Strength from Above.

Thanks to his mother's choice not to undergo an abortion, "strongman" Bud Jeffries is alive and well, grateful for the chance to bring the power of God to America's youth.

Almost every day, Bud Jeffries does something most people would consider impossible. It may be doing a deep knee bend with more than 900 pounds on his shoulders, or it may be loading that barbell with more than a thousand pounds and carrying it for distance. Some days he will flip a one-ton automobile end-over-end, or pull a 32,000-pound bus. For variety he will occasionally lift people over his head with a single finger, "unbend" a horseshoe, or use a single bare hand to drive nails into planks. He's also perfecting the art of tearing license plates in half.

In the elite sport of drug-free powerlifting -- which focuses on three lifts, the bench press, barbell squat, and dead lift -- Jeffries has won state, regional, national, and world championships. He has set two world and several national powerlifting records. He has also won several titles in the even more rarefied field of "Strongman" events, which focus on lifting large, unwieldy objects, such as barrels, kegs, weighted logs, large rocks, and round "Atlas Stones."

On June 2nd, Jeffries defended his title as the world's strongest man in drug-free competition by winning his weight class in the "U.S. Strongest Man: Battle of the Titans" meet. In addition to his accomplishments as a powerlifter and strongman competitor, Jeffries has competed in the Highland Games (a traditional Scottish strength event), Toughman contests, and No-Holds-Barred martial arts events.

The 28-year-old Jeffries, a professional massage therapist who lives in Lakeland, Florida, with his wife, Heather, and five-year-old son, Noah, is 5'11" tall and weighs over 350 pounds -- with most of the mass centered in his chest, shoulders, arms, and legs. He has a 57-inch chest, 22-inch arms, and 33-inch thighs. On formal occasions, he wears a custom-made size 70 suit jacket -- and such occasions come frequently for Jeffries, who is a devout Christian who considers his part-time career as a strongman to be a lay ministry. "I've been blessed with talents that the Lord expects me to use to glorify Him and bless the lives of others," Jeffries explained to THE NEW AMERICAN.

While Jeffries' accomplishments as a strength athlete are all but incomprehensible, they must be considered miraculous in light of his background. "If my mother had listened to the 'expert' medical advice she received while she was carrying me, she would have aborted me," Jeffries told THE NEW AMERICAN. "But she was a person of faith and prayer, and she was willing to put her trust in God."

Saved through Prayer

Bud Jeffries was born on August 31, 1973 -- seven months after the Supreme Court's notorious Roe v. Wade decision demolished all existing legal protections for unborn children. His parents, Bernard and Shirley Jeffries, had tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to have children. They were understandably overjoyed to learn that they would at last have a child -- only to become gravely concerned when Shirley, a licensed practical nurse, was exposed to German Measles during the first trimester. While the German Measles is not a serious threat to an expectant mother, it is a viral infection that can lead to severe fetal deformity. Shirley Jeffries was advised by her physician, and several of her professional colleagues, that she should undergo an abortion.

"My parents were devastated by this advice," recalls Jeffries. "My mother knew the medical facts, and understood the risks. She had been told that I would be stillborn, or that I would be born alive with severe handicaps -- that the best she could hope for was a weak and sickly child. But she and my father understood that life is a gift from God, and He alone can give it or take it. They went to their church and prayed with some of their friends, and then they told the doctors that they were going through with the birth -- and not to bring up the subject of abortion again."

After Shirley went into labor, Bud was almost lost: His heart rate plummeted below the range of the fetal heart monitor, and an emergency cesarian section was performed. Amid anxiety and more than a few prayers, Shirley gave birth to a strong, healthy boy. But this was not to be the end of Bud's challenges.

While walking to his grandmother's house as a four-year-old, Bud was struck by a van. After being carried for more than thirty yards on the van's bumper, he was thrown into a ditch. With his skull fractured and his right thigh broken, Bud spent three months convalescing in a body cast; when the cast was removed, he had to learn to walk all over again. To rehabilitate her son, Shirley enrolled Bud in tae kwon do, a Korean variant of Karate. Studying the martial art helped Bud regain his strength and flexibility. It also piqued his interest in the world of strength and fitness.

At 17, Bud was involved in yet another automobile accident, this time being sideswiped by a car that ran a stop sign. After hitting the windshield hard enough to shatter it, Bud was left lying on the floor of his car in a pool of blood. He was taken to the emergency room, and he left under his own power six hours later after being treated for minor injuries. The driver of the other vehicle, a paramedic, was left uninjured by the crash but ended up spending more time in the hospital than Bud: He was left nearly crippled after attempting to remove the injured 290-pound teenager from the wrecked car.

As a 17-year-old high school graduate, Bud earned a position on the University of Florida football team (which went on to win the 1991 Southeastern Conference championship). But yet another accident -- this time, a broken shoulder -- led to the end of a very promising football career.

"Several of my teammates went on to play in the NFL, and it's likely that I'd be there too if I hadn't broken my shoulder," Jeffries observed to THE NEW AMERICAN. "But I think that there was something providential in that injury, as painful and frustrating as it was. Yes, it would be great to have the money and fame that come with an NFL career. But now I have a beautiful wife and a wonderful son, and I'm able to reach people through my strength ministry. So maybe the Lord closed one door for me and opened up another."

Faith and Strength

Although Jeffries loves the pressure of competition and the discipline of training, it is the opportunity to minister to youth that he finds most rewarding. For churches and youth groups throughout the southeastern United States, Jeffries puts on strength demonstrations as a way of sharing his personal story and his testimony of God's grace in his life.

"I have worked very hard to achieve what I have, but any credit and honor are due to God," he insists. "We call my business and ministry 'Strongerman Productions' because no matter how strong any of us or all of us might be, there's always One who's stronger, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. I try to help people understand that no matter what burdens they carry or what challenges they face, the Lord's strength is there to help and bless them, if they will give their lives to Him."

As an athlete, Jeffries has performed -- in televised broadcasts of "Toughman" contests -- for audiences of millions. But in his ministry, he notes, "there's no audience that is too small. I figure that even if there are only three people who can come and see the demonstration and hear my testimony, maybe God knows that these three people -- or even just one of them -- have a special need for the message. So I'll go anywhere and talk to anyone who's interested."

Not surprisingly, given his background, Jeffries has a special interest in the right to life. "We live in a time when it's just taken for granted that the best thing to do with unborn children who may be born with handicaps is to abort them," he remarked to THE NEW AMERICAN. "I am alive now because my mother and father understood that life is a gift from God, and they had the faith to trust in Him."

In recent years, parents of handicapped children have filed "wrongful life" lawsuits against physicians, claiming that the children would have been better off being aborted. On July 13th, France's highest court upheld a judgment in which a retarded boy was awarded civil damages because he had not been aborted. As the New York Times observed, the case was "described as establishing in law a disabled child's 'right not to be born.'" Jeffries, understandably, has no use for lethal sophistries of this sort.

"I'm not saying that every potentially handicapped child will turn out like I did," he states. "But life itself is a miraculous gift, and it should be protected. My mother got the best advice she could, and it was entirely wrong. I don't hold a grudge against the doctors who told Mom to abort me; I've met some of them and consider them friends. But I think that the mistakes they made in my case just show how inadequate man's knowledge and wisdom can be when they are used to deny one of God's greatest blessings -- life itself."