“You can’t save yourself through art. You can’t save yourself through music. You can’t do it through travel. You can’t do it through wealth,” Rice shares. “All your attempts at saving and transcending through other means will ultimately fail.”

Long before the “Twilight” craze, author Anne Rice brought vampires into the literary forefront with her best-selling novels, “The Vampire Chronicles,” reports Dan Wooding, founder of Assist Ministries..

According to a news release from Jodi Phillip at A. Larry Ross Communications, Anne Rice is the newest personality to share her story on www dot iamsecond dot com, a bold multimedia movement designed to help people discover their purpose in life. In it, Rice discusses how her vampire novels were really a reflection of the darkness she felt without God.

In her “I am Second” video, Rice deemed herself a “Christ-haunted atheist” whose early writings were littered with grief, loss and her struggle with faith. Despite the fact that God was a “golden” part of her childhood, Rice abandoned her faith during her college years in search of new freedoms and knowledge.

“I felt a kind of desperation … I felt that there were so many things forbidden to me as a Christian … I felt a desperate need to be free,” Rice says on iamsecond.com. “I bought that to grow up, one has to put aside God, and I began my adventures as a student of the modern world and as an agnostic, or an atheist, and that lasted for me for 38 years.”

After years of dissatisfaction with the world, Rice discovered through her own novels her heart’s desire to revolt against the darkness of a life cut off from God.

“I really believed in God. Not only did I really believe in Him, I loved Him and I wasn’t admitting it,” Rice says in her video. “As long as you are denying God, you will not know any rest. You will not know any peace.

“You can’t save yourself through art. You can’t save yourself through music. You can’t do it through travel. You can’t do it through wealth,” Rice shares. “All your attempts at saving and transcending through other means will ultimately fail. You save yourself or God saves you when you turn to Him.”

Now, Rice writes only to honor God. Her works, “Called out of Darkness,” “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” “Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana” and “Angel Time” have been successful Christian books.

Rice’s story is one of three new videos to be added to the “I am Second” Web site this month. Her story follows rodeo star and professional cowboy, Trevor Brazile, and extreme skateboarder-turned-pastor, Christian Hosoi.

Launched in the Dallas-Fort Worth market in December 2008, www dot iamsecond dot com has quickly spread virally across the globe, revealing the video stories of personal struggle, transformation and hope of celebrities and everyday people who put Jesus first in their lives. The movement’s videos cover a variety of personal struggles, including abuse, addictions, pride, eating disorders, broken families and the search for success and meaning in life.

Other celebrities featured on the I am Second site include Season 7 American Idol contestant Jason Castro, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Indianapolis Colts former coach Tony Dungy. The video of redeemed rock star and ex-member of the band Korn, Brian “Head” Welch, continues to be the most popular video on the I am Second site.

To date, the campaign has received more than 2 million visits to its Web site from over 211 countries. In addition to the U.S., the majority of visits have come from Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, the Philippines and Brazil. Visitors spend an average of 8 minutes and 42 seconds on the site. The campaign also has a strong presence in the social media realm where its Facebook Fan Page alone has more than 107,000 members.

SOURCE: http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue9266.html