A megachurch pastor in Georgia should have been long dead were it not for a great miracle that saved his life when he was still a 17-year-old rebel.
Pastor Bill Purvis of Cascade Hills Church in Columbus, Georgia has written a book called "Make a Break for It" where he detailed how a young sinner found God after being stabbed in the chest, throat and stomach and left for dead. That former sinner was himself.
In an article that appeared on Charisma News, Purvis recalled an incident that happened 42 years ago when he picked up a prostitute and brought her back to a house.
Little did he know that it was a set up for murder.
While Purvis was inside the room with the prostitute, a man suddenly entered the room with a butcher's knife and stabbed him in the chest while he was still fully undressed.
"He stabbed me in my chest, and the knife came out my back. Second time, he stabbed me in the throat, cut my jugular in half.
"I tried to run out the door, and the third time, he stabbed me in the stomach. In a matter of seconds, I wound up with three mortal wounds."
"I knocked the door down, and stepped out on it. I had a friend waiting in the car. He saw me covered in blood, and I hit hood of car and screamed to get out of here, ran 50 more feet, fell in parking lot and grabbed a light pole."
Purvis said what happened next was pure miracle from God.
While he was clinging to that light pole, he recalled a young man who knocked on his door two weeks before the incident.
"He said, 'Everything you're looking for can be found in Jesus,'" Purvis remembered.
Bleeding to death, Purvis then cried out to God for forgiveness for his sins and asked Jesus to transform his life.
Purvis' friend who had been in the car rushed him to the hospital where a surgeon happened to be on duty.
After nearly 12 hours of surgery, Purvis came out of the operating room a totally changed man.
Now he leads a megachurch in Georgia.
"God just changed my life, radically changed me," Purvis says. "I was the aimless boy. If God can do what he did for me, He can do it for anybody. The story I wrote about making a break for it means to break free from an old life, anybody can do it if God's doing something in their life, they have to make a break."
