My name is Martin S. Fadden. I was raised in a good Christian home in upstate New York but by the age of seventeen, I was full blown alcoholic, which landed me in a drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Hospital by the time I entered my middle twenties. This was a ten week stay. There I was told that I was an alcoholic and would always be that way.

One of the hospital staff members was a believer and he said that one day I would be a believer also. Little did he know that I hated so-called Christians.

After being released, after one year of being sober, I grew weary of burning for a drink so I went back to the old way of life. That’s when I stated hitchhiking all over America. I actually hiked alone from upstate New York to Houston, Texas, three separate times and from Carolina to New York, once from Syracuse, New York, to Gallup, New Mexico, and also from Orlando, Florida to Houston.

I was running from God but did not know it.

During all this time my mom had been praying for me (thanks, Mom!). I talked to God all the time but I really did not know Him. When I was 15 years old, I really had an encounter with God in the Baptist Church. I fought off the Spirit’s leading (to get saved) and went my own way.

It was during one of my stays in upstate New York that God finally totally cornered me and got me to say the words He wanted me to say.

It was the early eighties when, due to alcoholic-related occurrences, I ended up living on the streets in New York. I had been living in my own apartment but in mid-January I got kicked out. In upstate New York in January the temperature gets as low as 25 to 50 degrees below zero. Well here is what happened to me.

As I had just become homeless I went to a bar and spent all my little money. At 2:30 A.M. the bar closes up and everyone goes home, only I had no home to go home to and I had no money, no friends because of it, no place to crash, to keep warm, to stay alive. What was I supposed to do?

As I left the bar going nowhere, I saw a way! A police car was heading my way. All I had to do was jump in front of the car and give the police a hard time and I would get thrown in Jail and I would be warm and alive.

Guess what happened when I did what I had to do? The police saw me, recognized me, called me by name, told me to get out the road and go home! What home? Then they just sped off and I started walking, drunk as I could be, heading nowhere. Then somehow I remembered and old wooden work shed a friend of mine dad owned nearly three miles away from where I was, and I remembered it was always unlocked! Off I went to new hope and a place to crash. I finally made it to the shed but lo and behold it was padlocked shut! That was my last hope. Now I had no control left at all! I gave the door a swift kick and thank God, it was warped at its bottom and I had just enough room to push my way into the shed. I pulled the bottom of that old door and had a bit of control now! (God was after my control—all of it).

As my eyes focused to the dark room I saw an old, small, thin mattress on the dirt floor. Remember it was 25 degrees below zero in that old work shed, too! Then I saw a Coleman cook stove and it was half full of fuel! Guess who had no matches? And no control. Me!

I laid down on that small mattress. Then my hands and feet started to throb in pain because all the blood in my hands and feet started to flow toward my heart and hypothermia set in. Where I am from, it is very common that frostbitten fingers or toes actually break off as the bloodless flesh becomes ice and pressure is applied to them.

Now I became very afraid because the room started to spin around and around and I was going to pass out cold (real cold!) and there was not a thing I could do to stop it from happening.

Just before I did pass out, I heard a voice laughing at me, an evil voice in my head. The voice declared, “NOW YOU ARE MINE”. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE AND GO TO HELL.” I was terrified, to say the least! Finally, I was completely out of control, on the verge of dying and ending up in hell and then I started making deals with God.

I remembered the God I needed so much and I cried out to Him. I said, “GOD, IF YOU CAN GET ME THROUGH THIS NIGHT ALIVE, I WILL GIVE YOU THE REST OF MY LIFE!” I did not pray the sinner’s prayer. I only wanted to live. Then I passed out into what I through would surely be hell’s fire.

The next thing I experienced was warmth and a strange heaviness. I was warm from my knees all the way up to my chest.

My immediate thought was that I had been freezing cold. Satan was screaming in my head that I was going to hell and now all of a sudden I am warm and what in the world was this strange heaviness on my body?

I did not want to open my eyes. I just knew I had entered hell! I had to open my eyes sooner or later, so I did, and to my sheer horror, when I opened my eyes, looking at me face- to- face was another set of eyes, but they were not human eyes. I heard a deep growl. I thought I was looking into the eyes of Satan himself but then I realized that it was a large black and white dog that was curled up on top of my body. It was God who, probably by an angel, sent that old dog into that work shed to keep me from freezing to death, GOD HAD HEARD MY PLEA FOR HELP!

To make this long story shorter. I finally surrendered my life completely to The Lord, am married, am a soul winner. I go the greatest church in The World, Lakewood Church, The Oasis Of Love In A Troubled World!
God used a big black and white dog to same my life so I could be a witness for Him all over The World.

Please take just a minute and say this Prayer now:

Dear God,  I admit that I am a sinner and ask you to forgive my sins. I believe Jesus died for my sins, and because He did I now may live. I ask you to write my name in The Book of Life forever. Thank you God for saving me, in Jesus name I pray amen.