Frank Hansen first attended Columbia Academy as a freshman in 1946. He graduated in 1950. Some would probably remember him as a little on the wild side and somewhat rebellious.
After graduation, Frank joined the U.S. Air Force. He became an alcoholic, a drug addict, and an atheist. During the five years he served, he was charged with nearly every type of court martial the military had and with several crimes through the civilian courts as well. For those years, he now feels he was a complete wreck and a lost soul.
During Hansen's incarceration, he read everything he could find on psychology and hypnosis. He decided, and set out to prove, that you could hypnotize your subconscious mind into not needing sleep. You just needed to hypnotize yourself into believing you were sleeping, even while you were working, or going about other activities.
After five and a half days without a wink of sleep, forcing himself to stay awake with drugs and alcohol, Hansen had a major heart attack. He remembers, "While I was dying, Bible verses in print began flashing across my mind like a television screen. This was not good for an atheist!"
Because of the large amounts of alcohol in Hansen's system, his main blood vessels were the size of a large man's thumb. Now in the hospital with no alcohol going into his system, his main arteries collapsed. The doctors removed them completely from both legs from the ankle to the groin.
All of this time, the Bible verses continued going across the screen in his mind. Then he started hearing a voice saying, "Go see a minister." It was repetitious, continuous, day and night, whenever he was awake. Hansen says, "This went on for several weeks as a war was going on over my soul. Satan was trying to keep me an atheist, but my mother's prayers and the Christian education that was embedded in my subconscious and conscious mind would not allow Satan to win."
It took a few months of not being able to get rid of these voices or the Bible verses, before Hansen went to see the Adventist minister in Amarillo, Texas, where he lived. The pastor said, "God is calling you back, and all you need to do is ask him to help you do this." He said, "We'll get down on our knees, and you say, ‘Oh God, help me,' and then I'll pray."
When Hansen said those words, "Oh God, help me," he recalls that immediately it seemed brighter than the fourth of July fireworks with many more colors. "The electricity was sparkling everywhere, and I became a new person," he remembers.
Elder Blair taught senior Bible doctrines at Columbia Academy during Hansen's senior year. Hansen remembers, "He told a group of us, who were a little wayward, that he would help us get a passing grade." Hansen needed a credit for Bible doctrines in order to have enough credits to graduate. Elder Blair told the group if they would just memorize all of the Bible verses for the year he would pass them with a D. Memorizing was always easy for Hansen, so he memorized them all and repeated them to Elder Blair in person. He ended up with a C- and graduated.
"Those verses were the very ones that flashed across the screen of my mind after the heart attack. There is no question in my mind that if I had not attended CAA, and been blessed to have Elder Blair and the other dedicated teachers we had, I would never have survived the heart attack, nor any of the other circumstances God has brought me through," says Hansen.
