Gene Mullenax

Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Gene Mullenax. I’m speaking to him at his home in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and I love creative miracles. I mean the more outrageous the more I love it. This Friday night begins Chanukah, the Feast of Dedication, the feast of a great miracle that happened in Israel. I want you to find out about a miracle that happened right here in the United States. You see in the 1950’s your lungs started hemorrhaging. What brought that on Gene?

Gene: Well the doctors said “It was like a wart on the tree,” just a dead portion of my lung. The more I worked and the harder I worked I kept tearing the tissues of that lung. It got to where it would hemorrhage every time I would cough or pickup my baby or something I would start hemorrhaging.

Sid: Well you were just newly married, and a new father… I mean that’s a horrible thing to happen to you. What did the doctor say?

Gene: Well the doctor said, at first they took me off of my job where I was a sheet metal worker. I was working right here in the North Little Rock area on a big building. They took me off of the building and went to the doctor to see where the blood was coming from. He x-rayed me and said I have a 2½ inch hole in my right lung, it must be tuberculosis, that was back in ’54. So they sent me to Booneville to a TB sanitarium and I stayed there 6 weeks. They proved it wasn’t tuberculosis. So they sent me back to Little Rock and the lung doctor was Harvey Shipp, he was the best in the state at that time. He said “The only thing I know to do is cut in there to see where hemorrhaging is coming from.” That’s when I woke up to all my ribs being cut through and my right lung being removed.”

Sid: You mean you didn’t know this was going to happen?

Gene: No he said “We’re going to cut a little window in there and see where the hemorrhaging is coming from.” He cut me from the back of my neck all the way down through every rib I had all the way over back to my tummy and jacked me open to get in there to work on me. The other doctor that was his assistant said “I had your heart in my hand for over 5 hours massaging it to keep you alive.” Of course that scared me almost to death because I didn’t know what all was going on. They do it a little different now but it still hurts.

Sid: Well if I understand this correctly they totally removed your right lung and 3 of your ribs?

Gene: Right.

Sid: And they left you a souvenir a real ugly hole in your back.

Gene: A huge whole, there’s a 2 inch tube that went into my back to keep the secretion and the blood, what have you coming out, and there was a pump on me. Every time that pump would come on I’d scream, and that was about every 2½ – 3 minutes.

Sid: It seems to me that that type of surgery especially back then was very life threatening.

Gene: It is very life threatening I didn’t have a 50/50 chance to make it. It was just by the grace of God that I did make it because I had worn myself down till I weighed 117 pounds. Of course came out of the hospital that way and my right shoulder would drop down for lack of support.

Sid: Well after this drastic surgery Gene, were you able to work after recovery? How long did it take you to recover, if you even did?

Gene: Well it took me almost 3 years and I still wasn’t recovered. I’d go to the shop, the boss I had would let me work about whatever hours I could work 1, 2, or 3, or whatever, then I’d come home. This went on for some 3 years or better, and some days I wouldn’t even make it to work. I’d start then I’d be so weak I couldn’t work, I couldn’t get to work. This is the condition that I was when I went under the tent.

Sid: In other words, you weren’t really able to work a full job. You heard about a healing meeting, a tent evangelist. What did you think of this guy?

Gene: Well I didn’t know anything about religion, I didn’t know anything about healing, I thought it was a circus Sid. When I came home I came home a new way that evening just giving up. I’d been to the doctor and he’d give me a good fussing and told me to “Go home and quit bothering everybody that I wasn’t going to be able to work.” Of course I had a young family to make a living for and I felt like I had to. Anyway I came home a new way, I saw the circus tent which I thought was a circus it was a huge tent, it seated over 10,000 people. I went to sit off to the side and went in there because I thought it was a circus. Seven days later I fully found out that it was a religious meeting, but I kept going back to that…

Sid: Weren’t people talking about it that there was something phony about it?

Gene: Oh yeah they was… first thing I did was called my wife’s pastor. I thought he’d be excited about what was going on and when I called him he discouraged me from even going. Then there was other people they told me that they had the stage wired, and other people told me that when you went up on the stage the reason they reacted the way they did they poured something on you to make you act that way.

Sid: Make you act what way?

Gene: Well there were people jerking, and hollering, and of course he’s praying for people and everybody I went to see to be prayed for they were healed on the inside. I wanted to see something on the outside.

Sid: So in other words you weren’t so sure that it was true. They just said “Well I was healed” but you didn’t see anything that was convincing.

Gene: I didn’t see any evidence of it. Not knowing anything at all about religion or healing, or anything like that you can imagine what shape I’m in I couldn’t get anyone to go with me. Everybody was afraid of him or…

Sid: Even your wife didn’t want to go?

Gene: No she couldn’t go.

Sid: Now back then this was a guy by the name of A.A. Allen. You knew nothing about him but there was people who said they had miracles, but you thought the whole thing was phony. So why did you even go if you thought the whole thing was phony?

Gene: It kept call me Sid, it was like a magnet. After I’d get home I’d be so weak I could barely make it in the door, and I’d get home and it wouldn’t be 30 minutes till I would want to get up and go back up and see what was going on.

Sid: Now back then they used to… they had so many people that would go for a healing they used to pass out numbers. So you finally worked up enough courage and you got in line to get a number and you had a chance to talk to him. What did he say to you?

Gene: You know what gave me the courage to go to the tent?

Sid: What’s that?

Gene: It was the very last night, it was the last afternoon of the tent. That night was the last meeting I either had to put up or shut up. So I went out of pure curiosity as well as a necessity.

Sid: Tell me what happened.

Gene: Well I was standing in the line at the 2:30 in the afternoon meeting, I was standing with a bunch of other people. As Allen guy would come by and talk to each one of them just a minute and he would fill out a card on them, he’d give them a card to take home with them. He came to me and he gave me a pink card and that made me mad because I thought I ought to get a white one like everybody else was getting.

Sid: Why did he give you a pink card?

Gene: Pink cards was desperation, hm.

Sid: Huh!

Gene: He was only going to pray for those cards that night. I got one of them by the grace of the Lord.

Sid: When he gave you the pink card did he say anything?

Gene: Yeah he asked me… first of all he asked me what church I went to and I told him I was a Nazarene because my mother-in-law was a Nazarene I figured that ought to do for her, she was a real nice person. So I told him I was Nazarene and he said “What’s wrong with you?” So I unbuttoned my shirt right there in the meeting and opened my shirt up so that he could see the bright red scar, my right lung was gone, 3 ribs was gone, huge whole in my back, my shoulder would drop down and I weighed 117 pounds, and I said “I want every bit of that back.”  I thought it was coming from him and I said “I want it all put back in.”

Sid: What did he say?

Gene: He said “Do you believe God would do that?” I said “I certainly do, don’t you?” I still thought it was coming from him (chuckling).  I didn’t like him at all.

Sid: Now I don’t understand why you even went to him if you thought it was all phony.

Gene: I’ll tell you the truth I was gone like a magnet. It was the most amazing thing, it was the Spirit of God I know now but I didn’t know it then.

Sid: Okay hold that thought we’re going to pick up right here on tomorrow’s broadcast.

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