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As I lay dying a voice said: ‘Let’s go’ (the near-death experience of a cynical prof)
Catholic Herald ^ | April 12, 2012 | Rory Fitzgerald

Posted on 04/13/2012 5:50:52 AM PDT by NYer

Howard Storm and his wife, Marcia

Howard Storm and his wife, Marcia

Howard Storm was an atheist until he had an extraordinary near-death experience. After that, everything changed. Indeed, he is now a Christian minister. His book, My Descent into Death, shot to prominence globally after the novelist Anne Rice called it “a book you devour from cover to cover, and pass on to others”.

She added that “Storm was meant to write it and we were meant to read it.”

Storm recently spoke to me from his home in Kentucky. He recounted going out to San Francisco in 1967, aged 19, in pursuit of the hippy dream.

“We earnestly were going to create a culture of peace and love,” he says, but “because it was so hedonistic and anarchistic it was doomed to failure. We soon began to see our contemporaries being destroyed by the excesses of drugs and sexuality.”

Disillusioned by hippiedom, religion and mainstream American society, he became increasingly nihilistic. He says he turned to “total narcissism: I’m no longer interested in changing the world … I’m going to live for myself.”

Storm rose through academia and took a job as a professor of art in Kentucky where he says that the overwhelming majority of the faculty were atheists and hedonists.

“Being cynical gives you a false and inflated sense of superiority,” he says. “You can look down on all the ignorant fools who go to church and believe in religion.

“The sad part of it is we conveyed those attitudes to our students. Many students came from homes where faith was valued. After a few short years in university they had nothing but contempt for faith. I think it was a horrible thing that we did.”

Storm’s life changed during a field trip to Europe in 1985. One morning, aged 38, he collapsed in his hotel room with a perforated duodenum. No surgeon could be found, and after hours in agony he “knew that it was over” as he fell unconscious.

“I fully expected that to be it: lights out, end of story,” he says. “Then, I found myself standing next to my bed, feeling wonderful. My senses were very heightened. The pain was gone. I tried to communicate with my wife. I thought she was ignoring me. I also noticed an occupant in my bed who bore a remarkable resemblance to me. I knew that person was dead.

“Then I heard people calling me from outside the room, saying: ‘It’s time for you to go. Hurry up. Let’s go.’ They said: ‘We know all about you. We’ve been waiting for you.’ I thought they were from the hospital.”

But when he stepped out into this “hallway” it was “very dim, grey and fuzzy, like a really bad black-and-white television picture”.

He says: “I went in to this hallway and had a very clear sense that the ‘portal’ back into the room was somehow closed. I could never go back. The people led me away, and the hallway subtly became darker and darker and darker over a long period of time. Eventually, I realised that I was in complete darkness, encircled by a crowd of people and overcome with fear. I said to them: ‘I want to go back.’ And they started pushing and pulling at me. The more I fought, the better they liked it. They were biting and scratching and tearing at me, all the while yelling and screaming.

“Later on, I realised that they were people like me, who had rejected God and had lived for their own selfish gratification. Their wish had come true: this is what they had. In the place they inhabit there’s no light, no birds, no joy, no hope, no love… a bunch of rats in a cage.”

They screamed and tortured him for an age, he says. “Eventually, I was too ripped up and defeated to do anything. I was solid pain. The real pain is the emotional pain. They did things that I don’t talk about… degrading things.

“I was lying there, when I heard a voice say: ‘Pray to God.’ I said: ‘I don’t pray. I don’t believe in God.’ Then, it came a second time; and a third: ‘Pray to God.’

“So, tried to think of a prayer. I started to mumble some things. A mention of God came into a few of these phrases. With each mention the people around me became very, very angry, and started screaming at me: ‘There is no God’ and ‘Nobody can hear you.’ It angered them so much that they were retreating from me. The mention of God was unbearable to them.” Encouraged, he mumbled other jumbled half-remembered phrases: “Glory, glory hallelujah, God Bless America, Our Father who art in heaven…”

Eventually, he found himself alone in this dark place. Thinking over his life he found it gravely wanting. He felt he deserved to be where he was.

“I felt that there was some kind of justice in the universe and that if you lead a miserable life you go down the sewer pipe of the universe into the septic tank. And that’s where I was. Yet I knew I hadn’t been flushed down into the deeper part, just yet.

“In that state of hopelessness I had a memory of myself as a child in Sunday school, singing ‘Jesus Loves Me’. I also had a vivid feeling of being a child and feeling that there was a wonderful God-man named Jesus who was my friend and who loved me. With real sincerity, I called out: ‘Jesus, please save me.’ With that, a tiny light appeared in the darkness and it came down over me. Out of this light came two hands. They reached down and touched me, and all the gore and filth that was me just fell away.

“In two or three seconds I was healed and filled with an indescribable love. In this world there is no equivalent to that kind of love. These arms picked me up and brought me into this brilliant light. I was held against the body of this man. I knew that he was Jesus. I cried.

“We were moving straight up, faster and faster towards the world of light. It dawned on me then that everything I had believed in was wrong, and I was going to where God lived. I thought: ‘They’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t deserve this. I’m garbage.’”

At that thought, “we stopped, and he spoke to me for the first time, and said: ‘We don’t make mistakes. You do belong here.’ He had responded to my thought. He laughed and said: ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know everything you’ve ever thought.’ Then he called out in musical tones and a group of beings of light – angels – who had recorded my life came. They began to show me my life, starting with my birth.”

Storm says they showed him scenes he had no memory of, like being a baby and his sisters playing with him. But as his life unfolded into adolescence and adulthood “things started going downhill”.

“It became painful, because I saw that when I did bad things, I knew that it caused Jesus and the angels actual pain. It hurt them.
“So, here I am hanging in space, between the worlds of light and dark, watching my life. I am being held by Jesus, but I can see that I caused him actual unhappiness. It was just so shameful.”

He says that “the only thing they showed me was how I interacted with people”. They showed no interest in his awards, promotions or other worldly achievements.

“It became evident that the primary thing was how I had loved other people. I had done very poorly. I had failed God’s expectations of what I was supposed to be doing, which was caring for other people.”

As to how long this process took, Storm says that “there was no perception of time”, but “when I try to frame it in our time, I say, it took longer than graduate school, which for me was three and a half years”.

Eventually, he was told he wasn’t ready for heaven and would have to go back to earth. “I was very upset,” he says.

Reluctantly, after some resistance, he accepted his fate. Then, instantaneously, he was back in his body in that Paris hospital, being prepared for surgery.

Afterwards his life changed utterly. He could no longer go back to his old ways. His friends met his story with “rejection, ridicule and scorn”. But he found new friends at Bible study groups. Gradually he became more and more involved in his church, eventually becoming a minister in the United Church of Christ. In this capacity he works closely with Catholic Church in Latin America. He argues that “God sees the Church as one Church” and that “all the divisions are manmade”.

This one Church, he says, “should be out there risking their pretty vestments”, pursuing those lost souls, gripped by the nihilism and atheism, now running rampant across the western world.

For more information about Howard Storm, visit Howardstorm.com.



TOPICS: Catholic; Evangelical Christian; Prayer; Religion & Culture
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1 posted on 04/13/2012 5:50:59 AM PDT by NYer
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To: netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; SumProVita; ...

While Catholics may disagree with Storm’s final assessment, the story is insightful, especially in terms of life after death.


2 posted on 04/13/2012 5:52:46 AM PDT by NYer (He who hides in his heart the remembrance of wrongs is like a man who feeds a snake on his chest. St)
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To: NYer

Great story. Bump.


3 posted on 04/13/2012 5:56:39 AM PDT by RightOnline (I am Andrew Breitbart!)
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To: NYer

May God remind us of this fellow’s story.

I’m such a sinner myself and I only hope that I can meet Christ’s expectations.


4 posted on 04/13/2012 6:01:05 AM PDT by struggle (http://killthegovernment.wordpress.com/)
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To: NYer

Beautiful story, thank you!


5 posted on 04/13/2012 6:03:18 AM PDT by Wpin ("I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny...")
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To: NYer

A divine rescue by the hands of our Savior.


6 posted on 04/13/2012 6:04:27 AM PDT by elcid1970 ("Deport all Muslims. Nuke Mecca now. Death to Islam means freedom for all mankind.")
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To: NYer

-—Storm rose through academia and took a job as a professor of art in Kentucky where he says that the overwhelming majority of the faculty were atheists and hedonists.-—

Which explains why modern art is worthless, and why I decided to skip art school. I went to engineering school instead, but fell into the same narcisstic trap. By the grace of God, I was able to escape the worldly lifestyle and became... an artist.


7 posted on 04/13/2012 6:10:34 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas (Viva Christo Rey!)
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To: NYer
trip to Europe in 1985. One morning, aged 38, he collapsed in his hotel room with a perforated duodenum. No surgeon could be found

Coming soon to Amerika if the SCOTUS doesn't knock down Obamacare...

8 posted on 04/13/2012 6:11:49 AM PDT by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell)
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To: NYer

This past Monday I had the most surreal day of my life. I believe my mother, who recently passed, sent this gentleman into my life. As an adopted child, my adoptive father killed himself in 1967 and I have carried a hatred for him all my life, though I never knew the man. (I was 2 when he committed suicide). Through fate I was at my studio when I shouldn’t have been and this guy shows up who bears the same name as my adopted name. (I legally changed my last name before marriage/family). Through our conversation he revealed to me that he was killed in a private plane crash in the mountains of Tennessee, yet here he was to tell me his story of being sent back by Jesus. There are many other aspexts to my story of that day wich would take too long to relate here but at the end of the day I had a clarity that I never had before. Any shred of doubt of God, Jesus or heaven is forever gone after hearing the story and its effect on me.


9 posted on 04/13/2012 6:16:37 AM PDT by Finatic (I ran out of change and have given up on hope. FUBO, I am so sick of your sorry a$$ you effin punk)
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To: NYer

>>While Catholics may disagree with Storm’s final assessment, the story is insightful, especially in terms of life after death.<<

As a Catholic, I see a miracle for a man who left this Earth before his time. Our Lord gave him a gift because He had a bigger plan for him. Pity he chooses to divide instead of bringing people to God. I’ve known MANY good people who Love the Lord and don’t care how people come to Him, as long as they do.

God in his infinite wisdom, His will be done.


10 posted on 04/13/2012 6:18:07 AM PDT by netmilsmom (I am Breitbart)
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To: NYer; netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; ...
A strange thing happened to me once. I never shared it online but did speak with a few close family members about it.

I had a cousin who was two months younger than me. He was always the type who wanted to be the first to deliver news to the rest of the family or neighborhood. Whether it was a car accident down the street or a house fire or even a death in the neighborhood he always raced to our grandparents 3 family house to be the first to tell about it. My brother Michael and I would laugh among ourselves about this. If something in the neighborhood had happened my brother and I and our cousin would head back to the house to tell the rest of the family. We would watch our cousin as he sped up his walking the closer we got to the house. My brother and I would just smile at each other.

Just before the age of 29 my cousin had died of a sudden illness not known to the family until after he had died. He had blood clots in his leg and one of them went to his heart and killed him.

The moment this had happened I was alone at home (in another town 15 minutes from the 3 family house). It was late in the morning and I was sleeping at the time as I had a 3rd shift job.

My mom got the news of my cousin's death where she worked. Evidentally somebody in the family had called her job to give her the news. Since I took her to work earlier in the morning she had to call me to give me the news and to go and pick her up from work so she could be with her brother during this terrible time.

Well, my phone rang and rang because I was sleeping. The sound of the phone ringing was most likely what caused me to dream that I got out of bed, went into the kitchen to answer the phone.

Me: "Hello?"

My cousin's voice: "Guess what! Michael just died"

Me: "What?"

I woke up suddenly and quickly sat up on the bed. That dream scared me. I never dream about death or people dying especially family members not to mention my own brother. The phone was still ringing. It must have been why I dreamed that I was answering the phone, I supposed. It had been ringing for quite some time now so I rushed to answer it.

Me: "Hello?"

My mom (sobbing): "You have to come pick me up. Kevin just passed away"

Me: "Who? Johnny?" (Johnny was another cousin addicted to crack and cocaine and was always assumed to be found dead at some point because of it)

My mom: "No. Kevin. I need you to come now and pick me up..."

I had never forgotten that call. I am one who can explain many of my dreams by connecting it to something that had happened to me unusually during the day before I had fallen asleep but this one I could never explain.

It was a dream that let me know that something must happen after death. That we do continue. To this day I have yet to tell this to my aunt and uncle. Years have passed since and I'm thinking about telling them about that dream.

11 posted on 04/13/2012 6:18:22 AM PDT by tsowellfan
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To: NYer

bm


12 posted on 04/13/2012 6:18:39 AM PDT by Vision ("Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?" John 11:40)
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To: Finatic

Wow! Thanks for sharing that.


13 posted on 04/13/2012 6:21:42 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas (Viva Christo Rey!)
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To: NYer

I have no disagreement. Our pastor likens it to a journey. Some are taking a jet and others are on bikes, but we get there all the same.


14 posted on 04/13/2012 6:27:31 AM PDT by OpusatFR
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To: netmilsmom

I worked with a man who was very religious and very up on the Bible.He is the person to go to when you have a question on the Bible because he can quote chapter and verse,old and new testament.
He and I are of different faiths{ I am Catholic} and he never tried to convert me. He said the same thing you said. It doesnt really matter what faith as long as you accept Christ.
But dont ask him how he feels about Jehovah Witnesses.....


15 posted on 04/13/2012 6:30:06 AM PDT by Yorlik803 (better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)
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To: NYer
‘It’s time for you to go. Hurry up. Let’s go.’ They said: ‘We know all about you. We’ve been waiting for you.’ I thought they were from the hospital.”

It took awhile before he realized that they were the demons of Hell...

16 posted on 04/13/2012 6:32:24 AM PDT by JimRed (Excising a cancer before it kills us waters the Tree of Liberty! TERM LIMITS, NOW AND FOREVER!)
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To: struggle
I’m such a sinner myself and I only hope that I can meet Christ’s expectations.

What Expectation?

This man's story sums it up very well. All our righteous acts are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). The expectation of Christ and the New Covenant is just that: Believe. Understand that "I'm Garbage"...I DESERVE hell...and apart from Christ's atoning death on the cross...I would spend eternity there and rightfully so. This is the expectation of the Gospel. That is the Good News.

Mother Teresa or Billy Graham do not deserve heaven more than you...and Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot do not deserve hell more than I. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory...and all deserve to be eternally punished for that...since that is the wage of our sin. But thanks be to Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, who died on a cross so that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish...but have everlasting life. There is no other expectation.

17 posted on 04/13/2012 6:48:51 AM PDT by NELSON111
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To: Yorlik803

-—It doesnt really matter what faith as long as you accept Christ.-—

I don’t mean to he argumentative, but that’s an important error.

Jesus is Truth Itself, so to be seekers of God we must be seekers of Truth. The closer we are to truth in our moral and intellectual lives, the closer we are to God.

What God wants from us on earth is our best effort at attaining truth, however much we fail. We must also exhort and reprove others, but always in charity. Easier said than done, I know.


18 posted on 04/13/2012 6:58:31 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas (Viva Christo Rey!)
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To: NYer

:: eventually becoming a minister in the United Church of Christ ::

Just like Jeremiah Wright....


19 posted on 04/13/2012 7:05:09 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alterations - The acronym explains the science.)
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To: NYer
Let's go...

...I like the night-life, baby! Let's go!...(Let's Go -- The Cars)

My idea of a call to heaven would be more along the lines of Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix. Or even Mozart.

20 posted on 04/13/2012 7:08:25 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand (I think in about 5 - no, 4 - years I'll have had enough.)
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