Posted on 10/07/2003 10:46:40 AM PDT by NYer
It was supposed to be a standard procedure -- an angioplasty to unblock an artery -- but to Curtis Pierce there'd been an ominous feel to it. It was the second time he had to have the surgery and he wanted to spend a week with his family before entering Terrebonne General Hospital in Houma, Louisiana.
His intuition was right: Something went wrong. He "flatlined" -- lost all vital signs -- during the surgery. He was only "dead" for 48 seconds, but it was literally an eternity.
The year was 1994 and Pierce was just 44. "While they were doing the procedure the pain came back and I mean I was yelling and screaming for these guys to stop," Curtis says. "I was yelling at a guy on the side of me and told them they were killing me. I was gasping for air. I reached to the anesthesiologist and said, 'you're killing me! I can't breathe!' But it was like they weren't listening to me.
"Anyway, after going through this and the yelling and the screaming, all of a sudden I went to look at the fellow on my left-hand side and he grabbed my gown and just tore it open. They were trying to put in IVs. I was still yelling for them to quit and when I looked down this fellow had raised his hand and slapped me on the chest while I was laying on that table.
"But the second time I saw him go up with his hand, I noticed his hand from above -- I saw the top of his hand. From above. I knew I wasn't in the same place, in the same position. Here I am looking at this guy from above!"
Like so many thousands who have had a near-death encounter, Pierce had left his physical body. He was now in spirit form. "I was looking at a body laying before me and I was kind of floating behind the table," he says. "I didn't realize who it was. Then I kind of drifted to the left of the table and caught a profile, and when I caught a profile of the face, I realized it was me.
"I knew I was behind the table and I said to myself, 'How could I be up there and my body is there, and I'm not feeling any pain any more? I'm feeling great.' I said to myself, 'Wow. I'm dead!'
Pierce was in awe, realizing he wasn't in that body. Then he went into a void that was totally pitch black. "There's no darkness on earth compared to the darkness I fell into," the Louisiana man told us. "But I didn't stay in that darkness for long. It was like I was in the dark for a millisecond, like when you change channels with your remote control.
"But it was a cold darkness and when I came out of there my eyes focused again and I was in this dome -- a huge white misty dome. It was a grayish mist. It was surrounding me and in my peripheral vision I could see people all around me. I was still floating and I was in another place. I could see a young lady with long dark hair. I don't know if any of my relatives were there or not. My eyes started to be drawn upwards. This all happened within milliseconds. I could see all the people looking toward the middle of this dome.
When my eyes looked upwards, that's when I saw the most beautiful sight I've ever seen, bright white -- white -- but it wasn't blinding. It was a warm sensation, very soothing to the eyes. Immediately upon gazing at this Light, I knew it was Jesus.
"I strained. I wanted to see His face," continues Pierce, a supervisor at a telephone company. "All I wanted to see was just Him, because I knew it was Him. He began to shower me with love, a love that I can't explain, a love that fulfilled every desire my heart ever wanted on this earth."
It was just the Light that Curtis could see -- but he had no doubt about the identity. "That's why I was in such awe," he relates. "I was trying to reach out for this Light, to catch it and get closer, because I wanted to be in the Light. It was in the shape of this gigantic door, but it was pulsating light, shooting love out, and the love was coming into me and out of me back to the door."
The "dead" Louisiana man found himself trying to reciprocate -- trying to give love back. But the more he tried, the more love came upon him.
He couldn't match it. He couldn't catch up. He was trying to love back God as much as God was loving him, which turned out to be impossible.
"I just wanted more and more of this love," says Pierce. "It fulfilled everything. It was home. Nothing can replace the love that Jesus has -- no money, no house, no worldly possessions. Everything down here is so temporal, and Jesus' Love is everlasting. It's never going to end! That's what's so awesome: I know it's there and will always be there and will never end. Once I leave this earth, I now know I'll be loved forever!"
All of his life, this telephone employee now realizes, he had been searching for this feeling, this love. When his hand crossed the rays of the Light, says Pierce, he could see through it and realized that he was looking at his own soul.
"Then I was in real awe," he recollects. "I felt so whole and complete. I knew how important my soul was. This was where I belonged. I began to know Jesus' joy and peace and power. At one point I could remember telling myself, 'He's so powerful the earth could drop a bomb right near me, the largest they could create, and not a hair on my head would move."
That was how protected the telephone supervisor felt. More, he came to believe, to feel, while looking at the "door," that God the Father was right behind Jesus.
Pierce tried to see Him too, but could not, and knew it was because of his own imperfections -- that he was not ready for Heaven, that he was not ready for the Presence of the Creator. He was at a mid-way place, the cusp, he believes, of purgatory.
"Jesus was standing right at the edge of the door. I could feel that. I knew I wasn't in Heaven because I had to get beyond that door. I knew that once I got beyond it, I was never going to come back to earth. I think where I was was purgatory because I was judging myself."
His past came to mind. Alcoholism. Lust. Jesus never said anything in condemnation but simply let Curtis see the truth for himself. In the Light of His Truth, there was no self-delusion, says Pierce. "If this was purgatory, the reaching for him, it took every ounce of energy I had," he emphasizes. "You have such a burning desire to be with Him. It's an awesome beautiful place to be in, but it's so tormenting not to be part of that love, to be in that love. That's what our souls want."
Pierce's body became irrelevant. He could hear himself think, and began to speak with Jesus. "I told Him that I loved Him and wanted more of Him and was trying to love Him back but that I could never catch up with His love," recounts Pierce. "I started to ask Him about all sorts of things. I asked Him about eternity. I remember as a child I used to ask about eternity -- how long is eternity, does it really exist. And here I was looking at Him and He's telling me, 'We're really here. This is real.'
"I was looking at the truth for the first time and He said, 'I know you want a glimpse of eternity. I'm going to show you eternity.' And it was a glimpse of endless time -- that's the only way I can explain it. And all I wanted to do was worship God for all of eternity. He showed me that I would always be loving Him and He would be loving me. I love you. I love you. I'd never be lonely ever again. That's what He was showing me."
The love was overwhelming enough to transfer into Pierce's very being. But it wasn't his time. He had to return to earth. And he didn't like that a bit. "It was like a slam back into my body," asserts Curtis of his revival in the hospital. "I hated where I now was. I saw the fakeness of everything -- the walls and everything. Just the people were real, and it hit me where I was and I started yelling and screaming and crying. I said, 'I was with God the Father. I want to go home. What are you all doing?'"
When the doctor informed Pierce that the procedure had finally worked -- that he was "fixed" -- Pierce made what has to be one of the strangest demands a doctor has ever heard. "I want to go home with my Father," insisted the Louisiana man. "You unfix what you just fixed now."
That was the power of the experience. That's how loved Curtis had felt on the other side of the veil. After Curtis explained what had happened, the doctor told him it was just an illusion. "I said, this here is the illusion," says Pierce. When he returned he saw how hooked the world was on materialistic things -- "fame, being number one at this, having money galore.
"All of those things are important to the world, but it means absolutely nothing to me now. The only things that are real to me now are people and nature, the water, the trees, anything that God created, and the Eucharist. Those are the only things that are real to me."
Pierce says that he was brought back to his Catholicism "big-time." He now goes to Confession every month. The devil, he now sees, is "alive and well. I can see him working. I can be around people and feel if they're involved with devil stuff. Who is caught up into the world is into devil stuff, those who live just for the world. My mission is to try to bring people to Jesus."
Curtis has had great trials since his return and has faced them in a new, incredible way. One was the horrid loss of a daughter whose boyfriend murdered her and then killed himself. When that happened in 1997, Curtis called up to the Lord and told Him He had to take his place for him to get through it.
"I told Him, 'I don't know why this is happening, but I know it's for Your glory, and You're going to have to show me the way to go with this. I know it's something that You want to teach me.'
"It opened up so many avenues, so many blessings came our way, because we didn't take it the way the world would have wanted us to take it," recalls Pierce. "The world would have wanted me to be angry -- and I knew that was the wrong way. Jesus came into my home that very moment and people saw miracles that whole day. Jesus had me have that man's family in my house, and we forgave that family. Jesus made me tell them that we had to learn to accept this and all together forgive the man, Chris."
It was made easier for Pierce to do this because he knew that otherwise, he would be jeopardizing that love he had encountered. He has also had trials due to the suffering of a wife who has long battled cancer. He is no mystic, but at times he can see the purity of love in certain people. It had seemed like months and months and months in eternity, even though it was less than a minute.
That "dome"? Pierce realized that God was speaking to everyone who was in it. He was loving everyone despite their imperfections. "Jesus made me understand that He was right at the door, and God was behind the door looking at me through perfection, through Jesus, and He saw just a little bit -- not much -- but just a little bit of Jesus in me. I know that God looks down today and that's what He's looking for: He's looking for a little bit of Jesus in each one of us, and once He sees everyone with a little bit of Jesus, that's when He'll come and bring us all home together."
Adds Pierce: "If you believe in Jesus and live for Jesus and become more like Him, you will never experience death. Anyone who has Jesus in their life, when they face so-called death, won't experience it. They'll experience a new and glorious life filled with God's love, His joy, His power, and His protection. Jesus truly defeated death. It doesn't exist. When He died on the Cross, He died the last death."
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This reminded me of Fr. John Romanides exposition of the final state of humanity:
Everyone will see the glory of God in Christ and reach that degree of perfection one has both chosen and worked for. Following Saint Paul and the gospel of John the Fathers support that those who do not see the resurrected Christ in glory in this life, either in a mirror dimly by unceasing prayers and psalms in the heart, or face to face in glorification, will see his glory as eternal and consuming fire and outer darkness in the next life. The uncreated glory that Christ has by nature from the Father is heaven for those whose selfish love has been cured and transformed into selfless love and hell for those who choose to remain uncured in their selfishness.Not only are the Bible and the Fathers clear on this, but so are the Orthodox Icons of the last judgment. The same golden light of glory within which Christ and his friends are enveloped becomes red as it flows down to envelope the damned. This is the glory and love of Christ which purifies the sins of all but does not glorify all. All humans will be led by the Holy Spirit into all the Truth which is to see Christ in glory, but not all will be glorified. "Those whom he justified those he also glorified," according to St. Paul (Rom. 8:30). The parable of Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham and of the rich man in the place of torment is clear. The rich man sees but he does not participate (Luke 16:19-31).
The Church does not send anyone to heaven or hell, but prepares the faithful for the vision of Christ in glory which everyone will have. God loves the damned as much as he loves his saints. He wants the cure of all but not all accept his cure. This means that the forgiveness of sins is not enough preparation for seeing Christ in glory.
(THE CURE OF THE NEUROBIOLOGICAL SICKNESS OF RELIGION)
In a very brief not so intense dream I has this same experience ... how crudded up the world --- people are !
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
He probably meant "Spirit," not his own "soul"; anyway, that is the secret, I feel, in that book by Napoleon Hill.
He saw that tremendous Light with two Figures in that Light, Jesus and the Father, so this author was there. And he wrote of Love, and again there are no words to possibly describe one-zillionth of His Love for you.... .
I had a NDE experience myself - something I will never forget
God is good !
And he wrote of Love, and again there are no words to possibly describe one-zillionth of His Love for you...
I know you went through a NDE twice. From your description & others, I look forward to that day.
Actually, the NDE site i posted supports this part of your statement. There are examples of NDEs from people of various religions, as well as from athiests.
RE:"... which demonstrates that the NDE is of human, not supernatural origin."
Same site has a section discussing the skepticism of NDEs. I only looked at the titles of the articles, so don't know how detailed it is.
That NDEs cam be induced by altered brain chemistry, (or drug use), does not prove that all NDEs are only attributable to brain pharmacology.
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