We have all heard the stories about heaven and hell. We often look to books or films for representations of what these mystical places look like. However, it is rare that we hear testimonies from people who claim to have visited both. One man named Jim shared his near-death experience with The 700 club, a daily programme that features news, interviews and 'Christian ministry'.
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Jim Woodford was an ambitious self-made man - so much so that he became known as Diamond Jim. He was so focused on providing a life of luxury for his family that he forgot the more important parts of life. At 61 years old, he suffered an accidental overdose and saw what the afterlife really holds. This is his story.
Jim’s materialistic ways
Jim thought that that providing comfort for his wife Lorraine showed how much he loved her, but she was a christian and prayed for something more fundamentally important:
God, please change his heart. Bring him to know Jesus Christ and just make a change in him and deal with this materialistic way
Over the years, Jim’s materialism consumed him and he pulled away from his family. He’d even wake up in the middle of the night and say to himself, ‘Is this all there is?’.
At 61, Jim was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare and incurable disease that caused him chronic pain. For five years, he used prescription drugs to cope.
Jim became ‘angry’
His wife explained he became a very ‘angry’ person as the pain was ‘just consuming him’. He explained that he never even considered looking to God for help, which makes the rest of this story all the more crazy.
In April 2014, Lorraine said a desperate prayer:
God, I’ve been praying but I haven't seen any change. Maybe you just have to break him to remake him.
Later that month, Jim took more than four times his dosage of meds. He was visiting a field he was planning to sell when he felt a growing burning sensation in his legs. Then, suddenly, he realised he couldn’t breathe. With his last breath, from somewhere inside of him he ‘didn’t even know existed’, he called out: ‘God, forgive me’.
Jim suffered brain-damage
When Jim didn’t come home, Lorraine called the police. Jim was found, unresponsive, in his truck and was rushed to hospital. Lorraine urged friends and family to pray as she awaited news.
The head doctor came out to tell her that her husband was ‘severely brain-damaged’ and on full life support following the failure of all his organs. He said there was ‘no way to bring him back’.
Lorraine, of course, felt terrible for having asked God to intervene.
Jim visited heaven
Meanwhile, Jim was having a life-changing experience. He remembers seeing ‘beautiful flowers and meadows’ - and he is not the only one to report such nature in the afterlife. However, the grass Jim saw gradually grew dark and scorched until it reached a crevasse. There, Jim saw a creature so horrific that he fell backwards in ‘abject terror’ at the ‘look of hatred in its eyes’.
Jim turned towards the light, and cried out for God’s help. Three angels appeared, and took him to heaven. There, he laid eyes on a figure with ‘violet eyes’: Jesus Christ. He asked Jim:
What did you do with the life my master gave you?
Jim realised he had no answer. Yet Jesus smiled at him, and Jim saw such ‘intense love and forgiveness’ in his eyes that in that moment, he became ‘his forever’:
I loved him, and he loved me.
Although Jim wanted to stay, Jesus told him he had to go back and tell his ‘brothers and sisters of the wonders’ he had seen.
Jim came back to life
When Jim came back to his body, he started screaming. The nurses were terrified, and one came to fetch Lorraine. She thought her husband had died, and was stunned to discover Jim alive and full of stories about heaven. He greeted her:
Hi, I saw Jesus and Jesus had horses.
She realised God had answered her prayer, as Jim became focused on Jesus. He became a much gentler version of his former self and although he still had the signs of Guillain-Barré, he no longer felt any pain. He is now keen to share his story, and says that you have to ‘open the door of your heart’ to let Jesus in - just as he did.
Read more:
⋙ This man died for several minutes, came back to life and revealed what actually happened
⋙ This woman who died for 14 minutes says she visited Heaven
⋙ This man died after eating a slug that gave him meningitis
Sources used:
Youtube: Near Death Experience Puts Man Face-to-Face With God
