Matthew Murray shares his story of being healed from malaria after being given three hours to live.

Matthew, Becky and Josiah Murray

Matthew: First of all I was really surprised and it cheered me up, because my doctor it turns out, was a spirit filled Catholic medical missionary, so that was the first real miracle. God gave me a great doctor. He was called Dr Michael Mahoney.

He took one look at me and he said, "Matthew you need this checked out seriously." He took some tests and gave me some tablets. He said, "If you're not better in two days time, you better come back. We'll need to get you in hospital." Two days went by and sure enough I could barely even walk, I mean I had to receive assistance to walk into his surgery. He simply said, "Man you've got to get to hospital right now." There was no time for waiting, he said, "Get there right now this is pretty serious."

Jonathan: What happened when you walked into the hospital?

Matthew: I walked into the hospital and I instantly collapsed. I didn't have the strength to even talk, or give my name. Life suddenly started to drain out of me and an overwhelming fear came upon me. I also for the first time in this scenario heard the word 'Ebola'. That's a pretty scary word to hear. They put me in a wheel chair and did some tests. They said, "Mr Murray, we are very sorry, but you have every symptom of Ebola. You've not been to Africa recently have you?" Now this was the exact time, the exact week when the Ebola outbreak was taking over. Everyone was scared; nobody dared fly anywhere. Everyone was thinking, "Have I got it, has he got it?" So they freaked out. They said, "You have every symptom of Ebola. We better do something. We better quarantine you."

I was 27 years old and my wife and little boy weren't there at the time. I've got no-one in the whole world, just me, and the doctors have said, "We are going to have to shut the door. We are going to have to lock the door and no-one can come in here for three days until we get this test done." It was pretty scary.

Jonathan: How did you respond to that in your faith?

Matthew: The thing is Jonathan, when 12 years ago I accepted Christ into my life, my life completely changed in a moment, I went from being an atheist, to an evangelist in seconds. God promised me that He would never leave me or forsake me. So you know what? It was a scary time, and I was terrified. My wife wasn't even there, or my son, there was no-one there in that room. Even the doctors were too scared to come in. They dressed in their protective gear and I could tell, they looked at me, and they didn't want to be anywhere near me. When a doctor doesn't want to be near you, it's pretty scary, but here's the thing, I wasn't on my own in that room, because Jesus was right there with me. People don't understand faith; they don't understand what God really means. God said, "I am with you always and I will never leave you or forsake you." So right in that moment, He was there, and I felt His peace and presence, even in the darkest, most scary time of my life.

Jonathan: Tell me how this story unfolded then. What was the journey that you had to walk out?

Matthew: I'm thinking maybe they tested me for every disease known to man. I was getting tested for every disease that I didn't even know existed. I was pretty scared and confused. Obviously the drugs they were giving me were starting to take effect.

When you get a diagnosis, you have to explore exactly what that means. So, I didn't have Ebola, thankfully, but they couldn't rule that out for several days. They told me, "You've got malaria."

Now at first I thought, "Well, hey, malaria! I've seen kids in Africa get malaria all the time. We give them some tablets and they get better. I thought it'll be okay. But then they said, "No, there are four strains of malaria, and you've got the worst one." They said, "If you have five percent of it in your blood, you could die, and you're at twenty percent."

The next day, they said, "It's gone to fifty percent, and your organs are now starting to be attacked and affected." So my heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and my brain were all attacked and were being damaged by this pretty crazy disease. From this point on, I don't remember very much. I was in and out of consciousness in intensive care. Things were pretty serious. They said to Becky my wife, "We think he's going to die within the next three hours. His body has rejected the medicine, there is nothing else we can do."

What do you do in a moment like that? You've found out your 27-year-old husband is going to die. Like I said, we had two very special friends there with us, and we had our little boy and that was it. Becky, in a moment of crisis, she did what all great women of God do, she got Facebook out. I always make a joke of it, but she got Facebook out. I know it's got it's faults, but hey, it kind of saved my life. She put a message out there, "Please pray for Matthew. We need a miracle."

What happened next, Jonathan, was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life. It was amazing. People, Christian people, believers, all around the world; small churches, large churches, prayer networks, and small groups, you name it, they began to pray. These days people seem to turn their back on prayer, but I'm excited to report that it still works. It's still amazing, and it's still important. People all around the world began to pray for me. They didn't even know me. They just saw some email or Facebook message about some English missionary with malaria. Thank God people prayed all around the world. The next few hours were pretty crucial.

Jonathan: But God answered those prayers. Tell us about that. What happened, what did the doctors do in that period? Were they still trying to save your life? How did this whole thing turn around?