TESTIMONIES: Okie Atheist Partied to the Gates of Hell, Then Turned to Jesus
(12:50 VIEWING) — Dr. Donald Whitaker was a hard-drinking party animal in 1975 when he was invited to a big production on the West Coast by Hoyt Axton, the songwriter behind “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher.” Whitaker was accustomed to rubbing elbows with famous folks, including Ringo Starr of the Beatles.
Dr. Donald Whitaker (Screenshot from YouTube).
Whitaker wasn’t particularly interested in the production in which Axton was involved, except for the fact he knew there would be lots of famous people around to party with , and so he took full advantage of the opportunity for a week.
But then he got sick and had to return to Oklahoma City. Somehow, he ended up in a hospital in Texarkana, Texas, in a coma and on a ventilator.
He recalls being unable to speak but hearing people talking about how likely he was to die in a short period of time. As a convinced atheist, such talk would not have meant much to him in any other situation. But being in a coma and unable to do anything was different, especially because his was a pancreatic condition that was typically fatal.
“It’s very easy to be an atheist when you are successful, when you’ve worked your way from Oklahoma welfare to being one of the most powerful men in your part of the country in relation to the political, it’s very easy to be an atheist when you’ve done all that,” Whitaker explains in the following video produced by Rooted Within.
“A man can sit back and say ‘I don’t need God, what is God,” he added. “But it’s very difficult to be an atheist when you are laying on your death bed.
You gotta watch this one all the way through!