(By: Lance Trudell)

Video:  MY HEAVEN EXPERIENCE - "IT'S REAL AND AWESOME!" 

On September 27, 1998, I was in a near-fatal car accident and I died for a short time. Somewhere during that time, I was in the presence of God!

I'm totally convinced the reason God let me come back to life was to tell the whole world that not only is God real, but so is heaven! I want to be back with God so much, but I have to be patient until God is done with me down here. If you experienced what I experienced, you would feel the SAME!

Please allow me to first share a little about my past to maybe help you better understand and appreciate my heaven experience. 

I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior at the age of five. I understood that He died for me so my sins would be forgiven, and whenever I would die, I would be acceptable to God to spend eternity with Him.

My father was very abusive to me, starting at a very young age. He would abuse me with harsh, angry words, and even strike me physically often for no good reason. I lived in fear of what he would do next to me. He was so explosive. That went on for a number of years. (Years later, I forgave my father, and I thank God so much for him).

Like many other youth who are raised in difficult home environments such as I was, I did poorly in school. Starting even before my teens, I began to use drugs and alcohol, to help me escape from the emotional pain and feel a little happiness.  

By the time I reached my teens, not only was I using alcohol and other drugs, I was also selling drugs to help support my habit and earn some extra money.  

I married at age 20, and we had a son thereafter. That marriage eventually failed. My drug abuse and the eventual crippling effects that accompany drug addictions no doubt greatly contributed to my marriage failing.  

I continued to use and abuse drugs, and live in sinful relationships with women, as opportunity presented itself. Through all those years, I also believed there was a God and I continued to trust Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior, but I never concerned myself a whole lot in trying to please Him. I lived to please myself, not Him. My life centered around me, not Him. 

As the years went by, the time came when I owed money to someone I bought some drugs from. I didn't have the money to pay this person back, and out of desperation to spare my life, I robbed a bank to come up with the money to pay this person back. Somehow I felt that it was better to rob a bank rather than robbing some individual, because I didn't want to be taking money from someone who needed it to buy their necessities of life.  

From the money I got from robbing the bank, I paid my drug loan off that I owed and then turned myself in to the police, admitting my guilt. Subsequently I was sent to prison for 62 months. While in prison, I did spend more time and effort thinking about God and even participating in spiritual functions, but I also continued to use drugs and even sold them to other inmates.

Once out of prison, I continued my drug using - drug selling lifestyle. I thought a lot about God through all that time, but drugs had such a hold on me that I simply couldn't imagine living life any other way.

Then it happened. My guess now is that God knew it was time to thump me real hard on the head to get my attention, so to speak. 

I was driving down the road in my car near Croton Dam in Lower Western Michigan. It was on a Sunday afternoon around 3:00 p.m. A tie rod broke in my steering apparatus, and it caused my car to swerve abruptly into the on-coming lane, hitting a truck hauling a boat, resulting in a head-on collision.  

My heart was not beating when the emergency people arrived at the accident scene. They used paddles on me to shock me to get my heart started. From the time the accident happened, it took about 20 minutes for the helicopter to arrive at the accident scene. Once I was aboard the helicopter - being transported to the hospital - my heart once again stopped beating, and again, they had to use paddles on me to bring me back to life. 

I was told by a family member I was in a coma for 97 days. When I woke up, I was unable to speak and walk due to the severe head trauma I had received. Various other parts of my body were also traumatized as could be expected. For days, my brain swelled, bulging out of the left side of my face where my eye socket area had been severely crushed. I suffered a great deal of memory loss as well from the brain trauma. 

After three plastic surgeries to help reconstruct my face, I currently have a metal titanium eye socket. I still have 4 vertebrae that were damaged from the accident that are pushing up against cartilage that is pressing up against my spinal cord, causing great pain constantly. I incurred a lot of memory loss from the brain trauma. I continue to work with medical professionals to help me improve my brain, speech, memory - motor skill functions, and although healing slowly progresses, it has been a huge challenge to deal with daily, speaking honestly. I thank God so much for my mother, Sharon, and my sister Rita, and my ex-wife Carol and all others who have helped me since coming back to life from my accident. Without their help, I don't know how I would have lived this long (this testimony being written in early 2013).

Now here is something so mysteriously interesting about my story. Upon coming out of my coma, and for approximately the next 10 years following, I had no recollection of what had happened when I had died from the car accident. But in May 2008, 10 years after my accident - my boy was tragically murdered, 15 days before his 22nd birthday. I was on my knees agonizing before God, crying with emotional, seemingly unbearable pain at my loss of him.  In my mind, it made no sense to me that God allowed him to die at such a young age, under such tragic circumstances. I cried my heart out to God, hoping to get an answer out of Him as to why He allowed me to come back to earth after dying 10 years earlier to now experience the pain of losing my son.

In that painful setting of crying and agonizing before God on my knees, I was suddenly given a visual revelation experience of my death experience from 10 years before. I saw the accident begin to take place. Just before hitting the truck, I clearly saw the man's face driving the truck. At impact, I began seeing images of my past, and then my spirit left my body. Then, instantly I was in front of God, and a purging process of some sort began to happen. Between His power being so overwhelming and the keen awareness of his holiness and my unworthiness clashing, I remember falling to a horizontal position and bawling uncontrollably as God continued His purging of me. 

I have no idea how long all this went on. All I remember is after that, I was instantly transported to the outside of heaven. I saw no people. I saw no angels. Who I did see was God! God was positioned on a high mountain of some sort rising high above heaven. I have no idea how big He actually was, nor could I tell you how close or how far away from Him I was. 

In once sense, seeing and feeling the radiance of His shining glory was like standing near a comforting warm fire on a very cold night. But that was the least that radiated out of Him. He radiated power - holiness - joy - love, peace, beyond human comprehension and what words could possibly describe. It can only be experienced -- impossibly expressed.

While standing there in His presence, I felt so unworthy and yet I felt such royalty. How can I possibly describe the feeling of that royalty? I don't think a person can, until they die and experience it personally for themselves, though it's imperative that a person has made Jesus Christ their personal Lord and Savior before dying to be granted Godly royalty status that I was experiencing.

Then my powerful revelation experience ended. I instantly became aware that I was still on my knees from when I had been crying out to God, but now I wasn't crying anymore. I was at peace, knowing that I would see my son again. 

Since then, I believe God gave me this powerful revelation experience to tell people that God is real and powerful and heaven is very awesome, and that Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to get there.

PLEASE HELP US HELP YOU SHARE THE BEST NEWS GOD HAS FOR EVERY PERSON BECAUSE...

JESUS DID IT! and...

YOU ARE SO GREATLY NEEDED!

Remember:  All that we do in this life comes back to our God-given purpose which is to serve and glorify God. The money and assets we accumulate, the fame and power we've attained or seek to attain - all of the things of this nature will one day pass away, but those lives of others we impact for Jesus Christ will last for eternity, and we will be rewarded for the part we helped play by impacting those lives ... for eternity.
(Matthew 6:19-21 is our assurance)