From Broken Health to a Wellness Company

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

When his health broke down in his 50s, it prompted him to get to the root of it and to found a great wellness company. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.

Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. It is a joy to be with you today on The Line of Fire. Michael Brown, delighted to spend this time with you.

I'm not going to be taking any calls because of a super important interview that I'll be doing. You know, our theme this month is Let's Get Healthy, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically. And my guest, Michael Ellison, is absolutely devoted to this wellness with a purpose.

And I want to, I want to be totally truthful upfront with you. I've done lots and lots of interviews over the years on The Line of Fire, but I have never been any more excited than I am today because of a, for a whole bunch of reasons. So without further ado, Michael, welcome to The Line of Fire. Thanks so much for joining us. Dr. Brown, it's an honor to be with you.

Well, great, great joy to have you. So I want to first talk about your own journey and your own background so folks can get to know you. We're going to talk about your book. We're going to talk about Trivita, the wellness company that you founded. But I was texting you before going to India, my 28th trip there last month, and you mentioned some formative things that happened to you as a young man in India and how that, that led to the founding of Ellison Media.

So tell us about that. Well, Dr. Brown, it was a very interesting time in my life as a teenager. I was actually 18 years old. You were in the Brownsville Revival, I believe. Well, I was in a small town revival in Washington as an 18-year-old and seeking God.

This was also during the time of the Vietnam War when there was a draft going on. And I was praying, God, you have a purpose for my life, and I want that purpose to be fulfilled. I'd go to the church and pray two hours a day, week in, week out, and a man from India showed up to speak on India, and he invited me to come to India as an 18-year-old and to share my faith all over India.

I could not believe that this would happen. I'd never been out of the country before. So I got my passport, I filed for a visa, and I was headed for India, except for I did not have a dime in my pocket to be able to do that for the months that I was going to be gone, Dr. Brown. And it wasn't long after that that I was drafted into the military, the army.

And so the story is so amazing what God does when He has a purpose, and we all have a part in His purpose. So 18 years old, I go to the draft office, and then we go through the physical. There's like 300 guys there, and we get down to the very last doctor that is seeing me to go through my physical.

Now I'm in fantastic shape, I know fitness, I was a wrestler, football, you know, tracked, everything is part. And the doctor says, I see that you have applied for a visa to India. Are you a draft Dodger? And I shared with him, I'm going to India, I think, to be able to share my faith unless I'm drafted, and then I'll serve in the Vietnam War. He said, go suit up. And I left and when the officer came out, he said, Welcome to the United States Army except for Michael Ellison. And when everybody else left, I said to the officer, I said, Officer, can you please tell me, okay, why I was not drafted?

He said, because a physician said that you were not in a condition to be able to serve in the military. I went to India, Dr. Brown. And in India, I landed in Calcutta.

That was in 1965. What I saw in the human conditions of poverty, and disease, and death, and the masses of people was just staggering to an 18 year old, you know, young man. I went with Dr. Mark Buntain. I was there with him. You may know of him, Dr. Brown, right, his great work in Calcutta. Well, he introduced me at that time as a young man to Mother Teresa.

This was before Mother Teresa was known all over the world for the work that she did. In India, as I went all over India, as a young man, I saw masses and masses and human conditions. And when I left there, five months later, this is what happened to this young man. In my heart, I knew there had to be a way of reaching the masses. And I knew that human conditions needed to be shown. And that was what birthed the starting, several years later, of Ellison Media Company. Extraordinary. You know, I knew part of the story, Michael, the whole draft story.

Wow. You talk about God's purposes, and for sure, every one of us in Jesus has a purpose, has a calling. There are none who are left out.

There are none who are sorry, you don't fit. Everyone has a distinct purpose as part of the body. And that's part of what moves you every day, getting people well so they can fulfill God's purposes. So, you found Ellison Media, I'm not going to mention the many names I could mention, but some of the best known Christian radio, Christian TV ministries in the nation, to this day, God gave you a plan and a strategy to help spread their message across the nation, to get them from hardly known to known across the nation as part of this vision. So now you are successful in this calling of God, you are helping major ministries fulfill their calling around America, around the world, you are pushing, you are going day and night, you are a health nut, you are running mountains and so on, and then your health breaks down. How old were you and what happened?