A pastor is praising God after surviving an encounter with a tornado while on a fishing trip with a friend. Brian Johnson of Winnie, Texas, posted a video of the harrowing experience to YouTube.
Johnson, who is pastor of First Baptist Church Winnie, is described on the church’s website as “an evangelist at heart.”
“He has a strong desire to help people come to experience the saving grace of Jesus Christ. He is also a committed disciple maker,” Johnson’s profile says. “He doesn’t want to lead people to Christ and then have them ‘figure it out’ on their own. He believes in teaching people how to follow Christ until they reach maturity in their walk with Jesus.”
The incident occurred while Johnson was fishing in the Stanolind Reservoir in Chambers County, Texas. The storm was reportedly classified as an E-F3 tornado with peak winds of 138 miles per hour.
Those winds caused the boat that Johnson and his friend were in to capsize.
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“I’m holding on to the boat ‘cause I’m holding onto it from the bottom now ‘cause the wind is just ripping,” Johnson told KTRK. “And I’m like, ‘It’s gonna pick me up out of this water any second.’”
“So I’m trying to hold on, but I can’t find Tony,” Johnson continued, referring to the friend who was with him. “So I’m hollering for Tony, and now I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, my friend is dead. He’s drowned under this boat or something.’ So I’m pulling on the boat, trying to lift it up. I’m hollering for him, beating on the boat, and nothing.”
Thankfully, Tony escaped the encounter without injury. Johnson and his dog were also unscathed. Johnson is grateful to be alive but also recognizes that his trip out on the reservoir might have been ill-advised.
“I shouldn’t be here telling you this story,” he told CNN. “I made a terrible decision. All the warnings were there, and I didn’t heed them. Yet somehow God spared me. So, I got to believe he spared me for a purpose.”
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While Johnson said in a YouTube video on Jan. 1 that he took down previous videos about the incident after getting a deluge of comments, many of them negative, he still wanted to share “the rest of the story.”