Will David Berkowitz Go to Heaven?
Friday, October 24, 2025
“Sin mourned and confessed, however deep and foul, will never shut a man out from the Lord Jesus.” – C.H. Spurgeon
Guess who I am looking forward to getting reacquainted with in heaven?
After being reunited with my dad and my grandad – and being introduced to some of my biblical heroes like David, Caleb, and Nehemiah… and some of my spiritual heroes such as George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon – I want to look up David Berkowitz.
Yes, THAT, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Inmate #78A1976 at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill NY.
Berkowitz and I almost crossed paths in the summer of 1977, when he was committing the last of his series of murders in and around Queens NY. Berkowitz was arrested by the NYPD on August 10th, and I reported to St. John’s University (in roughly the same neighborhood) for my freshman year of college less than two weeks later.
However, Berkowitz and I did meet several times after that at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg NY. He was an inmate spectator and I was a player/coach on a prison ministry softball team, and we spoke casually while both squads were taking batting practice before the game.
The last time David and I chatted, I asked him how he was doing. “It’s hard,” he replied matter-of-factly, “but God has shown me mercy and I don’t deserve mercy.” You see David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam”, now goes by the name “Son of Hope” because he is a born-again Christian. That means that his sins, as reprehensible as they may have been, are forgiven and remembered no more (Hebrews 8:12).
Here is how Charles Haddon Spurgeon puts God’s amazing grace into the proper perspective…
“Though dishonest as the thief, though immoral as the woman who was a sinner, though fierce as Saul of Tarsus, though cruel as Manasseh, though rebellious as the prodigal, the great heart of love will look upon the man who feels himself to have no health in him and will pronounce him clean when he trusts in Jesus crucified. Come to Him, then, poor heavy-laden sinner.”
“Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.” John 6:37
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
