Crossing Over | Near Death, Miracles, & Music - The Word At War

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I went into that pain again, except this time it
was unbearable, and then I was gone. The paramedic was
working on me, and I know this, it sounds crazy,
but I was watching her work on me. I could

(00:23):
hear everything she was saying to me, and she was
in a panic. Things were flying everywhere, and she's screaming
at me to come back. And I had no idea
what was really happening. But I found out later. I
died in that ambulance and then all of a sudden,
I felt better than I ever felt. And I was

(00:46):
in a room full of people I couldn't tell you
who they were.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Welcome to the War Room, Okyle, thank you for joining
me on the word at war. Well. There are so
many stories of people who have been declared clinically dead,
only to be brought back with incredible tales of what
they have seen on the other side when they entered
into the spiritual realm. We're going to hear one of

(01:18):
those stories today as I welcome my guest, Mark Graham
of the band's Stones Crossing Mark. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Man, great to be here, Thanks for asking me. I
love to talk about this.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's awesome, dude. Yeah, it was a pleasure. So just
give everybody the backstory. Mark came to my church, they performed,
and you need to check them out, by the way,
and I told him I was going to do this,
So make sure you check out Mark and check out
the band. Go to Stonescrossingmusic dot com. You can find
out more there. If you want to book them or
you want to find out more information, you can email
them over there. You can email them directly at seller

(01:52):
Entertainment too at gmail dot com, and then check them out.
They're out there on everything. Stone's Crossing is on Facebook, YouTube,
and pretty much every music platform you can find under
the sun. Same as same as you would for the podcast.
So but yeah, we're I'm looking forward to having this
conversation with my brother and I just felt led by
the spirit when he was there and he shared a
little bit of this, just a very brief part of

(02:13):
this story while he was at the church and performing,
and so I just kind of felt a nudge from
the spirit to talk to him about this. And that's
that's what we're doing today. Man, That's that's exactly what
we're doing.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
All right. Well, I'm ready, all right, dude.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
So first question, you know, just to kind of let
let everybody know a little bit of your background, a
little bit of your story. Just tell us about that
you know, tell us about you know, where you were,
where you were brought up, and what brought you into
the faith.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well, I grew up in Seinsville, Indiana, and didn't I
played music, but I didn't play a lot. We moved
out to the West Coast, and believe it or not,
my family and I I was pretty much a Kentuckian
and I didn't play bluegrass music till I went to

(02:57):
the West Coast.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
I did it all backwards man, I did.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
But then when I moved back to Indiana, it was
I started playing a guy in a gospel group and
then went back to bluegrass. And since I was twelve
years old, I felt a calling that I should be
doing the gospel instead of what I was doing. And

(03:24):
I tried to put a little gospel into everything I
everything I did, but I just didn't follow what I
felt I was being pushed to do. And after thirty
years of bluegrass, I was down in Georgia and played
in a little church a friend of mine. We just

(03:45):
sat down, played little music and I felt it right
then that it was time to get into this full time,
and I was going to be by myself. God's given
me so much to talk about. It's I didn't realize
why I was going through so much, but all this

(04:07):
information has made it easy for me to talk about
God and what he's done and what he can do.
And so I came home from Georgia and I told
the group, I said, I'm going to quit after October
and I'm going to go out on my own. So
when October came and I left my bluegrass band, I

(04:30):
got a phone call within a week wanted me to
come and do a Thanksgiving festival type thing. And I
was all by myself. I said, you know, what kind
of music would you like? You know? They said, well,
we want a little bit of everything. We would like
some Gospels, some bluegrass, anything you want to do. I thought, well,

(04:51):
this is going to be kind of hard to do
by myself. And I've played I'd played music with my
kids since they were old enough to stand up, and
we sang together, and so I asked him, I said,
you want to help me out on this one, and
they all agreed, and my son in law, who plays

(05:14):
guitar for us now and plays about every instrument known
to man.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, he's incredible.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah. Well, we got together and we put on this
little service after their Thanksgiving dinner and it went really well.
And I asked the kids what they thought. They decided
it's what they wanted to do. So God had a
much bigger plan than what I had. And I can

(05:44):
tell you, after playing music on the road for thirty years,
playing with my kids is the most fun I've ever
had in my life.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
See, I've always been nervous about I can sing in
front of however many people you want to line up
in front of me, but when I get up and talk,
I'm scared. Well, I was scared to death and up
until just recently. And I've had a lot going on

(06:16):
with a few people in my life that I'm trying
to bring them around to Jesus and I want them
to understand their life could be so much better. And
one day one of them sent me a text message
just made me mad, and I guess that's what I needed.

(06:41):
It was like Jesus hit me in the back of
the head and said, why are you so worried about
what you say? He said, I mean, it was like
he was sending my truck with me talking to me,
and he said, why I'd given you everything you need.
Why are you afraid? And I said, I don't know.

(07:04):
He said, quit trying to be perfect, Quit trying to
quote scripture, quit trying to said just talk about what
I've given you, which has really taken a lot of
pressure off because you know, I grew up I didn't
grow up in a church, and my family didn't go
to church. My uncle visited from the state of Washington

(07:29):
and had gotten saved. Well, he was crazy about it
at the time, so he was came back and wanted
to save us all. Well, I was the only one
that really went. I went to church with him. I said, okay,
let's go. I was fifteen years old at the time. Well,

(07:50):
I used to put on this act. I think you
could call it. But I've preached because I love hell
fire and Brimstone. I love to be preached at. I
love I love people to you know, when I'm sitting
in church and the preacher's done, I want to be
able to say, I wonder how he knew what I
did this week. You know it's those powerful and you

(08:13):
think wow, and you know he's not talking to me,
but it feels like it. Well, I got saved at
about fifteen sixteen years old, and then I went gung
ho for a little while, and then teenage years took
over and I went back to doing things teenagers do

(08:37):
and stupid stuff, very stupid stuff. Yeah, and I don't
know how any of this got to where we're at now.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
I know it's called the grace of the Lord.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Buddy, Yeah, right, but I I lost.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
My turn of thought that I'm sorry you railed your trade.
I'm you're talking about being a teenager.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah. Well, I went on through my teenage years, got
married and had a couple of kids, and I've had
a lot go on in my life. I've lost a brother,
I've lost a sister. And when I lost my sister,
I got mad and kind of walked away from God.

(09:23):
Everything I did kind of like what you and I
talked about earlier. I mean, Satan he's there every time
he didn't want us to get close, and every time
I would start to get close, something horrific in my
life would happen. Our house burnt down. Well, you know,
I'm new at this. I but why is God letting

(09:46):
this stuff happen? And then my grandfather passed away. Then
I lost my sister, and I just I got more.
I guess it was more. I was afraid to get
close to God because every time I would get close,
something horrific happened. And it took me a long time.

(10:08):
We moved to the West Coast and I raised my
family out there till my kids were in grade school,
and then I knew I had to move us back
to the Midwest. We needed to be closer to family,
and I kept getting closer and closer to back to

(10:29):
God because he moved us to Washington. It was his plan.
When I got out there, my life changed completely. Our
my family, me and my kids and my wife. We
grew very strong. We met some people that we felt
like God put in front of us, and I got

(10:50):
into the music out there. And when we moved back
to Indiana, I wanted to I didn't move right back
in with all my family. I moved about an hour
and a half away because I wanted him to have
to call me if they were going to visit.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
That kind of family, huh right.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
I love them all, but you know, I didn't want
to be next door anymore. And then right after we
moved back here, my cousin passed away. She was down
syndrome and she'd lived a lot longer than they thought
she would, but she passed away. Well, my face held

(11:34):
me pretty strong there. But my uncle, the one that
I talked about earlier, it was his daughter. He got angry,
and here I was the one talking back to him, saying,
you know, trying to bring him around. And because I
believe Charlotte my cousin was probably a true life angel

(11:58):
on this earth. Never in my life met anyone that
touched as many people as she did. She was just
an amazing person. And they raised her as just a
regular child. She went to school, she graduated high school,
she had a job. She was a very strong person.

(12:19):
And then within nine within the first year that we
moved back to Indiana, nine people in our family between
me and my wife passed away godly and my brother
was one of them. He was murdered. Oh wow, And

(12:40):
for the first time in my life, I felt what
anxiety was. You know, my wife has had some traumatic
things in her life and I just never understood it.
I always thought, you know, if if you've got a
problem that's bothering you fix it and don't dwell on

(13:03):
it and anxiety. I had no idea what that was
until my brother passed away and all the deaths in
my life that I thought i'd handle came back and
I lost my mind. I truly lost my mind. I
was afraid to leave my kids alone. I had to

(13:24):
take him to school, I had to pick them up
and bring them home. And my job I traveled all
over the United States, and I couldn't leave home. And
every time I would ask God and say, you know,
I need help. I can't handle this. It wouldn't go away,

(13:44):
would not nothing. And I thought, God, you know, I'm
asking him for your help, and he's I learned later,
he was waiting on me to give it all up.
You know. I was holding on to it and an
amazing thing. This new house that we had, I wanted

(14:05):
to put in a fence. I started digging the very
first posthole and I hit the city sewer line.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Oh boy, So.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
I went through, what do I do now? And they
told me I could. I could dig it up and
fix it myself and they wouldn't cost anything. And you know,
I didn't have any money, and I thought, Okay, I'll
do it. But I dug a hole big enough to
park a car in, and I found the line. But
while I was digging it, the pastor I lived across

(14:41):
the street from an Assembly of God church, and the
pastor across the street came over. Now, I had everybody
in town waved at me when they drove by, but
not a one of them talked to me. Well, the
pastor came over carrying a shovel, and I said, you

(15:02):
don't need to, you know, I'm pretty much done.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Well, we start talking and I called the town. I
had them come to. I said, I found the sewer line.
How I wanted to know how to fix it. But
when they looked at it, they said, that's an old
line that when we don't even use that anymore. I
just dug the hole big enough to park. Yeah. Well,

(15:26):
I met Steve Hyer, the pastor of the church next door,
and we talked, and then I went ahead the next
rest of that weekend putting in my fence post. And
I was putting up the fence boards and he comes
over with a hammer and I said, you don't have
to do that. I said, it's I'm already going to

(15:47):
church tomorrow. I'm coming to see you tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Now, where were you at kind of in your faith
walk at this point? Would you say I was.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Working on it getting stronger. Yeah, but I was still
doing it myself.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
And my wife has a strong faith, and her faith
at the time was stronger than mine.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
But Steve just had a way about him and we
became really good friends. And he had moved this Clay City, Indiana.
I mean this is a town of about eight hundred people.
He had moved and took over that church from Naples, Florida.

(16:35):
And I moved to that house from Enclaw, Washington. You know,
I came almost three thousand miles and he came almost
two and we both lived next door to each other.
If that wasn't God's plan, I don't know what was.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah. When you start looking at the kind of the
background of how all the everything that has to line
up to make that happen, it was kind of hard
not to say. He got at work.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
It's it's amazing. But I guess back to my story.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
I can ramble forever, but back.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
To the original story. You know, in my life, I questioned,
have I messed this up? Well, I you know, God
gonna welcome me in or is he just gonna shake
his head and say, sorry, you messed up. I loved him,
I knew him, and I guess I left. I stopped.

(17:32):
I didn't finish about my brother. It was always like
a movie going on in my head. And every time
this movie would start playing and I'd ask God for
help and nothing happened. I just would shut everything down
and go home. Well, I went to church. We were
going to church at Steve's church every Sunday, and I

(17:57):
decided I was going to go really give this to God.
Like said, I was almost a non functioning human at
the time. Yeah, And I got down on my knees
at that altar and I told God, I'm giving it
all to you. I can't do this by myself anymore.

(18:18):
And I truly felt it at that time. It lifted
from me that it was gone, my anxiety, my feelings
of fear, and I was able to move on with
my life. And every time that movie turned on and
I asked God to shut it off, he shut it off.

(18:41):
So I learned right then and there that you know
he's there, he's right beside us all the time, but
until you really give it all to him, there's not
a lot he can do for you. You know, he's there.
He wants to love you, he wants to engulf you.

(19:02):
But until you hand it to him and say, there
you go, God, I can't do this. Yeah, and wow,
what a difference that made in my life?

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, for sure. So I'm I'm smiling because I'm looking
at the the kind of comedy in the aspect too,
of how God finally got you to give it up.
You know, here you're carrying around all this crap and
you hit a sewer line, right, you know, and you
had to give up your crap in order to you know,
to get to let go. Is that amazing? Isn't that funny?

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Though?

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah, it's a humor he does, for sure. And oh my,
to have to have a fraction of the patience that
he does, man, it's uh. I always say, you know,
how old were you at this point? I'm just curious.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
I was at that point. I was probably forty.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
You would not believe how many times, how many times
I have heard the same exact not story, because the
story always changes, right, it's very different, different variables, but
timing forty years old, it's my story is forty years old.
It's amazing to me, it's amazing. And we know the
parallels of forty with scripture, you know, and how God

(20:24):
does that. It's just like I just.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Read this, I just went through that the other day.
I read that everything was in forty.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
It's amazing, and it's incredible forty.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
In a day. Yeah, it is amazing.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, I keep saying to everybody, and you probably feel
the same way as like, I'm just so thankful that
God was patient enough to not prune me off because
I was producing no fruit. You know here here I'd been,
I'd been grafted in, and but I'm not producing any fruit.
You know, I'm basically useless to the kingdom. You know,
I was neither. I always think of the verse. You know,
you're neither hot nor cold. So I spit you out

(21:00):
my mouth. And that's exactly where I was. You know,
God was there. He was a concept, you know, and yeah, okay,
but I always used him. You know, it's always a
tourniqueit situation, you know, die or straights reach out to God. Kay, cool, thanks,
I'm through that. You can go back in the drawer now, right.
And that's just kind of how my faith journey was.
And then forty. I started to awaken when I started

(21:20):
to really dating my wife now and things just started
to turn around. And then now you know, completely every
day from the minute I wake up to the minute
I lay my head on the pillow, it's it's about
kingdom work every day, which is when you do that,
you had kind of made something mentioned earlier of something,
and it just made me smile because when you dine
from that banquet, you don't ever want food from anywhere

(21:41):
else again.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
No, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
You were talking. You were talking about the joy of
traveling with you know, your daughter and your son in
law doing music, and and how you're having more fun
now doing that than you ever have. How long have
you guys been doing that together?

Speaker 1 (21:58):
About five years now? Okay, all right, not too long,
but we've accomplished and unbelievable. It just feels like we've
really accomplished a lot in that short period of time.
I mean, it's that's what makes me feel like we're

(22:19):
doing the right thing. You know. I think I've finally
figured out why God just kept me alive. Yeah, right,
because I've been close to death many times. I was elected.
Didn't bring that up. I was electrocuted. I was hit
with twelve hundred volts of electricity and the only thing

(22:41):
it did was burn a hole in my finger and
a hole in my knee. I've spent the night and
I see you, but came out of it just fine.
But while that was going on, that was quite an experience. Yeah,
there's just things like that. Of it. On my sixty
first birthday, I had I always had a premonition that

(23:05):
I wouldn't live past sixty, so I said, on my
sixty first birthday, I want to have a huge party. Well,
my wife and kids threw me that huge party on
my sixty first birthday and I didn't know that they
were going to do it. And they wrote out a

(23:26):
list and it was two columns on one sheet of
paper of accidents that I've had in my life, things
that have happened to me. And they said one of
these isn't real, and they wanted people to guess which
one wasn't real. Well, nobody caught on that the one

(23:46):
that wasn't real was I drowned, because I wouldn't be
here if I drowned.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
But yeah, right, but I.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Got a so much. They said that really happened to you.
You've had that happen, You've had this happ I see
God had a purpose for me. I just didn't know
what it was. And I said, I felt when I
started coming back and I was fully giving myself to God,

(24:18):
I thought I'd probably messed it up. You know, it's
always wondered, and that was a question that was always
in the back of my mind, no matter how close
I felt to God. In my mind, I kept thinking,
I've probably really messed this up. Well, that leads to
the heart attack I had. And we went out to dinner,

(24:45):
my wife and I and I ate a New York trip.
I had a whole what are they at? I can't
I don't remember the steakhouse, but they have a blooming
onion and I ate the whole bank, get the outback.
I ate the whole thing because my wife was on

(25:07):
a diet. Well, then she told me that broccoli was
the best thing in the world. So I tried their broccoli.
I blamed my heart attack on the broccoli.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
We're going to say your wife tried to kill you, Marcus, right.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
She told me to eat their broccoli, and it was
the only thing I'd never eaten there before.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
But it couldn't have been the entire bloomin onion that
you consumed along with this, you know, however, big New
York strip, I'm sure it was the broccoli that did it.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yes, that probably didn't have anything to do with.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
It, right, not at all anyway.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
So we were sitting there talking after dinner. I just
felt terrible, and of course I should feel terrible, and
that's what I'm thinking. I just ate a steak, I
drank enough ice tea to float a ship. I ate
a bloomin onion. I should feel bad. It was different,
and so finally I said, well, let's let's go, and

(26:01):
we went over to Staples. I had some stuff I
had to do, and I got sick over there, so
I thought, okay, I just ate way too much. So
we went to Walmart because it was in May, and
she was planning tons of flowers and I just dug
her a flowerbed that day. And something I never do

(26:24):
was I would just run out of breath and I'd
have to sit down and take a break. And I
don't know how many times I had did that while
I was building this flowerbed. And the night before that,
I asked God, I said, you know, God, I haven't
felt good in a year. I you know, I don't

(26:46):
know what's wrong. I feel really bad. Can is there
any way I can feel better? Well, we were a walmart.
I thought my back went out because I dug a
flower bed and between my shoulder blades and my back
hurts so bad I couldn't hardly breathe. So I told her,

(27:09):
I said, I'm gonna go sit in the truck and
just wait on you, because every time I would move
or exert myself, this pain came. Well, she came out,
she had to load the truck because I couldn't do it.
And we're across the street from the hospital. Across the street,

(27:32):
and she says, I think we ought to go to
the hospital. I said, no, I've just my back's out.
I said, that's got to be it, because every time
I move, I lose my breath and the pain hit me.
So I was driving home and as I'm driving home,
I didn't tell her, but my left arm fell off.

(27:53):
My steering wheel just fell off. I was holding it.
It fell down beside me. Still. I'm forty four years
old at this time, and my heart was the farthest
thing from my mind. And we got home and I said,
how about pushing on my back, see if it'll pop

(28:13):
and I'll be better. So she started that, and holy cow,
that was wasn't going to fix anything. I got off
the floor, I got to the bed and I was
laying on the bed and I was in pain that
I can't even describe. And it felt like somebody took

(28:37):
a garden hose and had kinked it in my chest. Nothing.
It was just like a kinked garden hose. The pressure
was building and I had no idea what was going on.
My sister in law, she's a pharmacist and she knows
her medical and so my wife called her and while

(28:58):
they were on the phone, the garden hose, I'm kinked
and I felt the pressure I felt at the time.
Now I know it was blood going back into my heart.
But then I felt fine. I thought, Okay, well, whatever
it was, it's gone. And my sister in law said,
I think you ought to take him to the hospital.

(29:19):
And about that time it hit me again. Well, that
would have been the last thing my wife would have thought,
I'd say, but I said, you better call an ambulance.
There's something wrong. I don't know what it is. But
it's not going away. And I laid there on the
bed and I heard the ambulance. I heard him come

(29:40):
in and they were talking to me, and about the
time they walked in the front door, all that pressure
was gone and I felt okay again. And they said,
we can't make you go to the hospital, and I said,
you might as well take me. You're here, there's something wrong,
and got an ambulance. They carried me out, put me

(30:03):
in the ambulance, and I remember the ambulance pulling away
from the house, and then I went into that pain again,
except this time it was unbearable, and then I was gone.
The paramedic was working on me, and I know this
it sounds crazy, but I was watching her work on me.

(30:27):
I could hear everything she was saying to me, and
she was in a panic, I mean were things were
flying everywhere and she's streaming at me to come back.
And I had no idea what was really happening, but
I found out later. I died in that ambulance and

(30:47):
I came back about the time we were pulling into town.
I remember coming back into my body. I saw the
red lights, the stop lights, I saw all the city
lights and we went to the emergency room. By the
time I got to the emergency room, I felt perfect,

(31:12):
What in the world is going on? Well, everybody seemed
to know what was going on with me. And I
was supposed to see Del McCurry the next night, you know,
bluegrass legend. And I said something to the nurse about
going to see him tomorrow night. She just said, I

(31:34):
don't think you're going to see anybody. And I thought, well, why,
I'm fine. And they had started unhooking me from all
the wires that they had hooked up to me, and
I had another heart attack. Well, I still had no
idea what was going on, except the pain was back.

(31:55):
And I'm in my mind thinking I'm unhooked. They don't
know what's going on, they don't have any idea, and
they're hooking me all backed up while I'm going through this.
And about the time they had me all hooked up,
I was normal again, and I thought, this is great,
this is just great. They don't know what's wrong with me.

(32:18):
And so I prayed and I said, God, they don't
know what's going on. I want him to find out
what's wrong with me. I think I can go through
this one more time, and I like to joke about it,
but I said, I didn't know he was going to
kill me.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
And he's like, okay, I'll give you what you wish for, buddy.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
He said, you want, you want to go through this,
But he knew me, and he knew if I didn't
have something dramatic, I wasn't going to take it serious.
And I was in this excruciating pain, and I remember
hearing the doctor or someone say, oh no, the batteries

(33:06):
are dead, and something that was they were had me
hooked to the batteries went dead. So the last thought
that went through my head is they're not going to
figure this out. And then all of a sudden, I
was felt better than I've ever felt. And I was
in a room full of people, and it was just

(33:29):
me and the doctor and nurse, my wife, and my
sister in law in that emergency room. When I went in, well,
I was it seemed like I was still in the
emergency room, but the room was completely full of people
and they were all smiling, they were all happy, they
were all just it was so comforting, and I realized

(33:54):
the pain's gone, and I'm going to the right place. Obviously,
I'm in the right place place, And I knew everybody
that was there in that room, but I couldn't tell
you who they were. I just felt them. I didn't
I couldn't recognize anybody, but I knew they were family.

(34:16):
They were of course, we're all family. So I don't know,
but it felt family, and it was full, and they
were all just smiling at me. And I said, okay,
I'm ready to go. And this person walked in front
of me with his back to me. He was looking

(34:37):
at the people, and he was then and turned around.
And when he turned and he looked at me, and
I said, you're Jesus, and he smiled real big, and
he nodded. And the next thing I know, my wife
was staring right in my eyes. I looked, I opened
my eyes and she was right there. Now she'll tell

(35:00):
you which she said. I didn't get up and come
to you. She said, it was just like something moved
me there. She said, It's like I floated to you.
She said, I didn't get out of my chair. I
don't remember that. I just remember looking in your eyes
and I was looking in hers. And when I looked
in her eyes, I said to myself, okay, I can't

(35:22):
go yet. And I was in the emergency room. I
was okay, but wow, I realized what happened. I met
Jesus and I thought so. I spent the next few
days in the hospital. They put in a stint in
my heart. They called it the widow Maker. It was

(35:46):
almost one hundred percent blocked, and they opened that up.
The paramedic that had saved my life. On the way
to the hospital was going around showing people my whatever.
Her read out that you know that, and everybody said, well,
he didn't make it, did he? She said, no, that's

(36:09):
him in there, and it was. It was just truly amazing.
But it changed my entire life. I mean, my outlook.
I know I'm going to the right place, and I
know that I've done some pretty you know things I'm
definitely not proud of in my life. But God is

(36:32):
foremost in my life. And now since that time, my
focus has been more on when I see Him. I
don't want to be you know that they talk about
you know, oh, I can't look at him. I want to,
you know, I they hide their face personally, you know

(36:53):
they're embarrassed. I don't want to be embarrassed. I looked
at Jesus right in the eyes, and he smiled at me.
And when I am in front of God and it's
my turn to be judged, I want him to say,
you did pretty good. I want to see him smile.

(37:15):
I want to know that he was proud of what
I did and what I've done and what I plan
on continuing doing and for the rest of my life.
I mean, there's an urgency I feel, especially in this
world today, and you know, we all know what last
week was like, and I feel a total urgency to

(37:40):
tell people about God, my brother, and I just you know,
I don't I'm not a I'm not a pushy well
I am a pushy person, but I don't want to
push it. I just you know, God just puts us
in situations, and when he puts us there, we can't
be afraid to talk about him, amen, bro, you know can't.

(38:04):
We can't think, well, what are they going to think
of me if I say, you know, God can help
you through that, or God loves you? Who cares what
they think? I mean, we sing a song about being
stained stained glass in a church and everybody walking by
outside looking at the church, and everybody inside and the

(38:31):
people outside thinking they're not worthy to come inside because
every one of us is stained. The people outside don't
realize the people inside are just as stained, just as
screwed up as as they are, and we need to
tell them that they're welcome. We need to be out there.

(38:54):
And when they look at us walking down the street
with a smile on our face and this crazy, messed up,
evil world right now, and they think, how can you
be happy? How can you smile? We got to tell him, Yeah,
Jesus is in my heart. Jesus is with me, and
he comforts me. And that is how I get through

(39:18):
a day. You know, I can't dwell on what the
world is doing to me. I just have to trust
that God has a reason for what's going on, and
He's going to get me through it, and my family,
my friends, the people I love in all, I don't

(39:39):
I don't worry like I used to. I mean, what's
the worst thing that could happen if you're born again
Christian and you die.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
You just increase my standing, bro, That's it.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
You just gave me. You just gave me an upgrade.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
This This world's not our home.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
We're going to leave this world. We're going to go home.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
And so you know, dying, I always say, it's the
coolest thing you're ever going to do. If you're going
to the right place.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well, that's for sure. Amen.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
I had a friend that I played music with for
a lot of years and he wasn't saved, and he
had some crazy ideas and me and him would talk
a lot, and he had a lot of health problems,
and he died on the operating table. And when I

(40:34):
was talking to him about what happened to me, he said,
you know, I didn't experience anything like that. He said,
it was just pitch dark. There was not a soul.
I was all alone and I was scared to death.
He said it was just dark. Well, you know, God

(40:56):
is our light. To be absent from God, you're going
to be in darkness. And I said, I said, maybe
you need to kind of rethink what you believe, because
you know, all we can do is plan a seed.
I used to beat myself up because I wasn't getting
through to people, but then I finally again God slapped

(41:21):
me in the head and said, quit worrying about that.
That's not your job.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
You're just on our job. To save anyone. No, that's right.
We can't preach preach the gospital, yeah, because it ultimately
what it does is it defies free will, you know.
And God's number one rule is free will for all
of his creation. And so you know, all we can
do is be seed planners, right, you know. And I've
I've come because I'm same as you. I think I've

(41:47):
spent a lot of time trampling my own garden. So
I like to say, you know, I like to plant
the seeds and then get out of my Get out
of my garden. Don't trample the garden, right like God
will water, you know. That's that's the best we can do. Man.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
That was another thing that took a lot of stress
off me. When I figured that out, I thought, what
are you trying to do? You know, play on a
seat and then get away.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah, it's it. And hey, Jesus even told the disciples, man, hey,
you listen. You go to a town and you try
to tell them, and if they don't listen, you dust
your feet off and you move to the next town.
There are too many people that need to hear, that
need to hear it so that they can make.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
A choice and that's you know, I had you know
how people talk about, you know, well, how can God
let this happen? Now? Can he have? You know, the
children that are born with problems, the problems of this world?
Well you know those those questions sometimes are difficult to answer,

(42:46):
and and you think, you know, well, Satan's really running
this world. God's just protecting us. And Billy Graham I
read a book of his. Within the very first few pages,
he said, answered that question for me. It said, you know,

(43:12):
free will is the greatest gift that God have gave us,
and it's up to us how we use it. And
if God fixed everything on earth, no one on earth
would ever know what true love is.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
You know, how can you love something if you never
had a tract, if nothing bad ever happened to you,
you wouldn't you wouldn't understand what it felt like to
truly care about something. And He gave us that gift.
And that's the only way I can explain it. But

(43:52):
I believe that as long as you keep your focus
on Jesus, when these tragedies, when death, cancer, all these
horrible things that happen on this earth, we can't blame
God He's there to get us through it. I've heard,

(44:13):
and I'm sure you've heard that people will say, well,
God will never give you anything that you can't handle. Well,
I look at that as God will never give you
anything that he you can't handle without him.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Amen, brother, it's perfectly said.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
You know, because there's a lot of things you can't handle.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
But as long as God is there beside you and
with you carrying you, you're going to get through it.
And when you come out on the other side it
might make sense. There's a few things in my life
that have happened that I just have no explanation for.
But most of all the tragedy I've had have come
out on the end better than they were before.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Loss is loss, But I don't know how people that
don't believe in God, don't believe in heaven, they can't
handle death. You know that death is final for them,
and we know death isn't final. That's our next home,

(45:24):
that's that is our true home. And once we're there,
we've got this world beat off the heck. So, like
I said, what's the worst thing that could happen to you?
If you're a Christian and you die, is you're going
to go to heaven. That's a pretty good thing. I'm
not you know, I'm not in a hurry to leave,

(45:44):
but I know when it's my time, I'm not going
to be scared of it. That was something that was
something that I told because I had more heart problems
and I ended up having a triple bypass. And before that,
the only thing that worried me was my grandkids, my wife,

(46:07):
and my mother, how they would handle me not making it.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
That's exactly me to a tee. I don't worry about
me not being here at all. Not one I would
have now, I can tell you before because we were talking,
you know, and obviously I've had a lot of a
lot of great talks today. But forty years old is
just the magic number. It's amazing how that always comes up.
If you would have, if you would have asked me
around that timeframe, I would have told you that I
wasn't so sure, you know, I don't. I don't know

(46:34):
if I was really secure in my salvation because I
was useless to the kingdom, you know, And that's that's
a scary thing. Now I don't worry about it one bit. Right,
not one bit. I'm the same as you. I only
worry about the earthly after effects of the impact on
those that I leave behind.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
And that was something that I told them because I
knew what was going on with me before my bypass,
because the doctor told me the next time that's what
was going to happen. There was no more they could do,
and I carried it totally alone for months, and I

(47:13):
didn't want anybody to know what was going on. But
I was having some serious problems, so I arranged everything.
I looked into my burial, I looked into everything. I
didn't want anybody to have to worry about that, and
I pushed it off until I had a doctor's appointment

(47:37):
in June on June eight. And this all started in April,
and I thought it kept getting worse, and I kept thinking,
you know, if I can just get to June and
then we'll see what's going on. And I work on elevators,
I climb a lot of stairs. I couldn't climb stairs.

(47:59):
I knew, I knew it was my heart, and I
knew that this was serious. But on June seventh, well, yeah,
June seventh, it was a Sunday. My wife and I
took a motorcycle trip. Stupid thing to do. I got
on my motorcycle. No one my condition. But it was

(48:21):
the greatest. It was the greatest day we had had
in we could remember. We had a wonderful time, great dinner,
We had a great ride. And when I got home,
I went to park the motorcycle and I couldn't lift it.
That pain in my chest and my back started happening again.

(48:47):
And I finally got myself in the house. I went
up stairs to my bedroom and then it hit me again,
and I said, okay, we've got to go to the
emergency room. And we got in the car. I took
a nitroglyceran tablet. Everything went away. I felt good, and

(49:10):
we were in the car and I said, okay, let's
just just go home. Well, this time, she wasn't going
to pay attention to Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
No, the jick is up on this, buddy. There is
no going going around it.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
I said, all we're going to do is go to
the hospital and I'm going to sit in the emergency
room till the next day, and then the doctor's going
to come in and we'll find out what's wrong, just
like you know. So I said, let's just go home. Well,
on our way to the hospital, there's a gas station
at a junction and there's a big hill behind it,
and she told me, she said, okay, I'm going to

(49:45):
park here and if you can climb that hill, we'll
go home. And she let me out of the car
and I went up the hill and I came back down.
I don't know which one of us was dumber, but
she let me. We went home.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Oh no.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
And but I got home and the nightro had opened
up whatever was clogged. And I went to the doctor
the next day and I told him what was going on,
and I said, you know, I know, you know it's bad.

(50:21):
And he said, well, I'm going to have to give
you a stress test because if I don't, the insurance
won't pay for any of this. I said, I can't
do a stress test. I said, fifteen seconds and I'll
probably be dead. He said, okay, let me try this.
He said, let's take your blood. We'll do and I'll

(50:47):
read that, we'll see what it says, and we'll go
from there. So I left the doctor and I went
We went to eat lunch. Before we got to the restaurant,
we were in the park. I got a nurse from
or call from his nurse, and she said, what hospital
do you want to go to?

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (51:09):
So I told her. She said, when you get there,
your room will be ready. All you have to do
is tell them who you are at the desk. It
was like checking into a hotel.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
I mean, it was an emergency, and.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
That tells you something when they're willing to move you
that fast. Nowadays, Oh it was.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
I mean within minute, it felt like, you know, half
an hour. I was fully in the hospital.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Yeah. You get to not only get the heart by
a pass, but you bypass all the line to get it. Oh.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, and I guess some of the medicines I was on.
I was supposed to win at least five to seven
days before they did an operation because of all the
thinners and stuff. Well, they didn't wain. They took me
in and as I was going in, my mom and
my wife were with me, and we were in a

(52:03):
room by ourselves, and I told them then, I said,
when I if I don't come out of this, don't
worry about me. I know I'm going to be fine.
I said, So you've got to continue on. You've got
to know that I'm fine, and I don't want you

(52:25):
guys falling apart. You know, that's a crazy thing to
say to somebody that could lose their son and their husband.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yeah, but it was true.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
I wanted them to know and here I am. Everything's
been great. And that was ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
I was going to say, I was wondering how long
between your initial heart attack, because you said you were
forty four when that happened and then the so this
was the triple bypass.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
So you were I was fifty four, Okay, somewhere in there,
because I'm sixty four now, Okay, Yeah, it was about
ten years later. About ten years ago, I had a
triple bypass. And now my life's focused on God and
trying our church, which I don't get to go too often,

(53:13):
but I get, Thank goodness, one thing for the Internet
that I don't know how to operate, but I can
still watch our services online. And they have a motto
that it is they're in a relentless pursuit, and their
relentless pursuit is to bring people to God, bring people.

(53:37):
You know, my pastor says, you know, I'm not I'm
not telling you you've got to get a church. I'm
not telling you you want to you need to come here.
You just need to get a relationship with God and
then go from there. But it's a relentless pursuit. But
we I ask ask them if I could use that.

(54:00):
So we've got a lot of promotional stuff that's printed
up with Southern fa or Southern Fate Stone's Crossing, and
I think the shirt that I'm wearing right now says
underneath it says Stones Crossing, Music Ministry, relent relentless pursuit.

(54:20):
Well that that's a question that gives people something to say.
What does that mean? Open the door? That's right, What
relentless pursuit mean? Well, let me tell you and then
gives you something to tell them, and tell them what
you're pursuing. You're pursuing their lives. Bring them to Jesus

(54:43):
because it's amazing. I said, I I know, I rambled forever.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
And no, you're good man. This has been great.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
I'm I used to be a very shy person until
you put a guitar in my hand. I grew out
of that and now I probably talked too much a
lot of times. But it's like when i'm my wife
will say, you know when I'm up in front of
it giving his service. That's just say. You know, I

(55:15):
knew exactly what you meant, but you probably shouldn't have
said it that way.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Oh that's all right, man, it's you know, let the
Lord figure it out.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
I'd say anymore after that slapping the head, I'm not
nervous anymore, that's right. And that's only been a couple
of months ago. I mean, I've been fighting and playing
music for God for five years now, and only a
couple of months ago did the nervousness to get knocked

(55:47):
out of me? Then? Right? You know I heard him
say it. Why are you scared? Just just moses, you know,
look at everybody he uses, they're not qualified.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yeah, but I've gone to Aaron. Man, it'll be fine.
I got this. It's okay, you know, you.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Know, don't worry about it, you know, so I don't.
My wife says, you need to write things down, you
need to make up you know something, you know, so
you know what you're going to say. I said, I
can't do that. If I make notes, I start to
read them and then I totally forget what I'm talking about,
I said, Or if I have notes and I glanced

(56:30):
down at them. You know, it's gone. As I just
pray before I get started. Week or two before, I said, God,
if there's something I need to say, use me to
say it. If there's somebody out there that needs to
hear something specific, use me to say it, you know.
And I just I said, I think I told you

(56:52):
before we started this interview. I spent twenty years trying
to write a song about my death experience.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
I remember tell me that the day that we actually
talked in the church, that you were still working on it.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
And I finished it and we sing it now and
it's I said, God gives us what we need. And
after twenty years, he gave me this song. And because
I didn't want to write a song that was about
me or was about a story, I wanted it to

(57:27):
connect to other people, and he gave me that. And
right now there's nowhere you can go find that song.
I don't I haven't put it out anywhere yet. We
do it live. But it's given me an opportunity to
talk about my experience, which you know, before it was

(57:49):
kind of hard to bring up. You know, how do
you just bring up in a conversation or a music
service that Hey, guess what I died, and let me
tell you I had Jesus. Now I can talk about
it because the chorus of the song is you know
he smiled, he nodded like he understood. In that moment,

(58:13):
everything was good. You know. It's just And I've been
singing that song, I've been giving a testimony before it,
and every single place I've done that song, people come
up to me and thank me for my testimony. They
have stories of their own. And I played at a
bluegrass festival, which we're not a bluegrass band. I don't

(58:36):
want people to think that because they label us as
bluegrass because we have an upright bass and we play
a banjo occasionally, but it's not bluegrass. I would call it.
I don't know what you'd call it. My daughter calls
it weird grass, and it's more southern gospel. I believe
we should call it.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I've got it. Are you ready? Huh? This is free
to you today. Call it graspl that's pretty good. There
you go, man, there you go. My gift to you, brother, it's.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
I didn't realize it would be so hard to sing.
But while I'm singing, and I have these visions of
what I experienced when I met Jesus, and I totally
forget what I'm doing. Oh wow, it's it's it's we've
gotten it. I think I've gotten through it, right, maybe
once or twice in the maybe ten times we did it. Yeah,

(59:34):
And I just apologized to the kids. I said, you know,
it's just tougher and I thought it would be. And yeah, man, yeah,
all my mute, honestly, all my music equipment is packed
away in the van because we're we're on well we'll
be uh well, I'll just throw a plug out here.

(59:57):
We're going to be an attic at George what is
it George B. Hayes Days. Next weekend, the twentieth and
the twenty first, we're going to do a secular seclarar
is that it? Regular music on Saturday, just some of

(01:00:17):
our crazy stuff, Little Lynyrd skinnered, a little Creeden's clear Water,
a little Eagles, you name it. We're going to do
that on Saturday, and then on Sunday we're giving their
gospel service at ten in the morning. And needless to say,
that's where I'm always excited. I would like to be

(01:00:40):
in a different church every single weekend and God's pretty
much made that come true. And it really is, it
really is. It's that's why I feel we're on the
right track, you know, because if we weren't, it wouldn't
we wouldn't keep on. I mean, I don't reach out

(01:01:03):
and try to book us. I don't, you know, I don't,
and I'll send out a few emails, but I'm not pursuing,
you know, I'm not drumming people saying we would love
to calm, we want to do this. People just call
and I don't even know how some of these people
ever even hear about us. M H and word of

(01:01:27):
mouth is the strongest advertiser of all brother and I'm
very proud of what we do. I think you guys
do it well and I we truly believe in what
we are doing, and I think that's that's something. The
feedback that I've gotten since we've been singing this song

(01:01:47):
is I can see that you really believe in what
you're doing. You're not just playing music. And that's what
I really wanted, you know, I don't want to go
to a church and put on a show. I want
to go to a church and reach somebody that needs

(01:02:08):
to hear something. That we do and God's made that possible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yeah, it's like for me. You know, there's all these
metrics and things you can look at downloads and you know,
views and all these things, but they're and they're great,
you know. It's it's nice to get the worldly, you know,
I guess affirmation that you're you're doing something that is
growing for the kingdom, you know, because I think God
knows that we need that to be encouraged. But the

(01:02:38):
thing that is far and away the most encouraging and
is the most moving and impactful for me is when
I get the emails and I'm sure you get it too,
with people coming up to you after and saying, hey,
you know, you really made me get back into my Bible.
You really spoke to me. I was unsure I was
dealing with this, and you brought me to Jesus, you know,

(01:03:00):
and all these things. Those are far and away the
most rewarding conversations that I have. Yeah, so far far away.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
I can't imagine being a minister and the exhaustion and
the you know, I said, one of my best friends
is an Acostal preacher and he's retired now, but he's
still every day. I don't know of a man that's

(01:03:31):
closer to God than he is. I truly believe when
he says God told me, God told him. Yeah, And
he's He's helped me through many things in my life.
He's he helped my wife through many things. And unknown
to either one of us, him or me, I was

(01:03:53):
in his church one afternoon. We did a service for him,
and I talked about dig in that hole, and I
talked about what he did for us and how he
gave us a light that we didn't really have. Well,
you know, we knew he moved from there. He had

(01:04:14):
problems too, but he had no idea that he had
touched our life like he had. And then he told
us his story, and we had no idea that we
touched him like he did. I said, we came from
thousands of miles apart to one little, little, tiny town

(01:04:40):
of eight hundred people. I came from Seattle, he came
from Naples, and God put us together. And that's probably
been thirty years ago, and he married my daughter and
my son law he I have a I made a

(01:05:01):
mistake many years ago of putting a sticker on my
guitar case that says we'll work for or we'll pick
for food. And every time that I would play in
his church, he'd give me a can of beans. And
so when he married my daughter son in law, I

(01:05:21):
didn't know they were going to do this. Well, he
performed the service and he didn't charge us anything. My
daughter called me a few weeks afterwards and she said,
could you get a hold of Steve and ask him
if he found our check? And I said, what do

(01:05:43):
you mean? He said? She said, I gave him a
case of beans, but we put a check in that
case of beans, and I wanted to make sure he
found it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Oh my goodness, So she.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Paid him in beans. There you go, man, and he
did check and I thought.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
That, yeah, that's pretty good. Wait, I got a couple.
I got a couple of follow up questions for you,
but before I do for everybody that's listening. So make
sure you go check out check out the band, check
out mark to Stones crossing music dot com. You can
find out more about them. You'll see all of the
things that they have going on, and then obviously check
out the music. Now they do a fantastic job. One

(01:06:25):
of my favorites that you sang at the church was
was three Wooden Crosses. You guys do a great, great
powerful song. That is a great song. So yeah, you
can check these guys out on Facebook, YouTube, and then
the music is pretty much on every platform, so you
guys can find stuff out there. And if you guys
are enjoying the show and you want to help support me,
I would really appreciate it. Just please like, subscribe, follow,
and if you're listening to this and you know on

(01:06:46):
one of those platforms we just mentioned, and please just
leave a five star review if you think I'm I'm
deserving of it. It really helps. Obviously. You can imagine
I get attacked a lot for a lot of the
conversations that I have and the things that I'm doing,
and the boo birds are always louder than than the
happy folks. So I need your five star reviews to
offset the anger grams that I get sometimes and the
other thing too. Guys, if you are really interested in

(01:07:09):
being a part of a true Christian community, I'm really
super excited. I just started a school community that's skoo
l And if you actually click above, or you click
down in the description, or you just head to my website,
the word at warmedia dot com and click on school.
You can actually find out about the school community that
I started. You can actually sign up. The beautiful part
about that is it's true community. It's not algorithmically controlled

(01:07:32):
by like social media is. And we've got some awesome
things planned in there, like scriptural teaching and actually building
community the way that it's supposed to be. So again,
head to the word at warmedia dot com. Click on
the screen and just check down on the description. So
appreciate all the support. All right, my friend, My follow
up question is this, you know, I want to circle

(01:07:52):
back to to your friend. Has there been any headway
that's been made on that front as far as him
and his faith?

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
Oh? Yeah, I guess I didn't fit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Yeah, I thought. I thought, I remember you telling me
when we had a brief conversation because you guys were
obviously packing up and leaving. But I thought you said,
maybe he did.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Yeah. We stayed Facebook friends over the years, and his
wife passed away a couple it's been probably a couple
of years now, but when his wife passed away, he
brought up seeing her again and talking about God, and

(01:08:29):
I found out he had accepted Christ and was born again,
and so his experience saved his life.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Yeah, this is who it sounds like.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
I'd say. When I first met them, his wife was
always would you talk to him? You know, I just
want you to talk to him about, you know, what
you believe, And and he was way out there, he
was he had all kinds of crazy thoughts and I
just couldn't get through to him, and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
God did this isn't an amazing how many times, I mean,
how many times people have these experiences. It just I
guess what I'm really driving at is, it's amazing to
me how many stories and just thousands and thousands, of
hundreds of thousands, I'm sure of stories of people who

(01:09:24):
are atheists or firm believers or whatever, and everybody has
experiences that they have that are relatable or directly correlate
to that on the other side. And so for people
to question if anything awaits us on the other side anymore,
to me is just kind of almost staggering. You have

(01:09:45):
to like, it's a deliberate denial for whatever reason, to
justify I guess the way we want to live while
we're here, and that's the only thing I can come to.
So it's just kind of amazing to me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
It is I mean, every day is new experience. I said, people,
God puts people in front of us every day that
he wants us to talk to, and we need we
need to quit being afraid to do that. And that's
one of my messages that I like to give to
people in the church is quit being afraid. You know,

(01:10:22):
a Sunday Christian. You can't just be a Sunday Christian.
It's a seven day week job. And you don't have
to be a fanatic. You don't have to be crazy
about it. You don't have to drive people nuts. Like
I said, it's just planting a seed. God's used me
in some pretty crazy places. One of my jobs was

(01:10:43):
training people. I used to train people in aerial trucks.
And one of the guys that I was working with
was his wife was a Jehovah witness. You know. I
of course I don't believe in that, but it opened

(01:11:04):
my eyes, it gave me. We started conversation and we
talked and it was fun. He'd go home and come
back the next after he'd been off for a week,
and he'd come back, we'd meet up and go back
out on the road and his wife would give him
notes for me to read, you know, and out out

(01:11:30):
of her Bible. Yes, And so I read them and
then I would make notes and give them to him
and say, here, take these teer ukes. And it gave
it put me much deeper into God's word. It gave
me and I don't know whatever came of it, but

(01:11:52):
I know that God was using me and him and
and heard also two to bring us all closer. And
that's right, you know it just I love doing that.
I love meeting people and them putting me on that
relentless pursuit. You know. They asked me questions and I

(01:12:16):
I got to go find the answer. And it's just
it's a wonderful, wonderful life anymore. Yeah, man, Like I
said this, this week has been very tragic and our
our our church. I was able to go to church
this morning and they can't. They didn't do the series

(01:12:40):
they were working on. They had a special and it
was it was very strong, very powerful, and it was
you know, we're at war. Yeah, this is a war
going on. You're but the world, what is it that
I'm sorry that the word at war, the word of war. Yes, yeah,

(01:13:04):
the word at war.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
That's exactly the exactly that's right, my fire, and that's
why I named it what I did.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
And Christians out there that are going to church every
Sunday need to realize we are in a war. You know,
Evil runs this world and it's our job to try
to smash it, that against it. You know, we're not
gonna we're not gonna win, but Jesus is coming back,
and one of these days we won't have to worry

(01:13:31):
about that anymore. Yeah, we will have heaven on earth.
We will all be together. Anyone that loves Jesus, we
won't have any more sorrow. But until then, and tell
them we're at war with evil, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Right, And for everybody everybody watching this, you know, we've
were recording this about five days removed from the Utah
incident with Charlie Kirk. So that's what we're ferring because
I know this is going to come out a few
weeks down the line. And you know, the thing, the
thing that I felt immediately called to do was just
to get on and you know, tell everybody to be peaceful,

(01:14:16):
you know, tell everybody to take a step back, watch observe,
be good, be good watchmen, but don't engage, you know,
just just take a step back. Take a breath, because
we we we've had a tremendous amount of death already
this week, you know, and and and it started before
Charlie Kirk. Now we had a girl, we had a
girl on the subway in Carolina, and there's been various

(01:14:36):
things around the world. You know that the enemy is
is on full full throw man, because I think he
knows his time is short, says so write in scripture.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Right, We've had that crazy guy at the Catholic school
that killed great children.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Yeah, the day of Charlie Kirk, we had a shooting
in Colorado, you know, I think the same.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Day, I mean a couple of weeks of each other.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
Yeah, And so you know, I think what has really
shocked everybody, or really the Kirk thing especially is really
shocked everybody because everybody watched the after effect of not
only was the video and the event just absolutely brutal
to watch, but the gleefulness, the complete unveiling of evil, right,

(01:15:24):
because that's what's happened, right anyone, Because what you can see,
what you can read through that between the lines is
if you believe anything at all, whether you believe in
Jesus even, but if you hold any of Charlie Kirk's
values at all, and you don't agree with with, you know,
some of the agenda on the other side, then they
are would just be as glad for you to be

(01:15:46):
dead right. And that's the unveiling of evil that I
think has been really really hard for everybody to I
think it's been a really big toss of cold water
in the face. Now for those of us who have
been really deep into this the spiritual world and been
screaming and trying to do the battle cry for a while.
Now we are at spiritual war that because that's the

(01:16:09):
underpinning of everything. Yes, you know, we watch an assassination
of a man who literally spent some of his last
words on the earth. We're literally talking about Christ. And
the thing is, and I'm fearful of is we are
going to have people who are going to retaliate now
and try to trade life for life. And the challenge

(01:16:29):
and the and the real problem is something else that
I've thought about is when we trade life for life,
it's a one to one ratio here on the earth,
but it's not a one to one on the afterlife, right,
you know, like if if you take our life, one
of us you know, we're going to be with the
father and son. You know, we're gonna be with We're
gonna be with We're gonna be with our savior. If

(01:16:51):
they lose theirs, they're gone forever. Right, It's a one
to none and we need to keep that in mind.
And it's it's really hard, but it's been. It's been
hard to watch this week.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
It definitely has it's it's it was quite the shock that,
you know, what's what's what's come out of this is,
you know, Charlie Kirk especially, there were so many people
that you know that's on social media that said they
didn't really know who he was, yeah, or they you know,

(01:17:27):
or they've heard false things about him. And look at
your social media now he's all over what he has
to say and what he was trying to bring across
to college students that never had anybody talk to him
like that, never told them the truth. Yeah, you know,

(01:17:49):
we're all subject to the lies of this world. The
devil is the biggest greatest liar there is, and he
can he can make you question just about anything. Yeah,
that's why if we don't put on a full armor
of God, he can get to us and he'll find

(01:18:14):
that little crack and then every time and now Charlie's
what he was trying to put out there, people that
probably would have never heard him are listening to him.
The message has been amplified, state and lost again and
all of it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
You know, it's a time old thing. We can go
all the way back since the beginning of time, and
what we always see is under persecution, the message grows,
and under prosperity it dies. And I think that's maybe
what we're seeing a little bit of this week, the
tremendous persecution, because that's really what it is, right, I mean,
when somebody gleefully is happy about the silencing of a

(01:18:57):
counter message, right, because that's what this is. You know,
we're seeing exactly what you said, the fanning of the
flames of the message. And it's just, you know, it's
just really tough because it's I want our fellow brothers
and sisters in Christ to be christ Like about how
they handle it. And it's really tough because I've said

(01:19:18):
this several times this week, and I'll keep saying it.
There's a there's a reason to be righteously angry, Yes,
you know, there is. There truly is but what happens
is is it's so easy for righteous anger to be
turned into unrighteous reaction and unrighteous response. And that's the

(01:19:38):
thing that I just want everybody to be careful.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Of, because if we do that, we just put ourselves
in the same position of their.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Hate, and the enemy wins.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
Right and we I mean, you know, I had conversations
this week about because I didn't comment on posts that
people that would you know, they were getting joy out
of this, or they were making fun of things, and

(01:20:09):
I decided to go biblical with it when I didn't question,
I didn't argue. I didn't fight with them, because that's
a losing battle.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
Yeah, you're not gonna win.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
I just tried to handle it like I think Jesus
would have. You know, Yes, I'm angry. Oh golly, I
think all of us are angry. And I mean I
get angry and I get upset, and I question these
things every time something like this happens, and these last

(01:20:44):
two weeks have been horrendous. And so when those people
would come back because I didn't make any kind of post,
I just I had some people that I would read
their posts, and nope, none of the friends I had
because I don't have those kind of friends, but they
have people that they're acquainted with and they make comments.

(01:21:08):
And the only way I would come back at him
was biblical. And I think this world needs to understand
that we need to get out there and tell them
about the love of Jesus, Jesus, you know, and then
they come back and say, well, Jesus when he loved everybody,
you know, he just loves everybody and he's loved and

(01:21:29):
he's loved and he's loved. Well, sure, but that doesn't
mean he doesn't get angry.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
I mean, yeah, that doesn't mean he's going to accept sin.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
But he's not going to go out and seek revenge.
He's going to try to overcome the evil with good,
with the truth. I mean, that's the key. It's truth.
There's truth and there's lies, and the world is full
of lies and it's our job to give them the

(01:21:59):
truth the best we can. Not that we're perfect, we're
far far from that, but we have to. The Bible
is the truth, and when you've got to look at
Jesus when you're looking for the truth, you can't look
anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
Yeah, Jesus brings the shovel in the hammer. Yes, yes, yeah,
that was beautiful, you know, because you were sharing that
story and I just smiled because I've had this so
many times pop up too. You know, they'll know your
mind by how you act. Basically is the paraphrasing of
the gist of the verses. I'm not a chapter in

(01:22:41):
verse guy. I'll give you the KM version. That's good
enough to get us in the ballpark, I think, and
I always remember, you know, Saint Francis of ASSISI was
the one that said, you know, preach the Gospel to
all the nations and when necessary use words. Isn't that good?

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
That's good?

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
That's good right? And that's was laughing because I was
smiling inside because when you were sharing that story with
your pastor, I just thought of that very I thought
of that saying, you know, he was not He didn't
come over, he didn't come over with Bible in hand
and start preaching to you. He he came over with
a shovel, and he came over with a hammer. And
he realized when he brought the hammer he didn't even

(01:23:18):
need to because you were already decided you were going
to church.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
But he still hammered the nails, just like I did.
I mean, here you go, man, and thirty years later
we're great friends.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
Isn't that great?

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
He's taught me a lot, and from what he says,
I've taught him at I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
Who would have guessed? Who would have guessed the biggest
turning point in your life would be over a sewer pipe?

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Amen to that? Isn't that gray?

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
You got a lifelong friend out of the deal. He
suted to turn your faith around. You know, you gave
over all the baggage that you had that you've just
been carrying. God. God's so cool man, the way that
the way that he operates.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
It's funny how all these years I never put that together.
But you just gave me something a little humorous to
talk about. Now, you know?

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Well, now, now, for everybody listening, here's how this goes.
For anyone that's the least bit musical, you already know
this is going to wind up turning into lyrics somehow,
some way. I can already think I'm gonna good.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Luck with that one.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
Dude, My goodness.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
I just thought about it. The song that I wrote
that I won't sing today.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Okay, that's fair enough.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
I do believe that it's on our Facebook page.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
I we did put it out there, and it was
at a festival we were at just recently, and I
think it was the one one few times that I
actually got through the song and all three of us
did it right, So that's why it's probably out there.
But yeah, I think that's on our Facebook page and

(01:25:02):
I would love it. We joke we're on a quest
to get ten thousand likes and we're at about eight
hundred and fifteen now.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
So okay, you can get chipping away, check to like.
There you go, very good, get.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Us closer to that ten thousand Mark.

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Amen, brother, Well, hey man, thanks for your time today, dude.
It was great talking with you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Oh this has been I haven't gotten to talk about
a lot of this stuff in a long time. It's
been good.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
The Lord connected us and we did our part and
it was good.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
There you go, brother, Thank you guys. Absolutely, my friend.
It's been great talking to you. I really enjoyed it
very much. And if you guys want to check out
more about Mark and Stones Crossing, head to Stones Crossing
Music dot com. And again you can check him out
on Facebook YouTube, give him a like. We the likes
do help man gives us. It gives us that encouragement
we need. You know, we are human. So YouTube and Facebook,

(01:26:02):
and then check out the musical on each platform. And again,
if you want to help support me, I can't ask
you enough for that. We all need love, we all
need support, and you guys have been awesome. But definitely like, subscribe, follow,
and then if you're listening to this, leave that five
star review if you think I'm deserving of it. I
would really appreciate that. On Spotify, Apple or wherever you
listen to the show. And again, I'm super excited about

(01:26:22):
our school community that I just started up. I talked
about that a little bit earlier in the show. But
you can click above, or you can actually click down
on the description or head to the word atwarmedia dot
com and you can click on school there and you
will be able to get into the school community. I
would love to have you in there. Where are going
to build a community that is second to none. I'm
super excited about it. And if you enjoy this conversation

(01:26:44):
with Mark today, check out my conversation with my friend
timber Cleghorn from the show Alone. Mark, thanks a lot, Man,
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Thank you very much. I really appreciate it too,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Crossing Over | Near Death, Miracles, & Music