Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson, who recently pushed past rival GOP candidate Donald Trump among party voters in the key early voting state of Iowa, has said his success in the race shows "the power of God."
During a recent appearance on Daystar Television's "Marcus and Joni" program, the 64-year-old retired neurosurgeon was asked why he decided to run for president despite having no prior political experience.
"Well, I must admit that Candy [Carson] and I were really looking forward to retirement, and we bought a beautiful home in Florida on a country club on a 17-hole [golf course]. I bought an organ, I was going to learn how to play the organ, and read all those books you never read, and see all those movies, and not have to set the alarm clock," Carson replied. "But you know, sometimes the Lord has a plan that is different for us."
After Carson had given a keynote speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, where he slammed "Obamacare" and other left-wing policies in front of President Barack Obama, thousands of Americans urged him to run for the nation's highest public office.
"After the [National] Prayer Breakfast, people started clamoring for me to run for president, which I kind of thought was a ridiculous thing," Carson admitted. "I said 'that will all die down, so just ignore it.' But, it never did, and it just kept building and pretty soon, I was getting a box every week with 5,000 petitions in it. Pretty soon, I had a whole room full of these boxes, and people saying 'you have to do this, you have to do that for us.'"
Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist, eventually turned to God instruction on whether or not he should enter the presidential campaign.
"The draft movement built and I finally said, 'Lord, I don't particularly want to do this, this is not on my bucket list, but if you want me to do it, you open the doors, and I'll walk through them. If you close the doors, I'll sit down,'" Carson said. "And, the doors began flying open, much to the consternation of all the professional class and all the pundits who said 'it is impossible, you can't possibly put together a national organization as a political neophyte. You don't know any of the people; there is no money. You can't do it. It is impossible. Forget about it.'"
"And yet, you see it is happening, and they don't understand the power of God," Carson continued.
Although business mogul Donald Trump has been leading most national public opinion polls in recent weeks, Carson is steadily gaining; a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Trump with nearly 33 percent support among self-declared Republicans as of Oct. 20 and Carson with about 16 percent.
Additionally, in a recent survey of 574 likely Iowa Republican caucus participants, 28 percent said they would support Carson, compared with 20 percent who said they backed Trump, according to Reuters.
Also in the interview, Carson discussed his latest book, A More Perfect Union, charging that the U.S. Constitution is "inspired" by God and emphasizing the importance of our nation returning to prayer.
"The principles were wonderful. I think they were geniuses, and I think they were divinely inspired," Carson argued. "The whole thing was about to fall apart in 1787 and Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman, said, 'Gentleman, during the pre-revolutionary days and the revolutionary war everything out of your mouth was 'God save us,' and now you don't want to talk to God. Let's get down on our knees and ask God to give us wisdom.' They knelt and prayed and got up, and they put together a 16-and-a-third-page document that is one of the most admired and substantial documents in the history of mankind."
