Over 4,500 people were baptized on a Southern California beach during an outreach event overseen by Pastor Greg Laurie and Harvest Christian Fellowship in what the evangelist believes could be one of the largest mass baptisms ever. 

Known as the Jesus Revolution Pirate’s Cove Beach Baptism, the event took place at Pirate’s Cove Beach Saturday and drew an estimated 20,000 attendees. Of the thousands baptized, one of them was Laurie’s granddaughter, Stella.

In comments emailed to The Christian Post, Laurie attributed the large number of baptisms to “a number of things,” among them the success of the recently released film “Jesus Revolution.”

“I would say the Jesus Revolution movie really impacted people and so many have come to Christ after seeing it,” Laurie said. “They were so moved by the baptism scenes in the film and wanted to take the same step in life. It was life imitating art, and that art was based on my real life story and the story of many others as well.”

This is not the first major baptism event held at Pirate’s Cove this year, as a few hundred churches came together to baptize around 4,100 people in May on Pentecost Sunday.

“We have never seen a crowd like that for baptisms,” said Pastor Mark Francey, one of the people behind the Pentecost gathering, in an earlier interview with CP.

“As believers, we always want to be obedient to what Jesus asks us to do. My mentors taught me it’s as simple as praying, obeying, then acting.”