Living Beyond: Making Sense of Near Death Experiences

Enter the Father

A commanding voice rang out and crashed over Angie like a gigantic wave. The voice expressed a strange mixture – ferocious anger, but also love at the same time, like an angry parent.

Angie cowered. ‘The darkness vibrated. Every particle of darkness reverberated with the words, “This is God.” I knew there was infinite power in that voice.’

‘Is this what you really want?’

This great voice emanated from a pinpoint of light that swelled with each thunderous word until it hung like a radiant sun just beyond the black wall of mist that formed my Prison.

Though far more brilliant than the sun, the light soothed my eyes with its deep and pure white luminescence… I knew with complete certainty that I was in the presence of God. I didn’t need to be told.

He was a Being of Light, not just radiating light or illuminated from within, but he almost seemed to be made of the light. It was a light that had substance and dimension, the most beautiful, glorious substance that I have ever beheld. All beauty, all love, all goodness were contained in the light that poured forth from this Being.

There is nothing that we are even capable of imagining that comes close to the magnitude of perfect love that this Being poured into me.

Angie became aware that none of the other suicides had heard the voice. The man closest to her could see that she was focused on something, but it was apparent that he couldn’t hear anything. Others continued to babble unaware.

Then God spoke again. His words were excruciating.

‘Is this what you really want? Don’t you know that this is the worst thing you could have done? You can’t take your own life; it’s not yours to take.’

I could feel his anger and frustration, both because I’d thrown in the towel, and because I had cut myself off from him and from his guidance.

Angie felt she needed to express to God how trapped she’d felt, and that she had seen no other choice but to die. So she responded, ‘But my life is so hard!’

Her thoughts were not even completed before his response came.

‘You think that was hard? It is nothing compared to what awaits you if you take your life.’

When the Father spoke, each of his words exploded into a complex of meanings, like fireworks, tiny balls of light that erupted into a billion bits of information, filling me with streams of vivid truth. I was filled with pure understanding about the purpose of life. He continued:

‘Life’s supposed to be hard. You can’t skip over parts.’

Enter Jesus

Suddenly Angie felt another presence alongside the Father, the same presence that had stood by her during her Life Review. Similar to the Father, this presence was now radiating light such that she could see him. She discovered that he too streamed love towards her. She thought she could perceive a difference, though.

This love was as pure and potent as the Father’s, but it had an entirely new dimension of pure compassion, of complete and perfect empathy.

I felt that he not only understood my life and my pains exactly, as if he had actually lived my life, but that he knew everything about how to guide me through it; how my different choices could produce either more bitterness or new growth.

Having thought all my life that no one could possibly understand what I had been through, I was now aware that there was one other person who truly did.

Through this empathy ran a deep vein of sorrow. He ached, he truly grieved for the pain I had endured, but even more for my failure to seek his comfort. His greatest desire was to help me. He mourned my blindness as a mother would mourn a dead child.

Suddenly she knew that she was in the presence of Jesus Christ. He spoke to Angie through the veil of darkness.

‘Don’t you understand? I have done this for you.’

As she expresses it, her spiritual eyes were opened. In that moment she was suddenly inside Christ’s body, taken back in time and experiencing, from Christ’s point of view what transpired in the Garden of Gethsemane. As if it was happening in that moment, Angie experienced Christ experiencing her life, living her entire life, as if it was His own life. She began to see what it was that the Saviour had actually achieved, how he had sacrificed himself for her. ‘He showed me: he had taken me into himself, subsumed my life in his, embracing my experiences, my sufferings, as his own.’

Angie perceived where she had gone wrong. She had heard many times about Jesus before her NDE, and had hoped that there was truth to the idea of a Saviour who had given his life for her, but had been afraid to really believe it. To believe without seeing requires a great deal of trust. Her trust had been violated so many times in her life that she had very little to spare. She had clung to her pain so tightly that she had been willing to suicide rather than to believe he cared for her. ‘He had wanted to comfort me and to hold me, but we were separated by my responses to the lessons of life. He had been there for me all through my life, but I had not trusted Him, until now.’

Teachings

Angie was then provided with new understanding and knowledge.

Amongst many other things, she learned that suicide produces a ripple effect, with harmful long-term ramifications remaining for those left on Earth. Her children, for example, would be greatly harmed by her suicide. She was given a glimpse of their potential futures. By abandoning her earthly responsibilities, her oldest son in particular would make harmful choices in his turn. ‘I caught a glimpse of how deeply God loves my boys, and how, with my callous disregard for their welfare, I was tampering with the sacred will of God.’ She still tears up when she talks about the damage she would have caused her boys.

The same applied to many others, such as her husband and her sister.

Angie still could not see how she could live her own life, but having seen what would become of her children, she uttered a hint of a response, ‘Okay.” Suddenly she found herself hovering above the dark plane. One gift to her of her NDE was to rekindle the desire to live and love again.

She was told that the realm of darkness where she had been sent was quite literally a spiritual time-out, a place where she was supposed to grasp the gravity of her offences.

‘But I had to ask, why me? Why was it that I could see God while the vacant husk of a man next to me could not? Why was I absorbing light and being taught, while he was hunkering down in misery and darkness?’

The answer was unexpected. It revolved around willingness. When she had wondered whether the shell of the man beside her might be Judas Iscariot, she had shown she was willing to believe that Christ had once walked the Earth, lived and died. And once willing to believe, she was able to begin accepting what she was being shown. ‘My spiritual time-out could have lasted a moment, or it could have taken me thousands of years to progress out of that dark Prison, depending on when I reached the point of willingness to see the light.’

The Escape

With this teaching, her spiritual eyes were opened and she suddenly saw beings of light all around her that had been invisible to her previously.

Angie found herself floating above the field of darkness and entered into a realm of scurrying spirits of light. She learnt that they were preparing for the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in the not too distant future, but she was not told when precisely.

She was filled with understanding and knowledge, everything she would need to complete her mortal existence.

Then the powerful energy source that had transported Angie to the dark Prison returned to liberate her. A rushing sensation engulfed her, and suddenly she was back in her body on Earth, lying on the couch.

Reflections

With the opportunity to reflect since her NDE more than twenty years ago, Angie has decided her state of mind had imprisoned her on Earth long before she had entered that dark Prison in the afterlife. The more she had entertained gloomy thoughts to the point of acting on them, the more her darkness had influenced and harmed those around her. Furthermore, the Prince of Darkness, Satan, had manipulated and encouraged her suicidal thoughts. The Prison section for her and those who were like her was a natural consequence, a gathering of ‘like with like’. Her sufferings and torment had been magnified in that Prison environment where there was no escape from her situation except by divine intervention.

Knowing that forgiveness is important, Angie has forgiven and sought reconciliation with each person who damaged her before her suicide, including her father who had abused her, her mother who had abandoned her and her husband who had treated her so badly.

Today Angie is a spokesperson against suicide, and travels widely to teach and to warn others against taking their own lives. ‘Don’t do it. Talk to someone, talk to me, or get into counselling. Medicine has come a long way since my suicide. Seek medical help. If someone in your life is depressed, you must reach out. A person who is suicidal cannot always seek help. We must take responsibility for each other.’

Angie also feels that it is important to share that her near-death experience was exclusive to her. People who have lost loved ones to suicide should not assume that they went to a place of darkness during their NDE. Just as Angie’s experiences were influenced by her own thoughts and beliefs, she believes that we continue to affect our circumstances during the NDE. She often prays for those who have died by suicide; she prays for their families to forgive them.

During her NDE, Angie saw that prayer and forgiveness are the most powerful tools for good that can be accessed by human beings.

Many people commit suicide during deep depression. One of life’s challenges may be to learn how to cope with depression, or to overcome it. An overwhelming desire to commit suicide is one of the biggest indicators of clinical depression. As Angie points out, seeking medical help is a smart decision, as is attending support groups – if one group or counsellor has not been helpful, try others.

It is heartening to know, as Angie Fenimore attests both from her own experience and from counselling others who have attempted suicide, that an afterlife experience definitely discourages further attempts at suicide.

David Rosen  15 in 1975 interviewed 7 of the 10 known survivors who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Most striking perhaps is that each claimed to have had a spiritual experience that had subsequently transformed their lives. Consequently, none had again wished to commit suicide.