EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the autobiographical testimony of Ellis Brasher. To read the story based on the interview with Mr. Brasher, click here.

I am an 83-year-old born again Christian and an admitted alcoholic with 54 years sobriety in AA. I have a fairly long story, which many have told me that it is the best they have ever read. I live with the urge to help others in their life struggles especially concerning alcohol, drugs and more importantly salvation.

Jan. 14, 2016 was my 54th Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) birthday, and before you start thinking of congratulatory remarks or emails; that is not the primary reason for my writing this little story.

If I were addressing an AA meeting, like all others do, I would start with, “Hello, my name is Ellis, and by the grace of God and help from other AAs I have not had a drink since Jan. 14, 1962.”

In my formerly shaky and nicotine-stained fingers, I’m holding the little billfold-size card, which they gave me 54 years ago, and on one side it says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Folded inside the little card are the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of AA. It is very long for one finger typing, so I’ll peck out the first 3:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.

In some of the above a mention of possible character defects is made, and I simply figured I needed to cover a few hot checks and quit taking stuff to pawn shops for drinking money, but later on I found out it could mean quite a bit more.

When a person has consumed alcohol to the point that he finds himself at the door of AA, there are not many everyday problems that he can cope with; his everyday affairs may be strewn out in at the most three-to-four-hour stretches. One of the first things an AA newcomer is told is that he can only abstain from alcohol “one day at a time,” and he may even have to break that down to one hour or even a few minutes, which was truly the case with me.

I was born and raised in a church family; three times a week to church, my dad a deacon, but the wheels came off for me the first time I used alcohol. I will first say that I think alcohol abuse and active alcoholism fall under two different types of conditions; one being the problem of inborn alcoholism and the other the habitual drunk. If you are not an alcoholic, either active or inactive, then you don’t have a clue about the problem.

My first real consideration that I might have a drinking problem was in about 1958 while in the Winona, Miss., city/county jail; about my 25th trip to jail and facing a 60-day sentence. The sheriff was a very close personal and family friend that came in one day advising me to consider going for state-paid treatment of about six weeks. Well at that time my body had started giving problems in that my temperature would go up to about 104 every night; so with that and the idea that the treatment center might be better than jail, I agreed for them to take me there. As soon as the treatment center folks learned about the temperature problem, they put me in isolation for fear I had something the others in the ward might catch. After about 10 days in isolation and dozens of blood tests, the doctors concluded that excessive alcohol had disturbed the part of my brain that controlled body temperature. I stayed there about six weeks, got dried out, got on an anti-alcohol drug named anti-buse and went back to my job.

In less that three months I quit the anti-buse, started back drinking, got thrown out of a beautiful home where I was boarding, living in my car and then back in jail.

Not too long afterwards and looking for a geographic cure for my drinking problem, my mother and I sold the farm and moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. Why not, I’d already used up all the jobs in that area.

That cure lasted about 60 days, and I became acquainted with the City Judge of Corpus Christi for being drunk in a car. The drinking was really getting bad by then, and I’ll relate a couple of the escapades.

On one occasion while being booked I made what was perceived as an unbecoming remark about the Mexican policeman, and he promptly floored me with his blackjack and broke two ribs kicking me. I was a real tough cookie.

On another, I was in such bad physical condition the jailhouse people transported me to Memorial Hospital for an IV injection of glucose due to their thinking I might die in their jail.

In 1961 I completely gave up on trying to quit. I gave consideration to taking my life and might have if not for my mother and sister; my dad died in 1954. Along about this time I decided there would never be a turning back for me; I did not and would not care or worry about it, in fact I think I may have been hoping for death.

And also about this time it was becoming increasingly more difficult for me to have a drinking buddy that would stay with me. This problem was solved when a guy named Jack hired on as a welder where I was working. Jack had been in and out of AA several times and was married with a couple of kids. Just before Christmas in 1961 Jack and I went by Jack’s house and I found out the house was being foreclosed, and the water, gas, and electricity had already been turned off. I also found out that Jack had stolen his neighbor’s little lawn watering tractor and hocked it and had stolen the connections to hook up the water hose from the neighbor’s house to his. At that time both of my hands and forearms were badly swollen and infected from minor cuts and scratches received in the shop and due to poor body condition. Jack noticed this and said to his wife, “Judy, bring me my scalpel so I can lance some of these places on Ellis.” On my asking Judy where Jack got the little velvet lined leather case with a full set of surgical instruments, she replied, “He stole them from the company doctor’s office where he went to take a physical before being hired.” Right then I knew Jack was my kind of guy.

I spent the first week of 1962 in jail in Corpus Christi, and on Sunday the plant manager where I worked came down and got me out to do a special job. This, to the best of my remembrance in four different states and nine different jails it would be about the 47th and at least hopefully for now, the last time in jail for me. I promised him I had taken my last drink.

On Thursday a very cold weather front came in and they paid us off for the week and said “don’t come back until Monday.” I stayed drunk for the next three nights and days and on Sunday evening about 7-8 PM an old alcoholic girlfriend looked across the aisle of a beer joint, “The Little Brown Jug” and said, “Ellis, why don’t you go to AA?” Well I sat there thinking that if the AAs came and got me I could get home without getting in jail again. Every cop in Corpus Christi knew my old beat up car, so I said, “If you will call ‘em, I’ll go.” And they even came inside to get me, which was against their rules. Thank God I have not had a drink since. I gotta tell you if a person ever has that kind of experience, he will have to believe it was due to a Higher Power. Miracles happen every day; most are not recognized. Since then I have come to believe the Lord sent two angels in the form of AA members to rescue me, and am I ever grateful.

I could relate several times that I narrowly missed death, but I’ll tell of only one, which occurred while I was still living with my mother in about ‘60 or ‘61. I came home drunk and went to bed smoking. The door to my room was closed and also my mother’s. I set the bed on fire and of course the smoke knocked me completely out, but enough smoke went out under my door, down a hallway, around a corner and under my mother’s door to awaken her. She came and dragged me out and into the living room where I woke up the next morning wondering where all the smoky smell was coming from. She had also carried enough buckets of water from the kitchen sink to put out the fire. And when I finally looked in my bedroom, the mattress springs were all burned out and lying on the floor.

But I must tell of other sort of funny incidents. When I would get off work at 3:30 PM I always went by the Hi-Hat, a beer joint run by a huge guy, 6’-6” or so, 250 lbs, with a bad eye and also named Jack. Jack had a girl or two working there, and he liked to come around, sit on a bar stool and drink with the guys. One afternoon he was sitting by me and I said something he didn’t like; don’t have a clue what it was. Without any warning he backhanded me in the face with that club of a hand, knocked me off the bar stool, across the floor and under a pool table. I start crawling out and Jack is towering over me like a huge gorilla saying, “Come on out you little ________, I’m gonna kill you!” I then figure it’s too late to apologize and start thinking about a way out; I mean, I’m about 5’-10” and 140 lbs, and I am ready to run. Only one problem, there is only one door and Jack is in front of it. I then notice Jack is standing by one of those little shuffleboard machines that is about 18” tall. I figure I got one chance, so I come out from under that pool table running hard as I can, run into Jack and knock him over the shuffle board machine. He hits the floor like a huge log and me right beside him with a death lock around his neck and squeezing as hard as possible while he is gagging and kicking the floor like you see those wrestlers do. Everyone in that beer joint is bending over laughing, and I’m yelling at Jack, “I’ll turn you loose if you won’t bother me.” He says OK, and I jump up and run. I didn’t go back to the Hi-Hat for about a week; finally drove up one day, left the motor running, opened the door and looked in to which Jack said, “Come on in you little ________; ain’t nobody gonna bother you.”

On one Friday the shop supervisor came by and said, “We have a special job going, and I want to make sure you’ll be here tomorrow. I promised I would be there. I stayed out drinking until the wee hours and got up late Saturday morning. I went out to my car, found about half a bottle of liquor, drank it on my way to work, stopped by a place, drank a couple of beers about half a mile from the shop. The boss met as I was walking toward the shop and said, “Ellis, get back in your car and go home.” I went back by, drank a couple more beers and started toward downtown Corpus on Leopard St. As I approached a stop light at Port Ave., I hit the back of a car and knocked it into a police car that was stopped for the light. The cop got out, walked back to the car in front of me and starts waving his hands at the driver. Then they both start waving at each other, speaking Spanish; so it appears the cop doesn’t think I’m involved. So I slowly back up, turn right across the parking lot of a car dealer and head back home.

But back in late ‘50s I was living and working in Memphis, and one morning I woke up in jail with nothing on but my undershorts and pants. Next morning we all had to see the judge, and I was barefoot and no shirt. There were about 50-60 people in the line, and I look back and see a guy with a shirt and T-shirt on. So I ask him about borrowing his T-shirt until I see the judge, so he pulls it off and gives it to me. When I get up close enough that I can hear, everyone is saying “not guilty,” with some lame excuse like, “I was just taking some strong medicine,” and every time the judge says “$50-60.” I see this ain’t working so I try something different. I get up to the stand and the judge says, “It says here the police found you passed out in a phone booth, how do you plead?” I reply, “Guilty as charged, you honor.” Well the judge looked a little surprised and asks me, “You ever been up here before?” I lied and said “no sir.” He replied, “I’ll let you go. Case dismissed.” So I gave the guy back his T-shirt, walked about a mile to where my car was sitting by a phone booth with all the windows down and the keys still in it. So I get in and drive down on North Main, sell a pint of blood and go get a pint of Wilkins Family.

Also at the time I was in the Winona jail just before the alcohol treatment; I was in with a drinking buddy named Hughby (RIP). The layout of the cell was a barred/locked door leading out to the waiting/booking area and another barred/locked door leading outside to a grassed lawn area with a large, sycamore shade tree. After a couple of days we’re laying around, and I’m eyeing that huge lock on the door going out to the lawn area, and I decide, what the heck, just to have something to do, I’ll see if I can open it. I found a piece of wire from a broken up old bed and in less than 10 minutes I swung the door open. Hughby had been watching me and said, “Now what?” We still had what few dollars we came in with, so I said, “Let’s walk down to that little store, get some cokes, nabs and cigarettes.” Well we do and come back and are sitting under the sycamore shade when the sheriff drove by, threw on his brakes and shouted, “What are y’all doin’ out here?!” I replied, “Well sheriff, that side door was open so we just walked down to get some cokes and stuff.” He replied, “Y’all git back in that cell, and I’m gonna kill that trustee.” So me and ol’ Hughby had us a big laugh. And Hughby got out the next day; some of his kin came and got him out.

But seriously, I am very sure the Lord kept me alive for reasons that perhaps only he knows, and perhaps only to relate this little story to someone that might read it and receive or give encouragement to someone that might need it. As I said before, miracles happen every day.

TESTIMONY OF ELLIS BRASHER, RUSK, TX

Like many youngsters I walked the aisle of the church and was baptized as an early teenager. I was part of a church-going family and felt that it was my duty to be a member of the small Baptist church we were attending.

I think I did have some vague understanding of the Bible, about Jesus Christ, His teachings, crucifixion and resurrection.

I had no knowledge or understanding that true salvation does indeed involve more than just simply doing something dutiful that I had heard and read about.

Not knowing any better I was satisfied with my perceived salvation and then at about 18-19 years old I began drinking, and then in 1962 I wound up in AA at the age of 29 and even then I still thought that years before I had completed my required functions as a Christian and was a saved person.

At this time in my life I had only a small knowledge of the Holy Spirit and had never experienced the feeling of his work. I had no idea that a person is only saved due to the urging of the Holy Spirit.

I may have at one time or another read the below Bible verses, but apparently they did not sink in my young brain.

MATTHEW 18:20 “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

JOHN 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

JOHN 6:44 “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

The last of the above verses unequivocally states that a person is only saved at the urging of the Holy Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit of the Father.

I now realize at that point in my life I was not saved and would not be until many years later.

In 1968 a workmate friend may have sensed that I was not saved and started witnessing to me about salvation, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and many other aspects of true belief. A feeling came over me that I had never before experienced in my life. It was as if you want to rejoice and/or cry at the same time. My friend sensed what was happening and remarked, “Ellis, I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking to you right now.” I was confused and simply replied that I did not know what he was talking about. Well, I never forgot that experience, and I began to realize that sooner or later I was going to have to do something about it.

I carried that experience in the back of my mind some 25 years and then one day I asked my wife if she would like for us to start going to church. She replied, “Yes, I thought you would never ask.” We both started going to Eastside Baptist in Rusk, Texas, where we were warmly welcomed and in a short while we both moved our memberships there.

I still felt that I needed to do something but was filled with confusion and anxiety wondering what to do even though on several other occasions I felt the presence and urging of the Holy Spirit.

Then sometime later, lo and behold, a man walked the aisle with a story similar to mine apparently confessing his pent up belief and faith in Jesus Christ and wanting to be baptized, which he was a few days later. I then realized what I had seen was what I needed to do; so at the next service where I felt that urge I walked down the aisle, told the basics of this story and was baptized a few days later.

Now, this does not mean that I or other saved Christians would never sin again; we sin and fall short of the glory of God perhaps every day, but the work of Jesus Christ on the cross was and is sufficient for all past, present and future sins of a saved believer.

1 JOHN 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

At one time I struggled about the idea that many propose that the Bible can’t be proven as “cold hard fact.” A lady friend, church member cleared that up for me with this remark, “The Bible and salvation are about FAITH; if they were about cold hard fact, there would be no room or reason for faith.”

In the past 10-12 years, I have spent considerable time reading and studying the Bible and have reached the following conclusions: When a child is born he/she is recorded in God’s Book of Life as per Exodus 32:31-32.

31 So Moses went back to the LORD and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold.”

32 “Yet now, please forgive their sin-but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”

Even so, the child has a one-way ticket to hell EXCEPT for two circumstances as below:

1. The child/person dies before achieving the knowledge of accountability.
2. At some age and ONLY at the urging/prompting of the Holy Spirit the person accepts and confesses Jesus Christ as personal Savior at which time his/her name is recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life and can never be blotted out.

REV. 3:5 “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”

REV. 13 speaks of the “beast” which is symbolic of the “antichrist” and significant is verse 8.

REV. 13:8 “All who dwell upon the earth will worship him, whose names are not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

This verse indicates that people’s names are entered in the Lamb’s Book during their life and when would be a more logical time than at the time they accept Jesus Christ? The previous 3 verses should remove any doubts of “eternal security,” aka “Once Saved Always Saved.”

REV. 21:27 “But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Note: if the person dies after achieving accountability and before accepting/confessing Jesus Christ; the name is blotted from God’s Book of Life.

REV. 20:15 “And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”

And by the way, the person can’t just roll out of bed at 9:00 AM Sunday morning and say, “I think I’ll just run by the church a few minutes and get saved;” it just doesn’t really work that way.

God’s plan of salvation for mankind was preordained “forever ago,” the plan calling for a ‘“perfect sacrifice” for the redemption of sin with the sacrifice being his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, born sin free of the virgin Mary.

As you know we are being bombarded by the media and others about the shortcomings of “evangelical” Christians. If a person is a Christian he at least occasionally reads the Bible and more than likely is aware of what is generally known as the Great Commission as it relates to this verse and other similar verses.

Matthew 28:19 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”

The idea of the Great Commission is the root cause of all Christian evangelism and all Christians are, or at least should be, aware of the obligation these verses apply as well as the actual urging of the Holy Spirit to comply. Using the word “evangelical” to describe the word “Christian” is totally superfluous. In other words, it isn’t needed. Personally, I spend considerable time as a Christian, witnessing to other people and the following verse boosts me up.

MARK 8:38 “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

If anyone reading this would like to learn more about God’s plan of salvation; my suggestion is read the Bible and I suggest the New King James Version, Personal Study with center column references and footnotes at the bottom of the page. Mine is a Nelson 165. And by the way, if a person does not believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God please consider what ISAIAH wrote some 2,700 years ago:

ISAIAH 40:22 “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.”

How else could ISAIAH have possibly known the earth was and is round unless inspired by God? And is it just coincidence that the word “circle” appears nowhere else in the Bible. Reading God’s plan of salvation and eternal life is very exciting; God bless and good reading and remember, a person does not get to heaven simply for being “good” and does not go to hell simply for being a sinner.

Ellis Brasher ellisbrasher@aol.com