In the late 1970s, music icon Bob Dylan was struggling through a low point in his career. His album “Street Legal” had received mixed reviews and his movie “Renaldo and Clara” had not been received as well as he had hoped.

Rounding out a tour of 115 dates, he was not feeling his best during a show in San Diego on Nov. 17, 1978, when someone in
the audience threw a small silver cross on the stage. Dylan knelt down, picked up the cross, and put it in his pocket.

The following night, he was feeling even worse while playing in Tucson, Arizona, so he took the cross out and put it around his neck. Upon returning to his hotel room, he claimed in an interview that “the king of kings and Lord of lords” appeared to him.

A week later, he was wearing the cross around his neck during a concert in Fort Worth, Texas, and on Dec. 2, during a show in Nashville, Tennessee, Dylan introduced “Slow Train,” a song he had written about his newfound faith. Weeks later, he was baptized into the Christian faith and began taking Bible classes while in California.

The singer-songwriter — who was born in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised in a Jewish household — expressed the magnitude of his “born again” awakening in 1980 with journalist Paul Vitello, a reporter for the Kansas City Times.

“Let’s just say I had a knee-buckling experience,” Dylan recalled. “Music wasn’t like it used to be. We were filling halls, but I used to walk out on the street afterward and look up in the sky and know there was something else.”

“People get cynical or comfortable in their own minds, and that makes you die, too, but God has chosen to revive me,” he said.

With a movie about his rise to fame, “A Complete Unknown,” nominated for eight Academy Awards, Dylan is back at the forefront of popular culture. But the truth is that his songs have amazed and inspired listeners for nearly 65 years.

Through his forays into multiple music genres, including folk, blues, rock, country, and gospel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet has left his indelible mark on popular music and inspired a multitude of artists ranging from Johnny Cash, the Byrds, The Band, and Peter, Paul & Mary; to Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Bruce Springsteen to name a few. In fact, Peter, Paul & Mary helped start the Dylan train rolling with their now classic rendition of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” a No. 2 charting hit for the trio in 1963. Two years later, the Byrds would take Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” all the way to No. 1.

While “A Complete Unknown” highlights Dylan’s formative folk years, primarily between 1961 and 1965, the lesser-known but equally important conversion chapter in his life is essential to understanding his still-flourishing musical journey.

The aforementioned “Slow Train” appeared on “Slow Train Coming,” the first of three seminal Christian albums Dylan released between 1979 and 1981. The others were “Saved” and “Shot of Love.” To validate the magnitude of these recordings, Dylan officially released the multi-record “Trouble No More” in 2017, a box set containing live and unreleased recordings from
this period.

“Slow Train Coming” was a successful album for Dylan, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, and the song “Gotta Serve Somebody” made the Top 25 on the singles chart, Dylan’s best position since “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” reached No. 12 in 1973.

“Gotta Serve Somebody” was Dylan’s proclamation that everyone has to serve someone and “it could be the devil, or it could be Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” In “Slow Train,” Dylan explains that how we live determines our final judgment, and, for all believers, the “slow train coming around the bend” will be their salvation with the Lord.

Many of the songs on the album are inspired by the New Testament’s Book of Revelations, including “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” which includes the lyrics, “Jesus said ‘be ready, for you know not the hour in which I come;’ he said, ‘He who is not for me is against me,’ just so you know where he is coming from.”

The song goes on to explain, “There’s a kingdom called heaven, a place where there is no pain of birth; where the Lord created it, mister, about the same time he made the earth.” He further attests to his religious awakening in the song “Precious Angel,” where he admits, “You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.” He also implores the Lord to “shine your light on me” because he knows he can’t make it alone.

In “I Believe in You,” Dylan admits he is willing to take whatever repercussions he must face from others for his faith and implores the Lord to “keep me where you are… Don’t let me change my heart; I know I will sustain ‘cause I believe in you.” The album’s closing track, “When He Returns,” is a slow, contemplative admission of what an all-knowing God can do because “He sees your deeds, He knows your needs even before you ask. How long can you falsify and deny what is real?” It culminates with the notion that “He’s got plans of his own to set up his throne when he returns.”

“Saved,” the second in Dylan’s Christian trilogy, was even more religious. Despite not having a hit single, it managed to reach No. 24 on the U.S. album chart. The title song directly addresses his conversion to Christianity, proclaiming, “I’ve been saved by the blood of the lamb,” as a gospel piano and choir emphasizes the joy and happiness it has brought him. In “What Can I Do For You?,” Dylan wonders how he can reciprocate all that Jesus has done for him, asking,

“You have laid down your life for me, what can I do for you? You have given me eyes to see, what can I do for you?” Dylan references Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane — where Jesus prayed and was arrested — in the song “In the Garden,” asking, “When they came for him in the garden, did they know? Did they know he was the son of God? Did they know he was the Lord?” The song culminates with another question: “When he rose from the dead, did they believe?” This song, perhaps
more than any other on the album, demonstrates Dylan’s true belief in Jesus as the Lord and savior.

In “Saving Grace,” he further embraces Christianity, testifying that “there’s only one road and it leads to Calvary. It gets discouraging at times, but I know I’ll make it by the saving grace that’s over me.” And the closing track on the album finds Dylan trying to spread the Gospel to others, asking, “Are you ready to meet Jesus? … Are you ready for the day of the Lord? Are you ready? I hope you’re ready.”

“Shot of Love” was the final album in his Gospel trilogy and contained more personal inspirational songs such as “Property of Jesus” and the exceptional closing track “Every Grain of Sand.” “Property of Jesus” is a direct response to nonbelievers who mock his Christian faith, exclaiming, “He’s the property of Jesus. … You’ve got a heart of stone.”

“Every Grain of Sand” is a deeply personal prayer that some have compared to “Blowin’ in the Wind” as a reflective hymn for the ages. In fact, it is a continuation of the journey through fame that Dylan had embarked upon only further down the road.

If “Blowin’ in the Wind” posed the question, the sheer poetry of “Every Grain of Sand” attempts to update and answer — “I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame, and every time I pass that way I always hear my name. Then onward in my
journey, I come to understand that every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.”

Following his near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966, Dylan said, “Transfiguration, you can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church, you can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it’s a real concept.”

In 1997, Dylan met Pope John Paul II in Bologna, Italy, after performing for 300,000 young people who attended the World Eucharistic Congress. The pope was a fan of Dylan’s lyrics and said that in regard to Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the answer to the question is Jesus.

Bob Dylan has shown respect for all religious thought, from his Jewish roots to his conversion to Christianity. It was all part of his life’s journey while searching for the answer he so eloquently advised us was always “blowin’ in the wind.”