Angels on Earth

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES
Many people have clinically died in hospitals and then come back to tell about their experiences from death's door. More and more medical professionals are testifying to bringing people back from clinical death and often these people have incredible stories to tell of leaving their body and moving towards the Light, i.e. Heaven and sometimes, toward Hell. Here are two stores of people temporarily visiting Hell.

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First Story - "My Trip to Hell and Back""

This is from "Angels on Earth Mag" March/April 2001 issue, owned by Guideposts Publications).
This is from an Interview with Howard Storm who technically died and related his "Near Death Experience".

This isn’t the kind of near-death experience that people are used to hearing about!

On Saturday, June 1, 1985, Howard Storm, a professor of art at Northern Kentucky University, was in Paris with his wife, Beverly, and a group of students. While in his hotel room making plans for his last day in the city, Storm collapsed in agony. A pain in his abdomen—so intense that at first the 38-year-old professor thought he must have been shot—sent him to the nearest emergency room. Storm’s duodenum had perforated, flooding his abdominal cavity with burning digestive acids.

A perforated duodenum can be deadly if not treated. The hospital was terribly understaffed, and Storm was to wait more than 10 hours before he received proper attention.

With his wife by his side, Storm lay helplessly in bed as the stomach acids consumed him from within. When at last he felt death approaching, Storm was grateful. At least now, he thought, the pain will stop. He whispered a tearful good-bye to his wife, and closed his eyes.

The very next thing Storm remembers, he was standing next to his hospital bed, the pain all but gone. Looking more closely at the bed, Storm was dumbfounded to realize that he—or someone who appeared to be him—was still lying in it. Next to the bed sat his wife, numb with grief. Storm walked over and spoke to her, but she just kept staring straight ahead, completely ignoring him. “I kept thinking, ‘This has got to be a dream,’” he writes in his book, My Descent Into Death (Clairview, 2000). “But I knew that it wasn’t. I felt more alert, more aware, and more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life.”

Then Storm heard voices calling to him from the hallway outside his hospital room. “They were pleasant voices, male and female, young and old.” Storm felt compelled to follow them.

Howard Storm: Basically, to Hell. As I walked down the hospital corridor after them, I saw figures around me. They were vague, indistinct—as if on a TV with bad reception. “Who are you?” I called to them. The closer I got, the more they retreated. Gradually, I realized that they were malevolent beings. They approached, and began to mock me, to push me, to pull and bite at me with long, sharp fingernails and teeth. It was without a doubt the most horrific experience I’ve ever been through.

AOE: In your book, you say that at the lowest point of this encounter, you called out to God. You also say that doing this was very out of character for you.

HS: I hadn’t said a prayer in my entire adult life. I was a one hundred percent cynic. But what was happening didn’t allow for disbelief. These beings—who I sensed had once been human and were now denizens of Hell -were getting pleasure out of the torment they were causing me. They began to actually tear off and eat pieces of my flesh. A voice inside said to me three times, “Pray to God.”

And that’s what I did. I started mumbling lines I remembered from my childhood: a jumble of the Twenty-third Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance—whatever I could think of. Then, with everything I had, I yelled, “Jesus, save me!”

Out of the darkness, a brilliant white light appeared. I felt arms embracing and lifting me. A love more intense than any I’d ever known coursed through me. I felt that I was in the presence of Jesus himself, with innumerable angels gathered all around us. I sensed that they could see right through me, and I feared that they would recognize me for the person I really was: driven by selfishness, poisoned by cynicism and self-absorption. Deep down, I was no better than those hungry, hate-filled creatures that had taken such delight in causing me pain.

I had a sudden, urgent desire to repent a lifetime’s worth of unbelief. I told Jesus and the angels around us that I didn’t belong in their company, that I wasn’t worthy. They said, “We don’t make mistakes, and you do belong here.” Their love for me was unconditional. I guess the best way to describe how it felt to be among them would be to compare it to a really big family reunion. You don’t necessarily recognize everyone there, but you feel intimately connected to each and every person anyway.

AOE: Many people who have had near-death experiences talk about wanting to remain out of their body—to leave earthly life behind for good.

HS: I definitely didn’t want to go back to earth, but they told me that it was not my time. I said that I understood.

The next thing I knew, I was back in my hospital bed, covered in bandages, feeling like a truck had run over my stomach. At the last possible moment, the doctors had operated and saved me.

AOE: What was it like returning to your old life with the new perspective your journey beyond gave you?

HS: I was bursting to tell others what had happened, though it was difficult not to be extremely emotional when I talked about it. Not surprisingly, the people in my life who were used to the old Howard Storm—the cynical unbeliever who scoffed at the idea of angels or an afterlife—didn’t know what to make of this new person.

AOE: Can you tell us more about some of the angelic encounters you experienced after you were back in your body?

HS: The second day after my operation, as I lay in that Paris hospital, a young man came in and stood at the foot of my bed. He was just an ordinary, pleasant-looking man in a short-sleeved shirt with white pants and white shoes. The only thing unusual about him was that the room seemed to brighten considerably when he entered. He asked me how I was doing, and told me he’d be watching over me. Almost the moment he left my room, a nurse entered. I asked her about the young man, but she hadn’t seen him. “You must have been dreaming,” she said.

This happened more than once. Sometimes the encounter with the angel would be so intense that when a nurse or a family member came in, I would be sitting upright in bed with tears of joy streaming down my face. I’d try to tell what happened, what the angel looked like, how wonderful it all was. Everyone thought I was hallucinating.

HS: Yes. But of course, on one level I was perfectly aware of how absurd all this sounded. The old me wouldn’t have believed any of what I was saying! So why should I expect a doctor, a nurse, or even my wife to believe it?

AOE: In your book, you tell the story of your first visit to church after your near-death experience. Your wife was with you, wasn’t she?

HS: As soon as I was back home in Kentucky, and well enough, I asked Beverly to take me to a service. We ended up going to a small church near our home. I was still in very bad shape—thin, jaundiced, hardly able to walk. I moved slowly down the aisle, then gazed upward when I saw a strange light coming from around the ceiling. Hundreds of winged, golden angels were floating there, radiating light and love. I was overcome with emotion. I fell to the floor and began weeping and praising and thanking God. The ushers picked me up and helped me to the nearest pew. Beverly put her arm around me. I could see she was upset. I tried to stop crying, but each time I looked up at the ceiling and saw those angels I started up again.

The whole thing caused quite a disturbance. It was tough on Beverly. “Howard,” she said on the drive home, “you have to promise me not to do that, or I won’t be able to take you to church again.”

HS: Yes. And the next time we went, there they were, up around the ceiling, beautiful, golden angels. As the congregation prayed and sang they glowed brighter and brighter. When the service drifted away from praise into announcements of church business, the angels got less brilliant. They clearly were most delighted with the worship. I still sometimes see them when Beverly and I go to church.

AOE: The main way in which your near-death experience differs from most others is the terrifying description of your initial descent into Hell, before you were taken up into heaven. What do you think the meaning of that experience was?

HS: God gave me a preview of coming attractions if my life continued on its cynical course. I was taken into a world of unimaginable torment. Although I would never wish it on anyone, I ultimately am grateful for the ordeal, because it was necessary in order for me to be able to break through the walls of unbelief that had held me prisoner for all of my adult life. It was agonizing, but because of that experience, I was able to open my heart to God.

AOE: If you had to choose just one insight to pass on to others, what would it be?

HS: God loves each of us more than we can possibly imagine. He loves us as we are, but he gives us the choice either to accept that love or turn away from it. He’s just waiting for each of us to say yes to it. It sounds so simple, this idea that God is love, and that he wants us to realize this on our own. But I believe it’s the most challenging—and important—truth there is. Compared to it, nothing else matters.

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Story 2 - Matthew Botsford: To Hell and Back

CBN.com – “I felt this hot pierce in the top of my head from the back. Then everything went black.”

Matthew and Nancy Botsford worked hard and played even harder. They pursued life with gusto -- except when it came to God.

But everything changed on one March night in 1992. Matthew and two sales associates were in Atlanta on business. They had just left a restaurant and had gone outside to catch a taxi, when suddenly…

Matthew and the others never saw it coming. Behind them, several men were arguing when three of them pulled out guns and started shooting. One of Matthew’s friends took a bullet to the head and died instantly. The other was unharmed. Matthew was also shot in the head, and he too died.

“Utter blackness. Incredible fear. I went to a place what I believe was hell. It was void of anything good. Beyond anything any words could describe.

“This hand came down towards me, and as it did, it brought warmth, just flooding this room I was in with this brilliant white light. I was being pulled upwards. I heard this voice say, ‘It’s not your time.’”

Mathew was resuscitated on the scene and taken to Piedmont hospital in Atlanta. Nancy flew in from their home state of Michigan. Her first meeting with the doctor was devastating.

“He said there’s a 30 percent chance he’ll make it through the night. After that, he’ll probably be in a wheelchair,” Nancy recalls. “They didn’t know with the brain injury if he’d be a vegetable or not. He says he might even have to be in an institution.”

“I just saw this blackness, and this blackness in front of me just started getting bigger. I felt myself just falling into this blackness. I had no control. I was just losing it. That’s when I felt this heavy hand on my right shoulder. I felt this pull back, and I turned around. There was nobody there, and I knew it was Jesus,” says Nancy. “I went straight back to Matt’s room. He’s all wrapped up and bandaged. I just said, ‘Lord, I’m not saved. Bring back my husband even if he’s in a wheel chair. It doesn’t matter but bring back who he is, who his heart is, who his personality is. I promise I’ll stay with him.'”

That promise would be tested. Matthew was in a coma and flatlined several times.

Nancy lived hour-to-hour as it seemed that one crisis followed another. But with every crisis came a glimmer of hope.

“Every situation would be critical and then things would turn around,” she says. “He was put on kidney dialysis, and they said he’ll be on it three weeks. In three days, things turned around.”

After 27 days, Matthew awoke from his coma.

“It was incredible,” she says. “The whole focus now was to get him on his feet. To go against the odds that he’s going to be in a wheelchair. Our focus now was just get him better.”

The left side of Matthew’s body was paralyzed. But worse, the damage to his brain affected his ability to think and perform even the simplest of tasks. They returned to Michigan where Matthew started rehab trying to rebuild his body and his mind.

“But the rehab was painful,” he says. “Physically and cognitively. I remember I would do simple things like run through the alphabet in my head, make sure I could go through A to Z… They were teaching me how to eat.”

For two and half long years Matthew worked through the pain with Nancy by his side. Progress was slow. He eventually left the wheelchair and walked with a cane. Recovering mentally was a much slower process. But Nancy remembered her promise to stay with Matthew through it all…

“Cognitively he was not with it. He was in la la land. I did not sign up for this, but I remembered that promise. That was stronger,” says Nancy.

The Botsfords were so focused on Matthew’s regimen, they forgot their experiences with God.

“It wasn’t there. There was no focus there,” she says. “It was all about Matthew.”

That is until they moved to Florida. One day Matthew met a neighbor while out taking a walk.

“I remember looking up at him and saying, ‘Hey, where’s a good church around here?’ And it floored me what came out of my mouth.”

“We just knew then this is it,” says Nancy. “This is what we need. It just came alive that this is what we’ve been missing. There was this peace, that anchor, that stability… it just took us over.”

Through the years they began to recognize God’s hand in their journey. Today, Matthew walks without the help of a cane and even gets to drive. Mentally? He earned a college degree and is writing a series of sci-fi children’s books called Johnny Rocket -- all of which is amazing considering the bullet is still in Matthew’s head! But the big miracle in this story…

“When I was dead, I didn’t cry out for God. Yet He came down and with His own hand pulled me out of hell. That’s a loving God,” Matthew says.

Nancy concurs, “The miracle is that God so much loved Matthew that He didn’t just leave him in hell. He brought him up. The miracle is how He changed his heart. God exchanged his heart and gave him His own. That’s the miracle.”

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Third Story - 23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Weiss
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/188/story_18811_1.html

his book "23 Minutes in Hell," California realtor Bill Wiese describes his personal experience of November 22, 1998. Wiese claims that he was lying in bed at 3 a.m. when he was plunged into hell--not in a dream, but in actuality; not because he had died and was being punished, but because God wanted him to experience hell and warn others. Wiese believes that after 23 minutes of torment, Jesus came to rescue him from hell and returned him to earth, where he landed, shaking, on his living room floor. This excerpt reprinted with permission of Charisma House.

On November 22, 1998... I was catapulted out of my bed into the very pit of hell. My point of arrival was a cell that was approximately fifteen feet high by ten feet wide with a fifteen-foot depth.

With its walls of rough stone and rigid bars on the door, I felt as though I was in a temporary holding area, a place where a prisoner would await his final hours before meeting a far more terrifying destiny. Isaiah 24:22 says, "And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison" (KJV). Proverbs 7:27 refers to "chambers" of death in hell.

As I lay there on the floor of that cell, I felt extremely weak. I noticed that I had a body, one that appeared just as it is now. Lifting my head, I began to look around. Immediately I realized that I was not alone in this cell. I saw two enormous beasts, unlike anything I had ever seen before.

These creatures were approximately ten to thirteen feet tall. These towering beasts were far, far beyond intimidating. It is one thing to be threatened by someone much taller than you. But these creatures were not of this natural world. I recognized that they were entirely evil, and they were gazing at me with pure, unrestrained hatred, which completely paralyzed me with fear. "Evil" and "Terror" stood before me. Those creatures were an intensely concentrated manifestation of those two forces.

I still had no idea where I was, and I felt utterly panicked. Although I had no point of reference, no familiarity with anything I was experiencing, and no understanding of how I got here, still I was faced with the unimaginable reality that a tortuous death seemed certain.

The creatures weren't animals, but they weren't human, either. Each giant beast resembled a reptile in appearance, but took on human form. Their arms and legs were unequal in length, out of proportion—without symmetry. The first one had bumps and scales all over its grotesque body. It had a huge protruding jaw , gigantic teeth and large sunken-in eyes. This creature was stout and powerful, with thick legs and abnormally large feet. It was pacing violently around the cell like a caged bull, and its demeanor was extremely ferocious. The second beast was taller and thinner, with very long arms and razor-sharp fins that covered its body. Protruding from its hands were claws that were nearly a foot long. Its personality seemed different from the first being. It was certainly no less evil, but it remained rather still.

I could hear the creatures speaking to each other. Although I could not identify what language it was, somehow I could understand their words. They were awful words—terrible, blasphemous language that spewed from their mouths expressing extreme hatred for God.

Suddenly they turned their attention toward me. They looked like hungry predators staring at their prey. I was terrified. Like an insect in a deadly spider's web, I felt helpless, trapped, and frozen with fear. I knew I had become the object of their hostility, and I felt a violent, evil presence such as I had never felt before and greater than anything I could imagine. They possessed a hatred that far surpassed any hatred a person could have, and now that hatred was directed straight at me. I couldn't identify what these beasts were yet, but I knew they meant me harm.

I wanted desperately to get up and run. But as I lay on that wretched cell floor, I noticed that I had absolutely no strength in my body. I could barely move. Why didn't I have strength? I felt so defenseless. Psalm 88:4 says, "I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength" (KJV).

I knew that it was much more than physical weakness I was feeling. Indeed, it was weakness of every form. I was mentally and emotionally drained, even though I had only been there a few minutes. Most of us have experienced a loss of strength and energy after intense weeping, emotional distress, or grief. After a time of healing, we regain that strength though it may take years. However, at that moment I felt that there would never be a time for recuperating from the literal weight that had fallen upon me—a weight of hopeless despair.

Two more creatures came into the cell, and I had the feeling that these four beings had been "assigned" to me. I felt as though I was being "sized up" and that my torment would be their amusement. As they entered, suddenly the light vanished. It became absolutely pitch black. I had no idea why the sudden and intense darkness had begun. But I sensed that the light that had been present had been an intrusion and that the atmosphere had now returned to its normal state of darkness. Lamentations 3:6 states: "He has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago."

One of the creatures picked me up. The strength of the beast was amazing. I was comparable to the weight of a water glass in its hand. Mark 5:3-4 describes a man possessed with a demon with these words: "...no one could bind him, not even with chains...the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces." Instinctively, I knew that the creature holding me had strength approximately one thousand times greater than a man. I cannot explain how I perceived that bit of information. Then the beast threw me against the wall. I crumbled onto the floor. It felt as though every bone in my body had been broken.' I felt pain, but it was as if the pain was being somehow softened. I knew I did not experience the full brunt of the pain. I thought, How was it blocked?

The second beast, with its razor-like claws and sharp protruding fins, then grabbed me from behind in a bear hug. As it pressed me into its chest, its sharp fins pierced my back. I felt like a rag doll in its clutches in comparison to his enormous size. He then reached around and plunged his claws into my chest and ripped them outward. My flesh hung from my body like ribbons as I fell again to the cell floor. These creatures had no respect for the human body—how remarkably it is made. I have always taken care of myself by eating right, exercising, and staying in shape, but none of that mattered as my body was being destroyed right before my eyes.

I knew that I could not escape this torture via death, for not even that was an option. Death penetrated me, but eluded me. The creatures seemed to derive pleasure in the pain and terror they inflicted upon me. Psalm 116:3 (KVJ) says, "The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow." Oh, how I yearned for death, but there would be none.

Instinctively, I just knew that some of the things I experienced were a thousand times worse than what would be possible on the earth's surface—things such as the odors mentioned, the strength of the demons, the loudness of the screams, the dryness, and the loneliness felt.

Somehow I managed to move a bit and dragged myself across the ground toward the barred door. I couldn't see, but I remembered the direction of the door that had been left open. I finally made it to the door and crawled out of the cell. Apparently, the creatures allowed me to crawl out without stopping me.

As soon as I exited the cell, my first instinct was to get as far away as possible. Again, I desperately wanted to run. All I could think of was to get up onto my feet. However, every move to get up took great effort. I remember wondering, Why is this so difficult? After tremendous exertion, I was finally able to stand. I was thoroughly exhausted and, at the same time, very frustrated at how hard simple movement had become. Although I was now outside the cell, I could not run, and fear continued to bind itself around me as a snake constricting its prey.

I was horrified as I heard the screams of an untold multitude of people crying out in torment. It was absolutely deafening. The terror-filled screams seemed to go right through me, penetrating my very being. I once heard about a television special where a news reporter spent the night in a prison just to experience prison life firsthand. The prisoners were crying, moaning, and yelling all night long. He stated that he couldn't Sleep because of all the noise. This place where I now stood was far, far worse.

Through the panic and the deafening noise, I struggled to gather my thoughts. I'm in hell! This is a real place, and I'm actually here! I frantically tried to understand, but it was just so inconceivable. Not me, I'm a good person, I thought. The fear was so intense I couldn't bear it, but again, I couldn't die. I knew that most people up on the surface of the earth did not believe or even know that there was a whole world going on down here. They wouldn't believe it. But here it existed, and it was all too real. This place was so terrifying, so intense, and so hostile that it would be impossible for me to exaggerate the horror.