after a one-night stand out of wedlock, and married seven times.

“She chased after all of the empty promises of this world and sadly saw the emptiness of all of it,” Laurie noted. “But, thankfully, she came back to her faith and returned to it one month before she entered eternity.”

The Harvest Crusade founder then shared that he had a “very important conversation” with his mother toward the end of her life, during which she “recommitted her life to Christ.”

Using his mother as an example, Laurie asserted, “There’s hope for anyone, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what mistakes you’ve made, no matter what sins you’ve committed.”

“We serve a God of second chances, third chances, and fourth chances, and many more to come,” he concluded.

After watching Laurie’s video, evangelist Greg Stier noted that he had a similar situation with his own mother.

“It’s interesting to me how similar @greglaurie’s story & mine are, especially when it comes to our moms. God used both our crazy upbringings to forge us into passionate evangelists,” he tweeted on Sunday.

According to Stier’s memoir Unlikely Fighter, his mother nearly aborted him. When he was eight, he gave his life to Christ despite being raised in an abusive household. From that moment on, Stier would gradually witness how the gospel would transform other family members.

While Stier and his brother tried talking to their mom about Christ, she had a difficult time accepting Him due to her guilt for past sins. Eventually, she surrendered her life to Christ after hearing one of 15-year-old Stier’s gospel presentations.

“I’m not saying that, from that moment on, it was all sunshine and roses. But something shifted in her soul that day. She was on a trajectory of transformation because she finally received the forgiveness she so desperately craved,” Stier wrote in a Mother’s Day blog post from 2015.

Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Jon Kopaloff/Stringer

Milton QuintanillaMilton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.