[MUSIC PLAYING]
To be in Manhattan and see the streets empty in the middle
of the day, it's eerie.
The virus is all around.
We just don't know who has it and who doesn't have it.
The number of deaths rising dramatically
in just the past several days, most of them in New York City.
In New York, people were dying alone.
They didn't have family in their last hours of life.
Our world has changed in the last three weeks.
Who would have thought?
So Samaritan's Purse has opened up
a 60-bed hospital in Central Park, right across the street
from Mount Sinai.
We have chaplains who are going to New York.
They are used to work in an emergency type of situation
and they will pray for every patient that comes in.
If someone passes away, they will not die alone.
I think in the middle of pandemics, we don't back down.
God wants us out there, ministering
to people in his name.
[BEEPING]
We want to share the good news, the Gospel,
just that there is hope in the midst of this chaos.
[BEEPING]
We surround them with love, compassion, care.
And it became just a great opportunity,
not just in Central Park but around the country,
to share with people that they're not alone.
With the whole landscape of the COVID virus,
it was earth-shaking to me.
You saw the cities, states being shut down and here I was,
by myself.
So it's a hard thing to look at when you have no one
and you have no hope.
Almost exactly a year ago, I had a hemorrhagic stroke.
It was a horrific event and it made me stop.
It stopped me for the first time ever.
I was a workaholic and I was ignoring my relationship
with my wife and my kids.
Eventually, I had gone through two or three marriages.
And here I was, I was alone.
I was I was completely alone.
I was in the hospital, then I started thinking about,
what if you don't make it?
When I was released from the hospital
I came back to the house.
I actually said to myself, what if you
are on the brink of eternity?
You're going to stand before God and say what?
Before all this happened, I probably gave my life
to Christ six, seven, eight times,
but then I never changed.
I was preparing to die.
I really wanted to understand about the Bible, about Christ.
But then the pandemic hit, and there I was.
I was alone again.
Not only distanced from my church,
I was distanced from everything, and everything stopped.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The isolation I think has been maybe one
of the hardest things.
People all across the country were shut in at home.
Some of our team, we began to just think
about what we could do.
And we thought about, what would happen
if we had an Easter service?
Like a sunrise service, something from Central Park?
I thought I'd like to do this on television.
And I called Michael W. Smith.
He says, I want to know if you'll come, and lead worship,
and do the music.
And I just said yes.
I mean, I didn't even blink an eye.
And I remember getting off the phone going,
I wonder how my wife's going to feel about this?
Wrote Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News,
and just told him what we wanted to do,
and would he give me 30 minutes?
And he responded immediately, said yes.
So the pandemic opened up doors and created an audience
that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
There was a small film crew, there's a piano and a podium.
That's all there was.
The Lord Jesus Christ is risen.
He's not dead, He's alive.
And we're here to celebrate Easter, this Sunday, 2020.
He was so surreal.
In the background you could see the hospital
in operation, people being wheeled in and wheeled out.
It was really earth-shaking for me.
Jesus knows how to take those hopeless situations
and turn them around.
And He can do that for your life.
He can turn the hopeless situation
of your life 180 degrees.
He can turn it around.
You say, but Franklin, what do I have to do?
First, you have to be willing to repent.
There I was.
I was preparing to die.
And I looked back at my life, and looked back
at all the people that I had hurt, and I needed to repent.
To be sorry for what I've done.
I saw through every marriage, and through every scenario,
I wasn't alone.
Jesus never left me.
He never left me.
And Jesus Christ took our sins-- your sins, my sins.
He went to the cross.
And on the cross, he shed his blood for the sins of mankind.
And on the third day, God raised his son to life.
Jesus Christ is not dead, He's alive.
And He'll come into each of every heart that's
willing to trust him by faith.
For the first time, I understood what Jesus had done for me.
I wanted Christ to be in my life.
And I wanted to I want to live, but for a different reason,
not for myself.
He loved me enough to stop me and my life
has changed forever.
I've got into the word of God.
I'm getting more involved with the church.
I want to grow.
I want to bear fruit.
He had a plan for me.
And a plan for good, not evil, but to give me
a future and a hope.
And whether that future's one more day or like 15 years,
God gave me a chance.
And here I am, and I'm going to use it.
Praise God.
We have seen some incredible victories.
More opportunities are coming.
Some will be unexpected, I'm sure,
but we're excited to see how God directs and moves us forward.
We do need your prayers, no question,
and we need your financial support
as we get ready for the next chapter of 2021.
[MUSIC PLAYING]