TRUE Word, Faith for LIFE! with Dr. Shawn Greener

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Topsail Insider, where you can hear all
about the businesses and eventsin the beautiful coastal towns
in the greater Topsail area ofNorth Carolina.
Coming up, I have the honor andprivilege of speaking with Dr
Reverend Sean Greener.
He's a man who was pronounceddead at the scene of a horrific

(00:25):
car accident and, although helives with a life-threatening
condition as a result, he hasdefied all odds.
His journey has been nothingshort of miraculous.
From serving in the US Navy andlaw enforcement to founding an
elite executive protection firm,dr Greener's life took an
unimaginable turn.
Yet today he continues toinspire and impact lives through

(00:48):
his books, podcast and publicspeaking.
You don't want to miss thisextraordinary, profound tale of
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(03:03):
Hello everyone and welcome toTopsail Insider.
My name is Krista and I am yourhost.
Today we are talking to DrReverend Sean Greener, a
resident of Hampstead.
He is the host of True Word,faith for Life podcast and
author of two books ExcellenceKilled the Church how Mediocrity
is Destroying America.

(03:23):
That was in 2012.
And he's also written the BibleSummary for Real People.
Welcome, dr Greener.
Thank you for joining me today.
Well, thanks for inviting me.
I've been waiting for this for along time, actually, because
how I met you and I'll be briefwith this I met Dr Greener when
I was starting this podcast andI was looking for some equipment
and he posted on Marketplace.
So I asked him, because I waslooking for some equipment and

(03:45):
he posted on Marketplace.
So I asked him because I wasbeing nosy.
I was like, well, why are yougiving up podcasting?
And he did inform me at thattime that he was very ill and I
got the feeling that I justneeded to stop asking questions.
And so he told me that he hadsome more podcast equipment
coming up.
So I was following him, I waslooking to see what else he

(04:05):
might be selling and, lo andbehold, I noticed he has a
podcast up.
I'm like you did not quitpodcasting, what's going on?
And so I reached back out andI'm so glad to have you at this
table today.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Oh, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
You were military law enforcement and a private
protection firm, which I findcompletely fascinating, and I
know that I can't ask you anyquestions about it.
I'm going to ask a little bit.
And you can tell me what you'reallowed to say.
You are a disabled US Navyveteran and a former Newcastle
County police officer and anexpert on terrorism,

(04:40):
counterterrorism, personalprotection, survival and
high-level threat assessment.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Fascinating.
I sound like somebody, don't I?

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, that's a pretty exciting life.
What led you to join the Navyfirst of all, and can you just
talk about the progression tolaw enforcement and to
eventually founding your company, the Executive Protection Team?

Speaker 3 (05:01):
First of all, thank you very much for having me.
I'm honored to be here and I'mexcited for this podcast what a
cool podcast.
And your reasons in ourconversation before, your
reasons for doing this.
I love them.
I love your motivation.
I love your why.
You know the Navy.
My uncles had all been in WorldWar II and my favorite uncle.

(05:24):
They're all deceased, but myfavorite uncle was in the entire
World War II, except for 30some days the whole war and he
spoke with such love about hisservice and his why.
And he had a rough upbringing.
He was a really toughupbringing.

(05:44):
Why?
And he had a rough upbringing.
He was really tough upbringingand he married my mother's
eldest sister and he came fromreally the wrong side of the
tracks, if you will, but heserved heroically, just with
great honor and valor, and nobig deal to him.
He thought, well, this is whatyou do.
And so I looked at that as amodel and I thought, okay, my

(06:05):
older brother, who was two yearsahead of me.
He went into the Navy and forme I had scholarship officers.
I had three full scholarshipofficers.
I played soccer, I did art andmartial arts, and so I had
options, but one day it wasmaybe 6, 6.30 in the morning and
my parents were early risersand I was an early riser because

(06:27):
I ran.
I would do a lot of the fitnesstraining and all these things.
I was still in high school, butI would do a lot of that stuff
early in the morning.
There was no sleeping in at myhouse, that wasn't a thing, and
so at that time the pans were150 years old.
Big old cast iron pans were 150years old.
Big old cast iron pan 150 yearsold.

(06:48):
I'm just standing there and I'mlooking like what is my life
about?
What is my contribution?
And this was in my junior yearand I was just thinking to
myself okay, what am I going todo here?
Because I knew that I couldplay soccer at really great
division North Carolina was oneof them.
I knew that I could go to artschool, to really great schools,

(07:09):
and I knew I had options thatmaybe other people in my family
hadn't had.
But I looked at what am Icontributing?
Where am I making my mark?
And I'm saying, okay, this ismy country, but what have I done
for it?
And then I made the connectionokay, my physical body will

(07:29):
never be more fit than it is now.
And the Navy said hold my beer.
Oh, is that correct?
Was that what you think?
So I just decided, right therestanding there, I walked into my
parents.
They were sitting on the porchand I said I'm joining the Navy.
And my dad said is that aquestion or a statement?

(07:51):
What?
What are you telling me here?
I said I need somebody to signfor me because I was young.
They said, okay, what are yougoing to do?
I said I'm not sure, I don'tknow.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
But you knew it was the Navy.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
I knew it was the Navy.
The reason I knew it was theNavy was because several of my
uncles were in the Navy.
Now my favorite uncle was inthe Army, but I knew that the
ASVABs.
I had aced the ASVAB.
The ASVAB test is the test thateverybody takes to see what
your level of intelligence, youremployability, Specifically for

(08:25):
the Navy or across all militarybranches?
For all military, but it'sbasically an assessment, but I
took it and I aced it.
I don't know how.
It's not something that I knowof that you could study for.
I don't know how.
I just had a weird brain thenthat I could.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Well, you were a literal genius, am I right?
You were a literal genius, am I?
Am.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
I right, you were.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Okay, We'll get.
I want to talk about that alittle more.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
My wife will say not anymore.
We're going to get Colleen hereone day she's going to give you
all the dirt.
So you were saying you passedthat test, so I had to take it
again, because if you, ifeverything, if it's, I guess,
the way way they measure it 100%, they say okay, well, what's
the deal with this guy?

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Something went wrong, something's fishy here, and so
I had to take it again with aproctor as close as you and I
are sitting.
Oh, interesting yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
So I took it again and I had seen it and I had this
brain where, if I would look atsomething just for a second,
like, for instance, a book, andthis is nothing I taught myself,
it's a gift, it was a gift andI didn't appreciate it, and I
guess as we go on, we'll seejust how much I didn't realize

(09:37):
the gift that I had until I lostit.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Would you say it's a photographic memory?

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Photographic is about the third level down from the
memory that I had.
Yeah, so so I would goodness.
Yeah, it was a weird situation.
I could actually read.
This is this was a fun partytrick.
My wife didn't believe I coulddo it until she goes.
Okay, fine, so I could read twodifferent books side by side at
the same time really you couldquiz me about it.

(10:02):
so my wife goes you know we're,we were dating at the time, show
me, and I you could quiz meabout it.
So my wife goes you know wewere dating at the time, show me
.
And I did it.
And she was like, oh okay.
That's incredible, that's kindof weird, yeah, but I didn't
know.
I thought everybody.
I literally grew up thinkingeverybody had the brain I had
Incredible.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
And everybody had the eyesight I had.
Oh wait, what about youreyesight?
I?

Speaker 3 (10:20):
had crazy eyesight Really.
Yeah, the best they couldmeasure it was 25.
They didn't go any higher thanthat.
When you go in and yourdoctor's office, you stand on
line read the lowest line youcan read.
Well, I could read the copyrightat the bottom yeah, oh, my gosh
, yeah.
But so the thing is I had allthese assets that I didn't.

(10:43):
First of all, I didn't realizethat everybody didn't have.
I knew some people didn'tutilize their capacity, they
didn't go to capacity, but in mycase I had teachers on my case
all the time.
I had my English lit teacher,god bless him.
He actually cussed me out afterclass one day and he said you
are wasting a gift that, trustme, not even 1%.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
So your teachers were aware of this gift and they
knew that you were not utilizingit fully.
Some were what kind of studentwere you?
I was okay.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I was okay.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Were you bored.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Very bored.
Yeah, I felt like it was a lotof wasted time.
I didn't have the capacity todeal with the people talking
back, the people interruptingthe people.
The other students just weren'tpaying attention, yeah, and I
figured we're only here for thislittle bit of time Now.
I hadn't put together the wholeidea of put this is your career
, this is your high schoolcareer, then it's going to be

(11:41):
your college career, right, Ididn't look at it that way.
I was into sports and art.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
You said soccer, any other sports besides?

Speaker 3 (11:52):
soccer In high school , only soccer.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
I only played soccer, but I did martial arts.
What style of martial arts didyou do?

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Well, that's what's interesting.
I started with Aikido, which isreally a flowing, was designed
to disarm swordsmen when youdon't have a sword and then I
think my husband took that yeah,no good yeah, it's not a
popular.
It's not a popular style it'smore about mindset, uh and
exchange of energy transferringyes so there's a lot of rolling

(12:21):
and all that, and I was I wasreally really good at that, but
I was also very, very good atstriking, so I fought
competitively in full contactkarate.
Okay.
And so I excelled in that area,but I was a really skinny kid,
but I was really really fast andI was very strong, and so my
thought was okay, I don't thinkmy body's, my capacity, my

(12:44):
strength, my quickness, any ofthose things, I don't think I'm
going to be better and faster,and my mental acuity?
it's never going to be betterthan now as a young man, and so
I just I made the decision whileI was making.
I still remember what I wasmaking.
I can't remember what I atethis morning, but I remember I
was making scrambled eggs in a150-year-old pan, that's really

(13:06):
cool.
So for the Navy, when you go toboot camp, I had never been on
a plane, except for recruiting.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
So no college.
You went straight from highschool to Navy.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Much to the chagrin of a lot of my teachers.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Right, yeah, I bet yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
I think I would have wasted the scholarship money in
fairness In the military a lotof the schools, depending on
what you do.
I had a very nondescript jobreally, but I was fascinated by
the military training and as Iprogressed I had opportunities
presented to me becausedifferent people saw

(13:39):
capabilities and I loved theNavy.
So I was married.
I got married young and this ismy second marriage 21 years.
Oh that's right my secondmarriage, but my first marriage
I was too young.
I was too young and I was farless of, probably far less of a
husband and definitely far lessof a father than I could have

(14:02):
been and should have been.
So, that being said, I didn'tstay in the navy.
I had been recruited by theagency the agency oh really so I
was recruited twice and on twoseparate kind of two areas of
attack they flanked me okay, butyou're gonna have to go back.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
So what were they seeing that they're like.
We need you on our team.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
At the time I didn't know I was being recruited.
First of all I had no idea.
And let's just dispense of themovies portray.
Hollywood portrays that kind oflife romantically.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
You know, that's what I'm tapping into right now.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah, it's really not .
It's super, super hard.
It's a hard life.
You lie to everyone, includingyour family, all the people that
are closest to you.
My parents didn't know untilshortly before my father died I
shared it with him Really and mymother.
After my father had died, Iended up protecting some very

(15:02):
high profile people.
Father had died.
I ended up protecting some veryhigh profile people and we were
on CNN and usually if you're ona protection team, your
objective is to stay out of thecamera shot, and that was always
my goal.
But in these particular casesthere was so much press around
these people that you could.
There was no way to effectivelyprotect them, and so I would

(15:24):
get calls when the wee hours ofthe morning my mother she would
be up late.
Sean, I'm watching televisionand I'm seeing you on television
and you're with this person andshe knew who they would be and
it looks like you're a bodyguard.
Is this you, or is this someonewho looks like you?

(15:45):
And a lot of my friends anddifferent people who had no idea
they were seeing it.
They were seeing it too.
So all of a sudden I'm gettingthese calls and so finally I
said oh no, mom, that's just adoppelganger.
People have said that beforebecause I didn't want her to
worry, obviously, and so there'san element of you protect your
family by lying to them.
There is a truth to that,because when you share certain

(16:06):
things that are very difficultto hear, the darkness that
exists in the world is too darkfor most people to handle.
Right, I can see that.
It's just like with combat.
Combat is there's a very highlevel.
It's not just an adrenalinerush, but you're competing at

(16:26):
the highest level life or death,life or death.
And so there is a.
I'm going to use the wordthrill, but really thrill has a
negative connotation in thisspace, but in reality it's the
challenge, it's the ultimatechallenge, and you lose when you
die.
The challenge is live and win ordie, which is not the case

(16:47):
really.
There are lots of heroic menand women who have died in
combat and they died heroes notjust because they died, but they
died doing heroic things beyondour imagination.
But that world is extremelydark, and when you enter into
the space of internationalintelligence in the clandestine

(17:09):
I was in the clandestine serviceyou see an experience and are
privy to things that aresickeningly terrible and evil,
and so at the same time, as ayounger person, it's thrilling.
Right, I get it, I totally getit.
So it challenges your intellect,challenges your physical

(17:30):
abilities, challenges yourability to think on your feet.
And the problem is, stress isgood.
Dr Jim Lohr in his book Stressfor Success a book was out, I
don't know, 20 years ago.
It's still the best book onusing stress to your advantage,
and he talks about linear stressversus oscillating stress.
Oscillating stress is okay.

(17:53):
I'm going into this reallydifficult situation, and so then
you ramp up, ramp up, ramp up,and that loop is going higher
and higher and higher.
And that pinnacle is thatmoment where higher and higher
and higher, and that pinnacle isthat moment where, whatever it
is you're dealing with, whateveryou're engaging, coming out
victorious and then taking thatdeep breath on the downside of

(18:16):
it and catching your breath andletting all that adrenaline flow
out of you.
And so that's oscillatingstress and that's good for us.
Just like lifting weights right?
If you lifted a weight and youjust held it up all the time,
that's linear stress on yourbody.
Lifting weights,weight-resistant training, is
really the fountain of youth,but if you do it every day, all

(18:37):
day, it's going to wreck you.
So you have to oscillate, youhave to rest, and so that's the
way the stress is, for whateverreason, I had an uncanny ability
.
I was recruited for severalreasons.
My eyesight was off the charts,literally off the charts.
I could see no kidding, as longas it was within the line of

(18:57):
sight.
I could read street signs fromalmost a mile away.
That's incredible.
It was insane.
From almost a mile away.
That's incredible.
Well, here's what I learned is,that's great, but the issue that
made that good and bad was myperception of everything.
Was on fire, so I was seeinglittle movements and I had a.

(19:19):
My peripheral vision wasgreater than normal, so I could
see very clearly what's way outhere.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
So this is a hyper-stimulation.
It is it's hyper-awareness.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Great for executive protection in areas where you're
, you know, great for that.
But guess what?
That doesn't shut off.
And so what?
A lot of people with that?
There aren't many people withthat, but the people that have
it among that group they tend todrink or do drugs to try to
shut that off.
Yeah, yeah.
Because, it's exasperatingbecause you hear and you see

(19:55):
everything, all the movement.
You're always paying closeattention to it.
So all of that either eyesight.
But what became evident was myability to accept pain.
Now people will use a word or aphrase called pain tolerance.
Pain tolerance and painacceptance are two different
things.
So pain acceptance is theability to feel pain, intense,

(20:18):
terrible pain, and stillfunction at an optimal level.
Mental acuity is still high.
Physical ability is still highdespite severe pain impairment.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Did you have that naturally?

Speaker 3 (20:32):
or is that?

Speaker 1 (20:33):
something you trained ?
No, you had it naturally.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Very naturally.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Because I figured in the military.
They would probably train youto accept pain to some degree.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
They do some of it and then, as training advanced
in my post-military life, itbecomes more of a psychological
study of okay, this is a realsituation.
You may be hurt very badly, butpain is a feeling.
And you either pay a lot ofattention to it or you segment

(21:03):
it.
You fragment it, youcompartmentalize it, you put it
over here and you say okay.
I'm feeling pain, but I stillhave something to do.
Okay, and if I don't do thatsomething, if I succumb to this
pain, then I get killed.
Okay, you know or or tortured orwhatever the case may be, or
that may be, part of the processof pain.

(21:23):
The cause of the pain might betorture.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
So you were naturally built already to do the CIA
type work right.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, and it was.
I will tell you it wasn't alovely existence, but the other
part of I think I failed Spanishin high school.
I think her name was mrs huff.
God rest her soul.
She was old when she was.
She was good land.
She was really really old whenshe was our teacher, but I don't
know were you not applyingyourself?

Speaker 1 (21:57):
because how many languages did you end up picking
up?

Speaker 3 (21:59):
five, I spoke five, I could go into the country.
And here's the interestingthing if you just learn a
language because you want to govisit and you want to be able to
talk to people, that's one formof language learning.
I was a polyglot so I couldspeak.
For whatever reasons, I couldlearn other languages really
quickly.
And I don't know why, it wasjust my weird brain.

(22:21):
I could pick it up, but myfascination wasn't just with
that.
Like I said, that's great.
If you want to go visit thecountry, you can converse, you
can order a pastry.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Where's the bathroom?
You know type of deal.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
But my fascination was the deeper level, which was
the cultural appropriationUnderstanding how they wear
their belts in this country, howthey button their shirts.
Do they button from the bottomup or the top down?
How do they wear their watch?
Do they wear their watch?
Do they wear watches?
How do they count?

(22:56):
There's a great movie,Inglourious Bastards.
I don't know if you've everheard of it.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I've heard of it, but I have not seen it.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
There's a scene in that movie which it's going to
totally wreck the movie forpeople who haven't seen it but
there's a scene in it where oneof the undercover, pretending to
be German soldiers, he holds uphis fingers to show I think it
was three, the number three.
And there are many ways to showthree, there's three, three,
three.
To show three, there's three,three, three.

(23:23):
There's so many different waysthat you can show that.
Well, in the movie, thisofficer, this actual german
officer, could tell that, okay,this is not, this is.
It was a small thing, it was soinsignificant.
But little things don't mean alot, they mean everything, and
so they can cost you your lifeand and in that movie they did.

(23:44):
So I enjoyed learning thosethings and I would go in and
come out.
I didn't go in and stay, Iwould go in, do what needed to
be done and come out.
So that that was a greatadvantage for me.
And again, 90% of my family hadno idea.
Most of my friends, except fortwo, two really good friends
they knew that they were goodfor it because they had top

(24:05):
secret clearances anyway becauseof what they did yeah.
And so, anyway, I did that for atime.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
When did you become a police officer?

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Well, I said you know what, I think I'm done with the
Navy, so I'm going to go be apolice officer.
And so there was a time framein between Navy agency and there
was wedged in.
There was time to become apolice officer, so I applied for
it in the state.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
How did you like that work?
Well, you didn't stay in itvery long, did you?
Five or six years.
I think that's a good length.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
And this was the early days of anti-police, the
anti-police attitude Early daysof it.
I loved most of the people thatI worked with and for I worked
for some great people.
It was a very restricted job,so you knew what needed to be
done, but you couldn't do that,and the only reason you couldn't

(25:03):
do that was because ofperception I don't think we had.
We didn't have any body camerasor anything like that.
Maybe dash cams were coming in.
I doubt it, though.
I don't have any recollectionof that part at all.
But what I do know is it justfelt very restricted.
It felt stupidly restricted,very politically driven, and it
was a large police departmentand served a huge county, much

(25:28):
of which was urban and suburban,so it wasn't like the county
that we're in, where everythingis spread out.
It was a lot of people.
And it just was exasperating.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Maybe because I'm from small towns, I can't
imagine it being as adrenalinerush oriented as what you were
doing prior.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, it's a tricky business.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
I mean, I almost feel like you would be bored.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
I was a little bored, but the reason I left was I had
gotten hurt a couple of timesand we didn't know this then.
Obviously we know this now.
But I had what was calledarterial venal malformation, AVM
.
I had an AVM and so I passedout, you know, and they put me

(26:13):
in the hospital for a week, losta ton of blood internally, and
so they put me in the hospitaland they say, hey, you've got a
massive tumor and that'sfrightening.
You're going to check out.
This is bad deal here.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Oh, my goodness yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
So yeah, it was crazy .
But then they did doctor,medicine, surgery, stuff.
They said, ok, what this isthis calcification?
It's not actually a tumor.
It looks like a tumor onimaging but it's not actually a
tumor.
So they used sound, which isfascinating, to break it up.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
So they used sound, which is fascinating to break it
up.
I've heard of that.
That's really cool.
It was wild.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
And it's wild to experience it.
But during the course of allthat they said look, you have an
AVM.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
What is that?

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Arterial, venal malformation.
Think of it as the intersectionof your arteries and your veins
, where they come together.
There's a weakness and itbulges and becomes an aneurysm.
Oh Well, you know, fastforwarding all the way to today.
Right, I now have a massiveaneurysm.
Right.
And of all the things that aretrying to take my life, the

(27:15):
aneurysm is the worst thing,because I now have an aortic.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Descending correct Descending aortic aneurysm yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
And so the cardiologists all say it's in
the worst possible place.
It's bad and there's nothing wecan do for you.
So anyway, that is what it is.
So I have to get out of that,create a new life.
Well then, I you know, therewere opportunities to work as a
I use the word contractor, it'soverused, but as a consultant
really and then, in essence, acontractor getting to go and do

(27:46):
jobs because of my past and Idid and I liked it.
It was fun.
But one of the things that Iliked more than anything else
was hostile repatriation.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
And I like hostile repatriation.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
So what that is?
Someone is somewhere they don'twant to be Hiding.
They're not there of their ownvolition, oh gotcha.
They're being held, they'retaken, they're being held Okay
and interest Okay.
Of our government says, hey, weneed those people back for
myriad reasons.
Who knows what the reasons are.

(28:19):
Those were never my.
I didn't have to really thinkabout what the reasons were.
The government, the agency,couldn't go get them themselves,
so they needed a privatecontractor to do that.
I loved it.
I had a team of guys who rangefrom SEALs, delta guys, secret
Service, cia protection groupGreat, great people,

(28:40):
extraordinarily capable people,and so periodically we would
have these jobs and no one wouldever hear about it.
They just get reunited withtheir families and a liaison
would say, hey, we've got them,they're safe, we're bringing
them back to wherever themeeting point would be, which
usually would be either theUnited States, or, if they had
bad medical issues, they wouldgo to the next best place that

(29:05):
were friendly to us, get wellenough to travel the United
States and continue healing.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Gotcha.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
So I like that.
And then I also really lovedvery high risk executive
production.
Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
You are a thrill seeker.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
You know what I never really thought of myself, but
the whole notion of jumping outof an airplane never bothered me
, it never crossed my mind.
I thought to myself yeah, okay,when can we go?
Can we go now?
That's amazing.
Can you teach me on the way uphow to do it?
Maybe jump out, be next to meand just tell me what to do on
the way?
I loved it.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
I absolutely loved it no fear.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Well, I don't know that.
It's no fear, but it's just.
I had life in a differentperspective then, which maybe
wasn't the best perspectivequite honestly, because I beat
my body to death doing thesethings, and so I loved it.
I really, really loved, I lovedserving.
My thrill was looking somebodyin the eye and saying we're here

(30:03):
to help you, we're going tohelp you.
That's the thing that thrilledme was being able to change
somebody's worst day or worstexperience into one of the
greatest experiences they'veever had.
I love that, and I felt likethere's a certain type of person
who is to be in that role.
Now I want to go back to lawenforcement and just say that I

(30:24):
don't demean what they do.
Their jobs are so different nowthan even the little bit of
time that I served, and so forme I greatly appreciate great
law enforcement.
In fact, I do counseling nowhigh trauma counseling, which is
acute situations, usually withpeople that can't go to a normal

(30:45):
psychiatrist or psychologist ortherapist or counselor.
They can't do it because oftheir job.
They do that, they lose theirjob, and so helping people
through this acute situation toget them through and my wife can
tell you if she ever comes onthere are, there have been phone
calls at 3 30 in the morningwhere there's gunfire in the

(31:06):
background and so this person islocked up, for whatever reason,
their brain is not movingforward and yeah, I
get calls from the weirdestnumbers, and so I love helping
in that regard.
So for me, the thrill is reallythat.
But law enforcement, now theyreally have it tough.
In the case of police officersnow suiting up and going out,

(31:28):
there's all this extra gear thatthey have to carry.
I mean, in addition to this bigvest, which I encourage every
police officer out there, wearyour body armor, wear your body
armor.
I know it's hot, but I'd rathersweat than bleed, but they've
got to wear all this other gearwhich is designed for nothing
other than to minimizelitigation against the police
department.
That's what it's for, and youmay have comments that say, well

(31:50):
, you know, I've run into morebad cops than I have good cops.
Comments that say, well, youknow, I've run into more bad
cops than I have good cops.
Look, I've talked to literallytens of thousands of police
officers all across this countryand I can tell you, the amount
of bad cops is minuscule.

(32:11):
It's minuscule by comparison.
They are.
They're up against it.
The recruiting went through aphase where they stopped looking
for ex-military men and womenand they started looking for
well, we just want a collegegraduate, maybe with humanities
or criminal justice or whatever.
That's not the.
It's not a bad thing to have,but if that's all you have,
you're in trouble.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Because if you've never been punched in the face,
everybody's got a big plan untilthey get punched in the face.
Because if you've never beenpunched in the face, everybody's
got a big plan until they getpunched in the face.
And if you are fighting foryour life and you've never
fought for your life it's waydifferent than people realize.
I guess to sum it up is I havegreat empathy for law
enforcement out there.
The whole desire to help peoplewas always strong there and

(32:57):
what I learned was you spend 90%of your time dealing with the
same people over and over andover.
And so you don't get theopportunity to really really
help people.
My prior life was very specific.
Here is the problem you developa plan to solve the problem, go
do it.
We don't really care how you doit, but go do it and try to

(33:18):
bring them back.
And in the case of executiveprotection, when I formed
executive protection team, ourtagline was when it's your life,
we're your team.
We were actually, we were hiredwhen the Navy SEALs were outed
for the bin Laden raid.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
I remember that was a lot of a lot of navy seals and
military people speaking upwhile their lives were at risk
significant risk right well, wewere the company that was hired
to protect them wow, okay, notall of them, just a few of them,
and so we always make a joke ofthat, like when the navy seals
need somebody to protect them,we're the ones that get called,
and so that's a very specificthing.

(33:55):
So you can see, you can helpwith that, and I enjoy that.
That, to me, is the mission.
Is it clear?
And I know we didn't plan ongetting into this whole mission
creep and all that stuff, but itis.
It's that way in life.
People have a mission.
They start off with this thingyou can talk about weight loss,
you can talk about I want tolearn to do this, I'm going to
learn to do this, I'm going tolearn to do that.

(34:15):
And then you're all hyped up,you get all the tools, you get
all the stuff, and then it's notas easy.
Yeah.
It's not as easy as you thoughtit was going to be Right, wow,
maybe I won't do that anymore.
You just don't do it anymore.
You stop doing it, saying thatI haven't because I have.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah for sure.
But then the crash.
Okay, you have multipletheology degrees, you have an
undergrad in biblical counseling, but you do counseling now,
right, I do some, some.
You have a master's in theologyHebrew worldview.
You've got a doctorate intheology Hebrew worldview as
well, and a doctorate inpractical theology,

(35:01):
Timeline-wise.
So you've got this incrediblelife of intrigue.
When did you fit in all of thistheology education?

Speaker 3 (35:13):
That's a great question.
I may have been a reallyintelligent guy at one point in
time, but really stupid.
I had an opportunity to go tomany great schools for free and
instead I decided well, what I'mgoing to do is I'm going to be
in a business and I'm going togo to school in all this spare
time that I allegedly have, andI'm going to pay for it all

(35:34):
myself.
You know why not?
And so I did that, and I was aperson who I wanted to be part
of the family, so I set up mydesk in the living room.
What was weird is, before thecrash, that television could be
on, but I could be focused on myschoolwork, no problem.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
So you're no longer doing.
This is after the protection.
Oh no, I was still doing someof it.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
I had another business, but because that
business doesn't come inregularly enough to provide it.
So I had another little businessand I was doing that and
working crazy hours and reallyhard, but I still was capable of
learning.
I had a high interest inlearning and the topics were

(36:21):
fascinating to me.
So what I did was just totalimmersion.
Great professors, great adminstaff just they were the most
wonderful people.
They were fantastic and theykind of saw how I was and who I
was.
So they let me go at a higherrate of speed.
I think, than others.

(36:42):
So the undergrad, grad and onedoctorate was prior to the crash
, and yeah, then everythingchanged.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, you grew up in the church, am I?

Speaker 3 (36:52):
right, I did.
I grew up in an independentfundamental right haircut, right
clothing, right shoes, kjv only.
Nothing against the KJV, onlycrowd not throwing rocks.
I'm just saying it was theauthorized version because Jesus
, that's the one Jesus carried.
That was their thought andthat's how they operated.
And so very, very strict, veryincongruent upbringing.

(37:14):
My dad was not a person offaith for much of my childhood,
most of my childhood.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Your mom taking you to and from church?

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, but he always supported that, and they're both
been gone a little while now.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Did you have siblings ?

Speaker 3 (37:29):
I did.
I'm the youngest of five,youngest of five.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Okay, and all five were taken to church every
Sunday.
Youngest of five, okay, and allfive were taken to church every
Sunday.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
We had a drug problem in our family.
Mom drug us to church on Sundaynight.
She drug us to a WANA.
She drug us to Wednesday prayermeeting.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Oh yeah, that's funny .
That was our drug problem.
I like it.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
So, yeah, that was really a strong influence, but
it took with me, it didn't takewith the others, not everyone it
really took with me.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
What was it that made you decide when you were going
to get an education?
What made you decide theology?
What was the spark there?

Speaker 3 (38:08):
So, okay, what had happened was I and I try to get
through this without crying Iwas.
I had a high school problems ofdemocracy civics teacher.
He was my favorite teacher ofall.

(38:28):
My whole life he's been myfavorite teacher and he used to
go away to all these far-flungcountries every summer and he
would take all of these amazingphotos and record these little
videos and a lot of what wewould do is study those
countries where he went and hewould explain to us about their

(38:48):
systems of government and theupside, the downside and and all
of these things, the differencein the people.
Oh, wonderful.
Until he got to teaching aboutthe Holocaust.
When he taught about theHolocaust, I couldn't believe my
ears.
I was appalled.
I just couldn't understand itand I'd always been fascinated.

(39:11):
Why did God have jesus yeshua?
Why did he plop him down in thehebrew land among the hebrew
people?
Why did that happen?
That was always a fascination.
As a little kid, I know I readweird books.
Grown-up books.

(39:31):
When I was just a little kid uh, I would read books that were.
You know, I read the PDR, Ithink.
I was physician's desk reference.
Okay, my mom would go to yardsales and she'd give me a budget
and I'd spend it all on booksgrownup books like a physician
was retiring and originally mythought in my head was you know,

(39:52):
I want to be the doctor thatcures cancer.
And so how your brain?

Speaker 1 (39:55):
works.
It was weird.
I was a.
Be the doctor that cures cancer, and so how your brain works.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
It was weird, I was a weird kid, let me tell you.
And but the thing is is Ididn't say any of this stuff out
loud.
It was all going in in my headbecause I thought people are
going to think I'm weird, whichthey did.
I find out in retrospect.
And so, when it came to theHolocaust, I said why the Jews?

(40:18):
How did this happen?

Speaker 1 (40:18):
And I started really, really studying it.
It's a wonderful question, yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
And what became?
As a young adult, I had theidea of writing a PhD
dissertation on the Holocaust.
What it really was, how exactlydid it happen, and can it
happen again?
And how do we stop it?
That was going to be my thingand I said, well, I've got to go

(40:43):
and talk to the people, I don'twant to just read about it.
So I had the opportunity totravel to five of the
concentration camps.
I was able to secure privatetours, and so it was horrible.
It was.
It was I'd seen a lot of evilin my lifetime.
I'm telling you that broke mysoul.
It, it, it violated, and and I,you know, even at that point in

(41:06):
my life I had little faith inthe humanity of man.
I thought, oh, we're in deeptrouble more and more and more.
I really just didn't love it.
But then, when I was there, itbroke your soul.
Broke my soul, that's so.
It literally broke my soul.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
So you were just saying, I'm just intrigued by
what you're talking about.
So, looking upon mankind, youwere disheartened about what we
are as a species.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Just not the best creatures.
How depraved, how utterlyhorrible one segment of humanity
could be toward a specificsegment.
Now it wasn't just the jews, itwas anybody handicapped, it was
any down syndrome, all of that,and they were killed
immediately unless there wassome scientific benefit they
could find.

(42:00):
But when I went to auschwitz Ithe part that got me was again I
.
I was because of my background,I was, I had some back channels
and I could get private toursoh, right, yeah so there was a
one-on-one with an interpreterand as we come out at the end of
the day, I was devastated.

(42:24):
I wept.
Even now I wept harder thanI've wept my entire life and I
looked out at the people thatwere going through these
different exhibits and displaysand then seeing the horrific
things and the remnants of them,and everybody was pretty quiet

(42:50):
but I could see they didn'tquite get it and I remember
walking out of there and as Icame out there was these two
tiny elderly people and I'dalways had a heart for the
elderly.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Same yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
I love old folks, and we didn't speak the same
language, by the way, wasn't oneof the languages that I knew
but they saw me and they said,come, come, come.
And so I was there.
They took me to their little.
Their whole house, I kid younot, was maybe slightly larger
than this room.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
Okay, yeah, it was small.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
They invited you into their home.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Brought me right into their house.
Yeah, crazy, and they didn'tknow me at all.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
What did they want to show you?
What were they inviting you to?
They saw me hurt.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
They saw the hurt in my soul and they and they wanted
to invite me in.
So I don't know if you know,but Polish people make their own
liquor and they did and and wedrank that and we communicated
and it ended up being a wholeevening into the next morning.

(43:57):
Oh wow, but that whole time, Isaid because they would explain
different things to me and itwas difficult.
But I always say let yoursincerity be your own best
interpreter.
So they're sincerely trying tocommunicate with you.
I'm sincerely trying to connectwith them.
You'll work it out, you'll workit out You'll work it out, and
so we did.
And at the end, when I wasgetting ready to leave and I

(44:18):
gave them hugs, they tried togive me food and I remember I
forgot to ask how did you twomeet?
How did you two?
How did you meet?
How did you?
Do you have family?
How?
Did you meet?
Do you have family?
I didn't even ask because thequestions were all, and so they

(44:39):
do the come back in sign.
I go back in and we sit downand they pull their sleeves up.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Oh, yeah, they met in a camp.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
They met in a camp.
They didn't know each other.
They met in a camp as they metin a camp.
They didn't know each other.
They actually they met in acamp as they were being
liberated Okay.
His family, his entire family,died in that camp.
Every single person in hislineage that was alive died in
that camp, almost all but one ofher family.
They didn't know each otheroutside of there.

(45:10):
They had no connectionwhatsoever.
And she was slightly youngerthan him and as they're being
liberated, you know they wereyoung, they were very, very
young.
They kind of clung to oneanother and then through medical
care and different things theywould bump into each other and
eventually they were marriedvery, very young, extremely

(45:30):
young, probably legally way tooyoung.
But they both survived the campand none of their family did,
and that bonded them.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
So sad yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
Sort of thick and in the process of thinking about
writing that dissertation Ithought, well, I'm not doing
this.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
I can't do this justice.
Oh, you chose not to.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
No, I wrote 120 pages and then I just said whether I
would fancy myself to be a goodwriter or not.
There is no way I can do thistopic justice.
No way, and there were so manyPhD dissertations out there
where they touched on theHolocaust or different aspects
of it, my approach was going tobe a different way, through a

(46:09):
more personal way, and I'd eventalked to he wasn't a guard, but
he was a policeman at one ofthe camps- yeah yeah, how did
you?
how do you justify this?
Why aren't you in jail?
I was real in his family.
Bold yes and we have all thediscussion about well, what did
the families know?

(46:30):
I, I held a great animustowards Germany and Austria for
a very, very long time because Ithought how could you have
allowed this to happen, howcould you have allowed this to
happen?
And I still, to a great degree,that generation.
I don't excuse it, I don't givethem a pass, because those
officers came home.
They came home at night, theyhad families, so their families

(46:53):
knew what was going on, justlike when the atom bomb was
being created.
Everybody's there and they havefamilies and then they go home.
Well, do we think that theydidn't have conversations with
their wives?
Come on, that's unrealistic andwe've found through research
that, yeah, that did in facthappen and many of them wanted

(47:15):
it to happen, and many of themdon't express any regret at all,
no remorse at all, even untiltheir death.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Are you talking now about the making of the atomic
bomb, or are you talking aboutAuschwitz?

Speaker 3 (47:27):
No, no, I'm talking about the Holocaust Right, okay,
yeah, the families were likethat's how it was, that's what
happened, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
I do think that the generations that followed they
still, probably to this day,feel a great amount of guilt on
some level for what happened.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
I think there is some , but it's making a nasty
resurgence.
Is it really?
It is?
Yeah, it really is.
It's a huge movement.
It started very much as anunderground movement, but now
it's pretty bold Because peopleknow.
Now I can say what I want tosay.
I'll say what I want to say andI'll do what I want to do.
I did not know that, yeah it'sbig, it's unfortunate and what's

(48:08):
interesting is I rode BMWmotorcycles for many years and I
struggled with the choice ofbrand because of that.
They were a supplier to thethird rank and there were a lot
of companies.
Where I learned to let go ofthat was I learned the United

(48:28):
States had a lot of complicity.
Before we really connected withwhat was happening, we had a
lot of complicity.
Before we really connected withwhat was happening.
We had a lot of complicity anda lot of the stolen art, the
antiquities, the massive wealthstill sits in bank vaults in the
United States.
Much of it has never been givenback, and so I don't know that

(48:52):
we can say that we've taken thehigh road.
And given my past, I can tellyou that many times we have not
taken the high road, we have notdone the best.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
So let's go ahead and get to that accident.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
All of the different things that have tried to kill
me over the years, the life thatI had led.
One would never think that a19-year-old high school senior
in a borrowed car with stateminimum insurance, with his
other high school senior buddies, would be driving 109 miles an
hour, lose control, jump a40-something foot median and hit

(49:34):
me head-on at 92 miles per hour.
Nobody would think that that'show I would go out.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
It's an unbelievable story.
If you don't mind and I knowyou've done this before- yeah,
it doesn't bother me.
Would you please just take usthrough that day.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
It was a relatively normal day, were you at work?
Well, so I'm pretty much alwaysat work doing different things.
I had so many different thingsgoing, but one of the protection
vehicles that we used was aSuburban and I was to protect
two very prominent people who,for whatever reason, people

(50:10):
wanted to kill them and they hadvery, very significant and
actionable threats on theirlives.
And what ends up happening is Idropped the vehicle off at the
detailer because I had aspecific detailer who I knew was
trustworthy to be in the carJust cleaning the car.
Make it like brand new.

(50:31):
Okay, that's always how Irolled was brand new.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
And you're traveling with high level dignitaries and
so forth.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Everything's set up three different newspapers.
They would have drinks.
I wasn't their chauffeur, I wastheir protector, but I liked
everything to be top shelf.
Anyway, headed home, lookingforward to dinner, and I was
crossing a bridge and it wasdown to one lane and on the
south side of the bridge wasonly maybe six minutes from my

(51:01):
house where is in delaware?
delaware, okay, middletowndelaware and on the downside of
the bridge it goes back to twolanes.
So I went from the left lane,which was the only lane I could
do on the bridge, over to theright lane and I was going
around 51 miles per hour atimpact.
There's a start of a big doubleloop curve.
You would call it an S curve,but it was huge.

(51:23):
It was a huge curve and theywere, like I said, they had
spent the day.
The driver had borrowed hisuncle's car.
It was a big SUV and these guyswere all friends of his from
the high school which,ironically, my son went to the
high school.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
How many were in the vehicle with him?

Speaker 3 (51:41):
I think five, oh my gosh, I think five total in the
vehicle, four occupants, and I'mpretty sure I'm pretty sure
that was the number and it wasfour or five.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Were they drinking or on drugs?

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Nope, there the number and it was four or five.
Were they drinking or on drugs?
Nope.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
There was no drinking , no drugs, I was just speeding
speeding all day long.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
He was driving like a crazy person all day long and
in fact the one fellow that diedturns out the fellow that died
I knew very well.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Oh no.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
In fact my son was his backup on the football team.
They used to go to a footballpractice together a lot.
They would sometimes get rideshome because he was our neighbor
.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Oh yeah.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Thank you, it was horrible.
It happened so fast.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
I can't even believe that Amazing.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Not next door, but just across the fairway there
this house was, and a lovely guy, we know him well, smiling
Andre.
He was amazing.
What's interesting is I've hadthe best training in the world.
My driving training isextraordinary and I knew once I

(52:48):
came to realize anything, I knew, wow, if I couldn't avoid this,
this was high speed.
I knew that I was in terriblepain.
I knew that I was struggling tobreathe.
I knew that I couldn't move.
Those were all imminent reality.
I mean, it was right there,acutely in my face.

(53:10):
So I said three prayers.
When I air quotes came to, Isaid three prayers and I'll
explain why the air quotes herein a second.
When I came to, I prayed threeprayers.
I prayed a prayer of contritionbecause I said, if I couldn't
avoid this very high speed, Iknow the pain that I'm in, I

(53:31):
know that I'm not breathing.
Well, I'm probably not going tomake it out of this.
So asking for forgiveness of mysins my hurts habits and
hangups.
Then I prayed a prayer ofpetition for whoever's in the
other vehicle.
They're probably in as bad ashape.
Little did I know that most ofthem, other than the one boy

(53:52):
that was killed.
The worst injury was a brokenarm.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Okay, okay, that's amazing.
It is amazing, I mean, I didnot expect to hear that.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
I'm sorry, go ahead so then I prayed a prayer of
petition for them and then Iprayed a prayer of gratitude
that neither my dog, who was myshadow everybody knew me me and
buckeye rode together always,but because I was getting it
detailed, she was a blonde dog,so she wasn't allowed in the
black car when daddy gets adetail so but she was always my

(54:22):
companion and so-.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
You were just thankful that she wasn't with
you at that time.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
My family wasn't in the car.
I prayed for that and I feltlike, oh, it's my time, I was
convinced of it.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
This car was going how fast.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
At impact.
Well, when they crossed themedian, they were going 109.
When they hit me, they weregoing 92.
And I was going 51 head on.
Driver's side head on.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Did you ever find out ?
I mean, it could have been justthe speed that he was going and
he lost control of the vehicle,or was there something more to
it that made him lose control?

Speaker 3 (54:59):
Well, the crazy part of the story.
I mean there's about ninedifferent crazy parts to this
story.
But they had borrowed this car.
It was a particularly warm dayfor spring break and they'd gone
down to the beach, rode withthe beach.
They'd had a great day.
But he had been driving crazyall day long.
Just he was showing out for hisbuddies and trying to be cool

(55:20):
and he had just been stoppedjust a couple minutes, literally
a couple minutes before.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
For speeding, for reckless driving.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
He received a ticket for reckless driving and passing
on the right and something elseI can't remember.
I think it was two or threetickets, just literally a minute
and a half, two minutes before,and it didn't slow him down,
they had texted, just gotstopped, not texted, tweeted,
just got stopped by a racistwhite cop for DWB Driving while

(55:51):
black.
That wasn't what happened atall.
The guy was, he was drivingcrazy.
And this particular policeofficer who felt terrible about
what happened to me because Iknew him, you know, if I had
delayed him a little longer, whoknows?
But he didn't learn anythingbecause he ran, I think, nine

(56:12):
cars off the road Once thepolice officer got out of view,
just drove crazy again.
And none of the boys had thecojones to say, hey, stop this
car, stop this car, stop drivinglike an idiot.
And they regretted it later.
But, andre, they had stopped athis house.

(56:33):
His little brother was in thecar for the whole first part of
the day and he said, hey, theyhad to go on to another place to
drop the other guys off.
Hey, drop off my little brother.
And the reason.
And his little brother said Iwant to go, I want to go, I want
to go and he was like no, no,get out of the car.
And he's like no, no, get outof the car.

(56:54):
And he saved his life yes.
Saved his life, oh my goodness.
Yeah, and what was also crazyis we were the only me and Andre
were the only two believers inthe crash.
Yeah, so what happened in thecrash was it was astounding.
Crash was it was astounding.

(57:16):
We didn't know for two yearslater that I had died in the
crash, until we talked to thehead paramedic, or head.
EMT and EMT fireman, and him andhis buddy, who was his deputy,
had both run my vitals andmarked me dead and walked away
from the car.
And so I remember I don't haveany.
I didn't have a near-deathexperience that I can recall,

(57:38):
which is interesting.
I'm a person of faith, youwould think, but I did not have
that experience.
I remember I didn't realize itat the time that I was trapped,
but I remember being in intensepain and I had experienced
horrific pain in my life.
This was the worst.
This was easily the worst painthat I felt.

(57:58):
My left side was shattered, myface was wrecked.
You're probably good thing it'snot a video audience.
They'd be saying, well, whydidn't they fix it?
It lands.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
There's nothing wrong with his face.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
They can do things with plastic surgery.
These days I have to say, likeon True Word, faith for Life.
My YouTube channel I alwaysjoke and I tell people I said my
half a year probably watchingout of pity.
But the fact of the matter ofit is I knew I was not breathing
.
I mean I was just taking likethat little sips of air, were

(58:37):
you actively trying to get abreath.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Oh yeah, you were forcing it.
I couldn't breathe in, I couldnot breathe in, I could not
breathe out.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
I had massive thoracic damage, and so I just
couldn't breathe.
I could not breathe and I saidokay.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
So they walked away from you.
This man is no longer with us.
Let's go take care of the othercar.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
So the other car was on fire and so the fire
department was.
They'd gotten everybody out ofthe car including Andre.
But they were actively tryingto put the fire out.
And it was.
The car burnt to the rails, butI was so close to it that I had
red on my arm.
I could feel the heat of thefire.

(59:21):
It was intense.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
And no one is there taking care of you, trying to
remove you from the vehicle.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
No, they figured he's gone, and so we didn't learn
this until two years later, whenhe comes in and goes.
He was a friend of mydaughter's.
We were at my daughter'sbirthday party and he said I
thought I was going to have totell your daughter that your dad
was gone.
And so, yeah, we were like what, excuse me, my son.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
That was your first time hearing it two years later.
Yeah, two years, okay.

Speaker 3 (59:47):
Yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy.
And I was nuts.
He said did you not know that?
I said no, we had no idea.
No one told us, so we didn'tknow.
And so I remember being in thecar and I said those three
prayers and I said it's okay,it's okay, God, I'm already with
it.
You've given me a way betterlife than I've ever deserved,

(01:00:10):
truthfully, truthfully, and Iwas very thankful and I was very
thankful that my family and mydog wasn't in the car and I just
, I just remember thinking.
Once I came to they did tell meit was a bunch of high school
boys and I said are they?
Because the helicopter wascoming in?

(01:00:30):
And I said to the lady workingon me heroic, heroic, paramedic.
She was an advanced lifesupport paramedic.
She had climbed through theback, they had peeled open the
door and she had climbed throughmetal and glass and everything
to work in between the frontseats to work on me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Well, when did they realize that you were not dead?
Well at some point.
How long were you lying there?
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
I don't know what the time frame was, but I know that
the roof had collapsed, and onmy head.
Now I'm six foot four, and somy spine was in an S shape and
my head was crushed down.
It actually crushed down theheadrest, if you can imagine how
low a headrest is.
It had actually crushed theheadrest down and so oh, my

(01:01:20):
goodness yeah it was brutal.
It was a gruesome position to bein.
My feet were facing the door,my knees were facing the
passenger side door.
My gosh, I was trapped in eightinches of space front to back.
This body Now I was in waybetter shape then, but this body
was trapped in that kind ofspace.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
I just can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
It was gruesome yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Tell me about how your body physically altered the
vehicle.
Your body.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Yeah, I bent the steering wheel with my mouth.
I broke the windshield.
What they tell me is my mouth,just below my bottom lip, hit
the steering wheel, bent it andglanced up and my forehead hit
the windshield.
The seatbelt stretched eightinches.
The metal tang stretched.

(01:02:09):
They're designed to stretchjust a micro amount because it
helped.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
I didn't even know they could.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Yeah, honestly and all the engineers that have
looked at the car since.
They said there's no wayanybody survived this.
The airbags they did deploy,but what use are they?
They deployed and then blew outright instantaneously the.
The impact speed was just sogreat and so who discovered that

(01:02:37):
you were indeed alive.
There was a young lady Idescribe her this way, the way I
remember her she had long,straight, mid-length, maybe to
the just below her shoulders inthe back.
She was slender, she had alittle diamond stud in her nose,
she had beautiful eyes, she wascrying profusely and she had

(01:03:03):
walked up.
And I remembered and I don'tknow if she actually had on a
white top, but what I saw was awhite top and she had walked up
and she was walking to like athree-quarter view of me.
And then I remember and Iopened my eyes because
periodically I was closing myeyes because they hurt, they

(01:03:23):
hurt.
They physically hurt, and I justwas able to open my eyes and
look this way to the left withmy perfect, because I couldn't
move my head, and she startsscreaming oh my God, oh my God,
this guy's alive, this guy'salive.
And so that's when they startedworking on me and that's when
the lady went crawling throughthe back.
The advanced life support persongot there and she crawled

(01:03:45):
through.
She immediately startedspeaking with me and they did an
assessment.
I was real familiar.
She could see and it's too badI didn't have it on.
It would have been great if Ihad it on.
But body armor helps toattenuate chest trauma, so it
would have been great if I'd hadthat on but, I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
You were headed home.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
I was headed home.
So that was in the back.
She could see firearms-relatedthings.
She could see that I waswearing a firearm, so she says
it's a black SUV.
She asked me are you SecretService?
And I said no, ma'am, but I dowork with them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Okay.
So she wasn't frightened bywhat she was seeing.
She was already familiar withit.
She made the connection.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
And I said if you're worried about my firearm, I
can't move my arm, but if I cantell you how to take it out, I
can make it safe she goes.
No, for now, let's leave itthere.
Let's just keep it there.
And in fact the, the medic orthe police officer at the
hospital, the trauma center.
He's the one that took it out.
I heard the helicopter and Iknew by having been a police

(01:04:52):
officer and having differentexperiences in my life.
I said, look, if thathelicopter is for me, I've lived
a good life, god's been betterthan me and I deserve Take
whoever's hurt worse in thatvehicle because they're young.
And she said to me distinctlyyou don't get to make that
decision, we make that decision.

(01:05:13):
I was like, okay, yes, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Was it still the same lady?
Who was Same lady?

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
She was with me in the car the whole time and in
fact, a man had walked up andyou could tell he was a person,
carried himself like military.
And he had walked up and hestood right in front of the car
and he said I want you to lookat this point on your windshield
, don't try to turn your head.

(01:05:40):
I'm going to come around toyour passenger side and I'm
going to talk to you.
Don't turn your head.
Okay, so he comes around to mypassenger side and he says
listen, mr, you're hurt real bad.
Is there anybody I can call foryou?
And I said, yes, I explainedthat my wife, she, doesn't like

(01:06:01):
the phone, so you're going tohave to keep calling and keep
calling and keep calling,because if she sees your number
she barely answers for me.
You're going to have to keep oncalling.
And so he did.
And she was on a treadmill atour house and my son says Mom,
you've got to answer this phone.
They keep calling, and sureenough, you know.

(01:06:21):
So they were able to get to thescene.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
While you were still in the car.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Yeah, they were cutting me out of the car.
Took them 40 minutes to cut meout of the car, but that's
traumatic in itself.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Walking up and seeing you in that state.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
I had been training, as you might imagine, I had been
training my family for years,with my background.
I trained, trained, trained,train, practice, practice,
practice.
And one thing I drilled intothem is losing your composure in
a traumatic event makes itworse.
Be calm, take deep breaths,think things through TTT, think
things through, survive the next30, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, 30

(01:07:02):
hours, 30 days.
Just keep surviving, keep inthat mode.
And so they were very calm.
They did great.
They did great.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
I feel like I need to start training my children.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
You know it's.
You always hope people say, oh,you're so paranoid.
I'm not the least bit paranoid.
I'm still, to this day, armedwherever I go.
Still, to this day, I teachpeople how to survive terrible
things, and it comes when youleast expect it.
It's that event, thatlife-changing event, comes when

(01:07:37):
you least expect it.
Now, the problem for us was Iwas 90% of the income
self-employed.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
I'm the business.

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
Which is not to demean my wife.
She worked very, very hard, butshe worked in a business that
didn't generate and we werebuying over the business.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
She was working at the time.
She wasn't a stay-at-home mom,she was working.
No, no.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
She had her own business and did that and she
did great at it.
She did a great job, job, butall of a sudden the income stops
that's why.
I tell people you haveabsolutely got to get disability
insurance, get as much as youcan afford, because I will tell
you it took years, years for thedisability to come in many

(01:08:15):
years.
I was stubborn when I got homefrom the hospital how long were
you in the hospital?
A day, basically yeah basicallya day.
Yeah, I was crazy.
I got sent home with ashattered left side, massive
thoracic injury, twisted aortawhich turns out it was not a

(01:08:36):
twisted a order, it was ananeurysm.
Yeah, it was a mess, but I didnot receive the best care.
And so things we started tolearn as time went on.
Going to different specialists,they were like why, why in the
world you should have been leftthere in the hospital.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Was your facial bones crushed.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
I broke 10 teeth.
My jaw moved back up into myskull.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
Is that the brain injury and the brain injury yeah
, or was it just a collisionwith?
The.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
That was just a physical trauma.
Yeah, the brain injury.
We started to realize that Ihad a substantial brain injury.
I couldn't remember anything,in fact, I didn't know that I
spoke multiple languages.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
I had no after the accident you had no idea, no
recollection of it at all.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
and people they were, they were very nice, they came
over and would read to me.
They asked my wife, what can wedo to help you other than bring
food, what can we do to helpyou?
And so she would say well, seanloves to read, but he can't
read right now.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
You had quite the library too, right?
Yes, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
Thousands of books.
Yeah, yeah, I love books, muchto my wife's chagrin.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Wait a minute.
How many times did you read theBible front to back?

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
At that point it was 33 and three quarters times.
That's incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
I'm at 38 now and I learn something new every time.
I bet Honestly every time.
Okay.
So, avid reader, you're inthere and your friends are
coming over to read for you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
Sorry, I interrupt a lot.
So she comes over and she wasdear and sweet and wonderful and
I still remember the lady'shusband was one of my dearest
friends and so she's like, well,what would you like me to read?
I said, just pick something offthe bookshelf.
And everything was gobbledygookto her.
And so finally she pullssomething off and then there's a
handwritten notebook next to it, spiral bound notebook, and I
said what's that you have there?

(01:10:24):
And she shows it to me and Iwas like what's that?
And she goes it's yourhandwriting and it looks like
Hebrew, Hebrew or Russian, Ican't remember which.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
It was you spoke both Hebrew and Russian.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Wow Okay.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think wetalked about these specific
languages that you did know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Yeah, the primaries were Hebrew, Russian, arabic and
different dialects within that,so related dialects that you
would be proximal.
Those areas that would beproximal, you have to learn
those.
So it was one of thoselanguages and I said well, whose
handwriting is that?
She told me it's yourhandwriting.
She thought I was kidding, shethought I was joking, because

(01:11:03):
she pulled it around in front ofthe hospital bed and showed it
to me and I was like that'sreally nice handwriting in a
weird sort of language.
I kind of had an idea it mightbe Hebrew.
And she goes you don't rememberthat you speak these and write
these.
And I'm like nope, I didn'tknow that at all.

(01:11:23):
How long after the accident wasthis realization?

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
don't remember that you speak these and write these
and I'm like I didn't know thatat all.
How, how, how long after theaccident was this realization?

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Probably two or three weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
Okay, two or three weeks, maybe a little more.
I had a surgery that I had tohave two, I think about two
weeks.
They said the reason theycouldn't do the surgery is the
inflammation was just so massive.
And when they did the surgeryto put my shoulder back together
, they found pieces of mycollarbone was completely
shattered and they found piecesof it inside at the bottom of

(01:11:54):
where my rib cage was, at thebottom rib.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Which blows my mind, because they sent you home.
Yeah, the pain that you musthave been in.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
It was brutal.
I can tell you it was awful.
It, yeah, it was a, it was a.
You must've been in.
It was brutal it was.
I can tell you it was awful, itwas horrific, never ending pain
and it was the worst pain thatI've ever experienced.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
What kind of pain do you experience today?
I would imagine there's so it'sintractable pain.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
It's there's no really for it.
I could take drugs for it.
I'm offered you name it theVeterans Administration in
Wilmington.
I cannot sing their praisesenough.
I love them.
That's so good to hear.
Oh my gosh, these are the bestpeople.
The physical therapist, drWalker, dr Jude Miller, my

(01:12:39):
audiologists, dr Oster, myneurologist all of them, all of
the ones, the specialists thattake care of every part of my
body, are utterly amazing people, and there are so many there.
I know I'm forgetting names andI feel bad about that, but I'm
going to tell you they were andthey are.

(01:13:00):
I'm there between one and threetimes a week.
Four years I'm there and Istill go.
I just came from one of theoff-site treatment centers.
They're angels on earth, in myopinion.
I understand that not every vais that way.
Mine is, and I'm blessed beyonddeserving.
So they work on me all the time.

(01:13:21):
Oh, and dr and Dr Fountain andher people, all the nurses also
that take care of me Unreal.
They're just beautiful people.
It's probably I don't know thatit ever goes below a six.
They say the one to 10 scale?
I don't know that it ever goesbelow a six.
It's brutal.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
But you don't wear it .

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
I try not to, and I'll tell you why.
One thing I taught my family isthat your pain and your
suffering is no one else'sproblem, no matter what the
cause of it is.
You can't think of it assomeone else's problem.
You can't make it about them.
I'm totally handicapped now.
I'm 100% disabled.
I will tell you that I'velearned some very interesting

(01:14:04):
things.
I remember when I was a policeofficer.
One of the things that I woulddo is if I drove by and saw a
car with non-handicapped tagsand no hang tag, I would wait
for the driver.
The driver would come out andI'd ask them hey, are you
handicapped?
No, no, I was just going inthere for a minute.
No, no, no, are you handicapped?
They go, no, I was just goingin there for a minute.

(01:14:27):
No, no, no, are you handicapped?
They go?
No, would you like to be?
It ticked me off worse thananything, so I had a sensitivity
toward handicapped,accessibility, just what they
have to deal with, what people,blind, people, amputees, all of
these things.
I had a real heart for them andthen I became one.
It's mind boggling.
And so people who go into thatcareer, where that's who they

(01:14:51):
deal with, what angels on earththey are.
So I would say, yeah, I'm in apretty substantial pain and the
system because of my braininjury, injury the systems of my
body aren't working properly.
So you have an autonomic systemand a parasympathetic system.
They do things like blink youreyes, right, you blink your eyes

(01:15:13):
, you don't even think about it,it's just a well, I have to
think about it.
The the process of breathing,the all of the different body
processes, organs.
I'm now insulin-dependentdiabetic.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
You were not prior to that, no.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
I was in phenomenal health.
Phenomenal health, Greateyesight All of this now I wear
corrective lenses.
I use a cane, a walker andcrutches.
That's what I do, that's mylife now, in fact, the cane to
my right, that's my life now.
Yeah, In fact, the cane to myright was made by my dear friend
Doug Allen.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
It is a beautiful cane by the way.
I noticed it as soon as I sawyou at the front door.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Handmade from a branch that fell off a tree in
his yard.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Incredible Yep and he made it to the perfect time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Oh, he's amazing.
He's amazing.
He's amazing.
I'm telling you that.
The church family that I have,grace Community, topsail I've
spoken all across.
When I did my book tour itbecame this big thing Five

(01:16:20):
months and speaking and doingthat, be on the radio and people
say you need to have your ownradio show Because I was much
better then physically andmentally.
My mental acuity then was muchbetter than that it is now and
it will get worse.
Everything will continue todegrade.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
So you've had the accident, you are in a state of
recovery, you're learning thingsabout yourself.
Now tell me how you got intoradio and where were you living
now?
Are you still in Delaware?
At this time yeah, we were inDelaware.
So what made you decide youwant to do a radio show and
reach out to someone in TexasLike how, tell me about how that
came to fruition?

Speaker 3 (01:17:01):
So I was on a bunch of different radio and all over
the country and then some TVshows.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
Speaking about your book.
Yeah, I wrote the book mostlybefore the crash it was like
almost 90% done, right?
Yeah, it was almost 90%finished.
So after the accident you douse some technology to help you
finish the book, the last 10% ofthe book, Something called
Dragon.
Yeah Right, so if you buy thatbook.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
Excellence Killed the Church.
If you buy that book, it's notgreat because it's brain injury.
Boy trying to talk into amicrophone that's converting to
speech which is really not whereit is now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Right, this was back in 2012.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
2012, right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
So you finished the book.
It's now published and it'sgetting some publicity.
Yes, well, I hired a publicist.
You did.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
So here's my bright idea.
This is advice.
This is free.
You're listeners, you don'thave to pay anything for this.
But think of the money you'llsave.
Unless you write a bestseller,you're not going to make a ton
of money selling books.
So I wrote a book I was aprolific writer prior to the
crash a book of over 120 poemsthat I wrote songs, hymns, you

(01:18:13):
name it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:14):
Yeah, yeah, a whole bunch.
I have another book, a novel,that I'm working on that I'm
hoping that I can finish it andpublish it.
So I'd written an awful lot,but I wasn't finished with this
book.
Excellence Killed the Church.
How Mediocrity is DestroyingAmerica.
But it was such a controversialbook I thought, wow, I'll hire

(01:18:35):
a publicist and we'll do allthis.
So we took the money, thinkingI'm going to go back to work.
This is Sean Greener thinkinghere In my mind oh, I'm go back
to work.
This is Sean Greener thinkinghere In my mind oh, I'm going
back to work.
I've been hurt, real bad, lotsof times before I'm going back
to work, okay, and I'm going tomake the money and so we live,
thank God.
We put food away, my wife, Iremember she was always great

(01:18:58):
about it and I went to her oneday I said, look, we need to be
putting food back prior to thecrash and we had whole big
things of food that we did,thank God, and people didn't
know it until years after thecrash, that's what we ate.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
Okay, because the income it had completely stopped
, and so now you were justrelying on what you'd stored
away.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
I had no concept in my head, even though once we
started receiving theappropriate medical care, the
doctors all would say you arenever going to get better,
you're only going to get worse.
And it was only until DrHopwood, a neuropsychologist,
tested me for two straight dayssolid.

(01:19:39):
They're the hardest two days ofmy life.
I've had lots of very toughtraining.
I've been through lots of toughexperiences.
I was literally sweating tryingto put together a children's
puzzle of the United Stateswhere it says what the state is,
the shape, the color, all thosethings.
And I still couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
Did you realize, while you were taking the test,
that it was not going well?
Yeah, you did.

Speaker 3 (01:20:06):
Yeah, yeah, it was awful Cause I was in a total
state of delusion up until thosemoments.
I told my wife after the firstday I don't know, I'm not going
back.
And she said no, you're goingback.
People need to understand howbad this is, because I had
always been a workaround guy.
My process of thinking anddoing was keep moving the next

(01:20:30):
30, survive, the next 30, keepmoving, keep adapting.
All of these things were greatfor my life.
The problem was it wasn't greatLike when doctors would ask me
how are you doing?
How are you feeling Great?
I'm doing great Because in mymind, I wasn't great, like when
doctors would ask me how are youdoing?
How are you feeling Great?
I'm doing great Because in mymind, I am doing great.
My benchmark of great is waydifferent than most people's

(01:20:51):
great.
And so, yes, I'm in terriblepain, but you know what I'm
blessed?
I'm blessed to be here, andthat was the worst thing I could
do, because they couldn't, theyhadn't experienced anybody like
me.
It's just not what you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Were you fooling them ?

Speaker 3 (01:21:08):
I think some of them I was Some of them.
They're busy and they weren'tengaged.
But there was no fooling DrHopwood.
Let me tell you what she wasamazing.
She was a godsend.
She had talked to professors ofmine, the president of my
seminary, dr Ford.
She had talked to these peoplebecause she wanted to get an

(01:21:30):
idea, okay, what was before like.
And she talked to my wife andall this.
But you know, wives they'rebiased, hopefully.
And so she wanted to get abroader view.
She was amazing, and atdifferent points in time I could
see tears coming down her facebecause I was so frustrated.

(01:21:51):
Why can't I do this stupidsimple thing?
Why can't I tie my shoes?
Why can't I button my shirt?
What's going on here?
How come I can hold aconversation with you but I
can't do stupid simple things?
How come I can't rememberanything?
My memory was shot and all ofthese things.

(01:22:13):
I knew that I had to have liveda better life than I had
remembered.
And so she looked me right inthe eye the second day we're
about to finish up and she saidDr Greener, I am sorry to tell
you you are not only never goingto get better, you are going to
get a lot worse and it's goingto be a hard road for you, and

(01:22:38):
she had a conversation with meand my wife about getting our
affairs in order.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Several doctors had that same conversation and then
you were even on hospice at onepoint were you not.

Speaker 3 (01:22:50):
Yeah, yeah yeah, I could still be on it now if I
wanted to be.
But that's why I'm back in thepodcasting, because I had at a
certain point I couldn't do itanymore.
I couldn't sit up anymore.
I have a special what's calleda TLSO brace and it helps hold
me up.
It's got a metal bar and apadding system here.

(01:23:12):
It comes down and it mounts atmy waist and that helps me.
But you can't wear that all thetime.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
Because if you do wear it all the time, you won't
be able to hold yourself up atall, except for when you have
that on, and even then it won'twork anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
Tell me about the aortic aneurysm.
And this is a life-threateningcondition that you live with now
, correct?

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
So it's called a 5+, so it's 5or bigger.
So it's five or bigger.
The risk of MRIs for me seems.
I had 30 some MRIs prior todeveloping this massive
claustrophobia.
I was never claustrophobicbefore and I didn't know that I
was claustrophobic, untilthey're pushing me into the

(01:23:57):
thing and it's like, yeah, thisis.
She was like you said you'vehad these before.
I said, yeah, I have, and Iloved them.
They were great.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
But you were compacted in that car.
Is that triggered this whole?
It was yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
Different psychologists have said that
they think probably thatsubconscious event where you
don't want to be trapped inthere Because I could not move.
There was no moving in that carat all.
I had no option to move and Ididn't have the concept of being
able to move.
It was not even in my head,because everything was collapsed

(01:24:34):
around me.
When you're in that positionfor such a long period of time,
you can't move Mind-bendingInvoluntarily.
Now, if you're sitting stillbecause you're trying to avoid
getting shot or being detected,that's one thing.
You're doing that voluntarily.

Speaker 1 (01:24:51):
Still not easy, but I just can't imagine Crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:24:56):
I can't.
So she told me.
She said you need to apply fordisability right away.
And I still fought it.
I want to say it was four yearsbefore we ever applied or
looked into it.
I left there saying I willprove you wrong.
I have defeated everything inmy life the odds.
I was two and a half monthspremature.

(01:25:16):
I was 2.6 pounds at birth.
Oh my goodness, at that pointin time I was the youngest.
I was the smallest baby in mystate to have ever survived.
Wow yeah.
And I said I've been overcomingmy whole life long, I am not
going to stop now.
And so went a considerableperiod longer.
Of course, what does that do?
That drains your finances.
Yeah.

(01:25:36):
So we had spent everything thatwe had saved in our marriage up
until that point.
Every dime was all gone in ourmarriage up until that point
every dime was all gone.
Most of our credit cards werecharged up because I'm being
forceful with my wife and sayingno, no, no, no, no, no.
We're where I'm going back towork.
I knew what kind of money Icould make and I'll make up for

(01:25:57):
lost time and all of this.
And it cost us and that'sthat's on me, now, what I've
learned.
You have a brain injury, like,for instance, the trauma doctors
said did you ever loseconsciousness?
As I'm being wheeled intotrauma, did you ever lose
consciousness?
Well, that question in and ofitself is malpractice.
We've learned this, since whenyou're unconscious, guess what?

(01:26:19):
You don't know that you wereunconscious, that you were
unconscious, and so, yeah, theywere.
They kept asking me and I keptgoing nope, nope, sure wasn't,
which hurt us.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
It hurt us in the long run.
Yeah, it was an assessment thatyou desperately needed to be
correct.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
Yeah, and it wasn't yeah, exactly okay so suffice it
to say brutal, brutal realityhit us.
When one day I just said to mywife, I said I don't think I can
do it.
I tried several times.
I passed out in people's homes,fell down basement steps, broke

(01:26:59):
out in a sweat and passed outwhen they were there bringing me
.
They knew who I was locally.
They knew who I was because itwas national news.
The crash was national news andum, I just remember saying I
don't think I can do it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Um, I'm going to step back.
The aortic aneurysm you talk towhat?
Five or six different surgeonsand they're like we're not
touching this right.
It is what it is and it's whatit's going to be.

Speaker 3 (01:27:27):
So my, my wonderful, wonderful, I love him, my, my
cardiologist, now unbelievableguy.
I asked him.
I said, after he looked at allmy records and all my imaging
and everything, I said, so, okay, so what, what would you do?
What would you do?
And he goes well, if you weremy father and I'm like, whoa,

(01:27:49):
hey, why do we have to go tofather?
Why can't I be your?

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
brother.

Speaker 3 (01:27:54):
How about your distinguished older brother?
Maybe that?
How about your?
I mean your dad?
I got to be your dad all of asudden, and so we had a good
laugh about that.
And then he said look, ifyou're my dad, if you present it
to me at the ER and I'm just,I've got to try to save your
life.
I'm going to try, but you'll bedead in three minutes.

(01:28:14):
He said I have a great team,our team is phenomenal, but I'm
not operating on you.
And he was in a long line ofcardiologists that said oh no,
okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
So this is what you live with on the daily, or do
you just pretend it's anon-issue?
At this point, you appear to beliving your life with not much
thought to that.
That's the outside appearance.
What's going on in your headand your heart?

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):
So my faith is.
I remember we'll go back to theNavy for just a minute.
I remember getting back fromthis long trip back to the
States I'd been in the air for agazillion hours.
I hadn't slept in a gazillionhours, so I slept.
I mean, I don't know how long Islept, it was a long time and I

(01:29:04):
was staying on a military base.
I woke up I realized it's EasterSunday and I had kind of fallen
not fallen away from my faith,but I wasn't really practicing
it because I was focusing on allthis darkness in the world, you
know, and I was like EasterSunday and I'm not in church.
What's wrong with me?
And I put that Easter Sundayand I'm not in church, what's
wrong with me?
And I put that quickly out ofmy head, say hey, buddy, you're

(01:29:27):
super tired, you've got to doyour laundry, you've, you know?
Blah, blah, blah.
So I put it out of my head,walked to the chow hall and I
saw this God awful ugly,hand-painted, look like blue and
white bus, with this littletiny.
It was all at the far end ofthe parking lot of the chow hall
, this dear little old man doingthis, the come here sign, come

(01:29:54):
here, come here.
So he started walking toward me.
I started walking towards him.
We met in the middle and hetold me.
He said hey, my name is JewelMartin.
This is in Memphis, tennessee.
And he commenced to tell mehe's from church and he said you
know how do you like to go tochurch with us today?
We'll carry you there and carryyou back.
I said, well, sir, I certainlyappreciate that invitation

(01:30:15):
Absolutely.
But I said no, I got to get inhere and eat, I don't want to
miss chow.
And then you know, I've got toeat lunch, I've got to come back
here for chow, and then I'vegot a bunch of duties to do
later this afternoon.
So I do appreciate itAbsolutely.
But no, thank you, I appreciateit, he goes.
Well, guess what we have?
We have a full kitchen andSouthern ladies and they know

(01:30:37):
how to cook.
We have a whole kitchen, adining area.
I said, well, sir, I appreciatethat, that sounds really good,
but I've got to work out, I haveto stay very fit.
And he said well, guess what wehave.
We have a big old gym with afull-size basketball court and
we got glass backboards and wegot volleyball and we got all

(01:30:58):
kinds of people your age andthere's other military fellows
that are in there eatingbreakfast right now.
You won't go in there and eatbreakfast.
You'd come right on out afteryou're done in breakfast.
I'll carry you right on inthere, carry you right back.
You'll get here in time forchow this evening, if not before
, but in the meantime we'll feedyou a good lunch, you can do
your exercises and all that.
And I said okay, well, he's gotme, he's got me.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
You were not getting out of that I got no more and
dear.

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
he's long since gone to his reward.
But I went to church and I wasvery moved by the church.
I was also under massiveconviction.
Why did I not even think ofchurch, especially on Easter?
What am?
I thinking so yes, that got meback into going to church and
that's actually where I met myfirst wife and who gave me a

(01:31:45):
beautiful, amazing daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
That's who got you back into church and back into
religion, joel.

Speaker 3 (01:31:52):
Martin did when I was in the Navy, yeah, but I had
stayed with it.
I had stayed with it after thatand I was always fascinated
with it.
The scriptures fascinated meand I thought, wouldn't it be
neat if I could read these inthe original language?

Speaker 1 (01:32:05):
Wouldn't that be a fun thing?
That's why you went to Hebrew.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
Yeah, I did Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
Can you still read those languages at all?
I can do some Some.
You had a great many, a largepart of the scripture memorized
in your head.
You could recite them withoutthe Bible in front of you.
Is that right?
Am I getting that right?

Speaker 3 (01:32:24):
Yeah, and that was the weird thing, I didn't
realize other people couldn't dothat.
I used to like to do thesedramatic readings act out what
was happening, make it dramaticand exciting and make it come to
life.
And so I did that and it wasjust easy peasy for me to
remember entire books of theBible and gone.

Speaker 1 (01:32:50):
Tell me about the radio show.
This was a very popular radioshow that you were doing the
radio thing was crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
I contacted this company that produces radio
shows because somebody keptgiving me their names, like call
these people.
And so I took money from oursavings and I didn't know the
first thing about monetizing.
And within a short period oftime we debuted at 114,000
listeners.

(01:33:17):
And when I get a call rightafter the show ends, I get a
call from Texas, from the CEO ofthis company, and he says well,
hey, dr Sean, listen, I'm justcalling you up to congratulate
you 114.
He said we've never had that,we've never hit that number on a
debut.
He says, man, you must know alot of people and I said that

(01:33:37):
probably counts for my family,maybe, and some friends and some
people.
In pity, I don't think I have114 people that would listen.
He says no, 114,000.
This was your debut, my debut,yeah, first time.
I didn't know anything about it.
So they produced the show for ayear.
They were wonderful, yeah 5.

(01:33:58):
Some million subscribers to mywebsite at that time, and I
loved it, though.
I love teaching God and Country.
The Collision of Faith andPolitics was the name of the
show.
Eventually it was carried onmultiple platforms.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
You're doing this radio show.
It Is Religion and PoliticsColliding.
So to get that kind of reactionfrom the public listening to
you, what do you attribute thatto?
Because usually mixing religionand politics does not work, you
know what's funny is I hearthat a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:34:26):
I hear that a lot and my show True Word, faith for
Life.
What I'm doing now much less inthe area of politics, maybe
one-tenth of one percent, but Ican tell you that they are
inexorably connected religionand politics.
Because if you don't payattention to politics, you will
lose your religion, your abilityto practice your faith with

(01:34:50):
freedom and the liberty asintended, as the founders
intended.
You'll lose it because it's onthe chopping block at any given
time, and so I tried toillustrate active applied civics
.
A dear friend of mine, markHerr, founded Center for
Self-Governance and it's anapplied civics project really,

(01:35:12):
and it teaches people how to getinvolved in government and to
be plugged in.
One of the crossovers is ourfounders were people of faith.
They can diminish them all theywant because that's within
their agenda.
Hey, I don't want to believethat Judeo-Christian values were

(01:35:34):
at the center of our founding.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
But that's the case.

Speaker 3 (01:35:37):
They were.
That's a whole show in and ofitself.
But I had a unique perspective.
I taught a class.
I had started teaching theclass before the crash at a
church that I was attending andwe were bursting at the seams.
The people were reallyinterested in this.
So every week I would come backand we'd have to put chairs
outside the room.
And there were chairs outsideand people were leaning in and

(01:36:01):
standing looking through the twowindows, and it just grew and
grew and grew because peoplewere hungry for that kind of
knowledge.
And when I came back from thecrash which it was a, it was a
while and it was tough I thoughtI could do it a lot easier than
I could, but I was sweatingprofusely from just so much pain
.
You never be, in that kind ofpain where you're just drenched

(01:36:22):
with sweat.
But when we did the show it wasthe radio show.
The radio show God and CountryCollision of Faith and Politics.
When I did that, people werelooking for somebody to explain
to them what's really happeninghappen.
Somebody that knows, somebodythat has friends that he can

(01:36:43):
call and say, hey, person in theadministration or a person at
high levels of agency andotherwise.
Would you be on my show andthey would explain what was
happening and I could explainthings that were happening.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
I have access.
Then they were guests on yourshow.

Speaker 3 (01:37:02):
Some of them were Okay, the ones that could.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:05):
But I had access to information and I was still kind
of in touch with that communityand so as a result of that I
don't know, it just was crazy ittook off and I was doing, I
think, three hours a week andthen eventually, what did the
numbers grow to?
5.6 million, yeah, yeah.

(01:37:26):
If, if.
I converted all of thosesubscribers to my website that
came from the radio show.
If I can was if I had abusiness head.
I could have converted them andwould have made millions of
dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
But as it was, what did you make from the radio show
?
I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:37:43):
Zero, zero, yeah, not a dime.
And so on Sundays, the classhad grown to such an extent
where we needed more space.
So, there were some deer folks,the Stableys, and they had a
room that could accommodate ahundred people in their house.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
That's a big house.

Speaker 3 (01:38:05):
The room was pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
Oh really.

Speaker 3 (01:38:07):
And yeah, it was pretty amazing.
And I had this idea of kehalah,which in Greek, ekklesia, a lot
of pastors will refer to churchas ekklesia, the Greek word
ekklesia but really it doesn'thave a religious connotation,
it's a gathering, it's moresecular than it is anything else
, whereas Kehalah is Hebrew andit is.

(01:38:32):
It's the gather, it's like thehome church, right Meeting in
people's homes, and you meet,you have a meal, you worship,
you do music and then you do thelearning, you learn have a meal
, you worship, you do music andthen you do the learning, you
learn.
And so I had a thought of doingthat, and so I talked to Mr and
Mrs Stabley Mrs Stabley hasgone on to her reward, but they
welcomed all of us crazy peopleinto their home and that grew

(01:38:54):
and grew and grew.
So they said, how about doing abroadcast on Sundays, sundays
with Dr Sean?
So I did, and that grew.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
That's also a radio show.
Are you podcasting at thispoint?

Speaker 3 (01:39:03):
it was a radio and facebook live okay video at
facebook live and a couple otherplaces, and it went all around
the world.
And what here's what's crazy isyou don't know who's listening.
You have no idea who's hearingthe message, and what I tried to
do on sundays was try to teachthe Bible and the character and

(01:39:28):
nature of God, what being afollower of the way means and
what Yeshua was all about andwhat he is all about, and my
goal always was to teach in sucha way that seconds after you go
out the door you can apply thethings that I taught.
And I wanted to be in a veryreal way, real life, and so that

(01:39:52):
grew.
In fact, we had a group ofladies from Belgium who they
were an atheist book group.

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
Really.

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):
Atheist, Actually atheist, we say it.
We say it incorrectly.
It's atheist, which literallymeans against God.

Speaker 1 (01:40:10):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:40:11):
And so they were an atheist book group, all ladies.
Somehow they got a copy of mybook.
I remember back then thecompany that sold the books.
I went on the website and Ifound I could see that all these
books went to Belgium.
I thought, well, that'sinteresting.
And they started listening tothe show because I had embedded

(01:40:36):
links to the show.
So this group of ladies it getsme every time One by one came
to Christ.
One by one, they placed theirfaith in Christ, yep, and then
they became a Christian bookclub.
Really.

(01:40:57):
Yeah, yeah, if I do nothing elsein my life that made it worth
it.
That made it worth it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:03):
That made it worth it .
That's why you survived thatcrash 13 people, I guess.
I would imagine it's more.

Speaker 3 (01:41:13):
Who knows?

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
Who knows?

Speaker 3 (01:41:15):
Yeah, but it's, all of us have this mission in life
and I was so moved by it.
I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe it when theystarted writing to me and they
say we all listen to your show.
We gather at this weird hourhere and we listen to your show
and they subscribe to do all thedifferent things and they were
listening it blew my mind, itwas wonderful that's something

(01:41:38):
to be so proud of well it's.
That's a god thing, that's notme, that's somehow or another.
They saw through this goofinessand somehow another could
connect with god, and so that'swhat my goal was for that, and
this is the first book, correct,first book, yeah, okay which

(01:41:59):
was nothing great by the way.
This is.
This is not a great book.
If you buy my book.

Speaker 1 (01:42:04):
I did it is bold, it's real bold.
You don't mince words in thisbook Did you have negative
feedback where people were likeyou are wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:42:14):
I will tell you a story about that.
What's interesting you askedabout was the book well received
?
Yes, but in some cases, yes,very much so, and a lot of times
I would hear well, I'm gladsomebody finally said it, which
I appreciated.
I appreciate all that, but mywife and my son and I were in
Ocala, florida, and there was achance that I was going to be

(01:42:39):
senior pastor of a huge churchthere and we were in the early
talking phases of it, so much sothat my family, we went and
looked at houses andneighborhood and looked at
building.
What kind of house do we wantto build?
We met with the builder andfigured out which exact one we
wanted it was.
At that point, I have to tellyou, we were having dinner and

(01:43:04):
in walks this very famous andI'm not going to say his name
because it wouldn't be fair tohim, but he walks in with his
posse.
He's famous Big time preacher,tv guy, author, and I pointed
out to my wife and son.
I said man, can you believethat?
Look at that, he's in here andI happen to have an extra copy
of my book.
So I autographed the book andwrote an inscription to him and

(01:43:28):
thank you for all you do and forthe great work in the kingdom
and all this stuff.
I'd only known the work that hehad done and what appeared to
be the fruits of it.
So I walk over to him and I say, listen, I don't want to
interrupt you, I just want togive you this book as a gift
from me to you.
I appreciate what you do and Idon't want to interrupt.

(01:43:49):
I just want to give you thisbook.
He looked at the book and goesexcellence, killed the church.
He didn't even read the secondpart of it, which is how
mediocrity is destroying America.
And he looked at that and hethrew the book at me, threw the
book literally at me.
He goes the church ain't dead,I don't need this book.
I said, oh okay.
I said, well, here's the thing.
What I always tell people isthe book is either for you or

(01:44:14):
it's about you.
This one, apparently, is aboutyou.
Oh, my goodness yeah.
I was so glad that I thought ofit so pre-crash.
I would have never had aproblem thinking of that, but I
was so glad that post-crash cameright to mind and I don't think
it had any effect on himbecause he's still doing what
he's doing.
And I went back to the tableand they were like what happened
and I explained.
They were like well that'sdisappointing.

(01:44:36):
So yeah, but the point of it isis how he received it received
it.
He just looked at the cover andread the first part of the
title.
Yeah, yeah so yeah, it's anunfortunate thing.
That's how the world is.

Speaker 1 (01:44:54):
Okay, yeah, you have a second book.
Actually, there's two others Iwant to mention.
You have the Bible Summary forReal People.
How did that one go?

Speaker 3 (01:45:00):
That one went well.
Unfortunately, I signed up witha publisher who took all of the
royalties.
I didn't get a dime from that,yeah, and where most people buy
their books I'm not saying thename because I don't want to
give them any press.
It took years to get them totake the book down.
I said these people are rippingme off, they're taking the

(01:45:22):
money, they're not paying me andthat book sold well.
That book outsold the firstbook by a long shot, not a dime,
not a dime.
Still not gotten a dime to thisday, and I never will.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
Well, I mean, can you republish it?

Speaker 3 (01:45:34):
I'm rewriting it.
I'm almost finished.
I'm about 98% finished thatbook.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
These are some expensive lessons.
They are that you've learnedover the years.
You know what I'm not good at.

Speaker 3 (01:45:45):
Business.
I am not a good business person.
I'm not a good tech person, nota good tech person and I'm not
a good business person.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
I gotcha, I'll admit it, all right.
So what is the name of thispodcast?
You said it before.

Speaker 3 (01:45:58):
I just want to drive it home the True Word Faith for
Life with Dr Sean.
It's on YouTube.
It's a video podcast, so Iapologize in advance.

Speaker 1 (01:46:06):
I have been, I watched it and it's very good,
and you're doing it live, whichis impressive.

Speaker 3 (01:46:11):
It's something I'm not brave enough to do.
Most of it is live.
I tell you, I like doing thatbecause it's kind of like having
church.
It's very small, we just gotstarted.
And how that started was afriend of mine that I've known
almost all of his life.
He and a guy he knew founded apodcast and it was very
successful very quickly.
And he asked me.

(01:46:32):
He said, hey, would you mindbeing a guest on our show?
And I said sure, so I was aguest on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:46:40):
Oh, this is watchful.
Is this watchful?

Speaker 3 (01:46:42):
Watchful and Christopher yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46:43):
Okay, yeah, I saw that one.

Speaker 3 (01:46:45):
Yeah, so that episode was particularly successful, I
guess.
And they said hey, how'd youlike to come back and be a
regular guest?

Speaker 1 (01:46:52):
on our show Like every week.

Speaker 3 (01:46:54):
Every week, Every week.
So every Monday at 10, I'm ontheir show, but that's a much
bigger show than mine.
But the reason that I'm backdoing podcasting was I figured
I'm not dead yet.
I was supposed to be dead along time ago and they always
remind us hey, listen, you gotto understand because there's a

(01:47:15):
lot of other stuff wrongAdvanced heart failure.

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):
Oh, beyond the aortic aneurysm, there's other things
happening, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:47:22):
Way, way more than that.
I presented at the emergencyroom with a thousand blood sugar
and 12, 12 A1C maybe a littlehigher than that.
Yeah.
So I was lucky to have survivedthat because my pancreas is
failing.
So, as I said, the differentthings just stop working and
sometimes they just turn offlike a switch, and that's how it
is.
My doctors in Delaware refer toit as a cliff death.

(01:47:45):
So one minute you're alive,animated, next minute you're off
, just like that, depending onhow I die.
Which system fails first.
To give you an idea of where weare with it we've already met
with the undertaker.
We've already got everythinglaid out On my phone.
Everybody that's superimportant to me.
That's going to be a part of it.
We've already met with theundertaker.
We've already got everythinglaid out on my phone.
Everybody that's superimportant to me.

(01:48:06):
That's going to be a part of it.
My funeral is planned out towhen this song is played.
When that song is played, whattype of message do I want?
I want it to be a very strong,evangelical, positive event and
I want it to be uplifting and Iwant it to be a home going.
So you know, we met right upthe road.

(01:48:29):
Yeah, is the people is going tolay me out, and I felt like
I've tried to do as much of theplanning in advance as I can,
because I don't want my familyto have to do that.
That's why I always say have atrust, have an estate plan.
It's not just for wealthypeople.
Have all of your importantdocuments together.
If you have life insurance,have it all together.
If you have any insurance atall, have it together.

(01:48:51):
You have to make it as easy foryour family as you possibly can
, because when the time comes,it's going to be a devastating
thing, a devastating thing, andso you don't want to put them
through that, so help them withit.
And so you don't want to putthem through that, so help them
with it.
And so we did that, andperiodically we modify it.
It's three pages.
My funeral, it's a three-pageevent, but it's not going to be

(01:49:14):
long.
It's not going to be super longbecause my pastor at Grace
Community, topsail, is going tobe the one preaching it, and
I've already said hey, man,don't make people squirm in
their seats.
Make them squirm in their seatsfrom conviction.
But don't make them squirm intheir seats from sitting in
there.
That's funny, but anyway, no,he's a great guy, he'll do a
great job.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
All right.
Well, we're going to wrap thisup.
Now.
Let's talk about future plans.

Speaker 3 (01:49:44):
There was a novel that you were working on, or did
you complete that?
I mean, it's a good ways along,but I need there's a lot of
work.
There's probably, if I have ayear of life left in me, there's
a year of getting it where itneeds to be.
My biggest thing is rewritingthe Bible summary for real
people, and I've added about 85%content.
I need a publisher.
Okay, and I'm not going topublish it.

(01:50:05):
I'll end up giving it away.
Self-publish.
Well, you got to understandself-publishing is very
expensive.
So I could go to that companythat I mentioned, that I don't
give them any business becausethey're not really ethical
people.
I could go to that big companywhere everybody buys books and
you can do a self-publishingthing right through them for

(01:50:25):
very little money.
I could do that route, but thatreally and truly is.
Your book will never be seen.
It's a way for them to makemoney, it's not a way for you.
So I'm on a very small fixedincome.
It's a very fixed income.
So the resources that I used tohave I don't have anymore.
So it has to and I don't needan advance.

(01:50:48):
I just need them to cover allthe costs.
I can't pay six or seven oreight or $10,000 anymore to do
the hybrid publishing or sharedpublishing, whatever they have,
all kinds of buzzwords for it.
It has to be a traditionalpublisher.
I prefer a Christian publishingcompany just because they'll,

(01:51:10):
they'll get it, they get it, butI just don't have the money to
co-publish it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:16):
Right, I do know that there are some people in our
community that have publishedtheir own books, so if there's
anyone out there listening whocan guide Dr Greener in a way to
get that thing published wherehe can actually make money off
of it this time that'd be greatinformation to have I contacted
a company that turns completedmanuscripts into eBooks?

Speaker 3 (01:51:40):
And.
I thought, if there was a waynow it's costly, it's very
costly to do If there was a wayto do that, have it converted
into an eBook for a download andthen you pay what you can If
you can pay, great.
If you can't, that's okay, andif maybe you can afford to pay
for three or four other people'sbooks, pay it forward that

(01:52:00):
would be okay with me.
I'm almost to that point,because if I die before it gets
published, then it just sits.
Nobody's getting anything fromit.
That one is the one I'm mostproud of.
That one is the one that's-.

Speaker 1 (01:52:14):
The Bible summary for real people.

Speaker 3 (01:52:16):
I'm not sure what I'm going to call this version.
It's not going to be a secondedition, even though I own the
copyright to the first edition.
It's so much more of a book now.
Okay, I'm super proud of thatone and I would love for that to
be in people's hands.
If you think my first book,excellence, killed the Church,
if you think that is gritty, oof.

(01:52:38):
Oh really.
Oh yeah, this one's much more.

Speaker 1 (01:52:40):
Oh see, I didn't expect that at all.

Speaker 3 (01:52:43):
Much more in your face.
Okay, Because when you have adeath sentence, when you're told
hey, don't buy any greenbananas.
That's one thing I've learned.
Being terminally ill is thatwhole thing of the what do they
call it Filter.
I didn't get one.
You didn't get one.
Yeah, or it broke in the crash,because I don't have it anymore.
I figure I've only got acertain amount of time to tell

(01:53:07):
people about.
Jesus, the real story aboutJesus.
The real story about God, thereal story about faith.
I've only got a certain amountof time to help people
understand how all these movingpieces in the world work and why
it's critical that you get it,and you get it quickly.
You don't need a coupledoctorates in theology.

(01:53:29):
You don't need that, not withthe resources that are available
today.
But in that book I really getgritty to the faith.

Speaker 1 (01:53:38):
Well, I do hope you get that book published.
I really do.
I would love to read the newedition of that book.

Speaker 3 (01:53:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:53:45):
The genre of the Other, the novel.
What's the genre of that book?

Speaker 3 (01:53:50):
So that was intended to be the first in a series of
books somewhat based loosely onmy life and the like other life,
the other life, the intrigueyeah there's pieces of that, but
that one is probably.
I've been told by test readersand they said this is the book
that's going to.
This is the one.
Publish this one.

Speaker 1 (01:54:10):
Well, I hope you get that one published too.

Speaker 3 (01:54:11):
But I thought that one's not going to bring anybody
to Christ, that's not going tochange anybody's life.

Speaker 1 (01:54:15):
Probably not.

Speaker 3 (01:54:17):
And it's a book that really it's gritty, but it's a
book of you could be maybe 10thgrade and up.
You don't want your young kidsreading it because it's really
gritty.

Speaker 1 (01:54:35):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:54:36):
But it's clean, where there's not a bunch of
profanity.
My goal was to create whichlook, hey look, I was a sailor,
the mouth came along with it,and anybody that knows me.
I'm not a perfect man by anystretch, but I wanted to have a
book, a novel, an exciting thingto read, where there weren't
things in it that you wouldn'tfeel comfortable giving your

(01:55:01):
older teen.
I want them to be able to readthat, and so that's how it was
written, and I've gotsubstantially more to do on it,
just because of the times havechanged.
There've been a lot of changes,but it's a man.
Yeah, it's a murder mystery andit's gritty.
It is gritty and it touches onsome very, very third rail

(01:55:23):
issues.

Speaker 1 (01:55:23):
Okay, I'll be a test reader for you.

Speaker 3 (01:55:26):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:55:28):
All right, let's finish up here with some final
thoughts.
What is the final message thatyou want the listeners to take
away from this conversationtoday?

Speaker 3 (01:55:36):
You know, I know it's easy for people to think I have
held the hand of people as theywere breathing their last.
I've literally, as a policeofficer, I've watched the car
crash.
I was that close to it andgotten to the car as they were.

(01:55:58):
I remember one lady said, oneyoung lady said she was 23 years
old.
She said, mister, am I going todie?
And they always train you tosay no, you're going to be fine,
Hang with me, Stay with me.

Speaker 1 (01:56:11):
Stay with me.

Speaker 3 (01:56:12):
But I refused to do that and I said to her yes, you
are going to die, you're notgoing to make it through this.
And I felt like honesty at thatpoint.
What's the objective?
Well, they'll give up on living.
No, no, she knew she was dying.
Her chest cavity was wrappedaround her steering wheel.

(01:56:34):
She was most assuredly dying.
But I've been with other peoplewho were shot.
I've been with other people whowere different experiences in
their life where it's bad.
It's a bad situation and, yes,we're sick.
I've been with lots of peoplewho asked me am I going to die?
And there have been times whereI said I have a dear friend
named Pam who she asked me ifshe was going to die and I said

(01:56:56):
no, you're going to make it.
You're going to live and notdie.
You're going to go through hellto get there.
It you're going to go throughhell to get there.
It's going to be super, supertough, but you're the one to do
it.
You're going to do this andyou're going to have a family
and you're going to.
You're going to look back onthis and you're going to wow,
holy moly, that happened.
But then there were otherswhere you don't and we, you
never know.
You never really know, even theterribly sick people.

(01:57:21):
I always hear this term, peoplesay it a lot at funerals
Somebody had cancer or somedreaded disease.
Well, they were a fighter, theyfought.
They fought so hard.
As a believer, what am Ifighting against?
I'm trying to live.
I have a grandbaby, I have awonderful daughter and son.
I adore them.
I have a great son-in-law, anamazing son-in-law and, by the

(01:57:45):
way, I have an amazing,unbelievably cool and great
grandson, who is amazing andawesome and sweet and I want to
see as much of his life as Godwills me to see.
Of course, of course.
But we all are functioningwithin life with this notion

(01:58:06):
that that picky thing, that dumbthing that we're fussing about,
that thing we cannot change.
We can't change how otherpeople live their lives.
But we get all spooled up, alljacked up over it.
That thing that's going on atwork, that thing that's fix your
family, fix it.
Those are the only people yougot.

(01:58:27):
Fix it.
If you're the problem, fix you.
There's resources.
There's no reason to be alljacked up in.
Today you say, well, it's atough way to live and everything
is so bad and all of thesethings.
I say all the more reason toget it together.
Jack or Jill or Schmuckatelliwhichever your last name is, I

(01:58:48):
don't know Get it togetherbecause tick-tock, tick-tock.
The clock is ticking and thisbeating heart inside you one day
will stop.
Get right with God, get itfigured out.
You don't have to know all theanswers, you do not have to know
.
Look, I have decades ofdoctorate level theological work

(01:59:12):
in the biblical languages andall of these things and I don't
have it all figured out.
But I'm going to tell you this Iknow in whom I have believed
and I know he's able, and I knowthat when I placed my faith in
him, I was not guaranteed aneasy life.
Exhibit A my busted up, brokenup body.
But I can tell you this youwill never be happier than when

(01:59:38):
you're loving Jesus and you'reletting Jesus love you.
Your mama may not have lovedyou, your daddy may not have
loved you.
You may have had terriblethings happen in your life, in
your own family, maybe in yourown community.
All of those things canabsolutely be true, but you know

(01:59:58):
what?
God isn't them.
Jesus wants to change your lifeand he can and will do it if
you let him.
It's so much simpler thanpeople make it.
But don't wait around, don'tsit on the fence, because I'm
telling you, as a guy who knowsI have been at death's door so

(02:00:22):
many times, you, as a guy whoknows I have been at death's
door so many times, so manytimes I mean, call the family in
type of deal you don't know.
You don't know when it's goingto be, and not only for that
reason it's not an insurancepolicy, but also, don't you want

(02:00:45):
to live knowing who the creatoris?
Don't you want to know him?
Don't you want to know whyyou're here?
It's not just to take up spaceor time.
I love ice cream too, but I'mnot here just to eat ice cream.
And the fact of the matter of itis that I think if I could
encourage anybody is don't lookat churches or the people in

(02:01:10):
churches and say, oh well, thosepeople, I don't go there
because those people arehypocrites.
We are all hypocrites, from thepastor on down.
Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite, sinner, sinner, sinner, sinner
, hurt.
Have it hang up, hurt,hypocrite, sinner, sinner,
sinner, sinner, hurt habit.
Hang up, hurt, habit, hang up,I have them.
I'm as jacked up as anybodyyou'll ever see in your life,

(02:01:30):
but God loves me.
It took me almost a lifetime tofigure that out and to accept
it.
It's time you start acceptingit.

Speaker 1 (02:01:40):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (02:01:42):
The honor is mine.

Speaker 1 (02:01:43):
I don't know how to thank you.
It just means the world to methat you're coming here and
you're so open and you'rewilling to share your story and
your life with us and to shareyour love for Christ and trying
to lead people to Christ, likethose Belgian women.

Speaker 3 (02:01:59):
Ain't that something?
Yes, ain't that something.
I can't imagine Blessing of asomething.
Yes, ain't that something Well,I can't imagine Blessing of a
lifetime.

Speaker 1 (02:02:06):
Okay, let's give out your contact information.
So, listeners, you know that Iwill have all of the links and
the socials in the show notesand there'll be hot links that
you can click on for easy access.

Speaker 3 (02:02:18):
The easiest way to get a hold of me is smgreener at
gmailcom.
S as in Sean M as in Michael.
Greener as in the grass isalways greener.
Okay, at gmailcom.
Or contact me through the showon YouTube.
You can leave messages there.
I'm on Quora Q-U-O-R-A.
4.1 million views.

Speaker 1 (02:02:41):
Amazing.
Yeah, I do see you on Quora alot.
Yeah, I do see you on Quora.
It's crazy yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:02:44):
I write about certain specific things on there, but
there's a messaging platformthere.
Facebook is an easy way to getme Facebook Messenger.
Those are probably the easiestways to get me Okay.
I almost never check myInstagram messages.

Speaker 1 (02:02:59):
Oh, really Okay, which is terrible, because I
forget that they have messages.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:03:04):
But whatever way works for you, that I'm on, feel
free, okay.

Speaker 1 (02:03:09):
All right.
Thank you, listeners, forjoining us today.
I just hope that you enjoyedthat as much as as I have.
And thank you, dr Greener, forbeing on Topsail Insider and
sharing your story with yourTopsail friends and neighbors on
Topsail Insider and sharingyour story with your Topsail
friends and neighbors.

Speaker 3 (02:03:24):
This is the prettiest studio I've ever been in.
You win.

Speaker 1 (02:03:29):
Thank you so much.
It's just my converted diningroom.
Wow, it's lovely we're going towork on it some more.
We got a ways to go.
All right.
Thank you, you bet.
Hey, if you enjoyed today'sepisode of Topsail Insider,
please show your support byclicking the follow or subscribe
button on your favorite podcastlistening platform.
You can also follow us onFacebook, instagram, twitter and

(02:03:50):
YouTube.
Please also go totopsoulinsidercom and join our
mailing list by clicking on themake me a Top Soul Insider
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While you're there, you canclick the send me a voicemail
button and let me know exactlywhat you're thinking your
message just might be on anepisode of Topsail Insider.
You can email me at Krista atTopsailInsidercom, or call or

(02:04:12):
text me at 910-800-0111.
Thank you for listening andsupporting Topsail Insider and
our local businesses andnonprofits.
These are our neighbors and ourfriends, and together we build
a mighty and a beautifulcommunity I'm super proud to be
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I'll see you around Topsail.

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