'Duck Dynasty' Stars Alan, Phil Robertson Share About Alcoholic Past, Marital Problems, God's Grace at Saddleback Church
Alan and Phil Robertson of A&E's hit series "Duck Dynasty" preached at Saddleback Church on Sunday as part of the megachurch's "Follow Me" series. The Robertsons spoke about the success of their business, their personal lives and how God restored them from their past.
Alan, who will join Season Four of the show after 20 years of pastoral ministry, addressed the church to discuss his story and the challenges he faced when his father, Phil, was an alcoholic and even shed light on his previous martial difficulties.
"My father unfortunately fell in love with alcohol and he began running with a group of people that took our lives as a young family down a bad road," said Alan. "For the first 10 years of my life, for my brothers and me, it was very difficult."
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Aside from God's grace, he credited his mother, known as Miss Kay, as the reason his family remained intact. He also said it was she who led the family patriarch to the Lord.
"When he became a Christian, it's like the blinders came off and there was clarity and a vision and out of that vision, he wanted to build a duck call. He said, 'I want to build a duck call that sounds like a duck more than anything else' and the first Duck Commander duck call was built."
He noted that before his family built their business, they were involved in commercial fishing which ultimately paid for Duck Commander to get off the ground. According to Alan, much of the struggle their family business endured was a lesson from God, sharing that, 'anything worth having is worth trusting Him and being patient over.'"
That same lesson got him through marital issues 15 years ago.
"My wife and I split up, it looked like our family was going to be busted up forever. But by the grace of God, by a strong church family and by a God that loves sinners, we were restored," said Alan.
Before handing the stage over to his father, Alan told the crowd the success of their show and business has been because of God, and he made everyone laugh when he gave a prediction about the upcoming season.
"[Viewing] numbers will be even bigger once they find out there's a beardless Robertson alive," he joked.
After a long applause and cheers from the crowd, Phil began his message with a story about a customer who kept using the Lord's name in vain over the phone while he placed an order for a duck call. Phil challenged him to make the trek over to his home because he wanted to share the Gospel with him. A week later, the man appeared at his doorstep, and then 17 years later while Phil was a guest speaker at a church in Alabama, he ran into the same man who turned out to be one of the leaders of the church.
Phil said that his past was similar to the man and told Saddleback, "I have my past, you have yours…drugs, sexual immorality, alcohol, cursing …until I learned the error of my ways."
His message also touched base on the corruption of American society and said "if the founding fathers of this country could see how degraded American morality has become, they would hang their heads in shame."
He also questioned the church asking, "what's wrong with Jesus?" saying that he did not understand why so many turn against Jesus. Then he made an altar call for non-believers to accept Jesus Christ.
"He was here. He did die. And He was buried. And He was raised from the dead. There's hope to get off the planet alive," concluded Phil.
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