Last week a friend of mine suddenly died of a heart attack. In thinking about that and the feelings of his wife he left behind, I decided to share with you what happens at death based on all the eyewitness accounts I have read. Blog Post #18 was about what a believer experiences in heaven, but this one talks more about the immediate experience of death and not the total picture of being in heaven.
The moment you die it will be like just getting up out of bed or rousing from sleep. The difference is you will be very refreshed, more than you have ever been refreshed waking up from sleep. All aches and pains will have vanished. Death itself is painless and everything that was wrong with you is corrected. Some people look back at their bodies, others just move on into their new world. George Ritchie suddenly woke up from double pneumonia and was immediately concerned with meeting the jeep that would take him to the train that would take him to Virginia Medical College to train to be an army doctor. He totally felt like himself without any illness. He happened to look back at his bed and couldn’t believe someone else was already in it. He didn’t have time to figure it out and went on an incredible journey at the end of which he realized he had lost his “solid part” and went back to get it. When he finally saw his body, it was the first time he became aware that he had died. That is how easily the transition from this life into the next is.
When someone returned to his or her body, he or she just lay back down in it and became part of it again as the earthly life is restored. After Mary Neal drowned in a river in Chile as a result of a kayak accident, her friends were giving her CPR. One would say, “Breathe Mary breathe!” She would come back from heaven, lie down in her body, take a breath, and then get up and go back to heaven.
Not only are all your aches and pains gone, but everything is sharper than before. You feel youthful energy again. If you have vision problems, they are gone. One person said he could see ten miles away as clearly as things ten inches away. You will see richer colors and more colors than you have ever known. Your hearing will be sharper and you will be able to hear octaves above and below whatever you can hear now. The music you hear will be fantastic music of praise for all God and Jesus have done for us. The sounds of heaven, the music of angels’ wings and the music of the choirs of people and angels, are Don Piper’s favorite memories of heaven. All your senses will be sharper and you will have more senses than the five you have on earth, and they are intermingled. You can smell light and hear color. It is hard for us to visualize this in the limitations of our earthly existence.
The most amazing feeling you will experience, beyond the sense of being the whole person you never were here, is a peace and joy that you have longed for all your life and never found to the extent you now do. The atmosphere of heaven is total love. God’s love permeates everything and everyone. Again you cannot fathom the depth of this love in your earthly existence, but it is there for you nonetheless. Even here in our limitations we can experience that deep amazing fulfilling satisfying love of God. But there you will experience His love to its full.
The experience is so phenomenal that no one who experiences heaven wants to come back. Either they choose to return for the sake of family members or others that need them, or they are told it is not their time. Jesus told one man it was not his time and he had to go back, and he said he does not want to go back. Jesus told him again it is not his time and he has things to do back in his earthly life. He said he is NOT going back, and of a sudden with a whoosh he was back in his aching body. You don’t argue with God!
There is more, but that is enough for now. If you want more, read Heaven Is Beyond Imagination or get some of the books I have read such as those of Mary Neal, Don Piper, Richard Sigmund, Dale Black, and others, and read their experiences.