90 Minutes in Heaven_ A True Story of Death & Life - Don Piper [41]
I think I’m also a human response to some of the questions people wanted answered. Since I began to tell others about my experience in heaven, I can’t begin to count the people who have come to me and asked such questions as, Is heaven real? What is heaven really like? Or they’ll ask specific questions about the praise or the streets of gold. Someone seems to always mention a recently departed loved one.
Just to know that I’ve been there and come back to earth and am able to talk to them seems to bring deep comfort to many. Sometimes it amazes me.
Others look at the marks on my body even today and say, “You’re a miracle because of all you went through. You’re a walking miracle.”
12
OPENING UP
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down—when we die and leave these bodies—we will have a home in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long for the day when we will put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will not be spirits without bodies, but we will put on new heavenly bodies. Our dying bodies make us groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and have no bodies at all. We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by everlasting life.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:1–4
God used my closest friend, David Gentiles, to keep me alive, and I’m grateful. He also used David again in my life nearly two years after the accident.
Until then I had never talked to anyone about my heavenly experience. In a general sense, I had talked to Eva, but I always closed off the conversation before she asked questions. She tacitly understood that part of my experience was off-limits. To her credit, she never pressured me to say anything more.
It wasn’t that I wanted to withhold anything from Eva; I just couldn’t talk about the experience. At times I felt that it had been too sacred and that to try to explain it would diminish the incident.
Nearly a year and a half after my release from the hospital, David came to the Houston area for a discipleship weekend. He used that as an excuse to come to the house and spend time with me.
When the two of us were alone, I had a flashback to the time when I had been lying in ICU and had told him that I couldn’t go on. That’s when he had told me that he would pray me through. We talked about that day, and I thanked him again for his friendship and relentless commitment to prayer.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“I’m in pain.” I tried to laugh and added, “I’m always in pain, but that’s not the worst part for me right now.”
He leaned closer. “What is the worst part?”
“I just don’t know where I’m going. I lack any clear direction about my future.”
David listened as I talked about the things I would like to do, the things I couldn’t physically do, and how I wasn’t sure that God wanted me to continue at South Park. I felt loved and needed there, but I wasn’t sure that was where I should be.
He listened for a long time and then asked gently, “What did you learn from your accident and recovery experience?”
For three or four minutes I shared several things, especially about letting other people inside and allowing them to help me. Then I said, “But in the midst of all this suffering and despondency, I have learned that heaven is real.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean by that?”
Slowly, hesitantly, I shared a little—very little—about my brief visit to heaven. “Tell me more,” he said, and I didn’t hear it as prying. He was my friend and wanted to know. I also sensed that I could speak about heaven to David and that, as much as any human being was able, he would understand.
“I died in that accident. The next moment I stood in heaven,” I said.
He leaned forward, and although he waited silently for me to continue,