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CBN.com – "My secretary was on the phone and she said, 'Pastor, Bishop has just dropped. He's in route now in an ambulance to the hospital.'"
Pastor Alice Jones didn't know if her husband was dead or alive. She was away when she received the call. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she arrived at the hospital.
"When I first saw Bishop it was an unbelievable sight," Pastor Alice remembers. "Equipment was everywhere. Tubes were everywhere."
The man who never had an illness was in a coma clinging to life. Dr. Jerry Horner, a vascular surgeon at the International Neurosurgical Hospital, knew his chances of survival were slim.
"Bishop Jones, as you know, was preaching in his congregation, had a sudden onset headache, and just passed out. He then had a seizure."
An aneurysm in Bishop D.K. Jones' head had hemorrhaged.
"There is spinal fluid in the cavities of the brain," Dr. Horner explains, pointing to an x-ray. "But when you have a hemorrhage you get blood in the spinal fluid around the brain stem in all these spaces that contain spinal fluid. All of this white area is blood, and so he has a really a significant hemorrhage, or bleeding into the spinal fluid."
As Bishop Jones was rushed into surgery, members of the church fell to their knees to pray. Others around the world were mobilized for prayer as well. After 6 hours of surgery doctors were able to control the hemorrhaging in his brain.
But then something went wrong.
"The
doctor said, 'Mrs. Jones we have completed the surgery and we've brought your
husband out,'" Pastor Alice remembers. "'We took him to recovery and we've
done some testing. It appears there is some paralysis on the right side. I'm
going to take him back into surgery.'"
The surgery to repair the aneurysm had led to a stroke! Where was God why hadn't he answered hundreds of prayers for healing? But as Alice and family members endured the grueling hours of a second surgery, they never lost faith.
"You exchange your weakness for his strength. And that's what I felt. I said, 'God I bring you all this fear and anxiety, these questions and concerns, and I give them to you, because I can't carry them.'"
After four more hours they finally learned the surgery had been a success. Bishop Jones had survived! After 36 hours Bishop Jones awoke from the coma.
"We played worship music on around the clock," Pastor Alice recalls. "And we asked the nurse to never stop that. We put up banners, and balloons, and Scriptures, and pictures. We kept his room with a sense of 'we're here with you.'"
As the days passed, Bishop Jones' condition improved enough that his physician released him from intensive care. The doctors observed that his recovery seemed faster than normal.
"He was beginning to move his right side," remembers Dr. Horner, "which he had not done before. Sometimes times it takes 2 or 3 or 4 months before that happens. But he had already begun to show pretty significant improvement."
As Bishop Jones started rehab, again his determination and the power of prayer seemed to propel him forward toward recovery.
"I started getting better," he recalls, "and I told them I didn't want the walker. I put the walker down and I started walking on my feet. I started climbing the stairway -- a 45-step stairway. I'd go up one side and come down on the other."
After eight months in the hospital and rehab, a process that could have easily
taken twelve to eighteen months, Bishop Jones went home.
"Some people heal quicker than others," Dr. Horner explains. "Now whether that has to do with their faith or whether it has to do with the people around that are praying for them I certainly think that there is a power in prayer. Whether this was the key in Bishop Jones or not, I don't know that. But certainly that is with me all the time when I am taking care of patients."
"My husband walked by in church the first Sunday," Pastor Alice remembers. "He used the walker to get just to the entrance of the sanctuary. He walked back into the sanctuary and I don't think he ever walked with that walker again."
And Bishop Jones will tell you his close encounter with death has confirmed his belief that God is truly awesome!
"Jesus is really the real deal. He's not just a name that people say. He's actually the real deal. He's God. And he will help you."
"I learned of His faithfulness," Pastor Alice declares. "I learned of His
sovereignty. I learned of His grace and patience. I learned of His goodness.
There are times my husband and I just sit and sing worship songs together
to the Lord. We worship the Lord together for his goodness. The Bible says,
'Oh that men would praise Him for His wondrous works and His goodness to the
children of men.' We want to be those that give Him the praise."
It’s now been three years since Bishop Jones had his near death experience, and today, he’s back to his old self and then some!
Bishop Jones says, “I’m like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’ll be back. I’m back.”
And it seems like in every way Bishop Jones continues to defy the odds.
“You know I’ve had a couple of doctor’s reports and their progress of what I’m doing is probably blowing their minds. But it’s God. It’s the hand of God,” says Bishop Jones.
Alice says, “I live with a miracle. There is no way that my husband should look like he looks, talk like he talks except God had defied the laws of science.”
And just like a person grateful to be alive, Bishop Jones can’t help but share his incredible journey with others. He’s now a chaplain at the same hospital where God healed him.
“Jesus healed the ten lepers and they all walked away but one of them turned around and said, ‘Thank you for healing me.’ And that’s what I did,” says Bishop Jones. “I went back to the hospitals to tell God thank you for saving me.”
Bishop Jones’ schedule remains busy as he continues to oversee eight churches around the world. But in the midst of it all he is just thankful for a second chance to live.
Bishop Jones says, “I’m very grateful. I really love the Lord. I tell you.”
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