MY DEATH and RESURRECTION

On January 24th, 1984, I was involved in a bazaar accident, thrown out of a car, across three lanes of traffic, and came to lay in a field. When I regained consciousness resting on my back, looking up at a chilled gray afternoon sky, circled by grown-up brush, a gentle rain was washing my bloody face. I couldn't remember anything that had happened. I had no pain, only uncanny peace. I knew I was dying. I said outloud, "Jesus I'm coming home."

Within minutes, Holy Spirit enlisted a number of prayer warriors on my behalf. My pastor and mentor was "co-incidentally" driving by the scene. Police were directing traffic and he caught a glimpse of my body by the road and immediate was captured in a deep prayer for the unknown victim. Weeping and groaning, he interceded for me until the burden lifted, an half hour before the hospital called my wife. As the news spread, people began asking other people to pray, and those people called other people who didn't even know me.

In and out of consciousness, laying on my back on a table in the emergency room at Haverford Hospital, I was being undressed. Nurses were cutting off my wet clothes. The down jacket was spewing feathers in the air! I had lost one contact lens so the whole scene seemed especially surreal. Nurses were actually laughing, and I thought it was kind of funny myself. (I earned the nickname "Feather Man." For days they were finding feathers in the hallways.)

Now Terry, my wife, was at my side holding my hand. She had been told it was not likely that I would survive, but surgery was necessary to stop a massive internal hemorrhage. 

Just before I was taken to the operating room, FAITH came to me. The kind of faith mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:9.

I squeezed Terry's hand. "I'm going to be okay," I said.

A double portion of Holy Spirit came on Terry. Her normally quiet and shy nature was displaced, and she turned into an evangelist, preaching to anyone in the hospital, and comforting her comforters!

I did make it through those tense hours of surgery, obviously, and there were other hurdles to overcome. Later that evening when the friends and family who had been attending my wife in the surgery waiting room finally departed, my body began violently shaking in bed. I remember emotionlessly watching my body convulsing from somewhere near the ceiling as my soul was departing. Terry panicked and called our pastor who recruited prayer warriors again.

Days later, when I began to regain consciousness and a spotted memory of what had happened that day, people remarked, "God must still have some important work for you to do." While I agree, I also know the devil tried to kill me, and would have succeeded had it not been for faithful pastors, family, and co-members of the church who stood faithfully beside my wife and I in prayer, refusing to let me pass prematurely out of this world.