Man Says He Visited Heaven, Met Jesus During Near-Death Experience

Well, Randy, a lot to talk about here. Your book, Heaven Stormed, A Heavenly Encounter, reveals your assignment in the end time, outpouring and tribulation. What an interesting subject matter. Let's just start, for those who don't know, and I know there are a lot of people out there who don't, what is a near-death experience? Well, I tend to differentiate between near-death and afterlife, Millie, because near-death is, as the name implies, it's near-death, that is, the heart has not stopped and the brain is not dead, so brain, obviously, lack of blood supply dies. Shortly thereafter, the heart stops. The afterlife, then, would be clinical death, and that's the point at which imagination or any kind of visionary aspect of the experience then goes away because there's no brain to think about it or configure that, anything that is beyond that experience. Yeah, and that's an important differentiator there so that people understand that. Now, your own experience, clinically dying for over 30 minutes, this, to me, is incredibly fascinating because we have so many people who debate this, whether or not an after-death experience or a near-death experience, whether or not the things that people claim they've experienced, heaven, these other visions, are true or not. I wanna get into your experience, but before we do, why do you think this is such a point of contention and debate for people today? Well, I can empathize with those who are what I call the NDE deniers. I was one myself before I had my own experience. So I think that the rational mind really only takes us to the point at which we can indeed assimilate the information or what is the experience, which no one does unless they've had the experience like yours truly and some others. So I was also very clinically and scientifically minded. I led clinical teams in minimally invasive cardiovascular surgery, led a biotech company, was a corporate executive for a large healthcare company. So that was my mindset, really, to think along that linear pathway, if you will. I was a Christian, but still had to try to validate it in the Bible, and there are stories, certainly, within the Bible, Paul talking about the third heaven and Stephen having the vision of heaven as he was being stoned, those kinds of things. But as far as somebody testifying of the particulars of it, I think we have to credit modern science to one degree. We can resuscitate people today. We couldn't back in the times, ancient times, when the apostle Paul was walking the earth and Stephen, but also the fact that now we have the ability, such a plethora of evidence to validate these experiences, and there's really no contradiction within the Bible for these experiences. I've debated, or I would rather say tried to respond to those who are not believers, and I think there's a very, very strong support, evidential support, that these experiences are consistent with the Bible. Yeah, so if somebody had come up to you before you had your experience, you said you were a Christian, but you kind of looked at things in sort of a more material, here's what's in front of us, scientific way, and they said to you, I died, I visited heaven, this is what I saw, what would you have said to them before your experience? I would have said that they may have believed that they had that experience, but that the mind can play tricks, essentially, that some of them, I would say, were looking for attention, looking to write a book, or wanting to be known for something, and I can tell you, Melanie, for myself, and I think I can speak for a lot of others who share these experiences, especially those who come from a background where we knew that we would sacrifice either our career or the success thereof as a result of sharing, and so I discounted, obviously, on the other side of the equation now that we are looking for attention, because this is not the type of attention that somebody who has been a physician or an executive or somebody who has gained some modicum of recognition in the world would want, so I would discount these by virtue of the fact that there was no validation possible for them. So let's talk about what happened to you, right? Being clinically dead for 30 minutes, take us through how that happened, and I know this is a loaded question, but I'll let you sort of take it away, what you experienced during that. Well, I'll give you a pause, Billy, when I meet Jesus, because I had just flown out to Washington, DC. We were launching a new drug that would be a potential cure for Alzheimer's. The FDA withdrew that, so I had to lay off my entire, I was the corporate operations director for the company, had to lay off my department. I was looking for another position, went out to my alma mater, Johnson & Johnson, and I flew back from your neck of the woods in the New York, New Jersey area. I had a sore calf waking up in the middle of the night, and I just thought, well, maybe I strained my muscle walking up the stairs. So I came down, and I tried to work out the soreness in my calf by bicycling up the coast. We live in San Diego, and what would be a straight road seemed like a straight incline, in that I could not trek up this road without losing my breath, heaving for breath. My calf now is about one and a half times its size. So I was able to make it back home, and then went to the doctor to get an anti-inflammatory prescription. And lo and behold, when I pressed my heel into the floor, as the doctor had suggested, I collapsed, and I was rushed to the emergency room. So after the CAT scan, D-dimer test, which is blood clotting tests in the hospital, there were seven blood clots that had formed because I'd let it go so long. They had enlarged, traveling up from the lower calf into the main artery, blood flow to the lungs. And then I contracted MRSA, which is a drug-resistant bacterial strain. So now I had seven clots, preventing my blood flow to the lungs. The doctor said I was a walking dead man. And then the septic shock, which entered into my body, caused a traffic jam in my vessels, my vascular system. I was clotting throughout my body, couldn't withdraw blood from my arm. And it was at that point that I was like a floppy fish out of water. And I was just flailing on the hospital bed. And then everything went dark initially. And the next moment of recall, I was looking down on my body, my still body, thinking it's strange that I was still at that point. And I was being pulled by this light. I know that sounds cliche almost, but it's absolutely true. There was a pull. But what happened to me, I was in a, kind of a very vague, ethereal space initially, where I saw these figures in front of me, and they were warring against each other. There's no other way of putting it. You know, on one side were these figures that looked very gallant-looking. The other side, they looked more worn-looking, more deprepid-looking. And it was only after I returned that I was able to assimilate this visualization of what was happening. I believe they were going, there was spiritual warfare going on before my, at that point, spiritual eyes. My brain was dead. My heart had stopped, flatline. Hospital records validate that. Brain stopped. So you were clinically dead during this time. And again, it was around 30 minutes, over 30 minutes? 30 minutes and 49 seconds, according to hospital records. So yes, I was clinically dead at this point. But yet you weren't, in light of your body was dead, and yet here you are experiencing, spiritually, all of these other things that you're seeing. When you saw yourself, you said, oh, that's strange that, you know, were you recognizing, and I know this might seem like a strange question, but in that moment, oh my goodness, I'm detached from my body. Were you aware of that? Well, that's a great question, because I was aware that I was still myself, but I was aware that I was not of myself on Earth, if that makes sense. That I was the same creation, but a different creation in terms of how I articulated and visualized the world about me, or the place about me. So I was in a space where I could see things, not just from a visual perspective, but from a level of understanding, a level of seeing through in a far more grandiose dimensional way, so that, as I learned after the fact, that my senses had been extrapolated beyond the five senses. So I was seeing things, hearing things, beyond which I would be able to do otherwise in my body. So as I was being pulled by the light, I knew to cry out amidst this degree of consternation and seeing these figures warring and wondering what that was about. I knew my only alternative was to cry out the name of Jesus, which I did. I had a crisis of faith prior. I'd lost a small fortune. Our drug was withdrawn. My daughter had strokes. So I had a crisis of faith going into this, but I still was a Christian. You hadn't renounced your faith, but you were struggling like a lot of people do. Right, I was struggling like a lot of people, and I cried out the name of Jesus, and I was cheek to cheek with this figure. And I knew instantly that this was Jesus. I knew it, I knew it. And I wasn't looking at him at this point, but I was so overwhelmed with emotion. My first thought was, so this is love. And I just caved. And I started shouting every superlative I could think of. Praise you, Lord God. And then he reached down, and he wrapped his arms around me, and he pulled me by my arms very gently. And then he turned me around, and I was face to face with love. There's no other description than absolute consummate love that I was looking into the eyes of love. I was seeing this glorious figure, and yet he was very similar to what we would describe, I guess, in the Middle Eastern appearance, but more glorious than that. And his eyes were tunneling into every dark place within me. Shedding the light of Christ within me. And it was the most incredible experience. And then he leaned over into my right ear, and he whispered two words. He said, trust me. And I had never been a trusting person. I'd been always at the effect of trying to figure things out, always at the effect of trying to prove it, prove it or lose it or not believe it. And he was saying, trust me. And that was the catapulting event for me throughout all of heaven. When I was to perceive all of these things, which were not just grandiose, but the personhood of Jesus Christ was the imprint of heaven. He was heaven in the expression of it, in every respect. What struck you the most? I mean, you just described a couple of incredible things about your encounter there with Jesus. What struck you the most about heaven itself and this is two questions, but how long were you there? How long did it feel like you were there? I think it felt, Billy, like I was there for years, tens of years, decades, maybe centuries. I don't know, but it was certainly compacted in our relative term here on earth. It was so much more in terms of the experiential aspect of it. So much more was happening. So much more was going on so that it was far beyond the limited time that I actually had in heaven. And Jesus walked me through a series of life reviews, which John Burke will tell you are very common with these afterlife experiences. Were those hard to go through? Were those life reviews difficult? Were they painful in any way? They were not. And that's the strange part, I think, that the life review was not just the times that I succeeded and I had done well. I saw things where I had not done well, where I had failed the Lord, but none of them really condemned me, but they reflected the grace of Jesus Christ in all of those times where he redeemed those parts of my life. And these were not just like sitting in front of a screen and watching your life on a camera. I was there, I was actually there. And there was one time as an agnostic where this boy I was seeing as a teenager working as an orderly in a hospital. And this little boy, maybe six or seven years old, he was emaciated, all bones, and I was serving him food. I didn't wanna touch his hands because I thought maybe he has death duties, whatever. And he looked very sickly. But he asked me, he told me he was going to heaven. And I said, well, that's nice. I don't believe in those things, but if there is a heaven, I'm sure you'll be there. Well, he said, I'll pray for you. And so a couple days later, I came back to the room. He wasn't there, he had died. And I was seeing this vignette there. I was there seeing him say to me that you'll be in heaven. At the moment, I was in heaven during that time. It was the most amazing thing. And it showed the power of prayer. The stranger, this little boy had prayed for me. Indeed, his prayers were heard in heaven. Wow. I mean, you've shared this story. You've talked a lot about this. Obviously, you have your new book. I can tell even as you're talking about it that there's a lot of emotion there still having come through this experience, right? And I mean, as you describe it, I can't imagine why you wouldn't have that emotion. I mean, these are incredibly emotional experiences to have. As you're going through the life review, you're spending what feels like potentially even years in heaven, even though it really wasn't in an earthly sense. At what point did you realize, I'm gonna have to go back? This is not going to, right now, this is not going to be the time that I stay here. Well, this is an incredible story in itself, Billy, in that the Lord told me I was going to go back. And you can well imagine I'm in paradise and whew, I'm going back to the world I did not want to go. And then this butterfly rested on my left shoulder and everything in heaven was intentional. Nothing was just happenstance. So I knew there was a meaning behind this butterfly resting on my shoulders, the most beautifully iridescent looking butterfly. And so I asked the Lord and he said that that butterfly represented wisdom. Now, looking back, we think of Psalm 46.10 and so the butterfly representing wisdom to me, I knew as he further expressed to me what I would experience and he said this, he said, moment by moment, I will reveal my purpose for you to you because if I revealed it to you in full, you would not remain dependent upon me. And that just was so true for years truly because I was a planet kind of person. You know, I had created three companies and I was just that type A personality and it changed the modus operandi of my life after returning. But it was I was returned because I had not fulfilled my purpose and it was the most disappointing statement from Jesus that I heard in all of heaven. But was also one that I knew I had to do because I had to be obedient to the Lord God. Well, when you came back, it's quite often, you know, when I interview people who have had this experience, and I know you would know this better than anyone, that the disappointment is the thing a lot of people remember when they wake up. The first thing they think of is, oh my goodness, I do not wanna be here. I wish I could have stayed there. I assume that was your experience as well, to some degree. I went through a period of depression for quite some time. I was starting in, I was offered a position to lead a mentally invasive heart program or company within Jane Johnson & Johnson. So I was looking forward to a great responsibility, but I had just come from paradise. I did not wanna return. Not only that, Billy, but my valves were damaged within my body. My blood was backflowing, I couldn't walk. I had brain bleeds in my, and all of these things were going on. So I had the physical aspect of having a damaged brain, damaged organs, damaged heart, to looking forward. But that wasn't really as devastating as it was being apart from Jesus. You know, you could have thrown me into a trash can as long as it was with Jesus, as it was in heaven. That would have been perfectly fine for me because that's all that mattered. That's really all that mattered, that I was with Jesus. And the paradise, all the aspects, all of the revelations that I experienced in heaven, those were phenomenal. But the quintessential aspect of my experience was being with Jesus, face-to-face. And for that, I will always long to be there again. I miss that, and will always miss that until I return. You know, that is one of the most common experiences that I've heard in this. And you know, you talked about your purpose, right? And that it wasn't fulfilled or done. And here you are, you're sharing this story now. You've got Heaven Stormed, you've got your book, you've obviously, you've got a huge social media presence where you share and talk through all of your projects on this. You know, getting to that place though, from the depression that we just talked about and coming back from this and that longing to be there and where you are now, which is fulfilling that purpose, how hard was it to tell people, this is what I experienced? What was that like for the people around you and just sort of breaking that silence on it? Well, I didn't do it for 14 years. I was silent about it, and a handful of people knew about it. Pastor, wife, a few close friends. And then I had written, authored a business book. I'd written some stuff for Forbes Magazine and so I was invited to be on a program on God TV. We had done some research that we put together on how to thrive in life. And so the interviewer was a former pastor who knew my story. And so he said, can I ask you about your experience? And I said, well, I don't like, I've never shared it publicly. So I guess if you feel led by the Lord, and so he did. And then the cat was out of the bag. And then the Lord, I was flying back, almost dropped my cranberry juice on a flight. And I heard the Holy Spirit say, I want you to share our time together. And I struggled with the Lord for that. I find it easier, Billy, to talk about other people's experiences than my own. Because as you said, it's not only is it emotional, but to me, it's very sacred. To me, it's a sacred experience that I'm very careful about. So I don't cast the proverbial pearls before swine. So that those who maybe will not receive it in the way that God intends it, and brought it to bear would, I want it to be valued as I want everybody's story to be valued. And so, I still, to this day, remain the reluctant sharer, if you will, and that I would rather not, quite frankly. What year did this happen? This happened in 2005. So here's my admittance paper, by the way. I can't show the hospital because that hospital made a mistake. But 2005, it was on April, you can see by the admittance here, April 2nd, where I had these events. Yeah, so it was quite a while ago. And I think that's part of the process, too, that trying to assimilate what is almost unfathomable and certainly unexpressible in terms of the limited vocabulary that we have available to us. Well, and being ready to share it, too, how have you dealt with those who say, and you hinted at this a moment ago, this is a lie, I don't believe this, you either made it up or you didn't experience what you thought. How do you deal with that? Because I know that there are lots of people, millions of people who believe every word and there are some who I'm sure come at you on it in a negative way. Well, I'm not known for being a fantastical thinker. First of all, this is so antithetical to my nature. But secondly, I knew that it would be a sacrifice. I had something that I love to do. I loved leading companies. I love bringing new devices and drugs to market that would help save lives. That was my passion. And I sort of knew that sharing this would be a sacrifice of some of that, but I didn't realize that it would be a sacrifice of almost all of it. Because it just, that didn't evaporate initially, but more or less, it did tend to be, my life, I know Don Piper and I had a discussion and he said, you know, this is gonna take over your life. And I said, no, it won't. I do other things. I was involved in launching a transcatheter, which would be a minimally invasive way to place valves in the heart. So I didn't know it won't. And sure enough, it did. And so I think that sacrifice, if I were to go back, I wouldn't sacrifice how the Lord has used my story and others, but I would, I do somewhat lament the fact that I can't do that anymore. And that's the part where I think people looking at it, not looking for attention. And I think, you know, you have to look at the source, you know, you have to look at validation. I, you know, hospital records. Why did I do it? Didn't want to do it, that sort of thing. Yeah, no, absolutely. And well, that kind of brings us to the book, Heaven Stormed, you know, this particular project is very interesting because it brings together a number of related subject matter that aren't always talked about together. What are you hoping people take away from this book? Well, Heaven Stormed is, again, the book I never wanted to write, you know. Heaven Stormed goes to a place that is very different from anything that I've ever shared about before. It goes into the end times, being before the throne room of God. And certain revelations that the Lord had revealed to me in that place, relative to the end times. So the only takeaway that I would want from anyone reading this book or anything else about my life post-sharing is this. God loves you more than you can possibly understand. The Lord Jesus loves you so much that the way he looks at you is the way he looked at me, is as though you're the most special person in the world. So take aside in the end times. I know a lot of fascination about that, the storm, the releasing of what came from the throne room, the paradise, the reviews and all of that. If that is the takeaway of understanding or being brought closer to God because of an understanding of the heart of God, then I think that, to me, is the ultimate success. Well, no, that's incredible. And as you sort of hinted at, and I want people to grab the book so they can read it and understand it and see for themselves what you experienced and saw, how have you made sense of those experiences, particularly what God showed you about the end times and about just that experience when you look at what's happening around us right now? And obviously, nobody knows the day or hour. I always preface everything with that. And yet you've had this experience and you're talking about it. So what did it sort of show you, especially when you look at these current events? Well, you know, Billy, you wrote the Apocalypse Code which I thoroughly enjoyed because a study of the scriptures, which I did subsequent to my experience through the storm, brought me some degree of clarification. But I think, and we may agree on this, that the study of the end times or the experiences as I had to some degree through the storm in heaven can override the central message. Yes. Which is the unfolding of the end times, the tribulation and all of those events are because God needed it to happen. It's not because necessarily because he just got fed up with us, although he has every right to. It's because the accumulation of sin for eons of time. And the fact that there's a rejection and one that has been accumulative to the effect where we see it today in a grandiose way means that there has to be an end point. You know, there has to be the complete final redemption. It can't go on forever because this world is so sullied and people are suffering to a greater and greater extent in it. So there is in the Bible, certainly that redemption, you know, the new heaven, the new earth, the tribulation is a short period of time. That's seven years old, seven years long, I should say. And so, you know, that's a blip in time in the scheme of eternity. But yet, you know, it's a very important time in which God will show that the rejection of him will be manifested in the world. It's almost as though, you know, as I interpreted it from my perspective in heaven, that God was saying, okay, you wanted, you didn't, you rejected me, you said you didn't want me. So here's what it looks like without me. And that's what I gleaned, that in the absence of love, the manifestation of love, of course, one of the names given to God, that there is all of this other stuff, which is released. And so I think that if one understands from the context of God's love, of what he's doing, as opposed to feeling that he hates us, which he obviously doesn't, anger, righteous anger, and all of those things, but if it's looked from the paradigm of God's love, necessitates that this must be, and this is how it's going to unfold. Well, I want to thank you for your time. This has been an incredible conversation. The book is Heaven Stormed, and there's a lot more ground to cover. So I would love to have you back again very soon. Thank you, Billy. This has been a great honor and privilege.