Transcription
Hello again. I'm glad to be with you again and share my witness of the Savior. And this story I have that helped me understand Him better, so that I can help each of you understand better. [Music]
I have been asked to share in more detail what happened to me when I died and how all that came about. What happened that day? It was Friday the 13th, 2004—happened to be the night before Valentine's Day. I went to bed on the 12th. It was uh, Thursday night, the 12th, and I woke up with a pain in my chest. It was—I looked at the clock; it was 3:00—uh, four in the morning. And I uh, went into the bathroom. I didn't want to wake up my wife, and I went into the bathroom so that if I made noise, I'd be away from her. But I disturbed her anyway, and she came in there, followed me shortly after, and she said, "What's the matter?" And I said, "Well, I I I have a pain in my chest. My chest hurts." She said, "Well, so does mine." Well, she had pneumonia; had to go to the hospital that day also. But I had this pain, and I was in there for a little while, and I thought, "I need to lay down," but I couldn't lay down flat. I needed to lay—so I have a lot of pillows. I like to sleep with a lot of pillows; they help me. I have physical problems that pillows help. So I put them on the head, up against the headboards like a recliner, and I was leaning up against that, and my chest got hurt more and more. And Charlotte says, "What do you want me to do? What should I do?" I said, "Well, call a hospital; see what they say." So she calls the hospital. We had a little cell phone uh, and they said, "Call 9-1-1." I don't want to call 9-1-1; it's three, you know, a little after three in the morning, and I don't like to make a disturbance and bother anybody. But things got to be a little worse—got worse and worse, and I finally said, "Get Michael up." We had two children; we we have 12 children between us. And I had nine; she had three. After my wife died, I I got married, and so we have eight boys and four girls. But of that group, we had two left—the two youngest, Michael and Lisa. Michael's the oldest of the two. "Get Michael up; have him run across the street; get Brother Oates, and then Brother Olsen"—is a—was a member of our bishopric—"and he uh, good man, and having come give me a blessing, a priesthood blessing, and then call 9-1-1 and hurry." So it got more and more painful, and and I started—I was holding my chest, and I was perspiring, and my arms were hurting, and I couldn't breathe very well. And I said, "Help me, please help me." The pain was getting great, and my my son brings Brother Olsen over, and he's kneeling next to me, and Michael was standing at the foot of the bed. We were in a very small apartment, but we had a bathroom for the master bedroom, and uh, my wife—in order to be on the phone, she had to hold the phone up to her ear, lean against the window in the bathroom, or she'd lose the call. The building—the building is is made out of a concrete uh, block—real thick block—and it was stopping the signals, and we had an inexpensive cell phone, and and it wouldn't get a signal. So she had to lean on the window. So she's about oh, maybe 12 feet or so away from me, maybe 15, but she can't move from the window or she loses the call. So she's in the bathroom, and I could see her through the door leaving there, and then she uh, would ask questions that the 911 operator would ask her, and she would ask uh, Spencer, and Spencer would—that would haul her back to her—the answers, like things like, "What color is he? Can he breathe? You know, is he choking? Is he perspiring?" You know, these kinds of questions. And and all this time, I was getting to hurt more and more, and I was just screaming, "Help me, please help me!" And I was holding my chest real hard because I thought it was going to explode. It just felt like it was going to just burst right out of my chest. And then all at once, I I leaned back, my eyes opened really wide, and they rolled back in my head, and I lost all pain. Well now, you go from this very hellish pain—I can take pain quite a bit—so when the pain makes me scream, it's really bad. And I rolled over off the pillows, face down in the bed, and as I did that, you know, and all the pain was gone, I I thought a prayer, "God, you know, help me. I, you know, I want to stay here," and I then I couldn't figure out how come I couldn't shut my eyes, how come I couldn't speak. I could hear everybody. My wife was in there screaming, "Don't leave me, please don't leave me!" And uh, I had I had seen two people come and stand at the foot of my bed. Well, I thought it was my son, but then I thought, "Change your clothes. You got darker clothes on now. You have lighter clothes on. How can we change your clothes?" Well, that wasn't him, because he had come over to be next to me with Spencer. And two people came from the spirit world to greet me. Now, when I was 11, my mother died of a heart attack; she was 51, and she talked about her mother coming with two men who wore suits, and they were escorts to to greet her. Her dad was still alive at that time. So I I had some experience, you know, from her experience, knowing a little bit what happens when you die—that you have someone come to greet you. So I found out these must be escorts, and I but I took uh, I took a minute to figure out that I had died because I noticed that I could see out the window; I could see through the walls. It was night, but I could see outside as though it was daytime. I could see my daughter with our dog, because she grabbed the dog to get out of the way of the paramedics, went into her bedroom and was holding the—sitting on her bed. And I had moved from my bed up to the wall next to the door to the bathroom, and I could see my wife threw the back of my head, through the wall, and see her on the phone and hear her, you know, screaming. Uh, "Well, this is different. I must have died." When I had—when I rolled over, I had this absolute helpless feeling. I couldn't do anything about what was happening. It reminded me—was when the doctor—I see—my my wife was in a car accident; a guy ran a red light and hit her, and she died in the car, and my daughter was there with her. My daughter—13-year-old daughter—but uh, when he told me that she had died, and the words were, "And we lost her," I felt absolutely helpless. I couldn't do anything about it. And at this time, I had that absolute helpless feeling, and I couldn't do anything about what was going on. Well, I'm standing there against the wall; I'm in the air a little bit, and I'm watching myself with Spencer and Michael and these two gentlemen standing at my bed. They didn't move; they stood—not at attention, but with their arms down to the side—just stood there. They dressed in white, and we communicated without speaking. And I said, you know, "This is great. I'll stay if I have to, but I want to go back. You let me go back," and he said, "Yes." And then they told Spencer Olds and Brother Olsen what to say, and he gave me a blessing—priesthood blessing, using the Melchizedek Priesthood—and he commanded me to return. So at that time, I went back to my body, and I kind of floated over and kind of crawled into my body, and that was kind of fun, you know. I could feel it in my heart; I could feel it going down my legs and in my arms and my head, and then I was getting warm, you know. It's kind of like going cold to warm, and it just kind of shot down everything. And as soon as it all completed and kind of went through about my head and up the ends of my fingers, uh, all the pain came back like a Mack truck smashing you, and I yelled. And so they were happy that I was here, and I was happy. So even though it was very painful, it was more of a cheer, "Great, I'm back!" And just about that time, the paramedics came in. Well, paramedics—they'd come haul me out. We had a very narrow hallway, so the journey barely fit down the hallway, and they had to throw me—no, it was crazy—out onto the thing. Our piano was in the way, and they threw it out of the way—I learned that later—and out the door we go, and we get in this fire truck—that's a ladder truck—and our little dead-end street couldn't turn around, so they backed up and hightailed to the hospital. Well, I get—here we are, you know, getting closer to four o'clock by now, or quarter to four, and so their door is shut, and they have to push code to get in. And yeah, I could see a man as they brought me out of that a fire truck, and I could see a man standing on the other side of the door, and he just stood there. And we go rushing up to the door, and nobody moves; they all stop; the door stays shut; everybody just standing there. And finally, the guy inside went over to the wall, and he did something, and later I found that it was a code, and he had to punch—any code on a keypad—and the door opens, and on rush we in—we go in. And I was kind of laughing; I thought that was funny; nobody else did. But we got in there, and they determined that I was having a heart attack, and they uh, trying to keep me alive. And now I was there for—for I don't know—an hour, maybe. And by then, my my wife had called my kids, and my daughter-in-law had made it to the hospital; they didn't live very far away. And so I had Michael and Lisa and Marin were all there, and Charlotte with me. And and then my wife had to go to the restroom; off she left. And and after that happened, I went into cardiac arrest again, and my nurse was a male nurse who was huge—probably weighed just under 300 pounds. He's probably six-four somewhere in there. And he came, and he just jumped and pounded me on the chest and jumped on me, and my kids were escorted out real fast, and my daughter-in-law, and he jumped and pushed on me, and he busted my ribs off my sternum and kind of busted up my ribs. They then they got the paddles, and they were shocking me and stabbing my heart with needles and pumping me full of things. It went on for about 12 minutes. I got shocked—paddled at least four times at that time—and it burnt all the skin off me. And during that time, I didn't get to watch myself, but I did get to go into the spirit world and see some people. Now, my parents had died before I did, you know, before, and my wife had died. So the three of them met me; I'm sealed to them, so they came. And now I've already got permission to be immortal—know—understanding—feet away—25 feet, you know, they're one—so my wife was closer than my parents. And the first thing they said was, "You've already got permission to stay, so why are you here? We have more to get done for the Second Coming than we have time for. All you're doing is getting in our way, so would you please go back where you want to be and let us get back to work." That's a fine—howdy do you say hello? It's been years since I've seen you. Well, you might want to be interested in knowing what they're wearing. My wife liked sweaters, and she liked red sweaters. She had a red sweater on; it wasn't quite this maroon; it was more red, and a three-quarter sleeve, and a—not a turtleneck, but I you know, whatever they call it—color around her neck. And uh, then she had on a red uh, down halfway down her calf uh, a skirt that was flowers—had flowers on it—big flowers. My mother, you know, she had a business selling flowers; she liked flowers. So she had a long royal blue dress on—cleared her ankles—and it had big flowers on it. My dad was wearing a dark suit; I couldn't tell if it's dark blue or black, but it was dark. She had a dark tie and a white shirt. And they all looked around 25-ish. My dad was 78 when he died; my mom was 85 when she died for good from a stroke; and my wife was 44 when she died. But they all looked around 25 and not overweight or anything. I'm half-Norwegian; my mother's kind of a stubborn Norwegian, and so am I, I guess. So even though they told me to go away, I said, "I'm gonna come say hi; I haven't seen you for a while." So I went over, and I gave him a hug and talked to him—found out what their assignments were—what's their assignments? My wife was a genealogist; she just loved that; she knew it better than most people I ever met. And so that's what she's doing; she's taking care of genealogy, making sure our families are sealed together, making sure all the ordinance works are done. So when we have a baptism or nation of some kind or some kind of ordinance, she'll always attend to it and record it in her book. And then if you're searching for ancestry to find out, you know, find names, uh, she'll come and help you. Now, my dad loved missionary work, so he's doing missionary work—talking to people that don't know about Christ—to help him understand Him so that they will follow Him too. And that's what they do. Well, one of the men that met me in my room was standing even farther back; he was quite a ways back from my parents, and it kind of caught my eye, and I thought, "What are you doing here? You're my escort, I guess. What you doing here?" And I kind of drew to him, and as I went to go back to see him, I uh, my parents took off, and I was walking back to him, and the Holy Ghost says, "Well, that's the Savior." Okay, that makes things different. And I had two problems now. I had one problem that I couldn't get to the floor fast enough to bow to Him. Two, I couldn't get deeper than the floor. But He was very kind, and He asked me to stand—come to Him. So I did. So I stood up, and I walked over to Him, and I instinctively gave Him a hug—a big hug—and He's taller than me. I'm—I used to be about five-ten, but now I'm about five-eight; I've been shrinking. And I had to look up at Him. So I don't know—six-two-ish He got in height. And as we parted each other, we weren't very far apart, you know—just a couple of feet—and He looks down at me and looks into my eyes. Now, just imagine you're standing there looking in the eyes of the living, resurrected, exalted, glorified Savior of the world. Can't describe what that's like. He has a great love and a great light in His eyes. Then He asked me a question that's very deep. He said, "Where's your heart?" Oh, how do I answer that to you? You know everything about me, and I'm so imperfect. How can I tell you my heart is with You 100% when I'm absolutely imperfect—my whole life—but before people—all look—all these things I do wrong—nothing big deal—but you know, when you stand in front of Him, every little—everything becomes a big deal. And so I couldn't answer Him; I couldn't I couldn't answer. And He just smiled and lovingly took me on a trip. And the trip He took me on was like Scrooge seeing his Christmas past—when we went back and saw the life of Christ in three-dimensional—looking like they shown Scrooge—Christmas Carol show. I couldn't interact with anybody; I couldn't talk to them; I couldn't change anything they did; they didn't know I was there. But it was—I could walk around Him just as though I was actually there in real time. I went back to the pre-mortal as Christ was born—as a first child to God in the pre-mortal. I watched all that stuff—uh, the Council in Heaven, the war in Heaven, kicking Satan and his followers out, and His whole life from there up to that day that I died on February the 13th of 2004. And that's what my book is about, you know—like this much of what I actually saw. But it's a witness of the Savior—the living Savior. But that's what happened that day. Uh, it was a very traumatic day. I got to the hospital, and they fixed my heart. I was dying again; I got paddled some more; they went in; they put a pump in me to pump my blood because my heart wasn't working well. They could stent me if that was the only thing they could try—if it worked good, if it didn't, too bad—and it worked. But the heart pump kept me alive. And uh, so I was going to see ICU with his hard pump, and I can tell you more about that another time, I suppose, because that was kind of interesting. I was awake and alert; I could talk to the nurses and doctors. And their nurse had never seen that before. Uh, just quickly—six days later, I had the widowmaker heart attack, which was not as bad as the one that I had. I had a non-survivable kind—100% death rate. I told the nurse, I says, "Well, you know, I did die, so your stats are still right." She laughed. But I'll tell you that another day. So far, that's what happened on that morning—Friday the 13th morning—which changed a lot of my life, but didn't increase my testimony because I already knew these things were true. But it did give me details that I didn't have before—remember—as a spirit witnessing this stuff. But anyway, it's all real; it's all true. Christ is real; He cares about us; He knows each one of us; He knows our names; He knows all of the reasons we do things and what we do, and He loves us perfectly. And this is a witness of the living Christ, and so it needs to be said. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. [Music] You