SID: Hello, Sid Roth here with Richard Madison, and Richard, many attempts for you not to be here today on my program throughout your life, because it is almost like the evil forces knew that if you could win against them in every battle you could help so many other people. But this was the battle of all battles, head-on collision, what happened?
RICHARD: At the moment of the impact of the head-on collision in 1986, April 13th, my left leg was pushed into my pelvis, broke my hip, severely broke my right foot, I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, collided with the steering wheel, the ribs in my chest were broken, one rib broke into, and punctured the aorta artery at my heart, another rib punctured my right lung, my spleen was ruptured, C5 vertebrae in my neck was broken, my jaw was broken, my right eye was knocked out and I was trapped in my vehicle for 39 minutes before they were able to transport me to Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, where I was pronounced dead on arrival.
SID: It sounds to me that 39 minutes even before you were dead on arrival would have just
destroyed your brain anyway.
RICHARD: Yes, well my family was told by the leading trauma physician that he had announced me dead on arrival and was sending me to the morgue. But he later said he felt like something told him to at least try to do something, and later he told me that himself that he had pronounced me dead on arrival but he felt like something told him and I wrote down Jesus on a piece of paper, and he said I am not going to say it was Jesus that told me that, but I wanted him to know that I was saying it was Jesus.
SID: Isn’t that amazing how God can use a non-believer to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. But things did not look too good for you in that hospital, tell me what transpired.
RICHARD: Well, they gave me 124 units of blood, I got hepatitis, yellow jaundice, blood poison, double pneumonia, they placed a brace around my neck, they waited 25 days to repair my broken bones, I acquired many infections, fevers raced through my body, they put me in beds of ice to try to brings the fevers down, they were giving me every antibiotic known to man, that’s what the physicians told my family, they told my family I had no activity on the lower lobes of my brain, my family was told to make funeral arrangements.
SID: Were you in a coma?
RICHARD: I was in a brain-dead coma.
SID: Brain-dead for how long?
RICHARD: 27 days.
SID: that doesn’t sound like much hope for your family, they were told to make funeral arrangements, what happened?
RICHARD: Well my mother refused to make funeral arrangements, she kept telling them
but you don’t know the power of my God. And she kept bringing people in and every four hours for ten minutes they would lay hands on me, anoint me with oil and pray, and ask God to raise me up. I didn’t know anything the entire time I was in this condition, the only thing that I did remember is when I sat up, is that I had just left a church, a prayer room and I saw my mother praying for me, and I believe this was the third time that they gave up on me, brought a social worker in, told my family they had to make funeral arrangements, because my liver and kidneys had stopped working.
SID: But I am not understanding something, you said you had just left the prayer room, how did you get there?
RICHARD: I had an out of body experience. They had told my family the third time when they brought the social worker in that my liver and kidneys had stopped functioning they had done everything they could do, they had repaired all my broken bones two days earlier, three steel plates, 19 screws, two pins, they accidentally severed a sciatic nerve into my left leg, and I began to go backwards, they said there is no medicine we can give him to start his liver and kidneys, we have kept him alive on life support but you must sign the papers now, but my mother said no, we are again going to the prayer room and pray, and I went, I walked through the hallway, I passed doctors and nurses.
SID: Do you remember slipping out of your body?
RICHARD: I don’t remember leaving my body, I didn’t know I was having an out-of-body experience but I walked through the hallway and I passed doctors and nurses and I got close enough to touch them but I couldn’t feel them, and they didn’t even know that I was there.
And I went in this room and I saw my mother on her knees and she is praying and calling out on Jesus, this was the third time that they gave up on me and I wasn’t a Christian at the time I was in the accident, I didn’t know Jesus as my Lord and Savior, but I watched my mother pray for me
and I spoke to her and she looked in my direction and I knew that something was wrong because she couldn’t see me, and she is praying for me and instantly I knew I had to do what she was doing, and I looked up and I said, “Jesus if you are real come on the scene and help me, something is wrong.” And that is when I felt a huge hand come down and cover the top of my head and I heard a voice that said, “I am Jesus, I am real, I am going to raise you up and give you another chance.” Immediately I went back to my body, I didn’t see myself walk through the hallways, but I reached for the nurse at the foot of my bed. She wasn’t prepared for this no more than I was, the last ten hour death watch I was swelled up, turned yellow and stinking, you know I had 400 staples held me together from nine surgeries, 17 drain tubes and the 18th tube was a
feeding tube, my body was swelled as big as a barrel, my dad said my head was as large as a basketball and he said he had to hold his nose when he came in to see me before they went back to the prayer room. And immediately when I sat up I reached for that nurse, I didn’t know where I was or how long I had been there but I immediately knew I had to tell somebody about this hand and this voice.
SID: What did the nurse do? Well you must have driven her crazy.
RICHARD: Well she turned around and saw me reaching for her and she jumped about five feet because instantly the swelling was gone, I was no longer a vegetable, I had a sound mind, infections left my body.
SID: You were brain-dead and all of a sudden you had a sound mind.
RICHARD: I had a sound mind. She went and got doctors and 12 doctors stood at the foot of my bed, they asked me all kinds of questions, I communicated on paper, and one miracle right after another.
SID: What about your mother when she found out about it.
RICHARD: Well this nurse actually saw that I was trying to speak, I had a tracheotomy in my throat, my mouth was wired shut, I couldn’t speak, I didn’t know why, and I am desperately trying to speak to her, and I believe God moved on her to relate to her what had just happened and she turned her paper over and said what are you trying to say? And I just scribbled on paper, the ligaments had drawn up in my arm, it took therapists several weeks to straighten them out and I wrote down, scribbled down, is there a church here? She said you are at Vanderbilt Hospital;
you have been in an automobile accident. And I wrote down it has got red carpet and several pews and my mom and dad is there praying for me.
SID: Now did you ever been in that prayer room?
RICHARD: Never been there, I had never been in that hospital.
SID: All right, because you walked there in the invisible realm you knew the color of the carpet
you knew they were praying there, so what did she say?
RICHARD: Yeah, I saw everything in detail, and she read it, she said there is a prayer on the first floor, I guess that could be a church, but I don’t know what it looks like, she said it has been a long time since I have been there. And I scribbled down I know what it looks like and I know my family is there. I just came from there. Well that really shook her up, and she motioned for
another nurse to take my vital signs and she went down and got another, went with another nurse and got my family, told my mother, my mother said a nurse walked in and said is there anyone here in the prayer room, I don’t mean to interrupt you but is there anyone here that has a
relative by the name of Richard Madison? And my mother stood up and said that’s my son,
we are not making funeral arrangements we are going to pray until Jesus raises him up, and she said the nurse said, “You must be praying to the real God, your son just sat up out of his coma.”
SID: So she comes to see you?
RICHARD: My mother and aunt walk in, they are holding each other by the arm, and they saw me sitting up and their knees buckled and they began to weep and cry, and I heard them say, “I can’t believe it, God really did it, I can’t believe it, God really did it.”
SID: She really believed you were going to rise from the dead but when it happened why did she
believe it so strongly?
RICHARD: Well she said she went into the ladies room to wash her face, and she saw me all of a sudden in the mirror with a sheet over me but all of a sudden the sheet dropped down and she said it looked like, instead of a sheet it looked like a gown. And she said she believed at that moment that it revealed the Lord was going to raise me up and use me as a minister. And as I, you know, looked at the doctors and wrote down Jesus and shook it at them a trauma physician couldn’t understand why I was awake, why I had a sound mind, told me he was going to deliver me off that morphine gradually, I wrote down Jesus raised me from the dead I am not addicted to medicine because I believed I was instantly set free from cocaine, I didn’t want no more cocaine, I didn’t want no marijuana, I didn’t want no alcohol, and I just assumed, I believed, I must mot need
any more morphine, and I wrote that on the paper. The fifth afternoon the trauma physician came back in, he said, “Richard I pronounced you dead on arrival,” looked me point blank and he said, “You shouldn’t be here.” He said, “You were a vegetable, you seem to have a sound mind, your neck was broken, we had three x-rays showing it broken and now we have three more showing it not broken, we gave you large quantities of blood, and large quantities of morphine,” and he said, “I remember what you wrote on that paper,” and he said, “Never in my medical profession have I ever seen anyone come off the amount of morphine that we gave you cold turkey.” SID: Hold that thought, you think that is something, wait till you hear the lesson he heard, really was taught,
on how to walk in healing, 14 people in comas, six brain-dead came back, don’t go away.
