Sid Roth - I Saw a Dead Woman Come Back to Life with Owens Edge
Sid Roth: Hello, I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Owens Edge, a successful businessman. And all of a sudden, his wife Shirley comes home and how was she acting?
Owens Edge: In my opinion, just very strange. She came in actually with her hands in the air, praising the Lord, speaking in tongues and I was waiting for the punchline. I said, "What is going on here"? And she was washing dishes. She'd be washing dishes and her hands would be in the air. You know, how are you going to wash dishes with your hands in the air? But just totally strange, odd to me, and I being agnostic would look at this and say, something serious, something very serious is wrong here. And I, in my state of mind, saw this as a mental problem.
Sid Roth: Did you tell her to get help? What did you tell her?
Owens Edge: Well I thought I would try to work with her myself, and if I could get her to drop this thing that she was doing and this group that she was hanging with, if I could get her to just turn that loose, I really felt that she would probably just come back to normal and our family could return to normal, and we would all be happy again. But then if she persisted I felt like that she would probably need professional help. Now she began praying for me, began really seriously praying for me. In fact, she would stay up all night and she had a job where she worked.
Sid Roth: How could she do that, stay up all night and then work?
Owens Edge: Well that's the first part of I guess something supernatural, something God was doing, giving her the ability to just pray for me. And she would stay up all night, work all day and then do this several days in a row. And when she came home the next time, she was still just as strange as far as I was concerned. All during that week I was worried about her. I really felt that this had to be some form of mental imbalance. This couldn't possibly be normal. And so she, I, well maybe I should say it this way. I approached her and I figured that if she did not speak on the subject, if I just asked her not to speak on the subject that this would begin to fade and go away.
Sid Roth: Just out of curiosity, did you think about leaving her? Did you love your wife?
Owens Edge: Yes, I loved her and I had no intentions of leaving
Sid Roth: You just wanted her to go back to the way she was.
Owens Edge: Yes. I wanted life to be normal again, happy, normal. This way was strange, bizarre. And so she asked, I asked her not to be conducting herself in this fashion and not to be acting the way she was acting, and she says, really somewhat to my surprise, because often times she doesn't readily agree with everything that I had said. And when I suggested this, she said, "Sure, fine. I have one thing I want you to do, though". And I said, oh here comes the punchline. So she said, "I want you to get up each morning and pray for 30 minutes".
Sid Roth: That's reasonable.
Owens Edge: Yes. I was agnostic, but I attended a church and sat in a pew because for businessmen that looked respectable.
Sid Roth: I understand.
Owens Edge: And so there I was, didn't believe a word of it. There I was. In any event, I agreed to do this because often times I had been asked to dismiss prayer in church and I would, I've been to church all my life. I would stand up and say this.
Sid Roth: Churches like successful businessmen in their churches.
Owens Edge: Yeah, they like to see us. But anyway, so when she, her request was to pray for 30 minutes each morning, I said, piece of cake, this is easy. I can handle this. And so the next morning, I did some of the chores that had to be done around the house and got the kids down to the place where they catch the bus, and I was then prepared to take 30 minutes and pray. Now of course being, you know, being in my frame of mind, praying would be easy, but it would be of no good except what it would help and how it would help in the relationship and getting her off of this craziness with Jesus.
Sid Roth: But you promised.
Owens Edge: And I was a person of word and I believe that people should do what people say they're going to do. I was moral. I was a moral person. But I just, I didn't believe, I didn't really believe anything as far as supernatural, God, anything like that, all that was [unintelligible]. And I was, we had a large house and had a large hallway going down the middle of the house, and I was walking down through this hallway, and I was going to pray. And as I began to speak, I really didn't speak. As I began to try to speak, there was like a lump would come up in my throat. My chest was filled with air and I could not speak. I could not say a word. Now this, I had never had that problem before. This comes totally as...
Sid Roth: Only when you prayed this would happen.
Owens Edge: When we were in church it would not happen when I prayed in church. When they'd ask me to dismiss the service in prayer, I would pray, no problem. But this time here, I know it was the power of that, those prayers my wife was praying. It was, praise God, praying with me, I tell you. And but I would go to say any word, I'd go in the form of prayer and it would just, I couldn't say anything. Nothing would happen. And this bothered me. Quite naturally, I guess it would. But it really bothered me. And I said, why? I would stop and as long as I wasn't trying to pray, I'd speak. And then I began to get the impression of eyes, that I was being looked at. I was just being watched. Well this caused me additional concern because that's not normally a thing that I had ever felt before. I had never had such sensations as that. But I was being watched and I couldn't speak, and I was beginning to wonder, what is going wrong, what is wrong with me?
Sid Roth: But your wife made a suggestion, Shirley, of how you should pray.
Owens Edge: Yes. She said, "If you do not know how to pray then ask the Holy Spirit to pray for you". And this, I did after, I might add, checking to make sure there was no one watching. I looked under the house, I looked up in the attic, everywhere. And then I went into one of the bathrooms, which was in a central part of the house and no outside windows to the outside. So I said, hey, I'm secure here. No one can, I know no one, it was getting a little strange really. And so then I just flippantly, well and I still tried to pray and couldn't, and then I remember what she said, and I flippantly said, "Holy Spirit, pray for me," and thinking in my mind, this is legitimate. She said that this a legitimate way to pray. Now I didn't, I was thinking to myself it was nothing, you know, would happen. And so now I could keep my word. I'll be prayerful. Right. Holy Spirit, pray for me. And I began to plan my day. We were building horse stalls that day. And I began to plan my day how I was going to do this, what I was going to do that day and what I was going to have the help doing, and so forth. And it was like I began to get high.
Sid Roth: High?
Owens Edge: I began to get high.
Sid Roth: Were you drinking?
Owens Edge: No.
Sid Roth: You weren't drinking. How did he get high? He wasn't drinking. Wait until you find out what happened. It is, I mean, it's almost supernatural. We'll be right back after this.
Sid Roth: Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with Owens Edge. He is a successful businessman. His wife goes a little too far with this God business. She's raising her hands. She's praying in supernatural languages called tongues. She's getting too fanatic. He says, I want you to stop. She says, "I will if you will pray for 30 minutes a day". Now he's an agnostic, but he says, I can do that. At least I'll have my wife back the way she used to be. He finds he can't pray. So his wife makes a suggestion. I mean, he can pray in church, but he just couldn't pray. Something was stopping him from praying. And so his wife says, "Why don't you ask the Holy Spirit to pray for you". He doesn't know what she's talking about, but he says, "Okay, Holy Spirit, you pray for me". And all of a sudden, I mean, this is early in the morning. He's not a man that drinks. All of a sudden he starts feeling high. High?
Owens Edge: Yes, just feeling drunk. I began to feel light, light-headed. I began to just get the sensations of just being drunk. And I just got almost like floating away. And then I became aware of a voice speaking. I became aware of this voice and it was in, I could not understand what it was saying. Although it was apparently speaking English, I could get a word every now and then, but not enough to put together enough words to make any sense out of anything. And it sounded like, it sounded as though it were a professional voice and it, like it was in another room. And I can remember trying to move in different positions to see if I could hear and get enough of what was being said to understand it. But now I was drunk and this was okay. I mean, you know how people are when they're drunk, they don't care. And so I was drunk and it never occurred to me, you're listening to voices. It just did not occur to me, I'm listening to a voice.
Sid Roth: You thought your wife was strange. You're getting pretty strange yourself.
Owens Edge: It didn't occur to me.
Sid Roth: Okay.
Owens Edge: It just did not. But anyway, I began to move in different positions and as I was doing this, it was like a steam began to come into the room and it just began to get thicker and thicker. I didn't even care about that.
Sid Roth: I have to ask you a question. Did you take drugs?
Owens Edge: No, no, never took drugs.
Sid Roth: Never took drugs. Did you ever have an experience like this before?
Owens Edge: Never.
Sid Roth: It was like smoke?
Owens Edge: I didn't believe people could have experiences like that.
Sid Roth: You're saying it's like smoke or steam?
Owens Edge: It was like a steam with its own light in it was beginning to fill up this bathroom area.
Sid Roth: Did you think you were nuts?
Owens Edge: It didn't occur to me that until later, but it did not occur to me at that time.
Sid Roth: Okay.
Owens Edge: You see, I was so drunk it seemed normal.
Sid Roth: Did you feel good?
Owens Edge: Great. Best I ever felt. I had never felt anything like that. Prior to that time I had just never felt such things. And I, and then the muscles in my stomach just began to contract. It did not hurt, it was not painful, but they would just draw. And I remember drawing double, literally my head between my knees and just groaning. That's the only thing I know how to describe it as, groaning. I just groaned. It felt great. I was high and it just felt like I was drunk. I felt good. I felt light. I had just never felt so good and I was just, there I was groaning. Now a day earlier if I had seen myself doing that I'd say he's nuts, you know, lock him up. Do something with him. He's losing it. And but there I was and it just seemed perfectly normal to me. And then it left and the contractions stopped. I straightened back up and the last vestiges of what I thought of as steam was leaving. And then I got up and as I left the room, I had no sensation of weight on my feet. I, it's as though they were not touching the floor. And I remember bending and leaning, and trying to look to see whether or not I was actually in contact with the floor.
Sid Roth: Were you?
Owens Edge: Yes, apparently I was. I would look and it seemed like there would be pressure, at least somewhat pressure going to the floor, but I couldn't tell it from my feet. Now maybe I was pretty light.
Sid Roth: So with all these phenomenal things happening to you of a supernatural variety, I assume you then became a fanatic like your wife for Jesus?
Owens Edge: No.
Sid Roth: No?
Owens Edge: I couldn't believe it. Once the high left, once I came back down and I went out, and I was working, of course this was primarily on my mind. I didn't get much work done. I couldn't drive a nail without my stopping and thinking what happened to me. I would think one minute, hey there is a God. There is a God. He does exist. Something happened to me and this couldn't possibly have been imagination or a hallucination, or any of these other explanations that I always conveniently had for other people. And then a little later I'd say, no, there is no such thing as this type stuff that's happening to me. I'm, there's something happening to my mind. I'm beginning to lose my mind, some chemical imbalance. Something went wrong with me.
Sid Roth: Well did you ever try it again, say, Holy Spirit pray for me?
Owens Edge: Yes. In fact, all during that day I was saying, I can hardly, I was thinking to myself, I could hardly wait until tomorrow when I can do this again. And I went back into the same room, same thing again and fully expecting it to happen again. I would, and so I was in there and I sat down, and I was about to say, "Holy Spirit, pray for me". And then I said, I did that yesterday, I can't do that again. Holy Spirit, pray for me, and I remembered this guy who asked for prayer in church. He said, "If you ask for prayer at church," he said, he stood up and he said, "You know, unspoken requests but I need one". I said, "Holy Spirit, pray for him". Almost the identical thing happened again to me that day that happened prior, the previous day. And the cloud, everything, the groanings, the whole nine yards happened again. And then when it was over I remembered something else Shirley told me, was she said, if you happen to pray in tongues, you can ask the Holy Spirit for an interpretation.
Sid Roth: Did you get one? I asked and, boom, it all started all over again. The cloud came back in, except this time when the groaning started, it was like instantaneously and I don't pretend to explain this particularly, but it was like, oh, and I was inside this man that had asked for prayer. And I knew everything this man felt. I do not know what was causing his oppression.
Sid Roth: All right, but did you ever verify was this true?
Owens Edge: Yes. For two weeks, I, it just boiled within me. But finally I could handle it no longer. I go to this man and I tell him, I said, "Let me, I just have to tell you this. I want to tell you what happened to me". And he says, "Well sure". And it was rural, this old farm, and he was standing there by his tractor, and our pickup trucks were setting there. And I began to tell him this entire story, what I just said here to you.
Sid Roth: What did he say?
Owens Edge: I began to tell him and he looked, you know he looked, he didn't say anything. He just stood there and he just listened. And then he said, the only thing he said to me was, "When did that happen"? I told him the time that it happened. I gave him the time. He just looked at me just straight in the face and started walking backwards, reached back and got a hold of the door handle of his pickup truck, opened that door, never took his eyes off of me, got in his truck. Now remember, the people in that church didn't believe really in supernatural. And he closed the door of his truck, and he drove off. And he didn't speak to me I'd say for two months.
Sid Roth: Then what did he tell you after two months?
Owens Edge: He come up to me and he said, "Do you remember you prayed for me one time"? And I said, "Yes I do". He said, "I need prayer again". And I said, "I'll pray for you right now". He said, "No, no, no. Just go back and do it the same way you did it before". And other than that, that was the extent of the conversation concerning me.
Sid Roth: But did he tell you that you had hit the right thing when you prayed?
Owens Edge: He never said it, no. He just, the only thing he did was come back and ask for prayer that second time. But I had a sense.
Sid Roth: And you know what? I have a sense that this man, believe it or not, Owens Edge, he still doesn't believe in Jesus for sure with all this supernatural phenomena that is going on, until he says, I want an absolute miracle. We'll be right back with that absolute miracle.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what, Janie, I love codes and you're going to love what this man has to say. In the meantime, you are such a hard head, a skeptic. You went, what, six months of back and forth, is God real, is he not real, what's going on, I can't believe you, I might add, that you're so stiff necked. But then you said, I want an absolute fleece and it had to do with rain on your property. What did you tell God to do?
Owens Edge: It actually involved the last time, the more Jesus appeared to me and he began to tell me things concerning, just explaining things to me. One of the things that he told me was, he said, "You go outside and you pray for rain". And of course, he was well aware.
Sid Roth: Wait a second. You're telling me Jesus came to you and you still don't believe he's real? You just told me that.
Owens Edge: I could still explain it all in my head that I was hallucinating. I didn't have anything concrete other than what was in my head.
Sid Roth: Okay, he said to you, what?
Owens Edge: He said, "Go outside and pray for rain and I will make it rain". I knew the meteorologist, the weather report that morning was no chance of rain in central Alabama. I go outside and I lift my hands. I was already praying. I was doing a lot of things that Christians do. I just couldn't, it was really strange. I look back now and it doesn't even make sense. But I lifted my hands, how I could vacillate back and forth after all I had seen and what he had done, I lifted my hands and I said, "Lord, make it rain". And I stood and I watched the sky, clear, blue sky, not a cloud. And then I was suddenly became aware the sky hazed over. And I was a little bit annoyed with myself because I did not see that happen. I did not see that haze over take place. I will not miss anything else. I began to stare intently at the sky and concentrating, holding my attention to what I was looking for. And a little cloud began to form right above me. And then it got just a little larger, and it began a gentle rain. Well I felt, this is my answer, this is it. I go and I sat down on the porch, and I began to swing, and those doubts began to come back, and I said, you know, it couldn't possibly have rained.
Sid Roth: My goodness, you're a hard person.
Owens Edge: I was. I really was.
Sid Roth: So what happened next?
Owens Edge: Well I was just so disillusioned and disappointed that I could explain this off and I got in my pickup truck just feeling really down, and drove off. And I'm going down the road and where our property ended, the rain had stopped. I stopped. I backed up and I looked and went down to the fence, drove down to the fence line and began to find that it had rained only on my property. It had not rained on the other side of the fence. Well after going far enough that this was totally beyond any laws of averages, I mean, this, somebody was tampering with the rain. There's no two ways about it. Well I stopped that truck and I got out, and I just laid down on the ground and just cried. I knew, I knew that beyond any doubt there's no way that that could have accidentally happened.
Sid Roth: Well then you made Jesus your Messiah and Lord?
Owens Edge: Then the process, it was complete, right.
Sid Roth: You went on a long fast and then miracles started happening, and you saw, you were in the presence of someone dead. Tell me about that.
Owens Edge: Yes. The, I received a phone call and to come and pray for a woman. It was a Mexican family, although this was in the U.S., it was a Mexican family and the lady's mother had died. And they being new in this country did not know what to do, that they were terrified. They were afraid to call a doctor.
Sid Roth: So you prayed for child and what happened?
Owens Edge: This lady.
Sid Roth: This lady, I'm sorry.
Owens Edge: Well she, the Lord raised her from the dead. She came back to life.
Sid Roth: The Lord raised her from the dead? She came back to life? Did you hear that? A dead person came back to life. But there's some of you, you're listening to me right now and you're dead. You may be alive, but you're dead. You see, if you do not have intimacy with God, everything that you see is just temporary. Everything that exists is just temporary. Everything that happens is just temporary. There's only one thing that's eternal. That is your spirit that is inside of you. So the question I have is, has God's life, because you have repented, you've turned from your sins and you believe that Jesus has washed away your sins and you've invited Jesus to come inside of you and be Lord of your life, that is when you're going to have life. But it's not just an intellectual thing. Some of you will have an experience like Owens Edge. But the majority of you will do it by faith. You see, faith comes by hearing and hearing the words of God. So let me tell you what God says. God says, there's none righteous, no not one. You may say you're a good person. Compared to who? Compared to another person? Compared to Owens Edge? Compared to me? Don't compare yourselves to humans. Compare yourself to holiness and you will fall so far short. And there really is an eternity out there that is at stake. It's your life, not mine. I know God. The question is, you might have been turned off to religion, you might have seen some hypocrisy. Don't get turned off on God because of man. You're too important to God. You're too special to God. There is a purpose for your life. Haven't you always felt there is a purpose? Haven't you always felt that there is a destiny? Do something about it. When we go off the air, you pray and you do business with God and you'll see. You'll see it will make a major difference. It will be life from the dead.