The Work
Run Baby Run is the autobiography of Nicky Cruz, first published in 1968 by Logos International (later reprinted by Spire Books, a subsidiary of Fleming H. Revell). It was written with the assistance of Jamie Buckingham and covers Cruz's childhood in Puerto Rico, his migration to New York City, his years as the president of the Mau Maus street gang in Brooklyn, his encounter with the evangelist David Wilkerson in 1958, his conversion to Christianity, and his subsequent life as an evangelist. The book was written as a complement to Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade (1963), which had told the story from Wilkerson's perspective; Cruz's account provides the interior view of the experience that Wilkerson had described from the outside.
The book has sold millions of copies, has been translated into dozens of languages, and has been particularly effective as a tool for ministry in prisons, urban missions, and gang outreach programs, where Cruz's experience gives the narrative an authority that few other conversion testimonies can match. It was adapted into a film in 1978 directed by Eric Laneuville.
Biblical Engagement
John 3:3 ('Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God') is the theological center of Cruz's conversion narrative. Wilkerson's message to the Mau Maus was precisely this: that the new birth described in John 3 was available to anyone, regardless of their past. Cruz's conversion is presented as a dramatic enactment of this promise - the president of one of New York's most violent street gangs experiencing the transformation that Jesus describes to Nicodemus as the fundamental prerequisite of kingdom life.
2 Corinthians 5:17 ('Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new') is the Pauline description of what Cruz experienced in his conversion. The before-and-after structure of the autobiography is structured by this verse: the 'old things' - the violence, the addiction, the spiritual emptiness - are presented as genuinely passed away, replaced by a new identity in Christ. This is not a gradual moral improvement but a radical ontological transformation, consistent with the Pentecostal theology of instantaneous conversion that shaped Wilkerson's ministry.
Ezekiel 36:26 ('A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh') is the Old Testament prophecy that undergirds the New Testament new birth. Cruz's description of his conversion experience - the sense that something hard and violent within him was replaced by something soft and open - corresponds to the Ezekiel image with remarkable precision. The 'stony heart' of the gang president becomes 'a heart of flesh' - capable of weeping, of love, of repentance.
Romans 8:1 ('There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit') is the assurance that undergirds Cruz's post-conversion life. One of the central themes of the book is Cruz's discovery that the shame and guilt of his past - the violence he had committed, the people he had hurt - was genuinely forgiven and not merely suppressed. The Pauline declaration of no condemnation becomes the foundation of a new life that does not require the constant self-justification that had driven his gang career.
Author and Context
Nicky Cruz was born on December 6, 1938, in Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, the eighteenth child of Nicolas and Alicia Cruz, who were spiritist cult leaders. Cruz has described his childhood as one of neglect and occult exposure; his parents reportedly considered him cursed and at one point told him he was a child of the devil. At the age of fifteen he was sent to live with an older brother in Brooklyn, New York, where he became involved with street gangs. He rose to become the president of the Mau Maus, one of the most feared gangs in Brooklyn in the late 1950s, known for robbery, violence, and drug-dealing.
In 1958, the young Pentecostal evangelist David Wilkerson came from rural Pennsylvania to Brooklyn with a conviction that God had called him to preach to the street gangs. He made contact with the Mau Maus, and Cruz's first response - captured in the famous scene in both The Cross and the Switchblade and Run Baby Run - was to threaten to kill Wilkerson. Wilkerson responded: 'You can cut me into a thousand pieces and every piece will still love you.' Cruz's conversion followed shortly afterward at a tent crusade in a school sports ground.
After his conversion, Cruz studied at California Bible Institute (now Hope International University) and married Gloria Cuevas, with whom he has four daughters. He founded Nicky Cruz Outreach, an international ministry focused on urban youth, gang members, and the poor.
The Wilkerson Connection
The relationship between Cruz's story and Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade (1963) is important for understanding Run Baby Run's place in the evangelical publishing ecosystem. Wilkerson's book was a massive bestseller - over 15 million copies - and introduced Cruz's story to a worldwide evangelical audience. Run Baby Run followed the pattern established by Wilkerson's account but deepened it significantly by providing Cruz's own interior perspective: his fear, his spiritual emptiness, the moments of genuine crisis in his conversion, and the struggles of his post-conversion life. The two books together constitute a remarkably complete account of a single spiritual drama told from two perspectives.
Reception History
The book's reception was overwhelmingly positive within evangelical and Pentecostal circles, where it became a standard tool for prison ministry, youth outreach, and missionary evangelism. Its appeal crossed denominational lines: while Cruz's story is embedded in a Pentecostal framework, its basic narrative of violent transformation through conversion has resonated with Reformed, Baptist, Catholic, and mainline Protestant readers alike.
Critical assessments have noted the book's somewhat formulaic structure - the darkness of the pre-conversion life is presented with great vividness, while the post-conversion life is described in somewhat more abstract terms - which is typical of the genre of evangelical conversion testimony. Some readers have questioned the rapidity and completeness of the transformation described; others have noted that Cruz's subsequent decades of ministry provide ample evidence that the conversion was genuine and lasting.
Theological Significance
The book's significance lies in its demonstration that the most extreme human beings - those whose violence and spiritual depravity seem to place them beyond redemption - are precisely the targets of the Gospel's promise. Cruz's story is an enactment of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32): the son who has gone furthest from the father is the one whose return generates the most joy. It has also been an important text in the Pentecostal tradition's emphasis on supernatural conversion as the foundation of social transformation: the street gang president becomes an international evangelist, and the same energy that drove his destructive career is redirected into the service of others.
Legacy
Cruz has continued his ministry for over six decades and has spoken to millions of people in prisons, schools, and crusades around the world. His story has been particularly influential in Latin America, where the combination of Catholic cultural background, Pentecostal conversion, and urban gang experience resonates widely. The book has been used in Alpha courses, prison chaplaincy programs, and teen outreach ministries across the world.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with John 3:1-21 (the new birth), 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (the new creation), Ezekiel 36:22-32 (the new heart), Luke 15:11-32 (the Prodigal Son), Romans 8:1-11 (no condemnation), and Acts 9:1-22 (the conversion of Paul - the New Testament's model of radical transformation from persecutor to apostle).
Further Reading
- David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade (1963) - the companion volume that tells Cruz's story from Wilkerson's perspective and provides the wider context of his ministry to the New York gangs. - Nicky Cruz, Satan on the Loose (1973) - Cruz's second book, dealing with spiritual warfare and his encounters with occult practices in his ministry. - R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (2004) - academic context for the conversion narrative tradition within which Cruz's story belongs.