It was ongoing with me. I would get up and drink. I would go to work and drink. I would come home and drink. That was my way of life. I had an older sister, and in 2008, we received a phone call from her husband saying that she was involved in a very serious home-accident. She had fallen outside on her patio. It was a concrete patio, and she hit her head, because she was in a drunken stupor. She needed emergency brain surgery, because of the trauma that she'd suffered. They were able to stop the bleeding in her brain, but her organs started shutting down one by one.
Here I was, hadn't had a drink, being a full-blown alcoholic myself, hadn't had a drink in probably a full day, which was a lifetime for me. During the time, we were watching there and they said that she wasn't going to make it. We had made the decision as a group, with her children present and her husband, that they were just going to go ahead and pull the plug. During that time, watching her fade away, God forgive me, but I sat there asking her to die fast, so I could go get a drink. I didn't even see it then, I didn't see how bad I was at that time, but I look back at it now, and it just tears me up. Alcohol, that's what it does to you.
I was walking out to go to work one morning with my breakfast, which was a six-pack of beer. As I was climbing into my truck, it just hit me that it was enough. I turned around, I took the six-pack of beer, and I threw it in the trash can, and I went and told my wife I needed help. There's two things I never do, ask for help and throw away beer. Thank God, I was able to do both. Well, when I finally got to the hospital, they came and got me and took me in. When they did a blood-alcohol on me, they had to do it twice, because they weren't quite sure it was right, but it was 0.38.
They were all amazed I was even able to walk in there, let alone being conscious. It was about two months after I'd got out of treatment and starting my fresh life. I left home, left my wife. I was going to start my new life with sobriety, and she wasn't going to be a part of it, so I moved out. I was on my way to the store one morning when I was T-boned, broadsided by an oncoming SUV on the driver's side door of my truck, and this driver was doing an estimated 65-70 miles an hour. He smacked on my side of the door.
I woke up in the passenger seat of the truck. I remember coming to, and hearing people standing outside, "Look, he's still alive." There was hairline fractures in my pelvis and there's compression fracture in my spine. For all intents and purposes, I walked away from an accident I had no business living in. Well, with a broken back, I wasn't allowed to be vertical for but very short periods of time, and I wasn't very mobile with a fractured pelvis, so I was forced to move back home. Thank God, I've got a stubborn wife who's willing to take me back, and put up with all this.
During my recovery, the only thing I could really do was watch television. As I was thumbing through the channels, I noticed a gentleman and I happened to stop because he was proclaiming that you can't prove biblically that the Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday, and that it's not biblical. I thought, "You know what, I think I can do this," so, I took up my Bible and did something strange to me, which was actually study.
Over the course of several months of watching this man, who I would later discover was Pastor Doug Batchelor, I started trying to disprove everything he was saying. The more I read, and the more I studied, the more I found out that not only could I not disprove it, I was believing it. I realized it was the truth. Then I started soaking up everything that Amazing Facts had-- I was at their website doing all the reading, I was looking at the Sabbath truths, I was downloading, streaming everything they had. I was really, really getting in. It helped me so much.
Over a process of about three months, while studying with The Doug Batchelor and The Amazing Facts team, and of course, my Bible, but over that three months, I had fallen in love with Christ like I had never had before. Not only was my back and my pelvis healed, but my soul was healed. I experienced an emotional and a mental healing, that I had been longing for, for years. I've got to do something. What do I do next?
I looked up in the phone book and I found the number for the local Pastor. I called him and I said, "Hi, my name is Brian, I've just been converted. Where do I go?" And the poor guy was like, "Brian, it's nice to meet you. Converted from what, and go where?" I said, "That's what I want to know." We had a little laugh over that. He thought it was funny, and before he knew it, I was heart and soul into this little church.
I was studying with the pastor and decided I want to be baptized, I wanted to be re-baptized. We thought, "Great." So I did some study, and we agreed that I was going to be baptized on this date. Well, the next morning, my wife asked me and said, "You realize what day this is?" I said, "Well, it's Sabbath, and Sabbath was amazing in itself, but she said, "Look at the calendar." When I looked at the calendar, on that day was the one-year anniversary of my sobriety.
I was being baptized one year after being sober, and I just thought, "There's no such thing as coincidence. That was just amazing that God had worked out for me." God has done amazing things with my life, and I have to give Him all the credit because short of just responding, I've done nothing. It's been Him, and it's just pleasure, absolute pleasure be called a child to God. I am really thankful that God used Amazing Facts television program and Pastor Doug Batchelor to make a change in my life.
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