IN THE NEWS!

SINGER SONG WRITER ERIC RANDALL SAYS HE IS STILL DRINKING FROM GOD'S LIVING WATER TODAY!

Artist Expressway caught up with Eric Randall, and asked him to share his incredible testimony with us. Follow below to learn more about this outstanding musician - Joe Ardis

I was born and raised in Southern California and never knew my earthly father (my parents divorced when I was 3) and except for a brief 7 year "personal tribulation period" under an oppressive, physically and verbally abusive alcoholic stepfather I never experienced what a true father/son relationship was or the way it was intended to be. This experience was later to be the inspiration for my song "Fatherless". I had a rather distant and cold relationship with my mother as well so for the most part I was a loner during my growing up years with very few friends. I was the second youngest of four children, one sister and two brothers. When I was 12 my mother took my sister and I (she was a year older than me) to a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles. We both went forward at the alter call and confirmed our faith and began a relationship with Jesus. I was born again but more was yet to follow.
 
Unfortunately, my growth as a young believer was stunted due to a lack of genuine Faith being demonstrated in the home and because of a very distasteful experience with dead orthodoxy at a Catholic and later a Lutheran church that I was required to attend. My stepfather was a Catholic (sort of) from Rhode Island and my Mother wasn't really a believer yet...that came later. By the time I was 14 I was fed up with Church and had decided if there was a way to really get to know God it wasn't at this church and so I "dropped out". It was right after my mother divorced my stepfather and I was angry at everything and everybody including God. After all, if He cared for me so much why was he letting all of this happen? (Listen to my song "Love You Lord"). But I was glad my stepfather was gone because now I was free from his tyranny yet at the same time I was reminded of the pain of not having a father who loved me and would teach me how to be a man. My emotions and thoughts were conflicted and I so in defense I just withdrew even more than before.
 
High School for me was a complete drag and the only positive experiences I can recall had to do with my Art classes which I excelled at (painting, drawing and sculpting) and Creative Writing/English. I started writing serious poetry in my senior year and my English Literature teacher was printing it out and distributing it in all of her subsequent classes after I graduated. I was somewhat of a rebel with a cause then and wasn't getting along with my mother so when I was 17 I left home and stayed with a "foster" family until I turned 18 and then I joined the Navy. Because I had developed a crush on a French foreign exchange student named Dominique during my last year of High School my plan was to "see the world" including France of course and to pay her a visit at the first opportunity. I didn't succeed.
 
One of my earliest poems written when I left home at age 17 which later became a song of mine is titled "Kid Now You're On You're Own". Another song I wrote a few years later is titled "Dreaming of You" and it's about Dominique. Ah...puppy love...sigh. So many of my songs were born out of my personal experiences such as "Knowing He's There" and "Live My Life For You". But I didn't actually start playing the guitar consistently until my last year of high school. I had received a guitar much earlier as a Christmas present when I was 12 but shortly after I had started to teach myself how to play "Day Tripper" on it my younger brother and my sister got into a fight and he broke it over her head. She was ok but the guitar died and my musical career was put on hold for many years. When I got out of the Navy early (it's a long story for another time) I bought myself a beautiful Aria 12 string acoustic guitar which I still have and play to this day. It's the one used in all of my recordings.
 
The crucial turning point in my testimony came a few years after my discharge from military service. It just so happened that I had been suffering from a strange debilitating and ever increasing and crippling paralysis of anxiety and fear. These mysterious "scary sessions" would come on suddenly and without warning and I would be gripped with fear and apprehension and would inevitably find myself lying on my back on the ground grasping for breath while my heart was pounding and about to jump right out of my chest. My blood felt like it was boiling as it coursed through my body and I was helpless to do anything to stop it. It was like a raging fire that was out of control and my fear just fed the flames and made it grow even stronger. These "spells" would usually last about two to three hours after which I would be exhausted and sore and aching all over. As I said this condition grew increasingly worse over time and after about 5 or six years of this torture I found myself at my wits end. I was now afraid to go anywhere because I never knew when one of these attacks would strike so I withdrew even more. I even had to drop out of College because of this after having one of these episodes start up in my Oil Painting class. That was when I started focusing more on playing my guitar and trying to write songs. I had taught myself the guitar by playing Beatle songs and Bob Dylan songs and before that I dabbled at early folk music and even learned to play the banjo a bit with a neighbor.
 
Anyway, getting back to the mystery illness, all my friends thought I was mental by this time and even my family was beginning to think the same. I was even starting to question reality and it was during this time that I wrote a song titled "What Is Real". To shorten this a bit let me just say that I had tried everything to find a solution to this living nightmare.  I went to Doctors (who thought I was on drugs because this was at the height of the Hippy era after all) and a Psychiatrist (my mother's idea) but he just wanted me to take Valium and attend his Group Therapy sessions until he could help me get the skeletons out of my closet that were causing my "Anxiety Attacks". Meanwhile all of my pot smoking friends thought I should just "mellow out with pot brother and everything will be cool" but I didn't need any drugs because I was already on a natural high baby! Unfortunately it was a recurring total bum trip that was completely out of my control. Well, finally after trying everything in the world and getting no help from anyone or anything I began to lose hope. I knew that something was seriously wrong with me and that it was life threatening and the thought that even my own mother was leaning towards it being a mental breakdown was a heavy load to carry.
 
I began to closely examine my life and everything that I had tried and how it had all failed miserably and it was then that the thought entered my mind...Have you ever asked God for help? I felt like such a complete idiot! Why hadn't I thought of it sooner? He is usually the last person on our list that we would go to for help when really He should always be the first! So I decided right then and there to get alone with God and plead my case before Him. I was all alone at my mother's home that evening and I slipped into a back bedroom, closed the door and got down on my knees and opened my heart to Him. I spoke to Him as simply as I knew how and told Him that I felt like I was talking to myself but that I wanted Him to be there more than anything in the world because if He wasn't there and real then there was no reason for living and no meaning or purpose to life. I told Him how no one could help me and everyone was giving up on me including myself and that if He didn't help me then I was going to die. I told Him that it felt like my strength had been stolen from me. I remember agreeing with Him that I had fallen way short of His perfection and that I was sorry for being such a miserable failure. I apologized for being angry with Him about how my life had gone so far. I asked for His forgiveness and His help with my affliction. And just before I got up I asked Him to please do something to let me know that He had heard me. A sort of "Help me in my unbelief Lord" prayer.
 
When I went back into the Living Room and stood by the wall heater I was warming myself and pondering over my talk with God. Then it happened! Someone touched me on top of my head but I was alone in the house...or was I? It literally felt as if something was being poured out on top of my head from the spot where I had felt the touch. It was thick like honey and at first it felt cold and numb and tingly but next it felt warm and electric and it continued to spread around the crown of my head and down onto my forehead and down the bridge of my nose. What is this I thought in panic! Now I'm having a brain aneurism of something even worse! My heart started pounding again and my chest started tightening up again but then the thought came to me...you asked Him to do something to let you know that He heard you didn't you? At that thought my racing heart began to slow down and I started to relax. If this is God then I am ok. He won't harm me. So I decided to just ride it out and see where it goes. The intensity of the numbness and alternating hot and cold sensation increased until it reached a plateau and leveled off. It wasn't painful or uncomfortable it just felt a little weird but by now I was used to things being strange in my life so I decided to just turn in for the night and in the morning when I got up everything would be back to normal if you could call it normal. There was another symptom that I had been living with too for quite some time which was that of always being tired and sore especially my chest muscles from all that tightening and stressing out during the attacks. No matter how much sleep I got I would always wake up still feeling exhausted with that pins and needles feeling in my eyes. I was a complete mess. But things were about to change drastically.
 
A few days after my "close encounter with God" my mother came home from work where she billed medical insurance at a clinic and said that one of the Doctors there wanted to see me. Yeah RIGHT was my gut reaction, that ought to do the trick! Why hadn't I thought of that before I sarcastically asked myself? He had aparently overheard her talking with a co-worker about me and had asked her to have me come in. She kept nagging me until I relented and went to see him just to get her off my back. His name was Doctor Persons and he was from Tennesee with that welcoming and very "personable" southern accent. I had the distinct feeling that he genuinely cared about his patients which was a very welcome change and he didn't acuse me of being on drugs either! The whole time he was asking me all sorts of questions about my diet, my daily routines and my sleep habits etc while he kept looking at my throat. I told him maybe I have cancer or maybe this or maybe that but he just kept on feeling my neck and looking at my throat. I kept thinking there's nothing wrong with my throat Doc what are you doing!?! Within a matter of minutes he had already determined what was wrong but he needed a blood test to be sure. So they took a sample of my blood and I went home still feeling all messed up and disappointed again. Another symptom I had been living with (if you can call it living) was depression and deep sadness and despair. It wouldn't go away and hovered over me constantly like a dense dark cloud. It is evidenced in the songs I was writing back then like one titled "Nightmare of Pain". Back then I was fighting off suicidal thoughts and the only thing that kept me going was that I was a believer (even if I wasn't speaking with Him at the moment because I was still angry) and I knew that suicide was not an option for a believer. Nevertheless, a few days later my mother told me that Doctor Persons wanted to see me right away and that it was very important. Yeah right I thouht from the depths of my deep well of depression and negativity. He just wants to sell me some legalised pharmaceutical drugs because he gets a kickback!
 
Thank God my mother was persistant at nagging me for two whole weeks until I finally gave in. I went back to his office and the first thing he did was chew me out for not coming in right away as he had asked. But he was absolutely right to be unhappy with me and had every right to lay into me like he did. I deserved it and I knew it so I apologized for being such a poor and rebelious patient and explained that "I am just not myself anymore Doc." Then he began explaining the blood test results to me. The most glaring findings from the test were that I was seriously low in one absolutely essential hormone or group of hormones that is produced by the thyroid gland. He said that the level of thyroid hormone that was detected in my blood sample was the lowest that he had ever seen in any patient in all the years of his practice as a Doctor. He said that he was amazed that I was still alive and walking around. Needless to say he wrote me a prescription for synthetic thyroid hormone called Thyroxine and told me to start taking it immediately once a day. He even described to me how it would feel when I took the first tablet right down to the minutest detail. He was so right on! Thank you Jesus!
 
Well, all of my symptoms disappeared almost immediately and I have been as solid as a rock ever since. That was in 1976. Praise God for His Mercy, Grace and precious Lovingkindness and for raising up Doctors to use as He sees fit. God could have healed me in that room that night when I was crying out to Him but no one would have ever known what He had done since nobody knew what was wrong with me. But now it is documented and He gets all the Glory, Honor and Praise forever and ever Hallelujah Amen! Before my healing all of my attempts at writing songs were feeble and they were always sad, hopeless and pathetic. Since that day in my room on my knees before God things have never been the same and the music that began to pour through me like water from a spring has been flowing ever since. The very first song that flowed out of me after my healing is the one titled "Like a Child". It was a Sunday morning and I was sitting in front of the very same wall heater playing my guitar where it all began.
 
There is one final thing that I forgot to mention earlier. After my close encounter with God (and what I now know as the baptism of the Holy Spirit) I woke up the next morning expecting to be "normal" again but the strange sensation was still there just as strong as it had been the night before. In fact it lasted for three days and three nights and only God knows why. After that I had an insatiable appetite for the Word of God and I began reading the Bible from cover to cover one translation after another and everytime I would pick up the Bible and begin reading it I could literally feel His presence on my head and across the bridge of my nose just as I did that first evening when I was in my room alone with God. I was like a man who had been dying of thirst in a desolate and bone dry desert of a wilderness who had suddenly come upon a beautiful, luscious blue and green life saving oasis. I'm still drinking from His Living Water today. In closing I think the one song that the Lord has given me that best summarizes my testimony and quest for Him is the one titled "About You".
 
- Eric Randall