Sid Roth - Miraculous Recovery from Deadly Car Accident Astounds Doctors
After a tragic automobile accident, Lillianne laid in a coma with no brain activity. Her father was shown - supernaturally - the exact day and the exact time she would come out of the coma. Next on this edition of "It's Supernatural"!
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter, and have we got a story for you. I've got Bob Old here, and he heard about his daughter - four years ago, got a phone call that no father ever wants to get. What did they tell you, Bob?
Bob Old: Well Sid, that phone call brought news to Nancy and I that was very devastating. We had heard on the line from a friend of hers that she had been involved in a serious accident. And I know a lot of parents have kids that are involved in accidents. But we were told within just a very few seconds that we needed to be on our way to Vanderbilt, that our daughter had been life-flighted to Vanderbilt, and that she was involved in an accident that was life-threatening.
Sid Roth: Of course, later on you found this out about actually what occurred. She actually left the house and went on a date with someone you didn't approve of.
Bob Old: Exactly, Sid. We had told Lillianne that particular boy she was dating that she could not see this boy again; that they just didn't gel right. They just didn't match. And to parents listening, they know those boundaries and how important they are. But we did. We did not want her seeing this young man. But she stepped out of our authority, and she stepped out from, you know, out there on her own and disobeyed us, and she went to a place she shouldn't have gone.
Sid Roth: What happened to her?
Bob Old: What took place was that when she went to see this boy, evidently they had gotten into an argument and they - he decided to leave and she decided to follow, and this was in a place called Joelton, a small community where we lived. And they were going down to a place called Devil's Elbow. And as they went down Devil's Elbow they were traveling at a fast rate of speed, probably in excess of 15 miles an hour of the speed limit, and on a dangerous curve. All that met was tragic; and so the automobile that she was driving while she was following him, as she went into the curve, and flipped. I mean, it literally went from the front end to the back end, and it just kind of cobbled itself over three or four times. In the process of that accident, Lillianne was hurled like a missile - a projectile - through the windshield of the car. She landed on her back, and she slid a little over a hundred feet on her back, which literally peeled all the skin from her back. When I saw her the first time on her back, I had never seen anything like that. I'm a Vietnam veteran and I've seen a lot of things, but I've never seen anybody's back just literally peeled of the skin that's on it, but that's what it did to her. It - we didn't know any of the other injuries or anything that happened to her until we got to the hospital, Sid.
Sid Roth: What did the doctors tell you? I'm curious.
Bob Old: When Nancy and I got to the hospital, the head doctor, Dr. Virginia Eddy, head of the trauma team, met us at the door, and she pulled us aside from the rest of our friends, and she said, "I just need to prepare you". She said, "This is not good. You need to know all the facts. She may not make it through the night. She's had severe injuries". And I said, "Well what are her injuries"? And she said, "She's had all of her skin removed from her back. She's had three fingers that have been severed from her hand. She has a hole that is just a complete hole directly through her elbow; just a hole that went straight through her elbow". She had - all of her ribs were broken; she had - both lungs had collapsed en route to the hospital. She had a variety of other injuries and contusions all over her body. She had - of the worst injuries, she had a closed head injury.
Sid Roth: What does that mean?
Bob Old: Closed head injury - a head trauma - means that the brain, because of the impact, was so harsh, so brutal, that her brain ricocheted off the inside of her head. It jostled back and forth on the inside of her head, which left her head and brain bleeding on the inside and swelling. It broke so hard on impact, it broke the bones on the inside of her ear and on her ears. That left her in a state of a coma; there was no brain activity. They had her on a breathing machine. And when Nancy and I first saw her, Sid, we weren't prepared for what we saw. She, her face had swollen. I guess it was about 48 hours before we saw her. In that period of time her face swelled together. Her eyes and her nose, and her mouth, they were just - it was just like it was flat. That's how bad she was swollen. They had a shunt to the brain which they were draining water and fluid from the brain. Again, the doctors told her she had less than a 50 percent chance to live, and the longer she stayed in the coma, the less chance she had to live.
Sid Roth: But what about this thing with her brain?
Bob Old: Yeah.
Sid Roth: I mean, if she recovered would she have brain damage? Did they prepare you for it?
Bob Old: They said that if she does recover, that we would have a lifetime dealing with the complications that could come from that. She might not know how to walk; she might not know how to talk. She may never regain full recovery of her memory; she may never be able to learn the way she's learned before. And was an A student; she was a good student. She was a top "class A act" in everything that she did, and she excelled in everything. She was excellent in science, and she was a runner. She was a competor. She was going on to be a state champion that year.
Sid Roth: Out of curiosity, Bob...
Bob Old: Yes.
Sid Roth: No father is prepared to see what he saw. You - I'm sure you composed yourself for your wife's benefit - for anyone's benefit - but what's going on inside of you?
Bob Old: Well you know, Sid, I wasn't prepared and I, you know, when I saw my daughter at that time, I literally just broke down inside, Sid. I was at a moment that I had never been before in my life. I was desperate. I was broken. I realize there's nothing I can do. For the first time I couldn't fix it. But for the first time, my daughter, I could do nothing for her. She was in the hands that was beyond my hands. She was out of it. She was out of the hands of the medical field. There was nothing they could do, and they literally told us that there was nothing they could do. We were waiting upon something else and someone else to do something. The only thing I knew to do was to pray. I mean, I'm a Baptist minister, and we were taught to pray; but I had never seen God really move. I mean, I had never seen a miracle. I had never seen the power of God. I heard about God and learned about God from the Bible, but I had never known this God of power, other than just what he had done in history. But what I wanted God to do was to be God for me. I mean, I needed God to be God for me in that moment, in that hour. And so out of desperation, I called my friends to pray, and I prayed. And we had hundreds of people that came to our support, and thank God for people that will support you and pray for you. But in that desperation of praying, on the sixth day, there about somewhere on the sixth day, Sid, God came to me, and I began to realize that things were growing worse. And the doctors talked to us again on the sixth day and they said, "Bob and Nancy, we're going to have to do surgery. If we don't do surgery, there are going to be complications that she's not going to want to live with when she wakes up. And if we're going to do anything, we got to do it now. But you need to be prepared. She may not make it through the surgery". And I said, "Doc, how bad can it get"? He said, "It's not going to get any better". He said, "This is as bad as it's going to get".
Sid Roth: What if that was you? What would you do about that? Well I can tell you this Baptist pastor who never heard from God before, never saw the power of God, thought he was just a God of history, heard God's voice. We'll be right back after this.
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter and I'm here with Bob Old, and he got a phone call that no father should ever get. Your daughter has been in a serious automobile accident. She's got brain damage. She's got, of all things - she didn't listen to her father, and her father didn't want her to date this particular guy. And she's out; her car flips over, and ribs are broken, bones are broken, three fingers are severed. She's got a pierced elbow. Interesting enough, what was the name of the street that she was on, Bob?
Bob Old: Sid, Devil's Elbow.
Sid Roth: Devil's Elbow.
Bob Old: That's where the accident occurred, yes.
Sid Roth: Okay. So you're at the hospital. You're a Baptist minister.
Bob Old: Yes.
Sid Roth: But you had never seen the power of God, but this is your daughter, and she needs surgery. Or even if she survives, you'll regret it, the doctor says. And was the surgery serious surgery?
Bob Old: Well the surgeries that they had to do were cleaning up surgeries. They were to put the fingers back on. They had to do things of that nature, if they were going to have her in any sense of wholeness of how she could be recognized, and want to function, if indeed she did come out of this coma.
Sid Roth: Well and what is the danger of her being in this coma a long period of time?
Bob Old: Long periods of time. The longer that they're in the coma, the less likely that the brain will respond to any outside activity. And when they told me that on that sixth day, I, my -
Sid Roth: So she was in a coma six days.
Bob Old: She was in a coma six days. No response; nothing whatsoever.
Sid Roth: Her brain - was it registering anything?
Bob Old: Her brain was registering very little activity. We did have some registration of activity, but very little. In other words, any outside stimulus they would give her, she really wasn't responding to that. Whatever they were picking up on those monitors was going on, on the inside. It wasn't from outside stimulus. But my desperation for God to move grew even greater, and I wanted to see this God of power, Sid, move. And so I asked God to, you know, just cried out to Him, and He spoke to me, and He spoke to me very clearly. Now being a preacher, I've always felt that I've heard the voice of God, but this was a different voice. It was - I was at a different place in my life than where I've been before, and I was broken. I was before God; I was open, I was poured out, I was an empty vessel, and I was at my weakest. And I found when we're at our weakest, He's at His best. And He came to me in that moment, and He spoke to me very clearly, and He said, "Bob, your prayer must be specific. You must ask for your daughter to wake up the next time you see her". And I thought about that long and hard, and I said, "Lord, ask her to wake up the next time I see her? Ask people to pray for that"? He said, "Yes, have My people to pray that she wake up the next time that you see her". Now I got on the phone and called the only man I knew who could get in touch with a lot of people; a lot of people that believed in God in a very short period of time.
Sid Roth: Did you really believe that that was God speaking to you?
Bob Old: I really believed it. I know it was God speaking to me.
Sid Roth: Had you ever heard the voice of God like that before?
Bob Old: I have heard the voice of God speak to me in my conscious before, but never so clearly; never so crisp and clear, never so resoundingly as in that moment. In that moment of my - only desperation and brokenness, God spoke to my heart and he said, "You're not praying specific enough. You need to pray for what you want me to do. You need to ask me. You need to ask Me to wake her up". And so I did, and I asked my friend to call as many people as we could, and send - fax churches in the area, and to tell the church families to pray, that the next time I see her at 9:00 a.m., Thursday morning.
Sid Roth: So you were specific.
Bob Old: I was specific, because He said, "… the next time". The next time I was going to see her was going to be 9:00, Sid, so I said, "Okay, here's the request: 9:00 a.m., Thursday morning, Nancy and I are going to see Lillianne, and I want the church to pray that when I see her at 9:00, that God will awaken her from her coma".
Sid Roth: Okay. You get there. How did your wife react to this, by the way?
Bob Old: Well Nancy, she is a great lady of faith, and she agreed with me to pray for her.
Sid Roth: I mean, 9:00 a.m. and she's going to awaken? I mean, that's almost putting God on the spot.
Bob Old: Well we talked about that and as a matter of fact, my friend that I asked. He said, "Bob, are you sure that we want to say 9:00 a.m."?
Sid Roth: Because if she doesn't wake up at 9:00, then your faith goes south for the winter.
Bob Old: That's right. That's the implication, and I knew that. But I also knew how strong God's voice was with me, and I also knew that I had to be obedient. I had to do what he was asking me to do. And so I said, "Mike, I want you to pray it exactly that way and no other way". Nancy and I, we spent the night in prayer, and in that night, in that room of my prayer, I got before God, and I knew what we had asked our friends to do. The phone rang off the wall, people saying 9:00, 9:00, and I said 9:00. At 9:00, God is going to move. That night I sat in my room, and I was crying out to God, and I never cried out to God like I did that night. And I just want to say to anybody that's listening, that in your time of brokenness and in your greatest need, if you would just get out of yourself and get on your knees, and turn to Him, and cry out with all of your heart, that's what He's looking for. He's looking for an empty vessel. He's looking for someone that's broken; someone that He can get to; someone He can touch. And in that moment of brokenness, I never knew how much I needed Jesus, Sid, until I knew that Jesus was all I had. And so I asked Him that night, "Lord, would You do this"? And I want to tell you, there was a wind that came through that room that night. I mean not - listen, I never experienced anything like this in my life. But I'm not talking about just something that you sense, but I'm talking about a breeze that blew into my room that night.
Sid Roth: Were windows open?
Bob Old: There were no windows open that night.
Sid Roth: Air conditioning going?
Bob Old: No air conditioning. I was in my bed, and my wife had fallen asleep. We prayed so much that night. And a breeze came into that room, and it filled that room with an aroma; with a scent I began to smell, and it was my daughter's hair. I could smell her perfume, and I knew that she was there. I knew that God was beginning to answer my prayer then. God was manifesting his miraculous power then. God was bringing her back from wherever she was right then, and I knew that.
Sid Roth: So 9:00 a.m.; what did you do?
Bob Old: 9:00 a.m.; Nancy and I, we got up; we dressed ourselves as always. We went to the hospital. We walked into that room and there she lay with this machine over here breathing for her, and that is a terrible sound, the machine, but it was breathing for her. She lay there all swollen with that gray-cast look on her face. And she lay there, and she looked like she was dead. And we walked over to her, and I took Nancy's hand, and I grabbed Lillianne's hand, and I leaned over to her, Sid, and I looked at her right in her eyes, and I said, "Lillianne, honey, this is your daddy. It's time to wake up darling. Open up those baby blue eyes for me". BAM! I mean, just like a bolt of lightning from Heaven, Sid. Her eyes, Sid, they just jumped open.
Sid Roth: Eyes opened up at 9:00 a.m. in the morning. It gets better. I want you to meet Lillianne. We'll be back right after this.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Bob and Lillianne Old. But before we talk with them - and I know you want to hear them right now - but let's go to the control room. Janie, what would happen if you saw your daughter in that type of situation? I mean, I just can't picture that. I can't picture a father and a mother looking at their beautiful daughter like that in that horrible condition.
Janie DuVall: Most people would give up and just say, I guess that was God's will and they're supposed to die. But that's not what he did.
Sid Roth: Well who's up next week?
Janie DuVall: You'll be interviewing Sandra Kennedy and she has seen the most awesome miracles. For instance, she's prayed for five women who had complete hysterectomies, but they all had supernatural children. They got pregnant.
Sid Roth: You say complete hysterectomies. That means that's medically impossible.
Janie DuVall: Absolutely. And then she has a lot of healing teams. She's trained healing teams, and they have seen six people brain dead who have totally come back to life. It's so amazing that the hospitals in Augusta, Georgia are asking for these healing teams to come because so many people are healed.
Sid Roth: The amazing thing is that's amazing. But what's even more amazing is she is now teaching the medical students on how to heal through the Word of God in the name of Jesus. Would you think this would ever happen to medical students?
Janie DuVall: I would never believe that. And yes, she said that the nurses and the doctors are having her come all the time to keep on training them.
Sid Roth: Thank you, Janie. Well Bob, you have your daughter over here, and the whole world can see you got your daughter back. What did God say to you?
Bob Old: Well you know...
Sid Roth: Before you prayed for her, what did he say?
Bob Old: Before I prayed for her, Sid, God said, "You need to pray specific. You need to ask for your daughter to awake the next time you see her".
Sid Roth: And she had been in a coma for how many days?
Bob Old: She had been in a coma for six days.
Sid Roth: And every day that went by, there was less likelihood she'd recover.
Bob Old: That's right, Sid.
Sid Roth: Would you reach over and hold your daughter's hand right now?
Bob Old: Gladly.
Sid Roth: Now what did you do when you grabbed her hand and she's in the coma? Describe what was going on.
Bob Old: She was laying there on that bed, with that cold gray stone face. And that breathing machine was breathing for her, and her chest was moving up and down as the machine would breathe. And she laid there with tubes running all in her. Her face was swollen; you couldn't recognize her hardly. And I reached over and I grabbed her hand, and I said, "Lillianne, honey, this is your daddy. You need to open up those baby blue eyes. It's time to get up. Open those eyes up darling". And BAM! Just like that, those eyes popped open. She looked at me, and she sat up. And she couldn't hardly talk because she had a tube - a trache - and she was trying to speak. And what she said was, she said, "Daddy, where am I"?
Sid Roth: You mean, you didn't understand. You didn't know anything from the time you had had the accident until the moment your father grabbed your hand.
Lillianne: That's right. I don't remember really waking up.
Sid Roth: But she grabbed the tubes out of her.
Bob Old: She began to pull the tubes out of her. She was trying to get up. These alarms were going off.
Sid Roth: You're really a fighter.
Bob Old: Yes she is. These alarms were going off because she wasn't supposed to be doing that, Sid. And the doctors and nurses come running. They had her hooked up to alarms; in case she did wake up, they would know - and this wasn't supposed to happen. So they came over and they started working with her, and Nancy just about fainted; they had to help her out. And I was literally dancing in the hospital room and shouting.
Sid Roth: I mean, this is just like reading the Book of Acts.
Bob Old: Oh hallelujah!
Sid Roth: That book is no longer a history book for you, is it?
Bob Old: No, it isn't a history book. He is an awesome God. He is a powerful God. He is a God that, if we will dare but believe, that anything that we ask in His name He will do - He will do it. All He's looking for is a person who is willing to cry out to Him in their moment of greatest weakness; recognizing their weakness, recognizing His strength. And have the faith; a little faith. You know, faith is not something - it does not matter whether you got big faith or not. I used to think that you had to have big faith to see God do powerful things. Little faith, it's what you put your faith in. It's the object of your faith that counts. And I put that little faith in Jesus, and I asked Jesus to do something for me I couldn't do for myself. I asked Him to bring my daughter out of a coma, and He did.
Sid Roth: Okay. Now when she came out of the coma, the doctor said it would take how long for her to be rehabilitated?
Bob Old: He said it would take several years for her to overcome the things that she was going, the things that she was experiencing.
Sid Roth: How long did it take, Lillianne?
Lillianne: It took me approximately three months and I was returning to school.
Sid Roth: Three months?
Lillianne: Three months.
Sid Roth: Were you speaking?
Lillianne: Gradually. I had to suffer some consequences, of course, because of the disobedience that I chose that night. So my consequences were learning how to re-talk, read, write, you know, speak, dress, and even bathe myself. You know, I had to learn all that. And of course, that happened. But God gave me strength, and gave me comfort of His Word. Because what's very common when someone has a closed head injury is you forget how to go to sleep.
Sid Roth: Really?
Lillianne: Yes. I asked my father and my mother, "How does one go to sleep"?, and they would start to give me step by step instructions. "Close your eyes, lay there, be still". I said, "Well Daddy, just read me Revelations in the Bible". You see, the comfort of His Word, his source, he was able to put me to sleep.
Sid Roth: What did the doctors and the medical - you just want to look at your daughter. I could tell.
Bob Old: That's right.
Sid Roth: What did the doctors and the medical staff have to say about her coming out at 9:00 a.m. of the coma, exactly when you said it, and recovering in three months rather than years?
Bob Old: Well Sid, they said to Lillianne and to me, over and over again, that they do not understand how this is happening. That this is - they had never seen this before. But they just simply wanted to be a part of it, and for us to be happy and to rejoice; but this shouldn't be happening. They were perplexed; they couldn't keep the charts caught up fast enough. Lillianne was making advancements in areas that she shouldn't be. I mean, just too quick. I mean, they just said "There's no way". As a matter of fact, Dr. Virginia Eddy told us both, "If we could bottle it and give it away, we would"...
Sid Roth: Now the newspaper actually had an account of this.
Bob Old: Yes they did; they sure did. They had an account of the actual miracle. Lillianne had the gift of running. God had given her - why don't you tell him about that.
Lillianne: Well while I was in the hospital, God kept telling me to set goals for myself. Of course, I refused to listen to Him because here I am, you know, can't talk, can't walk. I'm supposed to be getting out of the rehab hospital in two weeks.
Sid Roth: End result though, what do you do today?
Lillianne: I'm a Vista.
Sid Roth: A what?
Lillianne: A Vista was an old Peace Corp member.
Sid Roth: Lillianne, can you run now?
Lillianne: Yes. Not only can I run, but I placed third in my first cross-country meet.
Sid Roth: Do you hear that? Third in her first cross-country meet. Devil's Elbow, she had a pierced devil; literally, a devil in her elbow. Almost died for disobedience. How about you being obedient right now? Make Jesus your Messiah and Lord. I mean, right now ask Him to forgive you of your sins. The blood of Jesus washes away your sins. "Come inside of me, Jesus". You say that. "Come inside of me, Jesus. Take over my life. Make my life count. I want to run with the wind; run with the wind. Run with you, Jesus. You're all that counts. You're all that matters. You are my reason for living. I want to run"!