Heritage Series- Pastor C D Brooks 2 Biography and Interview

http://www.adventistsermons.blogspot.... Heritage Series- C D Brooks 2. Second part of an interview with Charles D Brooks former speaker/director of the Breath of Life Telecast.
Charles D. Brooks, one of the foremost Seventh-day Adventist evangelists of the 20th century, succumbed to pancreatic cancer on Sunday. He was 85.

Brooks, better known as C.D. Brooks, led a 60-year ministry that resulted in more than 15,000 baptisms on six continents and was known for its innovative methods of embracing new media to spread the gospel, including through the Breath of Life television ministry, where Brooks served as founding speaker for 23 years.

Brooks, who disclosed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, died at 4:30 a.m. June 5 in Laurel, Maryland, said his son, Charles D. Brooks Jr.

“Please keep my mother and family in prayer,” he said in an e-mail.

Ted N.C. Wilson, president of the Adventist world church, paid tribute to Brooks as “an eminent and much-loved senior statesman in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.”

“He was a highly dedicated and successful evangelist and biblical preacher,” Wilson said. “Elder Brooks loved the Lord, His prophetic church, and the Advent message.”

Wilson said he counted Brooks and his wife, Walterene, as longtime family friends, noting that they had worked closely with his own parents. Wilson’s father, Neal C. Wilson, served as president of the Adventist world church from 1979 to 1990.

“He and his wonderful wife, Walterene, have dynamically influenced literally thousands and thousands of people worldwide. Elder Brooks has been a great encouragement to me personally,” Wilson said.

“The church is greatly saddened by this profound loss, and we wish Mrs. Brooks and the entire Brooks family our heartfelt sympathy and Christian love,” he said. “We look forward with great hope to Jesus' soon coming when we will see Elder Brooks again.”

Charles Decatur Brooks was born on July 24, 1930, outside Greensboro, North Carolina, as the 10th child of Marvin and Mattie Brooks.

Six months later, his mother learned about the Seventh-day Sabbath while lying on what she thought was her deathbed after an unsuccessful surgery. A bright light filled her hospital room at night, and a voice said, “Mattie, I want you to keep My commandments,” C.D. Brooks told the Adventist Review in 2006.

Mattie Brooks, a faithful Methodist and the daughter of a pastor, was confused.

“Lord, which one am I not keeping?” she said.

She heard no answer. But suddenly the fourth commandment sprang to mind: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8).

Mattie Brooks made a miraculous recovery and began keeping the seventh-day Sabbath in her home from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday. She knew of no other Sabbath-keepers for the next 10 years.

“Never heard of Adventists,” C.D. Brooks said in the interview. “She had no tracts, no teacher, no Bible study, no anything.”

Her Methodist minister and others church members tried to dissuade her from keeping the Saturday Sabbath. But when the head deacon saw that she would not change her mind, he presented her with a wrapped copy of The Great Controversy by Adventist Church cofounder Ellen G. White. Young C.D. Brooks opened the package with a pair of scissors, and his mother read it with great interest.

Then when C.D. Brooks was 10, a Seventh-day Adventist literature evangelist knocked on the family’s door with some books. The very next Sabbath the family was worshipping in an Adventist church for the first time. Brooks recalled that a large copy of the Ten Commandments had hung on the wall of the church, and that it had left a big impression on him.