Entering heaven together

Called to the ER, Dr. Reggie Anderson barely had his gloves on when the gurney rolled through the door.

White female, Seventy-nine years. Collapsed at home. 911 called. She was intubated on-site and IV placed. She had asystole on the monitor. However, we continued CPR en route since we were so close.

“Asystole was a dire form of cardiac arrest—the heart completely stops beating, and no electrical activity can be detected on the monitor. It is usually a serious and life-ending heart attack. Betty Sue hadn’t responded to any of the EMT’s initial interventions. The survival rate for her age and lack of response was less than one percent. Things didn’t look good. But a one percent chance was better than no chance at all.

“We moved her into the two-bed emergency room to see what we could do. The EMTs had been doing masked breathing, so we moved her from their portable machine to our larger one. No activity registered on the monitor.

Continue CPR. Push the EPI.

“Still nothing.

One amp of bicarb. Continue CPR.

“Nothing.

Charge the paddles.

“We shocked her heart. Still nothing. The ambulance attendant poked his head in the room and said: Her husband, William, is outside.

We’re busy working on Betty Sue. Tell him I’ll be out when I can talk to him. It will probably be a few minutes.

I don’t think you understand, the EMT said. She called us for him. William had a heart attack first. We’re doing CPR on him in the hall.

What? I looked up in time to see my nurse’s jaw drop.

“The EMT explained that the husband had collapsed at home and the wife had called 911, but by the time the ambulance arrived, William and Betty Sue were both lying on the floor.

Well, bring him in and put him in cot two! I said.

“Running two codes at once in our tiny ER was unprecedented. I continued to work on Betty Sue while the EMTs and nurses set up William in the adjoining bed. I strongly sensed God’s presence inside the ER. I felt his warmth as intensely as I’d ever felt it. The divine scents calmed me as I felt the veil parting for one or both of these precious souls.

Their children should be here in five minutes, the nurse said.

Continue CPR on both patients until they arrive.

“Handling one code was challenging enough, but trying to keep up with two at the same time was impossible without God’s intervention. Thankfully, I felt him directing my attention between the two patients and keeping me focused as I supervised the nurses. Once William was hooked up to his monitor, I could see that his heart wasn’t registering any activity either. Like his wife, he was flat lined.

“I intubated him, and we started mechanical breathing. Still no signs of heart activity. Let’s try to shock him. I didn’t think that shocking him would work any better than it had with Betty Sue, but I had to do something for the adult children who were about to learn they’d lost both parents within minutes of each other.

Charge the paddles.

“I turned to look at Betty Sue’s monitor one last time before I shocked William, but as soon as I turned toward her bed, his nurse said something that made me turn right back.

Doctor, something’s happening here.

“She pointed to the monitor where it showed a hint of activity. Then, even before we could shock his heart, we saw a single heartbeat. Blip.

Hold the paddles, I said. I think we’re getting a pulse.

“Then there was another. Blip. Only this second blip wasn’t from William’s monitor; it came from somewhere behind me. I turned to see what was happening, and I realized it was on his wife’s monitor!

Blip. A second beat on William’s monitor. Blip. Another beat on Betty Sue’s monitor. Blip, blip, blip went William’s monitor, and Betty Sue’s echoed with a blip, blip, blip. I turned my head to watch each volley of heartbeats as they registered on the monitors. Without intervention, William’s heart had begun to beat regularly, and then his wife’s followed! Soon the two heartbeats were beating in a synchronized rhythm.

“It was the most unusual thing I’d ever seen. The activity in the room, which had been so busy and chaotic while we were trying to run two codes, had ceased. All the medical professionals were speechless as we stood in awe and listened to the monitors amplifying the sounds of two hearts beating in unison. Days after the couple was transferred to the ICU in Nashville, Anderson received a call.

I have an interesting story to tell you about your patients, the Nashville doctor said. They arrived in the ER, and I had the same conversation with the kids that you did. They wanted the ventilators kept in to help them breathe, but they decided they didn’t want any further heroics. If their hearts stopped, we weren’t supposed to start them again. I admitted both patients and put them in separate rooms in the same cardiac unit.

This morning during rounds, I was standing at William’s bed when his monitor flat lined. Since we weren’t going to resuscitate him, I called time of death, and then went down the hall to the nurses’ station to write, “Discharged to a funeral home,” in his chart. While I was writing, I happened to look up at the monitors in front of me, and I noticed Betty Sue’s. While I was watching, hers flat lined too!”

“If heaven was closer than I thought, would that explain how, when God called William home, Betty Sue heard him and responded? Or did William, with one foot in heaven, stretch out his hand to his wife’s soul, so she could come with him? How close does heaven have to be for us to reach out and touch our loved ones, or for our loved ones to touch us?”

 

Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013), 215-219.

Dr. Anderson experiences an "evil" death

“While I’d been treating Eddie for only a few months," Anderson writes, "I knew a lot about him. He had a reputation in the community for being a bad man. A heavy smoker, he’d abused his own body as well as abusing others. Whenever I saw his name on the appointment sheet, I dreaded his visit. He had a horrible temper, and his personality was as aggressive as his cancer. He’d physically and sexually abused his wife and his kids in the past. He was a troublemaker who, after drinking too much, got into fights, sometimes with his fists and sometimes with a knife.

“I don’t write this lightly, but Eddie was truly evil. He thrived on being mean and hurting others. I knew this first hand because I had been treating his victims for years.

“But I also believed deathbed conversions were possible. While I don’t have the ability to look into another man’s heart or soul and know where his relationship stands with God, I believed that no matter where he was spiritually, redemption was available. God had rescued me from the godless life I’d once been living, and I believed he could, and did, rescue others—even up until the moment of death.

“Every day for the next two weeks, I’d stop by Eddie’s room and try to talk to him about God. His response was always the same: Shut up, and take care of my cancer. And if you can’t take care of my cancer, then just shut up and give me pain medicine.

“I was sitting at Eddie’s bedside, praying for him as he made the transition from this world to the next. Eddie began to stare off into the distance. But it wasn’t like the gaze of glory I’d seen with other patients. Eddie’s stare was different. He seemed to be staring off into a great chasm. His eyes grew wide, he was restless, maybe even anxious, and I detected a look of fear on his face.

“The Cheyne-Stokes respiration signaled that death was near, and I listened to him as he struggled to take each breath. Unlike many of the believers I’d witnessed who had crossed silently and peacefully, Eddie seemed to be struggling. He made grunting noises and clung to each breath as if it were his last. Eventually, his breathing slowed, and the grunts became less frequent. When his last breath finally came, it wasn’t the same peaceful exhale that I’d become so familiar with in my other dying patients. Eddie fought to take a final breath, and then his pulse and heart stopped. His last breath was a grunt.

“Suddenly, I felt some type of dark cloud present in the room. The lights grew dimmer, and the temperature plummeted. The room was freezing cold as though the temperature had instantly dropped 100 degrees. The warmth I’d come to expect when heaven’s door opened seemed to have been replaced by the opening of a liquid nitrogen canister. The room appeared dark and shadowy, as if a black abyss was swallowing it. That’s when I smelled sulfur and diesel. The air felt heavy, and it got harder to breathe. I remembered the same smell after the Alday murders. Though I had no rational reason to feel this way, I was afraid I would get trapped and be unable to leave. I wanted to get out as fast as I could. Evil had entered the room.

“I quickly made the death pronouncement and left. I hurried down the hall to the sink. I turned the water on as hot as it would go. While I waited for it to heat up, I lathered my hands. Then I frantically scrubbed my forearms. As soon as the water was hot, I held my hands and arms under the steamy faucet until they turned red. I wanted to wash the darkness off me. Lord, please keep me from that evil in the future. Thank you for rescuing me from that. Because if you hadn’t come after me, that’s where I’d be too.”

Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013), 186-190.

Dr. Anderson's extraordinary "knowing"

“During one quiet overnight shift in the ER in Ashland City’s newly built two-bed emergency room, I went to the on-call room to take a nap. I hadn’t been there long when I was called down to see a young boy who’d fallen. His mom brought him in because she was worried.

“She introduced herself and told me the story behind their visit. Apparently, her son had fallen and bumped his head earlier in the evening. He seemed fine, so she put him to bed at his regular bedtime. A few hours later, he woke up and vomited. I heard that throwing up after hitting your head is a bad thing, she said, so I brought him in.

“The mom was calm. She was fully dressed and completely made up, and it was 1:30 in the morning. If she took the time to dress, I wondered, how serious could it be? The little boy with her seemed quiet, but he understood everything his mom said. I asked her to put him on the table, and I began my exam.

“His pupils were equal and reactive. He was attentive and easily followed my directions. Where did you hurt your head? I asked. He point to the spot, and I felt it. It was a normal neural exam. He was a normal kid who’d gotten a bump on his head. I turned to write up his report, and I planned to ask the nurse to give the mother a head injury instruction sheet.

Well, his exam looks good, but I think we should send him to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital to get a CT scan of his head.

“I had no idea why I said that. I wasn’t intending to say it, but the words slipped out of my mouth. I was confused. In that moment, I knew something more was going on. I left the examination room, and the nurse followed me. Why are sending a healthy child down there?

“I knew why she was asking. It was a big deal to find a neurosurgeon in the middle of the night. We would have to locate one who was on call and hope he called us back. Then we’d have to call Vanderbilt and make arrangements there. The nurse would have to order an ambulance to take them, and there was a ton of paperwork involved.

I don’t know, I responded honestly. God just told me to send him.

“The exam and all the evidence showed that the boy was fine. I couldn’t put my finger on it, literally or figuratively. It wasn’t as specific as a bump or a lesion; it was vague, like a temperature change while my fingers palpated the area of his injury. To this day, I’m not sure why I sent him, other than I’d touched him and felt something. Although I had no objective data to back up my referral, I had a sense that something was happening that only God could explain.

“If I were a betting man, I would have laid all my money that night on the likelihood that the neurosurgeon would call and say the boy was fine. Four hours later, he phoned. I’m not sure why you sent him, the neurosurgeon said.

I’m not sure either, I confessed.

Well, I’m glad you did. I just got out of surgery. We evacuated a hematoma from his brain. If you hadn’t gotten him here in time, he would have died.

“It was God who’d sent that boy to Vanderbilt, and he’d used my hands to make it happen. I thanked him not only for saving that boy’s life but for allowing me to be a part of his healing.”

Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013), 162-164.

Experiencing "heaven" in the ER

As a new resident physician, Reggie Anderson vividly recalls receiving a young man named DeWayne in the ER, with a stabbing wound in his chest. Anderson carefully inserted a needle in DeWayne’s chest and succeeded in inflating his lung, but still there was no blood pressure. The CPR they’d been doing hadn’t worked, so as a last resort Anderson realized he had to stab the patient in the heart. Into the pericardial space and no farther, he reminded himself, but as his right hand was trembling he stopped for a moment. Please, Lord, hold my hand. I can’t do this one on my own, he prayed.

“The prayer seemed to lift me out of my chaotic environment. I took a deep breath and felt my heart slow ever so slightly as my hands grew steadier. Once again, I lifted the needle. This time in a quick downward motion, I stabbed the patient’s heart.

“Suddenly I felt a calming breeze. An air current from heaven seemed to blow all around me. Nonclotting blood rushed into the syringe, and as I held it in place, I looked up to the right and felt a slight brush of wind on my cheek. The ever-present veil—so thin, yet thick enough to separate us from the next world—was flowing freely in a heavenly breeze. Then I felt the warmth of his soul. Before anything else was said, before I looked at the machines, I knew. He was coming back.

A day later, Anderson visited DeWayne.

What’s up, Dr. Anderson? He said when I walked in.

Looks like you are!

Do you remember, Anderson asked, what happened the night they brought you to the ER?

A little, he said.

You were dead on arrival. You had no pulse, no blood pressure, and you weren’t breathing on your own.

I remember that, DeWayne said. But after I got to the hospital and you moved me onto that other bed in the room with all the bright lights, you took care of me, Doc.

You remember us moving you?

Yeah, sure, that was right before you stabbed me the first time.

You remember me stabbing you?

Yeah. Twice.

I was surprised by his recall. What else do you remember?

He described the nurse who had worked with the respiratory therapist and me. Doc, would you please tell them thank you for saving my life?

I was stunned at the clarity and detail of his memories.

Were you in pain at all?

No, I didn’t feel a thing, DeWayne said. But I was real scared.

I didn’t tell him that I was too.

But then I saw my granny.

You saw your granny? I asked. I tried to remember if I had seen her too. I’d talked to his mother, and there were other, much younger women in the waiting room when I’d spoken to her. But there wasn’t anyone that I would have considered old enough to be his grandmother.

That’s when I knew I was going to be all right.

When did you know? I was confused.

When I saw my granny, he repeated. She was sitting in the corner of the room, until you let her come over.

I let her come over?

Yeah, don’t you remember?

I didn’t, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’d had enough wow moments to know that God worked in some pretty unexpected ways.

I wanted to know more. What did your granny say? I asked.

She held my hand and said, “You’re going to be all right.” That’s when I knew I didn’t have to be afraid no more.

Do you remember what I was doing?

Oh, yeah, that’s when you were staring at something. It was up and to my right, kind of far off in the distance. It was like you were listening real hard for something.

I smiled. Heaven’s breath had been in the room that night, and we’d both experienced it differently. On my way out, I told one of the nurses what he’d said.

That’s odd, the nurse said.

That’s God, I said.

Later than day the nurse told Anderson she’d spoken with DeWayne’s mother. His mother said his grandmother had been dead for four years. She thought Granny must have visited DeWayne from the other side.

Anderson reflects on the meaning of this divine intervention. “I’ve spent a lot of hours marveling about what DeWayne and I each experienced that night in the ER. I don’t have all the answers, but what I’ve come to understand is that God sent DeWayne’s granny to be with him that night. Though his granny was dead, she’d been sent to restore DeWayne’s life and his spirit, just like my murdered cousins had done for me.

“It seems to me that, in rare cases, God allows dreams or visions of people we have loved, those who have gone on to the other side, to help us know and accomplish our purposes here on earth. During those moments when the veil blows freely, I know that God is at work.”

Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013), 137-144.

The painting of Jesus is from the Ethiopian Coptic Church community.

Dr. Anderson's "dream" of being in heaven

The brutal murder of six members of the Alday family, Reggie Anderson’s close relatives, devastated his childhood faith in God. Why? He screamed at God. Why did you do this? Over and over he screamed: Why did you let this happen, God. They loved you!

Karen, a wonderful woman he began to date while in medical school, made Christian faith a requirement for any long-term relationship. But Anderson wasn’t convinced, until he had what he calls “the dream that changed my life.”

While camping beside a beautiful falls, he read the copy of Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis that Karen had given him. “Finally!” Anderson writes, “Someone had articulated the unresolved questions I had with Christianity. Lewis had also believed in the promises of science and the prophets of logic and knowledge; yet he had returned to love and defend the God I had grown up with. How? I tried to understand how he had reached that conclusion. Could I come to that same understanding?

Before falling asleep, Anderson read through the Gospel of John, which Karen had recommended and Lewis mentions in Mere Christianity. “Without warning,” Anderson writes, “I fell into a deep sleep. But this slumber was different from any sleep I’d ever experienced. My mind was tumbling, free falling, like the waterfall nearby. An overwhelming peace filled me, and I felt everything was right with the world.

“When my mind stopped tumbling, I opened my eyes to the most fantastical countryside imaginable: everything was vivid and radiant. All of my senses were finely tuned, like I had awakened in some enhanced version of reality. In front of me, a picturesque meadow was filled with vibrantly colored wildflowers. Pops of yellow, orange, red, blue, and indigo swayed with the breeze like living rainbows. The green was the lushest green I’d ever laid eyes on; the hue so saturated, it seemed like a new color to me. The splendor before me was stunning!

“I wanted to breathe in the view. As I did, I inhaled the most fragrant scent, so light and pleasing—like a mixture of citrus and lilac. I held my breath, allowing it to cleanse my insides and open my mind. I heard a trickling noise behind me and turned to see a running stream. Crystal clear blue water flowed over shiny rocks lining the bed and made a tranquil babbling sound. I moved toward the stream, and I felt an icy but refreshing spray, almost like the feeling I got as a boy when I opened the freezer door on a hot Alabama day. The flowing water was a glassy sapphire blue, but surprisingly light and clear when I scooped it into my cupped hands.

“Everything felt so real, more intense and tangible than my ordinary life. My senses seemed to awaken and open like a flower to the sun. I could see, hear, touch, smell, and feel things as never before. I didn’t feel like I was in a dream; I felt like this was the real life I’d always been searching for. This was more real than my life.

“I didn’t have time to think about how I’d gotten there because I heard an unmistakable voice calling me from the distance. It was the voice of someone whom I had once loved and who still loved me. It didn’t make an audible sound; instead, it resonated inside me and echoed outside, as if I’d heard it with my heart, or maybe my soul. It was easily the most compelling, yet comforting, voice I’d ever heard.

“I spun to my right to glance at the person who had spoken to my heart, and I saw a great crowd of people moving toward me. As I scanned the crowd, a cool breeze engulfed me. That’s when I recognized them. Jimmy, Jerry, Mary, Ned, Chester, and Aubrey! [RT: The six members of the Alday family who had been murdered.]

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there was no mistaking them. They looked ecstatic. I’d never seen anyone as happy as they were. They didn’t speak with words, but they seemed to know how much I had struggled with their deaths, and how that trauma had put up a barrier between God and me. In the most kind and loving way possible, they communicated that they weren’t the obstacles to my faith. They were there to lift the burden I had been carrying around for so long.

“They were so real, so present, and so very joyful. I had never seen such bliss radiate from a person’s face, but the essence of who they were was still apparent. Jimmy and Jerry even seemed to tease each other the way brothers do—in the same way the three of us had done at the farmers market. I wanted to run to them, to join them, and to live in this paradise with them. I wanted this to be my home too.

“Then I saw him. He inhabited more of a presence in the midst of the crowd than a human form, yet he definitely had human qualities. I couldn’t identify his race; he seemed to be a composite of all races, or possibly of a race I’d never seen before. Likewise, he appeared ageless—of every age and none, at the same time. He was unlike anyone I had ever seen before. Even his long hair defied description. It was at once silver, golden, and onyx-colored as it moved in the light. There was almost a glow from behind him, creating the effect of a halo.

Reggie, why are you running from me? Your friends are here with me in paradise; you can stop running.

“That’s when I knew. It was Jesus.

“He communicated with such authority. Yet I couldn’t see his mouth moving—I somehow intuited his words. As he spoke, I noticed that the light behind him glowed brighter. His eyes shone like the cool waters of the stream between us. His smile was so reassuring, like the one a loving mother gives to her baby. And inside me, I could feel the warmth of his love wrapping itself around my heart and my soul.

I am the one who came for you, he said.

“Immediately, I knew what he meant. For more than seven years, I had been wandering aimlessly in a spiritual wilderness. He had come to rescue me from the hate and anger that had trapped me in the wasteland and to bring me back to the faith of my youth.

I have a plan for you, but you need to stop running.

“I was in awe of him and knew that whatever he said, whatever he asked, I would obey him completely. But my instant devotion was challenged by his next words. You’re going to marry Karen, and together you will have four children. You will be a doctor and practice medicine in rural Tennessee.

“His final words to me were: All I have told you will come to pass. All you have to do is trust in me and in my words.

Anderson did marry Karen, and they moved to Tennessee where he began to work as a surgeon in a hospital serving a rural community. Over time, they had four children. The remainder of Anderson’s book is about his experiences with dying patients.

Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013).

Dr. Reggie Anderson experiences heaven

Dr. Reggie Anderson writes from the perspective of a firm Christian faith. He describes, however, his loss of faith as a young man and how the love he shared with the woman who became his wife—and having what he describes as a very powerful dream—renewed his childhood faith.

Anderson begins his book with his first experience as a resident caring for a dying patient. “Throughout medical school I had taken care of dying patients, but this was the first time that I, as the senior resident, would be the one in charge when a patient died. I didn’t know what to expect.

Dr. Anderson, the elderly woman began, her voice starting to fade. Will you hold my hand? I’m going to see Jesus, and I need an escort.

“That night, I experienced the veil parting—the veil that separates this life from the next. As I held the dying woman’s hands, I felt the warmth of her soul pass by my cheek when it left her body, swept up by an inexplicably cool breeze in an otherwise stagnant room. I smelled the familiar fragrance of lilac and citrus, and I knew the veil was parting to allow her soul to pass through.

“Since that first patient, I’ve walked with countless others to the doorstep of heaven and watched them enter paradise. On many occasions, as I held hands with the dying, God allowed me to peer into heaven’s entryway where I watched each patient slip into the next world.

“I’ve sensed Jesus on the other side, standing in heaven’s foyer, welcoming the dead who are made whole again. I’ve glimpsed surreal colors and sights and heard sounds more intense than I’ve ever experienced in this world. I’ve inhaled the scents of lilac, citrus, freshly carved cedar, and baking bread—more fragrant than I ever thought possible.

“Sometimes I’ve even witnessed patients leave this world and come back. As they’ve shared their stories with me, I’ve often remembered the time early in my life when God allowed me to step into heaven’s foyer, even though I no longer believed he was real.

“The one thing these experiences have in common is the intensity of the sights, sounds, fragrances, and feelings that I sensed. Heaven is more real than anything we experience here, and the sense of peace, joy, and overwhelming love is beyond description.”

Reggie Anderson with Jennifer Schuchmann, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale Momentum, 2013), 4-5.

 

Consequences of near-death experiences (NDEs)

In Consciousness Beyond Life Dutch cardiologist Pim Van Lommel reports that cardiac arrest survivors who remember a near-death experience (NDE) describe with wonder “nonlocal aspects of interconnectedness, such as memories from earliest childhood up until the crisis that caused the NDE and sometimes even visions of the future.” Also, the NDE “offers the chance of communication with the thoughts and feelings of people who were involved in past events or with the consciousness of deceased friends and relatives. This experience of consciousness can be coupled with a sense of unconditional love and acceptance while people can also have contact with a form of ultimate and universal knowledge and wisdom.”

Van Lommel compares the measurable life changes of cardiac arrest survivors who had a near-death experience with cardiac arrest survivors who did not remember such an experience. After eight years, van Lommel reports from his research: “people with an NDE scored significantly higher in the following areas: showing emotions, less interest in the opinion of others; accepting others; compassion for others, involvement in family; less appreciation of money and possessions; increase in the importance of nature and environment; less interest in a higher standard of living; appreciation of ordinary things; sense of social justice; inner meaning of life; decline in church attendance; increase interest in spirituality; less fear of death; less fear of dying; and increase in belief in life after death.”

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 247 and 67. See also Pim van Lommel, “The Mystery of Perception During NDE,” Jul. 5, 2013, 38 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avyUsPgIuQ0.

Joyce Hawkes writes: “My near-death experience established a connection between me and something much, much bigger than myself. If it is a part of God, the source of Creation, the bond has never failed. I lost my fear of death, and with it, my fear of separation from the Source. I lost any notion that the Source is available to only the few who belong to a specific religion. The Healing Presence of the Source is for everyone.” The focus of her life shifted from cell research to cell healing: “the body can be experienced as a sacred temple of the spirit and an expression of consciousness. This knowledge is the first step toward a life of fullness and oneness of spirit and physical existence—a seamless connection from Soul to Cell.”

Joyce Whiteley Hawkes, Cell-Level Healing, 8-9. See also Joyce Hawkes, “Biophysicist discovers new life after death,” Nov. 15, 2013, 16 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyaBeHeRK6M.