Heaven Is Beyond Your Wildest Expectations by Sid Roth Read Free Book Online Page B

mother that what she believes in is real.”

    I must go back and tell my mother
that what she believes in is real.

    Looking back, I saw all my family and thousands upon thousands of people stretching far back into the distance. I asked God who they were, and He said that if I did not return, many of those people would most likely never hear about Him. My response was that I did not love them; but as I expressed that feeling, God said, “But I do, and I want them to come to know Me.”
    How was I to get back? God told me to tilt my head, feel liquid running from my eye, and then open it and see. I found myself with my right eye open, and there was a doctor at the end of the bed with a sharp instrument prodding my foot. As he turned and saw me, the blood drained from his face, and you could see him thinking,
A corpse has just opened its eye.

    I heard the voice of God whisper,
“Son, I’ve just given you your
life back.”

    Still trying to grasp what I had seen, I heard the voice of God whisper, “Son, I’ve just given you your life back.” My response to God, “If that is true, could You please give me strength to turn my head and look through my other eye?” As God gave me strength to open my left eye, I saw in the doorway of the room, nurses and orderlies. They were standing in the doorway staring, open-mouthed. I had been dead for fifteen minutes; but now I was very much alive!
    I tried to move my neck. I thought that if I had been dead that long, I could be a quadriplegic for the rest of my life. So I asked God to heal me completely, and allow me to walk out of the hospital, otherwise to take me back into Heaven. Over the next four hours, I felt warmth and power flow through my body—the next day I walked out of the hospital, completely healed.
    Over the next six weeks I read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. As I read through the Scriptures, everything that I had seen in Heaven was described in that book. I believe Jesus the Messiah died for our sins on the cross, rose from the dead, and is the Resurrection and the Life.
    I believe in resurrection power.
    I believe in healing.
    I am a living testimony to it all.
    Commentary
    The Lord does warn even those who do not believe in Him when trouble is ahead; but like Ian, many do not heed the warnings. Ian’s sense of uneasiness was a warning he didn’t heed. The gracious mercy of the Lord and a praying mother enabled Ian to hear the Lord’s voice speaking to him to keep his eyes open. Even the feeble prayer Ian prayed was enough to rescue him from an eternity in the darkness of hell. The Bible tells us,
“But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you…”
(Isa. 59:2). Ian, an atheist, had been so far from the Lord that when He saw Jesus in all His light, he had no recognition of Him such as someone who knows the Lord immediately has. Then he surmised He must be God.
    As the Lord begins to show Ian His love, Ian wanted to flee from Him back into darkness as he saw his own unworthiness. But the love of the Lord overcame Ian’s feelings of uncleanness in His presence until he then wanted to come closer to Him, to know who He was. That shift in the spirit realm, where Ian realized his sin before God and then received His forgiveness, wanting to draw near to him, he experienced being “born again” of the Spirit of God.
    When anyone has a “born again” experience, we become new persons who are now responsive to the Spirit of God who comes to dwell within us. Little by little, God works in our lives to make us righteous as He is righteous. We can see that process already beginning in Ian’s life. Despite living a self-indulgent life, when Ian is given the choice of staying in Heaven or going back to earth, he realizes his mother would think he had gone to hell and never know he was in Heaven if he didn’t go back. The unselfishness of this choice reveals that a change was already beginning