A “Come to Jesus” event organized by Ohio State University football players took place on Sunday, drawing roughly 2,000 people, a number of whom came forward to pray and receive Christ.
The event was organized by former Buckeyes receiver Kamryn Babb and a collaboration of multiple churches in the Columbus area. Players came with 10,000 Bibles to give away.
The event featured prayer, worship and testimonies from Babb, receiver Emeka Egbuka, running back TreVeyon Henderson, tight end Gee Scott and defensive end J.T. Tuimoloau. It ended with the baptism of roughly 60 people in tubs in front of the stage.
“I don’t think anything I accomplish on that field compares to what is happening right now,” Tuimoloau told The Lantern, the school newspaper. He said that the event would be one of his favorite memories at Ohio State.
Henderson agreed and said, “Whatever I’ve done, man, this right here—what God is doing—is so much more important and so much bigger.”
Egbuka said this event is the result of years of prayer. “[W]e were praying with expectation—we serve a miracle-working God,” he said. “So we definitely had an expectation when it came out, but God did increasingly and abundantly more than we thought. So, we’re just so blessed and thankful.”
Babb suffered from four ACL-related injuries during his time as a Buckeye, and shared from the stage that he was drawn to the Gospel when his Uber driver prayed for him on the way to the airport. He said that in that moment he felt “the weight, the love, the grace, the mercy of God wrap [him] like a blanket.”
“I was just doing my thing because it was fun, and I’ll tell you this: I was on High Street, and I enjoyed it,” Babb said. “But at the same time, I didn’t recognize my condition. I was spiritually dead. … I could go out there, and I could smile and laugh. … But on the inside, I was broken.”
Henderson said, “Jesus changed my life, set me free from my sin, made me holy, made me righteous. … I’m only righteous because of what the Lord has done for me. It wasn’t anything I did, it was Jesus. It was Jesus. And He wants to do the same for you.”
“[Jesus] died for each and every single one of us,” he added. “God showed His love for us on the cross. The blood that He shed. He says, ‘By His stripes we are healed’” (Isaiah 53:5).
Egbuka said in a promotional video that the last couple of years have seen a revival among the Buckeyes team. A Cru ministry team member posted on Facebook earlier this month that at least 21 Ohio State football players showed up to fall camp wearing shirts that said things like “JESUS WON” and “FOLLOW JESUS.”
“Truly, I would say this was an event, if you want to call it that, that God truly breathed on,” Babb shared Thursday on Fox & Friends. “Jesus laid His life down for sinners, [who] the Bible describes as enemies of God, but He desires for us to be His. And, so this encouragement that I’ll give to the world, and that we gave students on campus, and from young to old, is to repent of your sins and believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power to save men and women. … It was an honor to see my Lord and my Savior move the way that He did, and it was only because of Him, it was all to bring Him glory. It wasn’t about a football team, it wasn’t about anything else besides Jesus Christ.”
Photo screenshot from X