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| Earl Gillespie |
This
is a story that many will choose not to believe. They will say it is nothing more than
hallucinations brought on by drug usage or some other stimulate. It is the story of a strange event that
happened to me, and one that I discounted and tried not to believe. I am aware of the fact that by telling this story
I will forever be relegated to the rank of a kook in the mind of some. In my research and study I have found that many
people have had similar or some type of afterlife experience but they are ashamed
to admit it, because of the fear that no one will believe them. In the Bible Abraham told the rich man there
were those who would not believe even if one came back from the dead.
Sometime
it is hard to believe even when things are happening to us. We are constantly searching for excuses and
other answers. We speak of Gods power,
but to some the greatest display of God’s power is waking us up in the morning,
or causing the sun to shine. We speak of
the healing virtues of God and our testimony is about being delivered from a
leg cramps four hours later. Now religious
leaders are teaching us about the natural world and the spiritual world, the
spiritual realm is cast aside. Have we
rendered the God of our salvation impotent? That fateful day, the first lesson I learned was that God does not answer everything we call prayer, much of it he ignores.
Like
most people my age, I grew up in a time when the message of the church was, simple
“fear God, and keep his commandants.”
This was our duty. Our mental
vision of God was a stern face old man looking down from the sky with an
upraised flaming sword in his hand, ready to strike down the wicked. We went to school to learn how to survive in
the natural world, and we went to church to learn how to survive in the
spiritual world. Even though the
supernatural world was a mystery, we believed in God and we believed in
ghosts. We were comfortable with the
idea that walking down a dark road at night, we might see a ghost, and we were
comfortable with the idea that dying was to meet God. We learned to work hard during the week, and
on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings, we went to church.
The
people I grew up with did not spend their day sitting under a shade tree
praying for God to deliver them from the cotton patch, they worked hard and
their prayer was for God to give them the strength to endure.
During
the late 50’s and early 60’s the world’s value system changed. With the increase of the knowledge of good
and evil, we began to question things that affected us. We even questioned the existence of God. Armed with our superior intellect we crashed
the gates of Heaven and demanded that God prove himself. When God refused to respond to our manipulations,
many concluded that nobody was home.
Then some of the enlighten minds used the media to state emphatically
that God was dead, and when the religious pundits were no longer afraid of a
lightning bolt striking them, they began the process of reinventing God.
The
God of today is about giving; going to church is about getting something from
God. The expression of I am going to
church today to get my blessing is commonly heard...
It
was during those turbulent years I walked away from God. I was what the scripture refers to as a
backslider. My calling and my faith were
tested and discarded. My fall from grace
was very costly.
Growing up in a religious home, I felt I
had missed out on the so-call pleasures of the world. Now that I had entered a new state of
disbelief, I began to experiment with the pleasures of the world. It was sad
that my disbelief and fall from grace was fueled by those who professed to be
messengers of God, those who were using the church and God’s people for their
own glory. Drinking, drugs and hard
living became my new way of life. I
often fantasize about coming back to the church, but the way back seems hard
and confusing. Years past me by and I
still found myself on the outside looking in.
This
story began that morning when I walked into my computer shop and began the
process of opening up for business. I looked at the clock on the wall behind
the counter it said 9:00 A.M. I picked
up a computer monitor with the intent of carrying it to the work. Then it happens, I learned later from the doctors that I suffered a massive heart
attack. There was no warning, nothing to
know that it was happening, lights out, just silence. There
is nothing like the sound of silence, total silence. Totally and utterly complete
silence, it is as if your hearing has been switched off. No machinery, no insects, no air moving, no
heartbeat, just silences. Then there was
the darkness it covered me like a blanket, I wanted to say warm blanket but it
was not warm. This darkness seems to be alive and sucking the very life force out of me.
It was the lack of sound and the darkness that
engulfed and frightens me as I found myself outside of myself. This was the
beginning of an out-of-body experience. From a position outside of my body I saw
the dark shape of my body lying in a fetal position on the rock hard floor of a
dark cave. It was like looking in a mirror at yourself and being
able to distinguish yourself by a faint glow that radiated around you. The darkness was so oppressing, dense,
choking and clinging to me as if it had a life of its own. Was it
the darkness that was holding me captive in this place?
I
slowly accessed my position and the cold hand of fear gripped me. I
was aware that I was with my body but I was not in my body because I could see the
shape of my body or the spiritual essence of my body or my soul or something lying
on the floor of the cave, Humanoid in shape, yet dark, black and sinister. Now a new terror invaded my spirit as my enhanced senses and suffering spirit began
relaying to me the depth of my predicament.
The separation of the spirit, soul and body is spoken of in the bible, yet it
is a profound experience; it is deeper than a painful divorce, the death of a
love one. The feeling of one crying out
for help and knowing there is no one there...
This feeling is the lowest depth of despair. It is the borderline of
madness, or even the other side of madness. Try to visualize that.
The
silence, the darkness, the fear, and the separation, force me to ask myself the
question that I already knew the answer to, am I dead? It was a clear, I had passed from life into
death and I was in some alien place.
There was no memory of my past or even who I was, my body, soul and
spirit had separated themselves into three separate entities. Hebrews
4:12 describes the separation of the soul and spirit by the word of God. “ For
the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and
marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. “
As this realization began to set in, a crack
in the wall seems to open and I was given a peep outside of the cave. Then again I am not sure if it was a crack in
the wall or maybe it was my spirit’s ability to perceive what was on the other
side of the wall. The cave was the
entryway to a huge underground caravan.
There were pits, ditches and streams all fill with fire as far as the
eyes could see. There were cliffs above
the pits and dark forms were trying to escape the flames below by climbing up
the cliffs. The flames would seem to
shoot up and grab a soul, a dark shape, and pull it into the fire. I could not hear the screams but it seems I
could see or feel the screams. Being able to see and feel sound is more painful
than hearing when considering that sound waves can break glass. Another strange aspect of the fire was it did
not give off any light. You could see
the fire and you could see the souls in the fire but the area around the fire
was not lit up. You could not tell what was lurking around the fire. The flames
punched holes in the darkness, the flames existed but the darkness did not
flee, and a sulfur stench fills the air.
Not
only did I realize I was dead, I was now forced to accept the fact that I was
in the gateway of Hell and there were sinister forces all around me in the
darkness preparing to transport my soul to these same pits. My fluttering spirit informed me that my body
was dead and my soul was lost and that it, my spirit would die the moment
judgment was pronounced. Once my spirit
dies, the consciousness that exist within my soul, the consciousness that is
communicating with my dying spirit, the conscious that once could communicate
with God, that consciousness would be
all alone in this horrible place of torment, unable to communicate with God or
man, all alone. This is the death of the
soul. A feeling engulfed me that was beyond and below sad, an indescribable
feeling of despair. Can you visualize
it? This feeling might be in the context
of one thrown off the roof of a tall building.
The end result is clear, but the thought process on the way down might
drive you insane. I don’t know whether
that explains the feeling or not. I am
still left with the word indescribable.
Continued Tomorrow
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