Simple Faith With Rusty George

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;24;14
Rusty George
As a pastor or staff member of a church, it is common to experience compassion fatigue and find that you spend so much time caring for others, you're not caring for yourself. Saga wants to help foster healthy churches by facilitating the support of the emotional, mental and relational health of their leaders. As a partner of Saga, pastors and staff can confidently and easily begin their journey by being uniquely matched to a therapist that best fits their needs.

00;00;24;26 - 00;00;40;27
Rusty George
To learn more about our church partnership with Saga, go to Saga Center Dawg. That's Saga Center dot org.

00;00;41;03 - 00;00;51;07
Intro/Outro
Welcome to Leading Simple with Rusty George. Our goal is to make following Jesus and leading others a bit more simple. Here's your host, Rusty George.

00;00;51;29 - 00;01;14;15
Rusty George
Welcome to Leading Simple. My name is Rusty George. Every week around here, we try to just provide a little bit of insight to make following Jesus and leading others a little bit more simple. Here's an issue that all of us have wrestled with, and that is, can God's grace still forgive me? Can God's grace even forgive me? In other words, have we ever gone one sin too far?

00;01;15;00 - 00;01;33;11
Rusty George
And we tend to think about people that have done the worst of the worst and wonder if God actually has the ability to forgive them for their sin as well. Maybe not the ability, but the willingness to. Well, you might remember back in the nineties there was an arrest that was made in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of a young man named Jeffrey Dahmer.

00;01;33;21 - 00;01;58;11
Rusty George
And we were horrified to learn that over the last 13 years, this man had killed and dismembered. And sometimes eaten 17 individual men. And it was such a horrific event that the nation was captivated by this. And soon the name Jeffrey Dahmer became synonymous with the most extreme, the worst of the worst, and maybe somebody beyond the grace of God.

00;01;58;24 - 00;02;22;10
Rusty George
And yet many of us were surprised to learn that during his time in prison, he actually gave his life to Christ. Well, I had a chance to track down the man who baptized Jeffrey Dahmer, a pastor by the name of Roy Ratcliff. He still resides up in Wisconsin. And we sat down over a podcast interview and had a chance to talk about was Jeff Sincere?

00;02;22;25 - 00;02;44;11
Rusty George
What was his relationship like with Jeff? And let's talk about God's grace. I think today is going to be interesting, but also inspiring for you. And I know you're going to want to share this with somebody else. So here's my conversation with Pastor Roy Ratcliff. Well, Roy Ratcliff, thank you so much for joining us. And we're so grateful that you would take some time to be with us.

00;02;44;11 - 00;02;51;16
Rusty George
For our listeners that don't know much about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, just where you live and ministry and kind of life journey.

00;02;52;12 - 00;03;15;21
Roy Ratcliffe
I've been a minister. I was a minister for 45 years. I was asked to retire after that length of time. And so I do something else now. But I served three different churches once in Andover, Kansas for five years, and then Wausau, Wisconsin, for 15 years, and then in Madison of 25 years. So that gives you some idea of how where I was and how long I've been there.

00;03;16;28 - 00;03;36;04
Roy Ratcliffe
The prison ministry was a new thing that came on to me when I moved to Madison shortly after I moved to Madison. I got the call about Jeffrey Dahmer, and after Jeff's death, a year later, I was interviewed about what it was like. And then an inmate saw that and said, Hey, you saw Jeff, Won't you come see me?

00;03;36;22 - 00;04;05;16
Roy Ratcliffe
And then another inmate. Then another inmate and then another inmate. Before you know it, I had a bunch that I was seeing every month. So I had a ministry that kind of developed just out of out of all of that. And it was kind of amazing things for me there. Other than that, just kind of a general ho hum minister, you know, preaching serve men's funerals, weddings, you know, the various things that that occur as to how you minister to people.

00;04;05;29 - 00;04;13;19
Rusty George
Okay. So that is all fascinating. But you stopped me in my tracks when you said and over Kansas. I grew up there.

00;04;13;26 - 00;04;14;15
Roy Ratcliffe
Oh, really?

00;04;14;17 - 00;04;19;10
Rusty George
I didn't know anybody knew that that city outside of Wichita. What years were you there?

00;04;20;00 - 00;04;23;12
Roy Ratcliffe
I was in Andover from 1970 to 1975.

00;04;23;29 - 00;04;29;01
Rusty George
Okay. Yeah, we would have. We would have been in the same town. So. What church were you serving there?

00;04;29;11 - 00;04;57;13
Roy Ratcliffe
It was. It was. It was called the Andover Church of Christ. It was on the main drag going north and south off of what was basically the the main road of Andover, I guess you would call it. Yeah. A little bit north of the the main highway, which was at 54. So I can't recall what the highway was now, but it was a highway that went into Wichita and we were about a mile and a half north of that that is amazing.

00;04;57;13 - 00;05;01;19
Roy Ratcliffe
On I guess it's called end overall as it was called and overrode. Yeah, it.

00;05;01;19 - 00;05;24;03
Rusty George
Was. And it still is. There's a there's now two high schools on that road. But when I was there, it was just one. Well, that's that's pretty impressive. I had no idea that of our conversation today that it would end up talking about Andover, Kansas, as well. Fascinating. Okay. Well, that's between you and me. I know our listeners want to know, how did you get the contact with Jeffrey Dahmer?

00;05;24;03 - 00;05;37;23
Rusty George
I mean, I know a little bit. It was kind of time and place, but were you kind of somebody that the prison would reach out to from time to time? Were you did you know much about a situation other than the press? Tell us a little about that connection.

00;05;38;10 - 00;05;58;14
Roy Ratcliffe
No, I was quite ignorant. I had seen and heard about him on the television and so forth. And so I thought, well, this kind of strange is kind of odd. That's too bad. And so forth. And I got a phone call from a fellow minister in Milwaukee who said he'd gotten a phone call from someone asking that. So the inmate wanted to be baptized.

00;05;58;14 - 00;06;25;23
Roy Ratcliffe
And since I was closer to the prison than he was, were I please go and take care of it. So I thought, okay, sure. What's the prisoner's name? And the guy says, You might want to sit down for this is Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, so that's how that's how I got the my name connected to his is a matter that in calling up the chaplain and finding out if this was really something that was was true and if so, when could we arrange a time to come visit with him and see him and talk with him?

00;06;26;15 - 00;06;50;00
Roy Ratcliffe
The whole story actually began a little bit earlier than that is kind of odd. Jeff had been interviewed by Stone Phillips on a national television thing. It was Stone Phillips that really pressed Jeff about his crimes and why he did the crimes. And Jeff had said talked about his evil urges and to people who were watching it across the nation, one was in Oklahoma and the other was and was in Virginia.

00;06;50;14 - 00;07;12;26
Roy Ratcliffe
They saw it. And the one Oklahoma was a prison minister and the one in Virginia was a Bible correspondence teacher there. She sent correspondence courses to and they both said, So I need to hear about Jesus. That man does. And so they sent him a Bible Bible correspondence courses. Ironically, since they were the same faith that Jeff's parents were.

00;07;13;11 - 00;07;31;20
Roy Ratcliffe
Jeff at received these things and read through them and then wrote at the end of each one, I want to be baptized. Find someone to baptize me. Wow. Well, you are in Oklahoma. You don't know much about Wisconsin. You're in Virginia. Don't know much about Wisconsin. You start making phone calls, try to find somebody somewhere. And the guy in Oklahoma finally reached someone.

00;07;31;21 - 00;07;52;29
Roy Ratcliffe
He reaches the guy in Milwaukee who said, oh, I know somebody who could do it. He's he's closer and he'll take over for you. And that's pretty much how I got into the whole thing. So it's really kind of interesting, although the wrapped around, it's really quite an amazing story in itself, just that for a long time these were all members of the Church of Christ, which is what I was a part of too.

00;07;52;29 - 00;08;11;29
Roy Ratcliffe
So so it's kind of interesting that had that all work together. When I first met Jeff, one of the first questions I ask him after I ask him, why do you want to be baptized? I mean, what what do you know about baptism? What's all this about as far as you're concerned? And he says, quote, in scriptures to me and I was obviously I actually read the scripture shows.

00;08;12;00 - 00;08;33;07
Roy Ratcliffe
I was surprised about that. So so what's your religious background? And in terms of Church of Christ, what? Yeah, you're the same faith. I have know that's that's it's EMI is in my my father used to take me to church as a little boy, but suddenly just stopped going to church. And I remember thinking, wow, what if he'd continued going to church?

00;08;33;07 - 00;08;58;22
Roy Ratcliffe
What if the Jeff as a boy had gone through all the experiences young people go through, you know, the weekly Bible classes and and summers, summer vacation or vacation Bible schools and, you know, go to a summer, go go to Christian camps and all kinds. It would that it made a difference. Well, of course, I don't know the answer to that, but I can't help but be prejudiced my own mind to say, well, yeah, I think probably would have helped.

00;08;58;25 - 00;09;26;02
Roy Ratcliffe
I would. Yes. I'm thinking, wow, what a what a shame. What an example of living your faith, what effect it has upon your children. I thought that was a really powerful moment for me. Anyway. Not many try to put Lionel down or down, but I mean, that's that's kind of the example that I've always wrestled with as a minister is as parents maintaining their faith and the effect their having their faith has on their children.

00;09;26;07 - 00;09;48;26
Roy Ratcliffe
Children tend to inherit and then tend to continue on with the faith of their parents. That's usually the way it goes. You know, a Jewish child usually becomes a Jewish person. Muslim child used to becomes a muslim, if you will, a family there. And so we tend to follow the path that our parents have set for us. And that was a case, I think, with Jeff as well, too.

00;09;49;26 - 00;10;13;10
Rusty George
When you first met him, you by this point knew a little bit more about him. What was your your first impression like? You mentioned that he quoted a lot of scripture. Were you were you nerve? Yes. Were you I mean, obviously, as a as a pastor, you've encountered a lot of different people, a lot of different situations. And, you know, we're certainly taught and believe to lead with the grace of God first.

00;10;13;10 - 00;10;21;12
Rusty George
But this is a pretty interesting situation. Did you find yourself a little apprehensive or a little bit nervous about the whole encounter?

00;10;22;20 - 00;10;41;16
Roy Ratcliffe
I had never been to a prison before. I never visited prisoners, so this was a whole new experience for me. I, I had some idea of what what to expect. I mean, you know, electronically locked doors. I mean, that's all part of the process. That's a little bit intimidating. So first, I, I didn't know quite what to expect.

00;10;41;16 - 00;11;07;25
Roy Ratcliffe
I really anticipated sitting across from him with a glass partition between us or talking on the phone or or on television with it. I didn't expect it to be in person, so I was quite surprised when they asked me to a little room about ten foot by 12 foot with table and chairs, and we sit down. Okay, I'll sit down and a few minutes later than Jeffrey Dahmer comes into the room and closes the door and shakes my hand to sit across from me.

00;11;08;10 - 00;11;25;08
Roy Ratcliffe
And I'm sitting there thinking, Wow, I'm in a room with a man that's killed a lot of other people. You know, it makes you kind of wonder if you have a if you're in danger to what? What's going on? Because I'm in a prison, so he's not going to try anything. I don't think that. Yeah, you have kind of a movie.

00;11;25;08 - 00;11;46;17
Roy Ratcliffe
They're going to think, well, this is not exactly what I thought it was going to be. This is really quite surprising. So, yeah, there's a certain nervousness on my part as to watch what we do here. One of the tricks you do as a minister, if you're speaking for people and you're always dealing with the question of nervousness and for a crowd is is to distract yourself from that nervousness is to think, well, what am I here to talk about?

00;11;47;04 - 00;12;07;03
Roy Ratcliffe
Okay, who to answer to? I start saying I want to talk to a so I start thinking, why are you worried that if we start talking with them and so were before I knew that I wasn't nervous anymore. I was just talking with a person who was questioning questionable baptism when he convinced me that he had studied enough the Scriptures to actually understand what baptism is all about.

00;12;07;03 - 00;12;27;29
Roy Ratcliffe
I said, okay, I'll baptize. I just figure how we're going to do this, because prisons are don't build Baptists when they build prisons. I mean, that's not something that's of father because their agenda, you know, so and heaved a sigh and I remember thinking, why did you make that sound? But asking, why do you make this sound? They said, Because I was really nervous about meeting you.

00;12;28;04 - 00;12;45;26
Roy Ratcliffe
I thought, Well, that was kind of funny. I was nervous about meeting him and he was nervous about meeting me. Why were you nervous about meeting me? I asked and he said, because I was afraid you're going to say you've been too evil, too wicked, you sinful to be baptized. You don't qualify because of your evilness. So I so forth.

00;12;46;11 - 00;13;03;22
Roy Ratcliffe
Well, the thought never entered my head. That wasn't the question that I'd raised in my mind. My question was whether he could be baptized. The question was, did he understand what baptism was about and what we're trying to accomplish here? So that was that was all I was dealing with. But I thought that was very interesting little moment we had.

00;13;04;00 - 00;13;24;01
Roy Ratcliffe
And it kind of dispelled both my nervousness and his nervousness as well. But I deal with the fact that, okay, what you thought was impossible is not necessarily impossible. We're going to try and make it happen. And so that was simply a matter of finding out from the chaplain, what can we do about this baptistery question. And that was a whole new little story in itself.

00;13;24;01 - 00;13;41;02
Roy Ratcliffe
The the chaplain wanted me to find a place that would donate a baptistery to the prison. He wanted to donate it because if they spent money on it and then it's been an equal amount money for the Muslims and for the Hindus and for the American Native Indians. And, you know, every every other group that makes a religious claim altogether.

00;13;41;11 - 00;14;03;05
Roy Ratcliffe
But if it was donated, well, it was just a gift. They have. And I did some research and I did find a place that makes a baptism for presents where it's a community would take the top off. And there's a little baptistery thing. So I them mentioned and I found a communion table with you can make it to a Baptist that would work.

00;14;03;05 - 00;14;24;09
Roy Ratcliffe
And he said, Well, we've already got a communion table. That's just the point. The whole point. But we looked at the table. We said, But we have a tub with that work. And so he begins to discard this tub about three foot by four foot, about 18 inches deep. And that should be enough, because in my faith it's a full body immersion.

00;14;24;09 - 00;14;38;25
Roy Ratcliffe
So that was a big deal, right? Well, he ought to be able to get into that. So, yeah, we'll do that. It's a tub they use for their prisoners when they hurt their backs was the little horrible things, so forth. So okay, we'll do that. So doesn't need to be moved to the sanctuary. No, we can walk to it.

00;14;38;25 - 00;14;59;11
Roy Ratcliffe
So that's what we decided to do. So it was a matter of simply setting the date for when we were going to do the baptism and getting going, going and following through with it. But it was kind of funny how that whole thing kind of worked out. What would you expect to happen? Doesn't always happen, you know, it used to do a little different turn here.

00;14;59;12 - 00;14;59;22
Roy Ratcliffe
There.

00;15;00;10 - 00;15;09;18
Rusty George
The Baptist tree that you found that was part communion table, part Baptist tree. I don't suppose that was built by American Rehabilitation Ministries in Joplin, Missouri, was it?

00;15;09;29 - 00;15;12;03
Roy Ratcliffe
Yes, exactly. That's what exactly what it was. Yes.

00;15;13;08 - 00;15;32;23
Rusty George
I went to school right down the street from that place for Bible College, Ozark Christian College. So it's amazing how many prisons they've outfitted with those. And obviously they didn't in your case, but it was close. Okay. So I want to I want to ask you a couple of questions that you may not know, but you can speculate on.

00;15;32;23 - 00;16;12;13
Rusty George
But you know, so much has been made since Jeffrey Dahmer to try to pin his actions on genetics or kind of the psychopath gene or perhaps, you know, he really couldn't help himself there. Even, you know, we're talking about in the in the movie about do we have his brain, you know, studied and those kind of things and not taking anything away from the science part of that, but knowing what you know now and having spent time with him, did you sense, okay, there seems to be obviously something chemical that's off, but there's also just a lot of really bad things that happened.

00;16;12;13 - 00;16;36;17
Rusty George
I mean, we have the divorce, we have abuse, we have neglect, we have no friends. A lack of church, as we already talked about, Was it all just kind of this mix of things that created and awoke this monster within him? Or do you feel like, you know, he was just possessed in those moments or was it just, man, this is just genetic and it was bound to come out no matter what happened.

00;16;36;17 - 00;16;41;11
Rusty George
Just and I know you're not a doctor, but what are your thoughts now, years later?

00;16;42;01 - 00;17;05;24
Roy Ratcliffe
Yeah. Why did he do the crimes? Why did you commit the crime? That's the question that everybody's always wanted to know. Answers to. My opinion is based upon the fact that I grew to love him and got to know him a little bit. So perhaps that my view was a little bit softened. It's also based on the fact that I've spent years with people and I've seen people do things that they shouldn't have done and so forth.

00;17;06;23 - 00;17;24;11
Roy Ratcliffe
What am I thinking is that I've observed that we all lose our minds from time to time. And when we lose our minds, we don't know that we've lost our minds and we think we're making rational decisions, that we do things that are kind of foolish and stupid and along the way and it's kind of like the prodigal son.

00;17;24;11 - 00;17;41;21
Roy Ratcliffe
He eventually comes to a scissors and says, Why am I doing this in my father's house? There's there's plenty food. I don't need to be starving looking at the pigs. Fools ever eat the pig's food or the man with all the demons that that's been cast out of him. And they go to the pigs and the people at the village come.

00;17;41;21 - 00;18;02;07
Roy Ratcliffe
And I see these in his right mind. He wasn't in his right mind before. Of course, that one is because of the demon possession and so forth. But it kind of illustrates to me the fact that sometimes we get out of focus, we lose what was going on, and we don't know that we've lost our mind until we start asking ourselves a basic question Why did I do that?

00;18;02;13 - 00;18;20;17
Roy Ratcliffe
Why did I say those things? Why what? What's what's the matter with me? That's not what I should be. And that's telling you that you begin to come back to your senses and so forth. At the end of his trial, Jeff would self-diagnose himself and say, I realize now that I was sick. Then you can realize that he was sick.

00;18;20;17 - 00;18;41;20
Roy Ratcliffe
He's beginning to ask those sorts of questions about himself. He's beginning to see that. But what I was doing just wasn't right. It just doesn't make any sense. A second idea that is associated with the same things come from the Book of James Chapter one, where James cautions the reader, Don't be. Don't say you're tempted by God. God doesn't tempt anyone, but each one is chapter one.

00;18;42;01 - 00;19;05;10
Roy Ratcliffe
He then is led into the sinfulness of basically the the way the verb changes from the active to the passive is amazing to me. Suddenly you're not just the active person involved in evil, but suddenly evil's taken hold of you, and so you're dragged away. You know, and you have the sense of being raped because you become impregnated against your will.

00;19;05;26 - 00;19;25;17
Roy Ratcliffe
And then you have a baby and the baby becomes sin in the and the sin goes up, becomes death. You have you have all whole life is played out in front of you. And to me, it tells me simply this, that evil is a force is much more powerful than we think it is. And that once you step into that many times, you cannot pull yourself out by yourself.

00;19;26;04 - 00;19;45;17
Roy Ratcliffe
So I think on the one hand, Jeff, a lost his focus because there was no focus on God. People used to ask me when I first started being interviewed about Jeff, why did he do these things? And of course, I didn't know the answer. But my best guess as a minister was, is there's no place for God in your heart, then there's no limit to the evil that you can do.

00;19;45;28 - 00;20;04;18
Roy Ratcliffe
I still believe that today. I think I think knowing about God or believing God puts a limit on what evil you do and so forth. So but I think that what I'm talking about is I think Jeff got himself involved in evil that was beyond his ability to to resist and became more powerful and began to control him.

00;20;05;24 - 00;20;24;15
Roy Ratcliffe
And he couldn't he couldn't figure out how to get out of it. When he was first in prison, when I first met him, he was happy that he was in prison because now there was some outside force of his controlling him that he couldn't control himself. So he didn't. He didn't she knew how to control this this evilness that was within him.

00;20;25;03 - 00;20;48;21
Roy Ratcliffe
I had another inmate later on that would describe his addiction to child abuse by saying that there was a beast inside of him and it scared him and so forth. And he had also been baptized and said, yes, there's a beast inside me, but there's something there's a force even greater than the beast that's inside of you. And you got to look at that force of that forces Jesus Christ.

00;20;49;05 - 00;21;10;11
Roy Ratcliffe
Jesus could become the beast inside of you. And I think that's what eventually happened with Jeff. I think he got lost. It got swept up in evil that was greater than he could can control. And before you know it, one thing led to another, which led to another, which led to another. And you know what? He is doing things that just are incapable for us to understand.

00;21;10;28 - 00;21;30;11
Roy Ratcliffe
I do think that the cannibal thing was a mechanism that he used to defend himself against people. I don't think he was as much of a cannibal as we like to make him out to be, to me, he confessed, eating only one bicep muscle to another. Reporter, he confessed, eating the heart. When he was arrested, he made a big deal about these parts.

00;21;30;11 - 00;21;52;04
Roy Ratcliffe
I was able to eat for later. So he made a big deal about about making the point that he was a cannibal. A guard told me about how Jeff one time said within the guards, hearing that no one asked here to see if the guard would jump, Jeff said, I bite. That makes the guard jump. Of course, as the whole idea is playing with the idea of being a cannibal.

00;21;52;04 - 00;22;26;28
Roy Ratcliffe
So and the idea of a cannibal persona is it attracts attention, which Jeff wanted desperately. I want some attention with the same time I said, Don't get too close to me. I don't trust you. Don't get too close to me because I will bite you. I will eat you, I will kill you. Something along those lines, people who actually know cannibals says Justin doesn't behave like a normal, normal, just normal cannibal would behave when my brother was in the Navy, he actually met a cannibal who told him, Killed my brother.

00;22;26;29 - 00;22;43;21
Roy Ratcliffe
You sitting on a dock, Your legs would make a good meal for my family. Well, that's the way cannibals think. But Jeff didn't really talk to me like, Oh, your brain would be good for me. I'm looking forward to eating your heart. He didn't do that. So that just was the thing he was thinking about. But it's the thing that kind of developed.

00;22;43;21 - 00;22;52;03
Roy Ratcliffe
It evolved as as he as you got into the flow of evil. So I kind of put string on my neck and I just can't stop talking.

00;22;52;08 - 00;22;54;03
Rusty George
You know, this is fascinating.

00;22;54;12 - 00;22;59;07
Roy Ratcliffe
That's my theory as to why Jeff did the things that he did. And I may be wrong. That's no.

00;22;59;07 - 00;23;20;04
Rusty George
I think you're you're dead on. And I think you dropped some amazing truth there, by the way, for all of our listeners. So you mentioned that when you got to him, he had already been doing a Bible correspondence class. He'd been learning about the Bible that he indicate to you what stories or verses from the Bible grabbed his attention in such a way that it began to wake him up.

00;23;20;14 - 00;23;26;10
Rusty George
It began to bring light into his darkness. It began to make him think that maybe even he could be forgiven.

00;23;27;16 - 00;23;57;24
Roy Ratcliffe
Jeff didn't really bring out any versus the had special meaning for him other than the verses that said you need to be baptized of things along those lines. One of the things that I learned about Jeff, especially after his death and I talked to his father and passed a message to his father that his father didn't know about, Jeff claimed, and he was surprised that he was an atheist and an evolutionist and kind of argued that you as animals eat animals as his role animals than it is natural for animals to eat and things like that.

00;23;58;13 - 00;24;30;24
Roy Ratcliffe
And he he alone would argued more humanely over that subject. Any other subject at all. After Jeff's younger brother, David went to college, he got connected with a church group and he was baptized and he came home. Message was, Dad, dad, you need to go back to church. So Lionel went back to church and when he went back to church to be having a an evolution seminar that is dealing with creationism versus evolution and said, So this is exactly the kind of stuff that Jeff and I argued about.

00;24;30;24 - 00;24;52;03
Roy Ratcliffe
So he scooped up as much material the good and sent it to Jeff. Now, exactly when this occurred, it's unclear to me whether it was before the incursion, incarceration or after the anchor. I don't quite know. I doubt exactly, because I don't think that the prison would have allowed him to receive those materials. But anyway, Jeff received the material and began working his way through the material.

00;24;52;03 - 00;25;15;24
Roy Ratcliffe
And Jeff told me that was what turned his mind from being an atheist to becoming a believer in God. I would tell Lionel that after just death, Lionel didn't know this. This was not this was this is something you would think that thought son would have said to father. But they didn't talk about those sorts of things. Another question was, Jeff wondered why they were going to church.

00;25;15;29 - 00;25;35;00
Roy Ratcliffe
I'd asked Linda, Why did you quit going to church? He explained that there was such an argument between him and his wife because Linda would explain in his book he thought she was going through bipolar issues. He's not a doctor, but that's kind of what he believes anyway. That's what he thought anyway, and that his going to church with Jeff gave her a guilt trip.

00;25;35;00 - 00;25;53;25
Roy Ratcliffe
And so she was arguing with him. And Lionel was not the kind of man who could deal with argumentation. So let him just decide, okay? I'm just going to quit going to church altogether. I read my Bible at home, eat communion at home. I'm not going to deal with that at all. So that's that was Lionel's thinking, but it's never explained to Jeff.

00;25;54;09 - 00;26;14;19
Roy Ratcliffe
And so you have these important informations that you think Father and son son to father. You would think they talk well, but they never, never really talked about. So and anyway, I was able to tell Lionel that this matters is what turned Jeff around. We got to thinking about faith in God and believing in God. Being a believer in God was really all about.

00;26;15;00 - 00;26;33;09
Roy Ratcliffe
Later on, Jeff would ask if I could find these materials and have them sent to his mother because his mother would give it of her faith too. So Jeff never had a feeling of evangelism. If you would talk about spreading the message of spreading the word to those that could use it, help me. Maybe it would help her, too.

00;26;33;21 - 00;26;51;21
Roy Ratcliffe
That's what he's thinking. So but anyway, I don't know that he had any special passage that that opened his mind up more than anything else. He was most concerned about making things right. He had done things wrong all his life. So you want to make sure he did things right. So he spent time arguing to me about the baptismal formula.

00;26;51;21 - 00;27;13;18
Roy Ratcliffe
What do you say when you baptize someone that falls on Holy Spirit or in the name of Jesus, all this sort? Because that's what the Book of Acts said and that's what other inmates had told him, so forth. So they argued, whether you argued well, what? Translation the Bible could use a translation were things that were relatively minor things as far as I was the service to him.

00;27;13;18 - 00;27;30;23
Roy Ratcliffe
They were big issues because he said, I've done things wrong so much of my life. I want to make sure I get it right this time. So that was his main focus, which was getting himself right, whatever right meant to him, Right? Meant getting back to the Bible and getting back to what his father's faith was all about.

00;27;31;03 - 00;27;50;08
Rusty George
So you've mentioned that you've worked with many inmates now, and I'm sure you've had a chance to baptized many. But this the day of Jeff's baptism was it what was it like? Was it was it unique? Was it different in any way? Did it feel the same? Sometimes people get baptized and they immediately feel this this wave of light.

00;27;50;08 - 00;27;59;09
Rusty George
They feel this release of of guilt or pain, or was it more of a kind of a, hey, I did the next right thing and I'll keep making the next right decision. Tell me what you remember about that day.

00;28;00;06 - 00;28;23;20
Roy Ratcliffe
I got in, gotten to the prison and met Jeff in the chaplains office where I took his confession of faith because I had to asked him. Yet he believed that it was obvious. But they said, Well, yeah, he believes in Jesus. So then two guards escorted the chaplain, myself and Jeff, down the hallway to where the tub was.

00;28;23;20 - 00;28;40;21
Roy Ratcliffe
And on the way we passed prisoners coming from the opposite direction, carrying mops and brooms and, you know, cleaning supplies and things like that. And they looked up and they saw Jeff. And I said, Hey, J.D., how's it going? Is they're going to be baptized today. And you had that sense of happiness or joy that they all seem to have.

00;28;41;04 - 00;28;59;23
Roy Ratcliffe
I felt like if they were allowed to touch you, they were all giving each of the high fives as they walked down the dock, down the hallway. And I mentioned that only because the question of how Jeff related to other prisoners is is an important issue. Later on your does it get along with the prisoners, the regime. You have a friendly relationship with them and they had a friendly relationship with him.

00;29;00;11 - 00;29;22;08
Roy Ratcliffe
We got down there to the place and the chaplain pulls out a little outfit that apparently his wife had made a little polyester white outfit that Jeff could wear while being baptized. So he wasn't baptized in his prison clothes. So Jeff steps into the room with it, with the tub and an officer as he changed his clothes. And I'm standing out in the hallway with the chaplain and the other guard, and we are waiting for Jeffrey.

00;29;22;08 - 00;29;42;04
Roy Ratcliffe
Get his clothes changed. The chaplain and the guards start telling little baptismal stories of their own about their niece or their granddaughter, their daughter getting baptized. And I got the sense that they understood that this was kind of a special moment. It wasn't just something passing through, just just to pass the time. It's kind a special meaning to.

00;29;42;04 - 00;29;58;11
Roy Ratcliffe
So I thought, well, that's kind of a special, beautiful moment there. Hmm. Does it always open up? And I and I go into the room and Jeff has to climb to the tub, and it's very small thing. So he's in a fetal position sideways, you know, looking up at me with his head sticking out of the water. That's okay.

00;29;58;11 - 00;30;13;15
Roy Ratcliffe
That I put my hand and said, I baptize in name with Father, Son. The Holy Spirit gives you sense and I push his head under and then it goes back up. I said, Welcome to the family of God as well. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. And he climbs out and he begins to get dressed. We step out.

00;30;13;24 - 00;30;32;10
Roy Ratcliffe
He just closed the door. And so that was that was kind of it's a little bit overdramatized. And the Netflix show where they leaned backwards, there was no room really on backwards. It was a tiny little thing. It was in a fetal position and so forth. And then he grabbed his shoulder saying, You're saved. Well, I didn't do that.

00;30;32;10 - 00;30;50;14
Roy Ratcliffe
It simply said, Welcome to the Family Guy, because that was obvious. We we were where we were dealing with the issue of his sins and so forth. And coming through on the other side. So so there was a sense of, I think, relief on his part anyway, that he was happy. He was glad it hadn't occurred in that there was a family of God that he was a part of.

00;30;50;14 - 00;31;11;27
Roy Ratcliffe
Now that was kind of new to him. And then we were escorted back to the chaplain's office where I said, okay, I need to I need to meet with them on a regular basis, because in my mind, he's just been baptized, is born, born anew, and he needs instruction. He needs to be able to continue on. And so the chaplain made a huge call, a permanent pastoral pass.

00;31;12;16 - 00;31;27;05
Roy Ratcliffe
And so every Wednesday from that point on, I was able to go to the prison visit with Jeff for an hour. We could talk about anything you want to talk about. There are things I want to talk about, but I let him decide. What he wanted to work was awesome, more important to him. And that's pretty much how we passed our time.

00;31;27;05 - 00;31;46;01
Roy Ratcliffe
From that point on. It was always an hour every Wednesday where we would meet together to read things to the scriptures and study or talk about whatever he was concerned about. You know, like the translation of the Bible to use and you know, how he's going to have communion and things of that nature, though those are issues that kind of bothered him.

00;31;46;18 - 00;32;01;23
Roy Ratcliffe
How do we how do we make this thing work here in this prison setting and so forth? A lot of people think that we talked quite a bit about his crimes. No, we didn't talk much, but I really wasn't worried about how he got to where he got here. The question is, where do we go from now on?

00;32;01;23 - 00;32;27;08
Roy Ratcliffe
That was the issue that we were dealing with. How do we live a Christian life in this kind of setting? Right. And so my my first advice was whenever there's a church service attend, it doesn't matter whether it's the same denomination or different, at least you're surrounding yourself with people who have a faith in Christ. And so try to absorb as much faith from them as they can and let them get some faith from you as well, too.

00;32;27;18 - 00;32;42;21
Roy Ratcliffe
And I've never really regretted that advice of those that some in my faith have said, No, no, you got to be separate, goes apart. I'm sorry. That's not my understanding of what it means to be a Christian. So knowing that that was a bit about the day itself of the battle, it was kind of a special day, kind of a beautiful day.

00;32;43;15 - 00;33;02;09
Roy Ratcliffe
Odd because it was a we had a full solar eclipse that day. So it was dark and it was the day that John Wayne Gacy was executed. They somehow made the point, well, two men died that day. One died from from committing his crimes. Another man died in a sense, you know. Okay. Well, that's a nice way of putting it.

00;33;02;13 - 00;33;07;13
Roy Ratcliffe
Wow. That's a couple tidbits about that day that make it special.

00;33;07;13 - 00;33;28;09
Rusty George
I did not know that. All right. You know, when you deal with somebody who and this is is true for any of us, we have that Damascus Road experience. We decide to put our faith in Jesus were baptized. But for all of us, the way the enemy tries to get at us is to remember what you have done.

00;33;28;15 - 00;33;55;18
Rusty George
And that constant memory of, Oh, I did this wrong. There's no way God could forgive me. Did the Jeff struggle with the idea of being fully forgiven? Did he wrestle with the grace of God, like even for me? Or was he just kind of ready to move on? Hey, let me interrupt this podcast for just a second. To remind you, if you're not taking care of your mental health, nobody else, step up and go check out Saga Center, Dawg to find out more.

00;33;55;24 - 00;33;57;02
Rusty George
All right, Back to our show.

00;33;57;27 - 00;34;12;27
Roy Ratcliffe
I don't know that he really gave it that much. A deep thought. I know later on, he felt very remorseful. He said he felt very remorseful. The crimes he committed and felt like he should have been put to death by the state. To which I say, well, yes, I agree. You probably should have been put to death by the state.

00;34;12;27 - 00;34;34;18
Roy Ratcliffe
The things you did were worthy of death. And then he got to a terrible look on his face and said, Well, then if that's the case now, then a Christian who says, Am I sinning by living, you're implying, should I kill myself or should I arrange for someone to kill me? So something along those lines and it got us to the guards.

00;34;34;18 - 00;34;54;01
Roy Ratcliffe
Give me the 2 minutes. You know, you I have 2 minutes to talk for you. Your time is up. So I don't really have time to really get into this now. Okay, well, next week we're going to study Romans chapter 13, and we get the idea what your question is, your relationship to the state and then sort of and then we'll deal with these questions here.

00;34;54;10 - 00;35;20;03
Roy Ratcliffe
And so the next one came back. And so we spent some time studying about how the state is the agent of God for wrath and so forth, and how a sword has been put into the hand of the state. And so we don't, you know, don't don't play around with this idea of you defensive as it now, of course, here in Wisconsin that Wisconsin has chosen to lay its sword down and picked up a rod so they'd rather chastise you other than rather than kill you.

00;35;20;03 - 00;35;37;25
Roy Ratcliffe
And so that's that's what they said. Yeah. So what is the Christian response with the opening verse? Just submit to the governing authorities. So whatever the governing authorities decide, that's what we're going to submit to so that they kind of answer that question there and then would launch into the question of suicide. I at one time had been suicidal myself.

00;35;37;25 - 00;35;58;17
Roy Ratcliffe
I understood kind of how he felt or how you feel about that. At one time I was good. People had convinced me that I had wasted my time trying to become a preacher and that maybe I shouldn't have been even trying to talk to people about crisis over that. And that was a deep psychological injury for me, and I had a very hard time dealing with that.

00;35;58;17 - 00;36;17;21
Roy Ratcliffe
And and I just wish I was dead and I prayed to God that God would take me to the Elijah story, take me, because I'm the only one that sort of stuff like that. And eventually my wife would want me to come out of that and see that. How ridiculous, silly that was. But it kind of dealt with the question of did you feel like you had been forgiven?

00;36;18;03 - 00;36;34;28
Roy Ratcliffe
Well, as far as I know, he had no issue with that. He was always worried about whether or not he should have been put to death because of what his crimes are going to be like. Look, the state had not fulfilled its obligation to punish him, that that was all he was concerned about. And I suppose he was concerned about that, because that's what people think.

00;36;35;11 - 00;36;55;15
Roy Ratcliffe
That's what people are talking about. When you hear the Jeffrey Dahmer story, all everyone wants to know is, what did you go to hell? That's really all that matters. You should be he should be punished for what he did. Yes. If didn't believe in Jesus, if there's no sense of of relying upon God, no sense of forgiveness, people have a hard time comprehending the forgiveness of God.

00;36;55;16 - 00;37;08;03
Roy Ratcliffe
They just have a hard time just grasping the idea that God could be a forgiving God and they really have the wrong concept. What God is really all about. And that is part part of the problem. I'm sorry, I'm getting preachy, so you stop doing that.

00;37;08;08 - 00;37;32;17
Rusty George
No, I love it. And I wanted to go there because I think that, you know, from the perspective of the victims, their families, the comfort that that many of them are given is, well, you know, he's been arrested now. He'll pay for what he did. Okay. Well, in your state, you're not going to do capital punishment, so he's not going to be executed.

00;37;32;17 - 00;37;59;25
Rusty George
He ends up dying a few years after being incarcerated. So he doesn't even have to live, you know, his entire life in prison for like the next 30 years. So then the only, you know, recourse is, well, at least he'll have to pay for his crimes in eternity in hell. And now he's been forgiven. What do you say to the families of the victims that feel like, you know, Jeff took everything from us and now he's been let off the hook?

00;38;00;25 - 00;38;21;21
Roy Ratcliffe
It's interesting you ask that question, because I actually had an experience with one of the victims relatives at his memorial service. Lionel came from Milwaukee with a crew that was due to film and also because he didn't trust anybody else. And a young woman who's with him, who was a sister of one of the victims of Jeff, had killed.

00;38;22;07 - 00;38;40;19
Roy Ratcliffe
And so I thought, well, that's kind of surprising that she would come with them. She had developed a relationship with Lionel and his wife, and she brought along her sister with her, but didn't tell her what this was all about. So here they come to our church building and we go to church settings and we're having a memorial service for.

00;38;40;19 - 00;38;58;08
Roy Ratcliffe
Jeff And the sister doesn't know about this. And so when she finds us, she's she's kind of enraged and she's sitting way back at the back of the auditorium with tears running down her face, all the rest is up at the front talking about Jeff and about the faith that Jeff had and and the desire he had to turn to God and serve God and so forth.

00;38;58;18 - 00;39;13;27
Roy Ratcliffe
And I was able to talk about Jeff and I let Lionel give a talk to the younger brother, David, go up and talk. And we got to say something about Jeff, so forth. And at the end of the service, then I walked up to her and I wanted to apologize. I'm sorry that your sister did this to you.

00;39;13;27 - 00;39;32;09
Roy Ratcliffe
I thought it was kind of a terrible thing for not to tell you what this was all about. And she said, well, she's actually very helpful to me just now that I actually heard your story about Jeff and that he actually did believe in God. It's easier for me to forgive Jeff now than it was before. I thought, Oh, well, that's interesting.

00;39;32;10 - 00;39;50;19
Roy Ratcliffe
A lot of times when you don't know the story from having been around people who actually were there, it's very easy to form your own judgments. And so a lot of the victims families are like that. They've been removed from Jeff. As far as I know, he's the guy who killed their relatives over so as far as I care about is that vengeance.

00;39;50;19 - 00;40;14;14
Roy Ratcliffe
Vengeance is mine. I'm going to have it. And if I can't do the things, we'll soon as we're going to the vigils in my in my place or in my name, so forth. And so they had that hope, but they don't seem to understand what God is really all about. The amazing thing about God for me is from Exodus 34, verse six, where Moses says, To see God and God passes in front of Moses and God cannot do this quietly.

00;40;14;14 - 00;40;36;12
Roy Ratcliffe
God must speak about himself, and God begins to describe Himself in terms of his great mercy and His grace, and is not going to be angry for all, all time, you know, not hold anger because all everyone's just such a for so many generations and also because of their lives. Oh, by the way, I will judge that guilty.

00;40;37;03 - 00;40;53;02
Roy Ratcliffe
We get this idea when we read a passage like that, that God, we reverse it. We said, well, God is primarily a God of judgment. And by the way, if the mood is right and if the feeling is right, nobody's going to settle, well, then, by the way, you might have mercy know when God just goes to serve.

00;40;53;02 - 00;41;08;10
Roy Ratcliffe
He's primarily a God of mercy. Also has to go to justice. You can't pull the wool over his eyes. These primarily God of mercy. We don't have an understanding of God that way. We don't see God being that way at all. So we have a hard time with the concept of God. We want to we want to play God.

00;41;08;10 - 00;41;28;19
Roy Ratcliffe
In terms of judge, you say I must, I must judge because that's what God expects of me. And you don't understand. There's God's answers. No, I am Premier, the God of mercy. And if I can find a way to show mercy, this person will show mercy. And that's mercy is translated into his forgiveness. And so the concept that God can forgive is just incomprehensible to us human beings.

00;41;28;19 - 00;41;52;01
Roy Ratcliffe
We can't cooperate because we don't understand who God is. We've been asked to play God in the sense of forgiving as God is forgiven. We don't want to do that. We want to play God in the sense of judging. And that's our problem, is that we completely misunderstand God all about so so to the victims families who have a hard time with this is because they don't really understand what God's all about, why they have a hard time with the idea of Jeff being forgiven.

00;41;52;24 - 00;42;13;08
Roy Ratcliffe
But they themselves have been sinful people. They themselves need to come to the point of turning to God himself. And I'm saying what God's all about. Once a teenager asked me, What's the meaning of life? That's a little bit, you know, taken aback by the question. But then it occurred to me, well, the whole meaning of life is to come to believe in God through Jesus Christ.

00;42;14;03 - 00;42;31;28
Roy Ratcliffe
He is the one he came to tell you the story. Tell you what? The one who set him said to say, Here's here's why you did what you did. Walk to the one who sent him. So the whole point of our being alive is to come to understand that there is a God and that God can understand our situation and God loves it and God forgives us.

00;42;32;16 - 00;42;57;05
Roy Ratcliffe
Jesus will say of God, He knows when sparrows fall, knows the number of hairs on your head. If God knows you so intimately that he knows what's going on in your life, then when you are assuming, Well, God has abandoned me, God doesn't care. God does, you completely have no idea. You looking at your own circumstances, you're looking at God through the lens of your own circumstance, but you're not looking at God as God has described himself.

00;42;57;14 - 00;43;03;18
Roy Ratcliffe
So we tend to rely upon the wisdom of man more than we rely upon the revelation of God.

00;43;04;08 - 00;43;11;17
Rusty George
I'm curious, how do you see God differently after your experience with Jeff Dahmer?

00;43;12;06 - 00;43;36;22
Roy Ratcliffe
Well, I think my understanding of God was developing at the time that I knew Jeff. It's simply gotten more more deeper since then. But yeah, I see God primarily as a god of mercy and a God of grace, a God who understands a God who wants to it doesn't want to destroy anyone. He wants us to to come to him and to understand what it's all about, but also an incredibly patient person.

00;43;37;27 - 00;44;00;19
Roy Ratcliffe
God is very patient. We showed you how then God allow a Hitler or a or Khadafi or whoever. You'll build and you want to pick on Ivan. God love the guy. You go all because God is patient. God is trying to is trying to allow them to realize the error of their ways and come to understand that without comprehending what God is all about.

00;44;01;25 - 00;44;24;24
Roy Ratcliffe
Recently, I got to see the film The Shack, which is based upon a book written several years ago, where a guy whose daughter is taken and killed and so forth, and the man is going through his grief and eventually goes to the shack to meet God. And in the process they're struggling with the concept of God's forgiveness. And he has two children left and the one character, Sister.

00;44;24;24 - 00;44;41;10
Roy Ratcliffe
Well, you have a son and a daughter. Which one goes to heaven? Which one goes to hell you choose? MM Well, I can't choose, he says, because I love them both. Well, that's how God feels about the guy who killed your daughter, as well as your daughter. God loves both of them, and God doesn't want to hurt those who want to destroy either of them.

00;44;41;10 - 00;45;01;08
Roy Ratcliffe
So is God giving them the chance to come to their own? And I thought it was a very profound idea of demonstrating a concept of God that most of us don't seem to have. And we see God as a judge primarily. We don't see God as submersible, a loving father. So I think the biggest the big business use is understanding that God is.

00;45;01;14 - 00;45;06;04
Roy Ratcliffe
And the older I get, the more the better I come to that understanding. Hmm.

00;45;07;16 - 00;45;27;28
Rusty George
You know, tracking you down was a little difficult to do. I wanted to have a conversation with you and we tried a lot of avenues to try to find you. But it's my understanding that you have kind of, you know, taken your information off the grid a little bit because of the reaction after the Netflix special that some people had.

00;45;28;09 - 00;45;49;05
Rusty George
How did people respond to you as the guy that potentially saved Jeffrey Dahmer? Obviously, we know Jesus did it, but not everybody was happy about that. What's been the reaction like, here we are many years later and this movie is series comes out and now you're back in the public eye.

00;45;49;24 - 00;46;11;21
Roy Ratcliffe
I'm not aware of how people react. You responded other than what a person experienced. People who find out that I'm the guy, they're often happy and glad you're you. Wow, that's amazing. That's wonderful. That's sort of like that. My whole experience with the whole Jeffrey story from the very beginning, all at the end, is that to my face, people have been very congratulatory.

00;46;11;21 - 00;46;27;22
Roy Ratcliffe
They've been very commending they've been very honored honoring me and so forth that you did a great thing. You did a wonderful thing. I would learned later that some of them would. It was damning. The back was like, Well, what an idiot. What a fool what he is. He doesn't know what he's dealing with. The No, he's talking about things like that.

00;46;28;02 - 00;46;55;29
Roy Ratcliffe
So I realize there's a certain hypocrisy with people that I'm dealing with, but to my face it was always been very congratulatory. They've always been very they're always they've always said wonderful things to me. Some have said that, you know, they thought I was a blessing and so were things along those lines. So I've I'm not experienced. I've not heard any of the criticism that you sometimes get, other than I recognize that people don't always want to hear the story.

00;46;56;13 - 00;47;16;24
Roy Ratcliffe
It takes a certain amount of faith to actually hear the story. If you don't have any faith, it all becomes kind of foolishness to you. It's kind of like the story of Jesus dying in the Gospels, just that those who don't believe, well, okay, if you don't believe in Jesus, you don't believe in the mercy of God. This story of just becoming a Christian or the story of forgiveness is going to seem foolishness to you as well, too.

00;47;16;25 - 00;47;35;25
Roy Ratcliffe
So, okay, that's that's just the nature of people. We live in an unbelieving world. That's a hard thing for me to understand because I grew up believing that we live in a believing world. But no, we live an unbelieving world. And the hardest thing of all to understand is that there is a God and there is a reason for faith and that God is very real.

00;47;36;03 - 00;48;03;16
Roy Ratcliffe
Sometimes we want to say, Well, well, sometimes we act like in the Elijah story where Elijah makes fun of the prophets and ball and the prophets of the Ashura, they all movies on vacation. Or maybe he's away, maybe as busy. A lot of our people think the same thing about our God. The gods do busy gods away. God does make you know, God is not there with and you can really you can put it twist the thing around and backwards, as opposed to what Paul would say to the Athenians.

00;48;03;16 - 00;48;24;22
Roy Ratcliffe
He's he's right there. You reach out and touch them with your magic. The way Paul described it, because God is right there in our lives, though, sometimes we just can't can't see. You don't want to see it. In my mind, we rely more heavily upon the judgment of man than we do upon the revelation of God. Trust the Lord with all your heart.

00;48;24;22 - 00;48;38;21
Roy Ratcliffe
Proverbs says, Do not rely or do not lean on your own understanding. It's our it's our fault. We lean our own understanding to the point that we don't trust in God. And that's our that's the biggest problem that we have in this world today.

00;48;39;12 - 00;48;59;14
Rusty George
Hmm. Well said. I want to ask you about the day you found out that Jeff had been in prison. How did you feel? Was it a sense of his his torment is over? Was it a sense of loss? Obviously, you developed a friendship with him. Walk us through that day a little bit.

00;49;00;16 - 00;49;15;10
Roy Ratcliffe
I heard about it on a I think it was a monday after Thanksgiving Day. The last I saw him was the day before Thanksgiving where he gave me a card telling me how much of a friend I was and how much you appreciate my being in his life. And I really felt that he didn't really have a true friends.

00;49;15;28 - 00;49;32;00
Roy Ratcliffe
Those who claim to be his friends basically laughed at him because he did silly things for them. But it really was. He didn't. I don't think he trusted people. I don't think I don't think he felt like he could have something, be confident and so forth. So I felt that I was probably the only one that did that.

00;49;32;07 - 00;49;53;20
Roy Ratcliffe
So I heard about his death on the radio and that was a big surprise to me. I was quite shocked to hear about that. But then I knew that the media is going to want to come to me to attempt to comment. So I had to quickly go home and change into a more was preacher outfit, you know, and then go to my office, or they would come to me and start taking pictures and talking to me, so forth.

00;49;54;02 - 00;50;14;16
Roy Ratcliffe
And I got to work through my grief by talking about it all the time that that whole day. What's going on? I got phone calls from about a half dozen women who thought they were in love with Jeff because they'd been writing him letters and he'd been writing back to them, so forth. And that was a big surprise to me because Jeff was supposedly a homosexual.

00;50;14;16 - 00;50;38;02
Roy Ratcliffe
And so that was a big shock because most of dealing with that now, earlier in July, Jeff had been attacked by a Cuban who thought if he could kill so an infamous he could be sent back to Cuba. He wanted to be deported. So that's what he tried to do. So he took a Scotch, David, and applied a razor to a toothbrush and tried to cut Jeff's throat because the whole thing fell apart.

00;50;38;12 - 00;50;58;08
Roy Ratcliffe
And in the process, they both went to what's called the hole or solitary confinement. And after that, I met with Jeff, and then the chaplain came and talked to Jeff and made very clear to me that the prison was going to make sure they had special watch for Jeff, because they would this happened again, that they were going to make sure that they go out of their way.

00;50;58;21 - 00;51;18;25
Roy Ratcliffe
So if Jeff is killed, I hear the stories about how a guard goes off to listen to some music and another guard goes off, make a phone call and they're just left alone. I've got to wow, everything you said to me just isn't true. I mean, they're just they're not following through on this whole thing. And so I felt a little bit of betrayal on the part of the chaplain and on the part of the prison itself.

00;51;18;25 - 00;51;40;20
Roy Ratcliffe
And of course, later on, you begin to raise questions about what was there some kind of conspiracy, Was something going on behind the scenes or what was I mean, I don't know that I do know. So I have no idea what was was what's going on with all of that. But it was it was quite a surprise that he was my friend and I felt bad that he had died in that sense of my own loss.

00;51;41;00 - 00;52;00;21
Roy Ratcliffe
On the other hand, he's with God now, so he's a he's in better hands that I could I could be with. Also, the biggest question I had my own mind at the time was, did I do enough to prepare Jeff to meet his God? That was the biggest question that I had in my own mind. It did show enough of God there.

00;52;00;21 - 00;52;23;01
Roy Ratcliffe
Sure enough of the love of God that that he could understand what God is really all about. So when he enters death, he's he's not shocked or not terribly surprised, but he's he's able to say, okay, I did I did anything I could do to serve you God. Well, there were stories in the Bible. Matthew Chapter seven where Jesus is no noted calls me Lord, Lord King, but He who does my father's will.

00;52;23;10 - 00;52;40;05
Roy Ratcliffe
Many will say to me that day, Lord, Lord didn't wait. And they start mentioning things that we would think, Wow, that's pretty spectacular. You know, they cast out demons and they did murals. Wow. Though if you do those, then it's pretty much a slam dunk that you've got it made. And Jesus would say the I never knew you.

00;52;40;13 - 00;53;05;04
Roy Ratcliffe
The part to me. You'll go out of my presence and go, Oh, what's going on here? Will you get back to those are do the will of my father is what matters. What matters. So to me, the biggest and most horrible thing I can imagine is is going through life, going through death, and then meeting God and God saying, I don't know you what, but I served you all.

00;53;05;04 - 00;53;26;02
Roy Ratcliffe
I don't know how do we. Oh, what's going on here? Well, because you made in your own mind what service to God was all about. You didn't serve God according to what God actually said. And so that's really what it comes down of actually listening to God's word and paying attention to God's Word instead of imagining in your own head what you think serving God is really all about.

00;53;26;08 - 00;53;33;01
Roy Ratcliffe
And for a lot of people, that's what their faith is really all about. It's doing what they think is the right thing to do instead of what God actually says, Right?

00;53;33;13 - 00;53;53;13
Rusty George
Yeah. So well said. Oh, I love that. No, I think I was just reading about that this morning in a book about, you know, at the Prodigal Son, you have one guy that takes matters into his own hands and runs away from the father and the other one that takes matters into his own hands and tries to control the father by staying home and being a good boy and demanding different blessings.

00;53;53;13 - 00;54;10;19
Rusty George
And I think we all we all pick our path in being a prodigal role. Your your book is called Dark Journey Deep Grace. Tell us about why you wrote that and what your goal was in writing this book about your journey with Jeffrey.

00;54;11;07 - 00;54;27;11
Roy Ratcliffe
My original title for the book was I called Him Jeff because the idea was that he was he's a human. The first thing I learned about his he was a human being and his name was Jeff and should treat him like a human being. It's over. As opposed to I remember being in high school and all the coach knew by my last name.

00;54;27;11 - 00;54;44;18
Roy Ratcliffe
They didn't know a first name. Just go, Hey, Ratcliffe, do this or do that. Like I said, okay, But you don't know. I have no idea who I am. And it's a way of just distancing ourselves from some by just calling them by their last name. So. So I want to make the point that his name is Jeff, and this is to promote as human being.

00;54;45;04 - 00;55;02;10
Roy Ratcliffe
The title was changed by the publisher because they thought it was a better title. The idea of Dark Journey, which the opposite with it. That sounds like a pretty idea. People ask me why? Why did I write the book? Well, for me it was it was telling. My story is telling Jeff's story, but most of all, it was telling God stories, really.

00;55;02;11 - 00;55;20;20
Roy Ratcliffe
It was all about. And I often make this point to people when I talk to them about my book, that even though you've never done things as bad as Jeff has done, there are times in your life when you're going to feel as bad about yourself as Jeff felt about himself. You're going to feel like you just did the most terrible things you should.

00;55;20;23 - 00;55;39;25
Roy Ratcliffe
And so you're going to you're going to you're going to embrace what I call bad commentary. I'm no good. I'm no good. I'm no good and rotten. I don't deserve to live all kinds of things. Eventually, this kind of thoughts will lead you to a to a point of suicide. But boy, in the process you dig yourself into a deep hole, a deep pit that you can't climb out of.

00;55;40;09 - 00;55;58;06
Roy Ratcliffe
I try to climb, but I can't climb because it's just too deep. So there's just no hope for me. I'm lost in this deep pit. And the whole point of Jeff story is that there's a hand that will reach down into the hole and grab your hand and pull you out If you hold on to the hand. And that's the hand of God.

00;55;58;13 - 00;56;19;16
Roy Ratcliffe
And to me, that's what Jeff's story is all about. Let's go to Jeff legacy, if you would. What it means to be to be a believer in God is to pull you, is to get you pulled out of whatever a mess or a mucky mire that you're in yourself and that you can't seem to figure out how to get out so much the time we do more damage to ourselves.

00;56;19;16 - 00;56;39;28
Roy Ratcliffe
We do to others, and it's amazing how much damage we do. And yet God's able to overcome the damage that we can do to ourselves. It's truly amazing when you think about God, Paul, just God to serve as the worst sinners. And the guy who called me from Milwaukee told me a story. They'd been studying the passage in Timothy, where Paul describes that was the worst of sinners.

00;56;40;07 - 00;57;00;24
Roy Ratcliffe
So he asked them in Milwaukee, Who do you who would you say is the worst of sinners today? Well, after you get through your Hitlers and your stones or gosh, Jeffrey Daniels name comes up gorgeous Milwaukee, of all things, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer story did to Milwaukee, what the assassination of John Kennedy did to Dallas. It did tremendous damage to the psyche of the city.

00;57;01;04 - 00;57;18;18
Roy Ratcliffe
So they really carried that to a great that hurt a great deal in their own hearts. And so he said so he passed it on to me. So I was sitting there thinking about that, and a friend came up from Texas and I showed him with that story. And the friends said, No, I don't think so. I think Paul would disagree.

00;57;18;18 - 00;57;37;11
Roy Ratcliffe
Paul would not say that Jeff is the worst of senators. Paul would say that Paul was the worst of sinners as well. Why do you say that? Because Paul was a man educated by he was educated about God. He understood what God was all about. And yet he turns against people who believe in God and tries to kill them because of a different faith in God.

00;57;37;21 - 00;57;57;13
Roy Ratcliffe
Whereas Jeff had no concept of God at all. If you think about God, it mostly looked at a person past. Oh, I think that's pretty body. I want to keep that, you know, that something along those lines, it's kind of hard to even compare the two but but I thought, oh, then they said so I told Jeff the story and just it all I think I'm still the worst of sinners.

00;57;57;13 - 00;58;23;02
Roy Ratcliffe
And I said, No, I think you're just full of I think you just freaked out by your own crimes. You don't understand what we're talking about at all. Paul was just a he was the worst of sinners. And I think that's true, although we would like to put that to Jeff. What Jeff did wasn't nearly as bad as what Paul would claim he had done, which was Gulliver's Way to kill people who serve God and serve in the name of serving God.

00;58;23;09 - 00;58;32;17
Roy Ratcliffe
And that's what Paul was doing and that's what Jesus said. What happened to his apostles and said the Pharisees would do that to him as well them as well.

00;58;32;17 - 00;58;55;16
Rusty George
Well, I'm so grateful that you would share this story with us, because I think a big question that a lot of people have is have had gone beyond the reach of God, have my crimes, my sins, which seem, as you said, as bad as you feel about your sin, Jeff felt about his. We all feel awful about the mistakes we've made and the decisions we've made.

00;58;55;16 - 00;59;24;20
Rusty George
And we we wonder, how did I get to this point? But for you to share this story and be so willing to put it not only in book form, but to come on podcasts and TV interviews and and share, this is so helpful for us to understand the true heart of God, of grace and mercy and forgiveness. And I just want to thank you for not just being on this podcast, but for your legacy of telling people about the grace of God.

00;59;25;01 - 00;59;31;10
Rusty George
There'll be a lot more people in heaven than just Jeffrey Dahmer from what it is you've done. So thank you so much.

00;59;31;24 - 00;59;32;28
Roy Ratcliffe
Well, thank you for saying that.

00;59;33;22 - 00;59;59;07
Rusty George
Well, it's been an honor to have you with us. I want to just say once again, thanks for being on the show. And we're really grateful for for your time on the program. Hey, Roy, let me ask you this question. We're going to do a series at our church the weeks after Easter called. You asked for it. We're we're going to allow our people to in the weeks prior to write down their questions.

00;59;59;07 - 01;00;23;06
Rusty George
And we're going to try to address that question each week. And there'll be questions like, why do bad things happen to good people? And can we believe the Bible is true? You know that your standard questions. But I know one of the big ones will be, can God really forgive me? I would love to be able to share some of your story and this conversation.

01;00;23;06 - 01;00;24;07
Rusty George
Would you be all right with that?

01;00;24;23 - 01;00;27;29
Roy Ratcliffe
Oh, sure, I'll be fine. I'm glad to be glad for you to do that.

01;00;28;04 - 01;00;47;24
Rusty George
And let me ask you this. I don't want to presume anything, but I have it's one thing for them to see, you know, you and I, with headphones, talking over Zoom, but I have friends up in Milwaukee, if I were to come up there, do you think you could give me an afternoon and we would just film you and I having a cup of coffee talking about this?

01;00;48;07 - 01;00;49;27
Roy Ratcliffe
Sure, That'll be fine. Yeah.

01;00;49;27 - 01;01;00;29
Rusty George
Okay. All right, well, we'll be in touch about that. I want to wait till you guys thaw out before I head up there. I know I don't do snow anymore since I moved from Kansas.

01;01;01;03 - 01;01;05;14
Roy Ratcliffe
Yeah, it might be April. Maybe it will. Probably.

01;01;05;22 - 01;01;20;27
Rusty George
Okay, well, we'll be in touch. Roy, I'm so appreciative of you taking our call. And I'm grateful that we both worked with Leif Wood so that we had this connection. And I'm thankful to meet another person that knows of Andover, Kansas. So I appreciate your brother.

01;01;21;05 - 01;01;21;25
Roy Ratcliffe
Glad a good.

01;01;22;28 - 01;01;45;18
Rusty George
Well, I've listened to that podcast now several times and every time I hear the words of Roy Ratcliff, I'm inspired by the grace of God and I'm sure there's somebody in your life that would feel the same way. So make sure you share this with him. Could be a good spiritual conversation for you as well. If you ever hear somebody talking about that Netflix special about Jeffrey Dahmer, you could send this podcast over to them and say, You might listen to this.

01;01;45;18 - 01;02;13;01
Rusty George
It might be interesting to you could prompt a spiritual discussion for you. Well, I'm so grateful for Roy coming on the show. And next, it's interesting. We put these back to back. We're going to talk to a therapist. Maybe we need that after today's conversation. But Bjorn Bjornsen has been people in therapy for many years, and it's opened up an organization that is designed to create more ways for people to receive counseling and therapy.

01;02;13;11 - 01;02;25;18
Rusty George
If you've ever considered going to counseling, if you've ever thought about maybe I should check that out. I think he's going to help you understand why it's so important. So make sure you join us next week and we'll talk you then. And as always, keep it simple.

01;02;26;00 - 01;02;49;09
Intro/Outro
Take a moment and subscribe to the podcast so you'll get it delivered every week and subscribe to the Rusty George YouTube channel for more devotionals, messages and fun videos. Thank you for listening to Leading Simple Lessons. We.