Wrongly Declared Brain-Dead Pastor Returns Home

Meghan Marlow will never again doubt God’s grace and the plans He has for her and her family. Watching her husband, Ryan, miraculously come back from the dead only sealed her belief in God’s mercy.

Ryan Marlow, the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, was pronounced brain-dead by doctors in August 2022 after suffering a traumatic brain injury. It was only a short time before doctors at the hospital had planned to harvest his organs.

But God.

Meghan Marlow’s niece, while visiting Ryan, played videos of the Marlow’s children playing and singing. It was then that the niece noticed his feet move.

Six months later, Pastor Marlow, 37, returned home and continues to recover from his injury. Letters and emails continue to pour in to celebrate God’s grace.

“Yesterday was such a beautiful day,” Meghan Marlow wrote in a Facebook post on their page Ryan’s Recovery. Hundreds of people came by to show love and support and we are just humbled. Many dear friends and many we had never met in person but the Lord makes us brothers and sisters in Him.

“Ryan was just shocked at all the love that was shown. For the last six months I’ve been able to see all the messages and the comments and the support and the prayers. But he has seen just glimpses here and there which is what made yesterday that much more amazing.

“For three hours Ryan waved, smiled and interacted with hundreds of people. I’m so proud of him, I know he was exhausted. So THANK YOU to everyone who came by. To God be the glory great things He hath done!”

Pastor Marlow was hospitalized last August with a listeria infection. The fact that listeriosis primarily affects pregnant women, newborns and older adults made Marlow’s illness all the more puzzling. With listeriosis, individuals can develop severe infections of the bloodstream or brain causing meningitis or encephalitis.

For Marlow, listeriosis progressed into a brain injury, leading doctors to pronounce him brain-dead a few days later.

“The doctor came out [of husband’s hospital room] with about 20 other people as my witness and said your husband has clinically passed,” Meghan Marlow said in a Facebook live video on Aug. 31. He is clinically deceased. He has passed away. He has suffered neurological death.

“I was called into a room and told that my husband was an organ donor and that we were gonna begin the process of finding matches for his organs. So that process began, he was on life support and they told me he would remain on life support until they found all of the donors.”

Doctors began to schedule the harvesting of her husband’s organs. For two days, Meghan Marlow and her family mourned Ryan’s passing, but she received a call from doctors that they had made a mistake and that Ryan wasn’t brain dead.

Doctors, however, told her that he was in a coma and could not survive without life support.

The next day, while on life support, Meghan’s niece witnessed the miracle, and Meghan quickly came into her husband’s room and cleared everyone else out.

“I told Ryan all the things that I wanted to tell him. That I loved him, people were taking care of me, that God was gonna make sure our babies were taken care of and it was gonna be alright,” she said on the Facebook live post. “I told him, ‘If you’re inside of there and you can hear me, I need you to fight. I need you to fight like crazy because I’m about to stop this process of organ donating and we’re gonna get some tests done because I don’t know what’s going on.’

“Long story short, he’s not brain dead, my friends. The doctor would not even do the brain death test because they said that there is brain activity.”

A drive-by parade was held for Ryan Marlow was held last weekend. Meghan Marlow gives all the glory to God, citing Luke 1:37: “For with God, nothing will be impossible.”

“He (Ryan) is a fighter. He is the strongest man I know. He is my hero,” Meghan Marlow said on a Facebook post. {eoa}

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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.