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CNN Larry King Live

Pat Boone Asking for Prayers for His Grandson

Aired August 17, 2001 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, Pat Boone is asking for your prayers. His grandson Ryan is in a coma after a freak three story fall. Pat believes prayer can save his life. With Pat here in Los Angeles, Ryan's mom Lindy Boone Michaelis. Also joining us, Kenneth Copeland, co-founder and president of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries.

Max Lucado, best-selling Christian author and senior minister at the Oak Hills Church of Christ in San Antonio. and Dave Owen pastor of the Malibu Vineyard where Ryan attended church. We are talking prayer power. We are taking your calls, next on LARRY KING LIVE.

And Lindy, I said Michaels. It is Michaelis.

LINDY BOONE MICHAELIS, MOTHER OF RYAN BOONE: Michaelis.

KING: And Max Lucado's new book i "Traveling Light," right? And that book will be out next month. He has authored many books. There you see the cover of "Traveling Light." We did a show about this, we didn't do a full show, we did two segments on it because of pressing matters.

On July 26, the outcome of that show was almost unbelievable, people calling the hospital where young Ryan was and hot-lines established. So we are going to go over that again briefly so you understand where we are with this, and why all these people are here. So we are going to have Pat tell the story again of what happened to his grandson.

Were you surprised at the reaction that night?

PAT BOONE, ENTERTAINER: Yes, I was. Of course I hoped for real reaction. The reason you invited me and I wanted so much to be with you was to just encourage people to pray for Ryan because I know that it is prayer that has kept him alive, has helped him progress, and is our only real hope for his total recovery.

KING: Hospital was besieged, though.

BOONE: Yes, in fact they asked us please, we called you after, can we do something about having people call the ICU, and the hospital. Because we didn't get to answer questions or take calls that time. And so people were I guess they were all pent up. But, you know they are hungry to know, does prayer really work? That last picture was Ryan and his fiancee Stephanie. It was their two-year anniversary.

KING: Tell us again what happened to Ryan.

BOONE: It was a June 19. And he and his buddy had gone up on the roof of this three story apartment complex to get some sun, and they had done that lots of times. And many of the young people that stay there go up and get sun on this flat pebble-covered roof. And there is a sky light over the lobby, and they know it is there. There is no barrier, no warning, but I guess the owner of building figured, well it is there and you will dodge it.

And Ryan and his buddies had. But this day, this afternoon, after he got up from getting some sun, his buddy was preceding him, Steve, off the roof, and he heard a crash. We don't know exactly how it happened except Ryan's feet are size 14 and he was in fliptops and he may have tripped or something, and he went through the sky light, it couldn't support his weight, and he hit a railing on the third floor and then somehow on the second and down to the tile pavement -- almost four stories below counting the roof itself.

So then the paramedics rushed over, the buddies called the paramedics, and called Shirley, my wife, his grandmother, Lindy's mama, and the paramedics came quickly but because of that fall, the impact of it, they did not detect a heartbeat or a breath. So they didn't think he could possibly live and by their own admission they didn't do anything for him. They just took him to UCLA, to the ER.

Shirley arrived...

KING: Your wife.

BOONE: My wife, Shirley, arrived just as the paramedics had taken him in. And she saw them, and she said that is my grandson that is one of the -- asked one paramedic, how is he. And that is his dad shaving him. But the paramedic turned to her and said, don't get your hopes up. And a scripture rose up and Shirley, at that moment and we found out later it is from the 118th Psalm, he will live and not die and declare the works of the lord.

And we have held to that now for over two months.

KING: He is in a coma -- has been in a coma ever since the fall, right?

BOONE: Right.

KING: All the injuries are healed?

BOONE: Physically it is amazing, the doctors didn't think he would ever come off the ventilator. He did. Surprising, the skull was fractured the jaw broken, and they fixed his jaw and today they took the archbars off so his jaw is completely fixed, he is breathing. All body functions are working great, but he has not come out of his coma.

KING: Lindy, are we saying if he were out of his coma, he would be up and around?

MICHAELIS: Well at this point he has been laying still for 8 weeks.

KING: For all this, it's been eight weeks, right?

MICHAELIS: Yes. They can rehabilitate the body's ability to move and walk around.

KING: But the rest of him is, on comparative basis, OK?

MICHAELIS: Yes, his lungs, his kidneys, his liver, his pancreas...

KING: What has caused the coma?

MICHAELIS: Brain damage.

KING: Brain damage. So he will be brain damaged if he comes out of the coma?

BOONE: No, well we the neurologists say that statistically is the likelihood but they have to admit, and we have heard many stories about people that were forsaken completely by the neurologists and didn't think he could possibly recover completely and have.

KING: What do you do for someone in a coma, what do they do?

MICHAELIS: Life support. They are feeding him through tube, and giving him antibiotics for infection that tends to happen with everybody in a coma.

BOONE: Staph infection a couple of times.

MICHAELIS: He is on medications to maintain him so that hopefully over time, there is going to be the day he wakes up and they can start to rehabilitate him.

BOONE: They feed him through a tube -- excuse me, Lindy -- they feed him through a tube in his stomach. He has not had a bite of food in over two months.

KING: Are there ways they can say, well, looks like he is doing better. He might come out of this tomorrow?

MICHAELIS: His eyes are open. He blinks, he looks at you.

KING: He does?

MICHAELIS: Yes. He doesn't necessarily track to -- if you move or to your finger, but he makes eye contact and occasionally his eyes will move when somebody moves in the room and he will follow along with that movement.

KING: Can he answer yes or no by blinking? No?

MICHAELIS: Occasionally it has happened, but he blinks a lot and so there is questions as to whether that was a deliberate blink.

KING: Kenneth Copeland, you were with him today, right?

KENNETH COPELAND, EVANGELIST: Yes, sir.

KING: How much time did you spend with him?

COPELAND: Probably an hour, maybe a little more.

KING: What do you do there when you sit by someone...

COPELAND: I went in there and preached to him for at least 35 minutes. I mean...

KING: Why am I not surprised at that?

COPELAND: We just had a service right there in his room. I'm was following what the Lord directed me to do. And I thought the response was just terrific, I mean...

KING: You felt a response?

COPELAND: Yes. When I laid hands on him the connection is there. I mean, in 35 years you lay hands on a lot of people. And I have laid hands on deader people that were walking around. I mean he -- I laid hands on him, and the connection was there. And he looked me in the face, I'm excited.

KING: You think he is going to...

COPELAND: Yes, he will be all right.

KING: He's not at UCLA anymore, right, Pat?

BOONE: No. He is in the fourth facility. UCLA did fantastic work for him, and we can't thank them enough -- for six weeks. But then they said we have done all we can do for him, and they suggested he go into a subacute facility. Now we have since determined that we think he should have gone into a hospital first as an intermediate step.

KING: He is not in a hospital now? Where is he?

BOONE: He is back in ICU, because he -- his temperature went to 106 last Saturday.

MICHAELIS: With a skilled nursing facility, another good facility, but Ryan is having some difficulties -- called brainstorming -- if you want me to explain it.

KING: No, I don't want to besiege the facility. Is there a number people can call to get updates?

BOONE: What I did was give the hotline that his dad, Ryan's dad, updates daily. And there is a hotline that people can call if they want to just know how he is coming, what the latest. KING: Do you know that number?

BOONE: I don't, but I gave it to your folks and maybe they will put it on the screen. It is a 949 number.

KING: We'll take a break, come right back. We will talk to Max Lucado, and Dave Owen as well. Our subject tonight deals of course with young Ryan, but also with the whole concept of prayer and healing. This is LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOONE (singing): Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's Pat Boone singing to a very young Ryan. Ryan is how old now?

MICHAELIS: Twenty-four.

KING: Now, he is in your ministry, Dave?

DAVE OWEN, PASTOR OF PAT BOONE'S GRANDSON'S CHURCH: Yes, he is. Never had a close connection to him myself, but my associate was counseling him for his marriage, upcoming, has been down been down to pray with him, and a lot of the young people are highly motivated to pray and they expect that he's going to recover.

KING: Is he a regular churchgoer?

OWEN: Absolutely, absolutely.

KING: And Max Lucado, who is a best-selling Christian author and senior minister of the Oak Hills Church of Christ in San Antonio -- Kenneth, you are from Texas too?

COPELAND: Yes, sir.

KING: San Antonio also?

COPELAND: No, Fort Worth.

KING: Fort Worth. What's your read on prayer and a thing like this? I mean, like, who is hearing it?

MAX LUCADO, OAK HILLS CHURCH OF CHRIST: Well, you know, God never turns a deaf ear to anyone, I mean He hears all of our prayers.

KING: But he doesn't always say yes.

LUCADO: He responds in what's best, He does what's right. And the challenge is trusting God to respond at the right time, the right way, and knowing that He is a God of love. You know, God uses things like this in a lot of different ways. Obviously, one way is to elevate our awareness of prayer, we are talking about it tonight.

He will use a challenge like this to deepen our faith, to call us to Him. He will reach out to us sometimes through pleasure and sometimes through pain. And He might use something like this to call us back to Him.

KING: Do you rationalize it, Ken, when a prayer is unanswered? How do you deal with that? You have asked, you have done your best, and someone -- Ryan, anyone -- doesn't get better.

COPELAND: Well, the first thing that you really have to come to grips with is the fact that God is never wrong. But we are.

KING: But that's also a way of accepting anything that happens.

COPELAND: Well, yeah, but it -- it is still stands to my responsibility. God has made His move toward man. He has produced His word. He sent His son to the cross. He has done all of these wonderful things because He wants to answer prayer. But there are very exact spiritual laws that govern the things of God, and if we get outside those boundaries, we limit our results severely.

KING: So what do you say to yourself when a patient you pray for doesn't get better? God wanted him or her not to get better?

COPELAND: No, never.

KING: What do you say?

COPELAND: Well, it depends on what the circumstances were, but in most cases my first reaction is to apologize, because I don't know enough. And I'm trying my best, I'm learning everything I can get my hands on, I'm walking by faith. For instance, fear, in a lot of circumstances, can negate the faith that it takes to make the kind of connection and spiritual things and with God that it takes to bring results. So, there is just a whole lot to know.

KING: Do you believe, Lindy, in prayer?

MICHAELIS: Oh, yes.

KING: Even though it has been two months.

MICHAELIS: Oh, yeah.

KING: You have been praying for two months.

MICHAELIS: Yes.

KING: Why not? Why not an answer?

MICHAELIS: Can I read you something real quick?

KING: You can do anything you like.

MICHAELIS: OK. Well, one thing the Lord has been trying to work in me is patience. And I rely heavily on what He says and His word more now than ever before, and one of the scriptures that means a lot to me is that he says, we can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us and they help to us learn to endure.

And endurance develops strength and character in us, and character strengthens our confidence, expectation for salvation. I'm learning patience through this, too. But I still believe that my son is going to get better.

KING: Dave, when you pray who -- what -- are you praying to God? Are you -- what is a prayer to you?

OWEN: To me, it's praying to God the Father. It's a very relational thing. He has given us power through the name of His son to approach him, and that's what gives me confidence. Even when things don't happen immediately, it takes some time. I have struggled physically for two years, but my experience doesn't determine my belief system.

KING: You have an illness?

OWEN: Yes, and I'm still confident of the outcome. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it's coming.

KING: How about when you see massive destruction? Floods?

OWEN: I think those are tough things for anybody to understand. I think that some of those things fall into the file of "I don't know. I don't understand."

KING: But yet, you don't doubt your faith?

OWEN: No.

KING: You either, Pat?

BOONE: Don't doubt it for a second.

KING: Even when you see calamity?

BOONE: No, because I know, you know, trying to understand how God deals with humanity is like an ant trying to understand the Internet. It's just beyond our ability to comprehend, so when things happen that don't fit what I believe, what I think should happen, I have to say, well, "God, you know better."

What I was thinking just now is of how God led Moses and the children of Israel right up to the Red Sea. They had already gone through this whole huge (UNINTELLIGIBLE), 10 plagues, you know, Moses saying, "let my people go," and finally, the eldest son in every family died of those who weren't covered by the blood. Now, he leads them up to the Dead Sea and has them wait. Here come the Egyptians and the pharaoh coming to take them back, and the people are yelling at Moses, "why did you do this to us? You brought us out here to die! There is nowhere to go but the Red Sea!" Now, God could have opened the Red Sea or taken them some other route, but he took them right to that place and had them wait until the Egyptian army is right on top of them and it's going to certainly destroy them or take them back, and then, at the penultimate moment, opened the Red Sea and children of Israel go through, and of course the Egyptian army was destroyed.

And I believe that that literally happened. Well, why didn't He do it the easy way? Because He wanted to prove a point. He had a purpose. And God actually...

KING: So, Ryan is facing a purpose now?

BOONE: He is at the Dead Sea -- yeah.

KING: Of his own?

BOONE: And we are having to wait, we're having to wait.

KING: We will take a break, we will come right back. We'll be including your phone calls. The subject is prayer. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: The Boones, a touch of Americana, Pat Boone, part of all our lives. Now we have one of them, young Ryan, who is 26 years old, in a coma, in a -- not in a hospital now, he's in a special...

BOONE: ICU, that hospital.

KING: ICU, the hospital. We're not giving you the number of the hospital. We will have a number, though, where they give you daily updates on Ryan's condition. Call 949-260-4992, starting tomorrow. You can jot that down: 949-260-4992.

Ken...

COPELAND: Yes, sir?

KING: ... if you believe in heavenly life and life goes on, then maybe Ryan is blessed if he goes on?

COPELAND: Well, he's blessed either way.

KING: So death isn't terrible?

COPELAND: No, death isn't terrible.

KING: So why all the concentration on keeping him alive?

COPELAND: Well, I believe -- now, this is just my opinion, particularly knowing this young man's life, I believe he has a calling from God on his life to accomplish here on the Earth.

And I think there is one thing that needs to be injected right here. We have not been without answered prayer where he's concerned. He `started off at death's door. His liver has been healed, his pancreas has been healed, his jaw has been healed, his lungs have been healed. I mean, this -- we're taking back the ground one stage at a time, but thank God it's been...

KING: Now, Max, you're not saying God healed it, are you? I mean, medicine had something to do with it.

LUCADO: God used the medicine, absolutely. He'll use a lot of different tools. I think it's important that we remember that prayer's our way of learning what God's will is as well.

I like the statement that says, "Prayer isn't always asking God to do what I want, but asking God to do what is right." And the model, of course, is Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed not my will, but Your will be done.

KING: OK, Dave, in view of that, Richard Sloan, a medical professor at Columbia University, said: "When you suggest that religious devotion is related to good health outcomes, you're also implying the opposite: that getting sick or responding poorly to treatment is due to insufficient faith." Are you saying that?

OWEN: I have a real struggle with that. One of the objectives I have is that no matter who I'm praying for, no matter what the conditions, whether they're healed or not, I always want to leave those people loved, encouraged and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for the future. And I think sometimes we put an unfair burden on people. The problem that you have is of your own making, there's something wrong with you, there's sin in your life. And I think that that is a very shallow view.

KING: We do know, Pat, that we do know, research -- a book I even did -- that people in hospitals who believe tend to do better.

BOONE: There's been recent, just in the last week or so, more medical findings released, some major, quite deep study about the recovery rate, the results, all this -- people who believe, people who pray -- they do lead healthier lives to begin with, and then they cope with crisis better, and they recover better, and they have a much better recovery rate. So there is something medically and scientific to it.

KING: And more than just a crutch.

BOONE: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

KING: We'll be right back. As we go to break, here is Pat Boone in very familiar territory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOONE (singing): How great, how high, how great, how high (UNINTELLIGIBLE) my soul, my savior God to me. How great thou are, how great thou are.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: We're back with our panel. We'll be including your calls in a -- in a little while. Ken, what do you make of those who claim they can heal just by -- well, the Benny Hahns (sic)? Those -- touch you and you're -- Benny Hinn, I'm sorry. You're cured?

COPELAND: Well, one of the -- that's one of the principal doctrines of Christ, is the laying on of hands.

KING: So you don't discount that?

COPELAND: No, sir. I do it.

KING: You do it as well?

COPELAND: I practice that.

KING: So you believe it, you believe it, too, when you see it on television?

LUCADO: You know, I've struggled on and off at times with what's legitimate and what isn't.

KING: That's it -- what do -- are you hurt? And I don't want to say Benny is one. So let's say do charlatans, leaving out any -- nobody by name, affect your field?

LUCADO: They don't affect my faith. They sure affect the credibility of my field. Yes, they do.

KING: Do you agree, Dave?

OWEN: I think that appropriate models of healing will help a lot more people embrace it, and the person that influenced me, John Wambaugh (ph), provided such an accessible model for healing: normal language, normal approaches. And he could lay hands on people, but you can do it in a way that makes people feel at home, warm, comfortable. And I'm very for models that work.

KING: You don't like the show business aspect?

OWEN: I don't like it a whole lot.

KING: Would you invite Orel Roberts to come to the hospital?

BOONE: Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, I would. And of course, Ken's been there and Benny Hinn's been there and prayed with Ryan. I think there's three things that occur to me immediately about the laying on of hands. One is God wants to partner with us. He wants us to partner with Him. He wants us to partner with each other. And then there are those who are filled with His spirit. And they are conduits of what God wants to accomplish. And Ken is one of those, Benny Hinn is one of those.

Billy Graham was on "The Tonight Show" and Johnny asked him this very question about the healers, the faith healers, because it's hard for people to understand if they haven't had this kind of experience and don't know what's behind it and all. He said, do you believe in that? And Billy said: Yeah, I do. I'm called to be an evangelist. There are others who are called to be healers.

And he said, have you never done this? And Billy, this great man, said: There have been times -- and he was thinking of a time in India -- where a mother held up her child, obviously dying, and wanted Billy to lay hands on this child. And Billy said I wanted to with everything in me, but that's not what I'm called to do. And I was at home looking at it on TV, saying, Billy, you should have responded to that urge in you, because God would have maybe worked through you to heal that child, because it's that compassion.

Orel said over and over and over again he didn't -- he didn't want to be doing what he was doing.

KING: It comes through him.

BOONE: But God called him to do it and he had to obey.

KING: Lindy, do you visit him every day?

MICHAELIS: Oh, yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

Yeah, it's hard for me to be way.

KING: Do you talk to him all day?

MICHAELIS: I talk to him when I'm in there in his room, yes.

KING: His dad, too?

MICHAELIS: Oh, yeah. I sing to him a lot.

KING: Yeah. How's his girlfriend doing?

MICHAELIS: Wonderfully. She's also a Christian that believes he's going to get well, and she's a strong woman.

KING: A lot of people around the world are praying. I know they prayed at the Western Wall in Israel. He was born in Israel, right?

BOONE: He was conceived in Israel, he wasn't born there.

KING: Conceived in Israel?

BOONE: But we know, that's right. And yeah...

(LAUGHTER)

... I'm telling it. You know better than I do.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: I think, Pat, in this case Lindy would know better than... (LAUGHTER)

We'll take a break and come back. We'll be including your phone calls. The phone number again for updated information on Ryan -- and by the way, when these folks pray, they pray for anybody who's ill. Right?

BOONE: Yes.

KING: I mean, this program is about Ryan, but it's about prayer.

BOONE: Oh, we've been praying for the Levys, Chandra Levy.

KING: Yeah, we'll ask about the Levys. For information updates on Ryan, 949-260-4992. We'll be back with your calls and we'll ask about the Levys as well. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back on LARRY KING LIVE. Let's reintroduce our panel They are: Pat Boone, his 24-year-old grandson Ryan Corbin remains in a coma after a fall and he is asking prayers -- everyone watching and all around the world. Lindy Boone Michaelis is Ryan's mother, Pat Boone's daughter. Kenneth Copeland is co-founder and president of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, a longtime friend of Pat Boone.

Max Lucado is the best-selling Christian author of "He Chose the Nails." His new book is "Traveling Light," comes out next month, and he's senior minister of the Oak Hills Church of Christ in San Antonio. And Dave Owen is pastor of the Malibu Vineyard in Malibu, California. Ryan Corbin is a member of the Malibu Vineyard congregation.

We will be including calls. Do you pray, Pat, for the Levys?

BOONE: Oh, yeah, we prayed a lot for them. We identify with them. I mean, they are -- and I must say, those parents exemplify faith at its best, you know. No matter what anybody else thinks, no matter what the evidence seems to imply, whatever, they are praying for and believing that they are going to get some kind of answer.

At least -- I don't know whether they think at this point that they are going to get her back alive, and the evidence would indicate that something had terrible happened to their daughter before they began to pray. I don't know what their prayer habits have been, but I know that their intense prayer happened after she was already missing.

KING: So, Max, when you are praying for a missing person, you don't know where they are, how do you focus that in your message?

LUCADO: You know, when I sit down with somebody and they are going through something like that, I try to remind them first of all that God still loves them and that the presence of pain is not the absence of God.

KING: Because it's easy to be bitter. LUCADO: It really is, it really is. I remind them that Jesus said in this world we'll have tribulation, I remind them that according to the Bible there's still a prince of the -- we call him the devil, there is evil going on, there's a collision going on, but then I try to remind them that God is still supreme, and He's going to love them, He's going to walk them through this, and He's going to use it ultimately for His good.

KING: Now, what do you say, Dave, if the Levys say, but why did you let this happen to us and to her?

OWEN: Well, I think it's an interesting concept that inevitably when something goes wrong, people can easily lay the blame at God's door.

KING: But if he has all the power, it's easy to do.

OWEN: Well, he has given us freedom of choice, and we live in a fallen world, where people are doing fallen things all the time. And we have the capacity to make choices, to do the thing that is consistent with the will of God and we can call on him at will to intervene on our behalf.

KING: In the Levys' case, Ken, all they are asking for is an answer, right?

BOONE: Yeah. And I believe they will get it. I believe that they are going to get that answer.

KING: Do you believe it too?

COPELAND: Oh, yes, yeah, without a doubt.

KING: This not going to remain unsolved, where is she?

BOONE: No, not at all. They have been quoting scripture too, as you know, in their press conferences, Old Testament and New Testament. I suspect...

COPELAND: I expect there is a lot going on here, trying to keep them from getting answers. You have people trying to keep it covered up, whomever they are. You've got a lot of people that don't want them to have answers, but still God knows the answers, and as long as they press into Him, they will get their answer. They will find out.

KING: Because obviously somewhere something happened, right? And usually somebody is involved, unless she walked off somewhere, right?

BOONE: Yeah, and if she had walked off, all the evidence says she loved her parents enough. She wouldn't have been putting them through this if she could avoid it.

KING: When you sit with your boy, Lindy, and you talk to him and sing to him, do you feel you are getting through? MICHAELIS: He makes eye contact. It makes us feel that he sees us, and he is not able to respond. We have heard about a lot of people that have been kind of in a locked place, where they are not able to respond, but they heard everything that went on in the room. And we are not taking any chances. We tell him how much we love him. We read scripture to him, we sing to him. I even had one day where I felt the Lord said, "go tell Ryan something funny," and I told everybody, "go tell him something funny."

BOONE: Yeah, because he has a great sense of humor.

MICHAELIS: Yeah. I just feel like the Lord has been walking me through it day by day, and it is important that he hear things that are not doom and gloom and that he doesn't -- he might have heard things from doctors at his bedside, and we want to negate that, we want him to hear that he is getting better.

BOONE: And there was a very moving moment -- I will never forget, Larry -- in which Debbie, my daughter Debbie, and Lindy and I stood at his bedside and sang together "It is well with my soul," and we know whatever befalls, it's well with his soul, and he has a relationship with God that is stronger than he has even with us. So, it is well, and we can take whatever outcome, but we just -- we believe that, as Ken said, there is a purpose.

MICHAELIS: Also, I was listening to a tape of Ken's recently in how he talks about us -- we are more spirit than we are anything else, we are more spirit than we are body, and we talked to Ryan's spirit. And whether he can make sense of the words right now through his earthly body -- I know he's hearing...

KING: And you never get angry at what happened to him?

MICHAELIS: No, I don't get angry. I get frustrated sometimes with some of the circumstances that he has to deal with -- not angry about what happened to him, but -- that's when I need to just kind of get alone with God and say, "Lord, give him peace."

KING: Let's start include some phone calls. Costa Mesa, California, hello.

CALLER: Hello, Larry. Hello, Pat.

BOONE: Hi.

KING: Hi.

CALLER: Lindy, my prayers are with you and your family, of course. And of course, with Ryan. You know, I'm religious and I believe in prayer, but I don't have 1 percent the knowledge that you have about religion, and I was just wondering -- you talked about the Red Sea and how it parted and now Ryan is just waiting for the Red Sea to be parted. What if that does not happen? How does somebody with such faith as you and your family, if Ryan does, God forbid, not come out of his coma, how do you answer those, how do you come with an answer to why that prayer is not being answered? KING: Pat?

BOONE: Yeah, thank you. Of course, you know, I don't like to think about that possibility, but I do know that the god we are praying to had to hear his own son cry out to him from the cross, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And God had to let his son die, because there was a purpose, it was for our own salvation.

There was no other way, because man -- every man's and every woman's in this world sins separates them from God and there had to be a sacrifice. He was the ultimate (UNINTELLIGIBLE), he was the ultimate Passover sacrifice, that lamb that was slain. Isaiah 53 paints the picture of the messiah who had to die. And so, God has had to hear his own son cry for his help...

KING: So, that is your rationale?

BOONE: My rationale is that God has -- He is in charge. He is not surprised by it. He is going to work it, as Max said, for our good. Ryan has a relationship with God that is eternal. This life so is short that if God said, "I'm taking Ryan to myself," we could accept it, because we know we are going to see him again, we know we are going to be together, that Ryan would not come back from that place if he could, once he experiences what's on the other side.

KING: And since you believe there is another side...

BOONE: Yeah.

KING: That has to diminish grief.

BOONE: It does.

KING: The grief then is self -- I mean, you miss him.

BOONE: Yeah.

KING: But if he's gone to a better place.

BOONE: We wouldn't bring him back if we could, once that has happened.

LUCADO: Well, it's like you said earlier, you know, if what the Bible says about heaven is true, then the ultimate prayer, the ultimate answered prayer, forever life, is heaven.

KING: You go there.

LUCADO: That's right. That's right.

KING: So, if someone gets there sooner, maybe that's a blessing.

LUCADO: Exactly. You know, all of our lives, we're just...

BOONE: We all want to go there.

KING: But Ken believes he has a calling to stay here.

COPELAND: I really do.

KING: We'll be right back with more and more of your phone calls. That number, by the way, for information on Ryan that's daily updated is 949-260-4992. Of course, the panel is all asking you to pray. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOONE (singing): I walked today where Jesus walked, and felt him close to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COPELAND: Spend all your time driving down the highway listening to all that mess, when you could be beating your spirit with the word of the living God. After all, you are a new race of being. Hallelujah. You have been born out of that old dead race over into the living race, Hallelujah. And Jesus is the lord head, and he is the very image of the invisible God and he is your lord!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOONE: That is our guy.

KING: In case you haven't noticed him, that is Kenneth Copeland in action. I'm told, Pat, that when you knew young Kenneth Copeland, you never would believe...

BOONE: I knew Ken when he was in high school.

KING: He was kind of a...

BOONE: The word that comes to mind is hellion. He was a brute, a football player, all-star, city all-star, football player -- fullback, as I remember -- he loved to just crunch into people dare them to tackle him and he hoped to hear something snap.

KING: Not a believer at the time?

BOONE: Well he had been raised believing in family. But he had not accepted it. And when I told him, I was hosting a TV show he was on, on a local station in Fort Worth. And I said -- I was going to his house one day -- and I said -- it was a school up here at North Texas State and I also preached in a little country church in Slidell. He let loose a stream -- I hope you don't mind me, Ken -- of invectives...

COPELAND: We will talk later.

BOONE: ... to let me know he was not buying that and I could save my breath. Later, years later, and we stayed in touch some through the years but, when somebody eventually told me that we have a mutual friend, Ken Copeland, I said, how is that wild man? Is he still alive? Is he in jail?

And he said, no, he is an evangelist. I said no, we are talking about a different guy. But listen, he is one of the more powerful evangelists on the face of this earth.

KING: Let me get another call, Nashville, Tennessee, hello.

CALLER: Hello there.

KING: Hi.

CALLER: This question really I guess is for Lindy about Ryan, and is -- are his -- any of his health care providers, nursing care, are they praying with you for Bryan at the bedside?

MICHAELIS: In general, not, but we have had wonderful experiences of a nurse here or there, that has shared with us that they are praying --sorry.

KING: They just want you to look, your own...

MICHAELIS: OK, and then a respiratory therapist, dear respiratory therapist did join hands with us and pray over him and shared his faith in the lord and wanted to pray with us for Ryan so...

BOONE: At UCLA there were a surprising number of nurses that let us know in ICU.

KING: You wanted to say something about Ryan.

MICHAELIS: Oh, just what I told you in the break was that Ryan believes that he has a calling on his life and had shared that with me within the last year or so.

KING: What did he want to do with that?

MICHAELIS: He would say to me, Mom, I don't know what God has for me, but I sense that God wants me to be used in a big way. And he said it with a lot of humility. He didn't say it like he wanted to be famous, he wanted to get out there and preach. He said I really don't know what the Lord has for me, but I think he wants me to be used in a...

KING: Do you have a calling, Max? Did you have a calling?

LUCADO: Yes.

KING: Did you, David?

OWEN: Absolutely. I don't know what live would be like without a sense of purpose and calling.

KING: You certainly must have had one. You had a big one. Livingston, Tennessee, hello.

CALLER: Hello, Larry. I want to say hello to Pat, I knew his sweet mother in Nashville. And I have a question for Kenneth Copeland.

KING: Sure.

CALLER: My husband recently had a miraculous healing from leukemia by prayer. And I want to know what to say to those people who say to me, why has God not healed my loved one.

COPELAND: Well, the...

KING: Good question.

COPELAND: The receiving is on our part. God is giving. If we are not receiving, then there is a -- there is a misconnection a breakdown, there in spiritual communication. God sent Jesus to the cross, he raised him from the dead, he seated him at his right hand on high, he has given us his word.

We have 6,000 years of experience of this word and the people that have lived it over the years. This idea that well, God healed one but he didn't heal the other, could it be that there was something wrong on our part rather than God? There is a breakdown in the receiving, more than there is in the giving.

BOONE: But you got to remember, too, that Moses died and David died, and Gideon and all the apostles died. I mean, we all die, I have actually written a song -- I have written a song called "Everybody Dies" and Lindy laughs because I did record it and I wrote it in the manner of Randy Newman.

It's an ironic sort of a song, but I quote so much in -- I read it on a bumper sticker, pondered it for months, live just once and you will die twice. Die twice -- what am I saying? Live just once and you will die twice, die twice -- I don't know, I forgot, but anyway the point is that god gives us a chance to gain eternal life, which then triumphs over everything else. And I say I think I better take the offer, the best one that I found, because after all my slipping sliding, feels like solid ground.

KING: Let me get a break. We will be back with more, don't go away. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COPELAND: I talked to God based on greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. I call that becoming God-inside minded. Just talk to God talk. Talk to him about your daily life. Talk to him about whatever you are involved in. And sometimes it wouldn't hurt you to stop listen. Amen. You know there are times he would like to get a word in edgewise if he just could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KING: Speaking of prayer, Pat Boone just told us that the thing that did bring Ken Copeland around was your mother's prayers for you, right?

COPELAND: Yes.

KING: And someone called, Lindy, to ask why CPR wasn't given immediately.

MICHAELIS: You know what, that is the first I heard that they didn't do anything.

BOONE: We hadn't told you this because I didn't want you to know.

MICHAELIS: Yes.

KING: Should they have?

BOONE: The paramedics -- actually one of them, said to a friend of Lindy's who then told me that when they reached him, because he had this horrendous fall, his heart had stopped, he wasn't breathing. There was no detectable sign of life, so they said, "we didn't do anything for him," and when they found out later, a week later, talking to Lindy's friend, who knew this paramedic, he said, "that guy is still alive?"

MICHAELIS: That was the first miracle right there.

KING: So, they should have, though, tried something, is what you are saying.

BOONE: They said, "we didn't do anything."

MICHAELIS: They did start his heart again, and...

BOONE: There, or?

MICHAELIS: No, I'm saying at the hospital.

BOONE: At the hospital, but not the paramedics, no.

KING: Yorba Linda, California, hello.

CALLER: Hello. First of all, I want to say I love all of you, and I'm in total support and prayer. And my question is directed toward brother Copeland. I sort of want to ask your advice on something. I work in the prison ministry, and I have a prisoner who is just a baby in Christ, and he has been told he only has six months to live.

Well, he wants to serve God more than anything, and I know he has the calling on him, there is a purpose and a strong calling on his life. And so, I'm supporting and encouraging him as much as possible, and being in the prison, it's very, very difficult, because they don't medically take care of you very well. KING: What's your question?

CALLER: The question is: What I can do to feed him and support him in his faith? He is standing strong, he is standing -- he has written to your ministries, brother Copeland, because he wants to serve, and...

KING: Well, what can he do in prison with a short time to live?

COPELAND: Get him into the New Testament prayers. Ephesians 1:16 through 23, Ephesians 3:14 through 20, Colosians 1 -- well, the whole first chapter of Colosians, the second chapter of Colosians, and get him praying those scripture prayers, and put his own name in there, and pray those.

And then, have him begin to pray the same prayers for the inmates around him. And as he develops in that, then God will begin to use him right there in prison and his prayer life will bring about whatever God's called the man to do. I mean, he may live six months, he may live six years, he may -- he may be -- he may be the next Billy Graham. I mean, who knows?

But the very first thing for him to do is to begin to develop his prayer life on the written word of God.

KING: We'll be back with our remaining moments, some final thoughts from each of our guests, and we will be repeating that phone number for you, too. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Before I ask Pat Boone what he wants the audience to do, Dave, what do you think? You think prayers will be answered?

OWEN: Well, you know, I think that people that are unconscious, we don't really know what they respond to what and what they know. I think we need to speak to him as if he were hearing everything we are saying, and pray on him with a conviction that I think God has put within us the will to live.

KING: So, how do you know he's not?

OWEN: He might. He might be hearing everything.

MICHAELIS: This show is on in his room right now.

OWEN: He's watching this right now.

MICHAELIS: I know he's hearing everything right now.

KING: Max, what do you think?

LUCADO: I think there is power in prayer, and I think it's important to point out, too, there is power even in a feeble prayer. You know, some people say I'm not good enough to pray, or I'm not religious enough, I haven't been to church in forever, but the power is really in the one who hears the prayer. And we let God determine who he hears, and he loves us.

KING: So you remain optimistic?

LUCADO: Absolutely.

KING: You too, Ken?

COPELAND: You bet. Yes, sir.

KING: You optimistic, Lindy?

MICHAELIS: I am.

KING: Let me get one more call in before I have a word from Pat. Richmond, Virginia, hello.

CALLER: Hello. My name is Ricky and I work with the International Mission Board in Richmond, Virginia, and I know firsthand the power of prayer, because I was overseas as a missionary.

I just have a question to Lindy and to Mr. Boone: Do you guys feel that -- you said that your son Ryan felt that this -- the God had a calling on his life, do you feel that this might be something that he's doing just to call attention to it, and also to -- because CNN reaches so many people around the world, that this is brought to the forefront and God can be glorified through this and through your faithful walk?

KING: In a sense, Lindy, he's accomplishing something now. Ever thought of that?

MICHAELIS: And that hasn't escaped me. Oh, yeah, I think about it a lot. Ryan would be so happy to know that because of him we are on this program, going into 210 countries, I hear we are talking about the power of prayer. Nothing would please my son more than that. And I do think that it could be the jumping-off point for what God has for Ryan.

KING: Only have 30 seconds. Pat, what are you asking people?

BOONE: Ryan said to me not long ago, "daddy, nobody's reaching my generation. I want to do that." I don't think God caused this, but he's using it, and the ripple effect is tremendous. And when he is healed and he comes on this program, I -- it's going to be very dramatic, and I want people to do what Billy Graham and his wife are doing.

I've written a song honoring him, and there is a Web site. Thank you, Billy Graham. We are trying to pay tribute to him, and he is praying for our son. So, that's what I want everybody to do, just pray and then rejoice with us.

KING: Thank you all very much. Tomorrow night, a tribute to Maureen Reagan, and Sunday night a reprise of an interview with President George Bush the elder, George Bush number 41.

Stay tuned for "CNN TONIGHT." The number again to information on Ryan: 949-260-4992. Good night.

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