THE DARKNESS
"Light has come into the world,
but men loved darkness instead of light
because their deeds were evil."
John 3:19 (NIV)
"Many… will be cast into outer darkness,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Matthew 8:12 (NLT)
I knew there was a release..... the battle to stay alive.... seemed to be over.
No one told me what had happened.....no one said, "You just died son."
I didn't know that......
All I knew was, that the battle to try and keep my eyes open and stay alive was over.
I knew I'd gone somewhere.... it wasn't like closing your eyes, and going to sleep.....I knew I'd actually gone somewhere.
For the previous 20 minutes in the hospital I had been feeling like I was floating away......
and yet..... when I closed my eyes......I wasn't floating away - I was gone.
The Bible says in Ecclesiastes,
that when a man dies his spirit returns to God who gave it and his body returns to the dust from which it came.
Well, I knew my spirit had left....I had gone somewhere.....and yet, I didn't know I was dead.
I seemed to arrive in a huge, broad place.....like a cavernous hall of pitch-black darkness......
I was standing up.
It was as if I had woken up from a bad dream in someone else’s house, and was wondering where everyone had gone.
I was trying to find the light switch, and I couldn’t seem to find it.
I wondered why the doctor had turned the lights out.
I was trying to touch something.....reaching for the wall lamp, but I couldn’t find it.
Then I realised I couldn’t find my bed.
I was moving around, but I wasn’t bumping into anything.
I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
It was bitterly cold.....I strained to see where I was.....trying to orient myself to these new surroundings.
I lifted my hand up to find out how much I could see.
I lifted it to where my face was..... and it went straight through where my face should have been.
It was a terrifying experience.
I knew right there and then.....I was myself.... Ian McCormack, standing there, but without a physical body.
I had the sensation.... and the feeling.... that I had a body, but I couldn’t touch it.
I was a spiritual being, and my physical body had died, but I was very much alive.......and very much aware that I had arms and legs and a head......but I could no longer touch them.
(God is a spirit, an invisible spiritual being, and we are created in his image.)
“Where on earth am I?” I thought.
As I was standing there in the darkness......I sensed the most incredible coldness and dread come over me.
Maybe you’ve walked down a lonely street at night, or you’ve come home by yourself in the dark and you feel as though there is someone looking at you.
Ever felt that?
Well I began to sense evil encroaching on me in the darkness.
The darkness seemed invasive.
I knew I was being watched.
A cold encroaching evil seemed to pervade the air around me.
Slowly I became aware that there were other people moving around me.....in the same predicament as I was.
Without my saying a word out loud, they began to answer my thoughts.
From the darkness I heard a voice screaming at me: “Shut up!”
As I backed away from that one.... another yelled at me, “You deserve to be here!”
My arms came up to protect myself and I thought, “Where am I?” and a third voice shouted, “You’re in hell. Now shut up.”
I was terrified....afraid to move.... or breathe.... or speak.
I realised that maybe I did deserve this place.
People sometimes have this strange picture of hell being party time. I used to think that. I thought that in hell you would get to do all the things there that you're not supposed to do on earth.
That is so far from the reality of it. The place I was in was the most frightening place I’ve ever been.
The people there could not do anything that their wicked hearts wanted to do,
they couldn't do anything.
And there's no boasting.
Who could you boast to down there? “Oh yeah, I raped, murdered, plundered, pillaged.” There's nothing to talk about when you know that judgment is coming.
to be cont'd
blessings
Yaddy
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