I think the Apostle Paul had a NDE and that is why he said so matter of factly that “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”. He was stoned and drug out of the city left for dead and his desciples prayed over him and he arose. This event left him badly scared and many of his writtings indecate, that to look on him you could see the marks of someone very seriously injured, that is why he said “I bare the marks of Christ in my body”.
I had my own NDE at age 7, just shortly after recieving my first Holy Communion. Eagle Creek was flooded that day and my sister convinced me that taking our boat out would be fun and exciting and it was, till we found the anchor was stuck and we were in the middle of a raging flood and it was about lunch time. We worried if we did not get loose we would be found out and be punished for our recklessness in going out in the flood. so we both pulled and tuged on the anchor rope to try to dislodge it but both of us pulling at the same time just tiped over the boat. My sister could swim but I couldn’t and I went to the bottom like a rock. Fear and panic came over me and I began to fill up with water. Then as suddenly as death seemed to be so horrible and painfull, I remember pure peace like a beatiful dream, yet not like a dream at all because what I experianced next was more real than the reality I had know.
In an instant I left my body, and from seeing the natural world to seeing the Spiritual world that is in and all around us. I no longer was blinded my muddy water as I went under the flood but I saw fish in the water as perfect glowing beings and everything alive had a beautiful glow around and inside and they seemed to speak and give glory to God, not in words but by expressions of higher purpose that only God could explain. This wonder left me dumb struck, not in a dull and lifeless way but in a way more alive than I have ever known. This was followed by the appearance of a great white light and a sence of awsome love and the presents of God. This was drawing me like a magnet but I then got the impression that my time was not yet and I would be going back. The drowning experiance was bad enough but going back I think was worse. I had seen the otherside of the rainbow and known great expectation of Love and Joy only to be thrust back into caughing up water and felling all wet and cold. I came aware of my surrounding and heard my sister say “Who pulled you out” I looked around and could see no one even though I had a memory of someone giving me help to breath again, forcing out the water from my lungs. I was in the middle of the stream on top of the over turned boat and my sisters veiw of what happened goes like this. She could swim so when the boat over turned she swam to shore and could not see me because the water was muddy from the flood, so she franticly ran back and forth along the shore to look for me. She finnally went for help and found my brother about a quarter of a mile away at home. He said to her "No one could still be alive under the water that long but he went with her quickly to see what they could do. As they were running back my sister prayed for a miracle and feared what dad would do to her if I was dead “Dad had a extremely violent temper”. As they got to the seen they saw me on the over turned boat caughing and regaining my breath.
I’m 53 now and I wonder what these past years would have been like if the miracle would have not brought me back. Would I be in Heaven? What would my wife be doing? Would my children have been born anyway with another father?
I experianced the born again life in a personnal way when I was 19. I understood that life has meaning only through a relationship with Jesus through the surrender to His Holy Spirit in us given at Baptism. Yet for many years my life still seemed to lack Joy and inner peace. It often seemed that the whole world was against me and at age 46 I felt the pressure of have three teenage children at the same time and began to pray in utter desperation and it was then that I saw as an adult what I had seen at age seven in the NDE. In the prayer I said crying in desperation “I need your help Lord, I’m just not going to make it unless you help me”. A great light began to come to me growing in intensity till fear and apprehension cause me to be frozen as if I was dead. Then from the midst of the Light a voice said “So that you know who I am” and His hand reached out and touched me on the neck and I was instantly healed of a serious neck injury. This moment seven years ago has given me renewed Hope in the continual care and Love of our God. God Bless
