Denzel Washington gets baptized, receives ministry license: 'It took a while, but I’m finally here'

Denzel Washington gets baptized, receives ministry license: 'It took a while, but I'm finally here'

Christian Post,

Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington was baptized at a church in New York City over the weekend and officially received his ministry license — an event he revealed was prophesied decades ago. 

"In one week, I turn 70. It took a while, but I'm finally here," he said in an emotional address to the congregation following the baptism. 

The actor revealed that when he was 20, he was sitting in his mom's beauty parlor when he encountered a woman named Ruth Green.

"She said, 'Boy, you are going to travel the world and preach to millions of people,'" he recalled. "She wouldn't even spell the word prophecy. My mother wrote the word prophecy ... 50 years later, look at God. If He can do this for me, there's nothing He can't do for you. The sky literally is the limit and there's no limit to the sky."

"To God be the glory. Hallelujah!" he continued. "Anything I can do, I will do for this church, the Almighty. I just want to be in that number when the saints go marching in."

Washington has been outspoken about his faith throughout his career; his father, the Rev. Denzel Hayes Washington Sr., was a Pentecostal minister, and his mother, Lennis, was heavily involved in church activities. Growing up, he was surrounded by the teachings of the Bible and the rhythms of church life. 

In a November essay for Esquire, the actor revealed he grew up in the church, but after witnessing altar calls and "people being saved," he "didn't really know" what was happening when he was young.

The "biggest moment" of his life happened at the West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, which he was turned onto by actor and director Robert Townsend, he said.

"Things I said about God when I was a little boy, just reciting them in church along with everybody else, I know now," he said in the essay. "God is real. God is love. God is the only way. God is the true way. God blesses."

He added, "It's my job to lift God up, to give Him praise, to make sure that anyone and everyone I speak to the rest of my life understands that He is responsible for me."

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