A woman's death and encounter with God
Nov 02, 2013
This may prove interesting and helpful to some of you.
Crystal McVea was always a churchgoer, but in her heart, she was never truly convinced of God’s existence. That changed after she says she had a near-death experience that brought her face-to-face with her creator....
The former teacher remembers being in the hospital on Dec. 10, 2009. After accidentally overdosing her on pain medication, doctors called a code blue and worked on McVea for seven to nine minutes, all while her mother watched in horror as her daughter lay dying.
“I remember almost every detail. I remember being in the bed. My mother was at my feet and I remember starting to drift off — and I remember opening my eyes and telling her that I loved her,” McVea recalled. “I remember just closing my eyes in that bed and I opened them and I was standing in the most beautiful tunnel of light I could ever describe.”
McVea said she instantly knew she was in heaven. The difference within her was noticeably profound. Negative feelings and emotions were gone and she said it was as though all knowledge had been instantly downloaded to her brain.
“On Earth I was chained with human emotions like shame and guilt,” she told TheBlaze. “I had an abortion as a teenager. After that abortion I thought, ‘I’ve done it now — if he was real, he could never love me now.’”
But in heaven those thoughts were suddenly gone. McVea said while she knew she was dead, she was overtaken by a level of happiness she had never felt.
She also soon realized she wasn’t alone.
“I had two angels standing to my left whom I recognized as angels immediately … they took on vaguely human shapes,” she said, describing them as emitting an amber light.
She recalls communicating with the angels, but that she didn’t need to use words to do so; it was as though they all could telepathically and effortlessly speak with one another.
It didn’t take long to realize that there was a third figure nearby. To her right, McVea said she recognized God. After years of lamenting over his existence and wondering why he would have allowed her to suffer through sexual abuse at such a young age, as well as other challenges, she said she instantly fell before him in worship.
“What I saw and felt was just this beautiful, radiant, glowing light. That’s the only word I can even think to decide it,” she told TheBlaze. “But I was very aware that I was in front of the presence of the one true God. I’m a Christian. I believe it was the presence of the father, and the son and the Holy Spirit.”
McVea loved heaven so much in those moments that she had no urge to return to earth. But she says the Almighty gave her a choice....
As they continued toward heaven’s gate, she said God showed her something she’ll never forget: He conjured the image of a little girl laughing and playing — a child that McVea felt intensely moved by.
“My spirit could not contain all the love I had for her. When I looked back down at her, I recognized her as me,” she said.
McVea believes God wanted her to know that he never abandoned her even in her darkest hours, so he showed her herself at the age of 3 — before sexual abuse forever changed her life. The love McVea felt while looking at herself, she believes, is the same compassion and care God has always had for her. The experience allowed her to see herself through God’s eyes and, as a result, healing took place....
Notice that this woman was not a believer until after her experience. Yet there was no condemnation, no flames of hell, no exclusion from God's presence.
If her story is true, it indicates that God can save people beyond the grave. She became a believer after she died, and her death did not seem to be the "divine deadline" that many have thought.
Of course, when anyone is caught up into this heavenly realm (that is, "the third heaven"), it is a timeless realm, where things are what they will be in the end, not what they are now in our own dimensional world. God sees all of creation in the light of its ultimate state, where all things are "under His feet" (1 Corinthians 15:27, 28). She briefly experienced the freedom that comes when guilt and fear no longer rule our views, emotions, and actions.
Hence, her experience told her of her end, not of the continuing experience in the time-bound world where she was to return. Even so, by her own testimony, it was a life-changing moment.