Very few Americans have ever heard the name John Barros, even though he is beyond a shadow of a doubt one of the greatest Christian heroes of our generation.

Barros has spent the past twenty years ministering outside of an abortion clinic in Florida, preaching the gospel and offering women various forms of assistance should they choose life for their preborn children. God has blessed his ministry with more than 3,000 saved babies: he consistently visits with many of the children, some of whom have now reached adulthood, and he continues to assist their families through his church and local crisis pregnancy centers.

When he is called a hero by the many pastors, lawmakers, and sidewalk ministers who have been influenced by his work to engage the issue of abortion, he instantly gives glory to God.

“I could never take credit for one of them,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Sentinel. “I don't have that power. And the more you do this, and the more you're around, you realize real quick that you don't have the power.”

Barros, who is seventy years old and stands outside the abortion clinic on crutches, has experienced incredible hardship over these past two decades, continuing to humbly serve on the sidewalk outside of the clinic in the hot and humid climate. He has persevered through two bouts with cancer and two aneurysms, and he learned last month that he now has an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer.

“It's kind of sobering when all of a sudden this happens so quickly. I don't even think it's been three weeks since I found out that I had pancreatic cancer,” he remarked. “I haven't really sorted all that kind of thinking out. But I do know this: my wife and I went through the psalms together. It seems like the ongoing theme in the book is that ‘the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.’ And he has not left me. I'm just on a different road right now, and I've been on different roads with him all my life, so I try to look at this as an adventure. If he takes me home, I want to make sure that I lead a life up to the end that glorified him.”

John started ministering outside of the abortion clinic with a pastor friend twenty years ago. He was initially hesitant to try stepping into the difficult work but was eventually persuaded by the offer of a free cigar from the minister. He has since experienced an irresistible draw toward the ministry despite the opposition he faces: most recently, pro-abortion protesters who started harassing him outside of the clinic after the overturn of Roe v. Wade with verbal taunts and threats have sought to dishearten him by leveraging his pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

“These days they’re playing cancer songs to go against me. I didn't even know there was such a thing, and they're all telling me how horrible of a death I'm going to have and screaming out this stuff, saying they can't wait for me to die,” Barros said. “They're there every day. The things they say about God, the things they say about babies, it's just unbelievable.”

The love and concern Barros has for the protesters was nevertheless evident. He excitedly told The Sentinel that one protester recently made a profession of faith in Christ after listening to him preach and has never returned to the abortion clinic.

God continues to save preborn babies despite the opposition he has endured. Barros even noted that the protesters sometimes unintentionally drive away mothers already uncertain about their decisions to have an abortion. As they have for many years, women regularly approach Barros at the clinic to tell him they had previously chosen life and to thank him for his labors.

“Yesterday we had a young lady come back that chose life a couple of months ago and tell me that she’s having twins,” Barros continued. “Today I had a lady that works for one of the delivery services come over and give me a hug, because her daughter was in there at one point, and now she has a granddaughter that's the love of her life.”

Beyond the fruit of more than 3,000 children saved from murder, Barros has witnessed the start of a revival among Christians seeking to save babies through sidewalk ministry and abolish abortion with equal protection laws in state legislatures, although they still “haven't been rising up like I would hope.” He spent the first three years of his ministry alone on the sidewalk, but he is now accompanied by a consistent handful of local Christians from nearby churches.

Barros has also seen a number of clinic workers quit their jobs, which he has directed them toward organizations to help them find new positions. Two women who worked at the clinic approached Barros with tears a few years ago after he had an unexpected medical complication, concerned that something had happened to him, while the director of the clinic more recently offered to visit him in the hospital as he endures pancreatic cancer treatments. Barros said that “they have always known that I care and I love them” even amid his warnings about eternal judgment for those who reject the gospel and participate in child sacrifice.

“I hate the blindness that these people are under. I love the girls that work there,” Barros said. “I know what awaits them. I just don't want to see that happen. It's not like I had a ten-step program to win these people over to be my friend. It's just something that God did.”

Barros considers 2 Timothy 2:24-26 to be a charter verse for his ministry: “The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” He also trusts in the power of the Scriptures to change minds, recognizing that God alone must work in the hearts of those he wants to reach.

“I go there knowing that these people are blind, and that they’re ‘dead in their trespasses and sins.’ It says ‘perhaps God will grant them repentance.’ It has to be a work of God, and he has to be the one that does it,” Barros said. “I know that it's up to God to do it. I have friends that don't realize the sovereignty of God. And they get beat up all the time, because they keep thinking, ‘If I would have just done this, or if I would have just done that.’ But if we go there with God's word, which is the ‘power of God unto salvation,’ even if nobody chooses life, then you go home and you just know that you did everything you could do.”

Barros encouraged Christians working to abolish abortion, whether through sidewalk ministry, legislative activity, or other means, to “just keep going, keep standing, keep fighting.” Despite the “culture of death” which pervades America, he wants believers to remember that God appointed them to live in this time and to not shrink from engaging the evils of the day.

“The longer that I walk this walk here, I am so thankful that God put me in this culture at this time,” he concluded. “And we should all be that way.”