God is real

Three years ago today, I was the pedestrian in an automobile-pedestrian accident. A Chevrolet Suburban going approximately 40 mph ran off the road along which I was walking and hit me head-on.

I was critically injured. What is far more important, from a spiritual viewpoint, is that I left my body and went somewhere else for a while.

All I can remember really is that the angel or whatever it was kept telling me that only love can survive this life. I saw what looked like a "city" of departed spirits who were in the next life. I don't know how long this "astral projection" lasted. It was as if I was leaving time and entering eternity. But, all of a sudden, I was back in my body.

I saw no sign of hell during the experience, but I did feel very convicted in my spirit for all the times I had not acted toward others in a spirit of love and forgiveness. I came back from this knowing that whatever is not of love in our spirits is burned away like dross at the moment of our deaths.

I don't know if I ever fully lost consciousness in the hour I lay in the ditch before the ambulance arrived. I think I must have, at times. There was a man named Eddy Coleman, to whom I am very grateful, who was with me from a few minutes after it happened onward. He had heard the crash while he was watching a football game in his nearby residence.

It was only by a supernatural, I would say divine, intervention that I didn't bleed to death or lose my life due to lack of oxygenation from my one lung which had not collapsed.

But I knew in my spirit from this same divine presence that I was not going to die in that ditch and that I would miraculously recover and that it wouldn't even take that long.

All those things happened like clockwork. I really don't know why to this day. But I can only praise the loving God who spared me that afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 9, 2003. And remember that love is all we have.

I read a devotional series each day (well, I read several at once when I fall behind) by Charles H. Spurgeon. After my accident, our church choir sang "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" probably because I had mentioned it in my testimony on Christmas Eve of 2003.

"Underneath are the everlasting arms." {#De 33:27}

God—the eternal God—is himself our support at all times, and especially when we are sinking in deep trouble. There are seasons when the Christian sinks very low in humiliation. Under a deep sense of his great sinfulness, he is humbled before God till he scarcely knows how to pray, because he appears, in his own sight, so worthless. Well, child of God, remember that when thou art at thy worst and lowest, yet "underneath" thee "are everlasting arms." Sin may drag thee ever so low, but Christ’s great atonement is still under all. You may have descended into the deeps, but you cannot have fallen so low as "the uttermost"; and to the uttermost he saves. Again, the Christian sometimes sinks very deeply in sore trial from without. Every earthly prop is cut away. What then? Still underneath him are "the everlasting arms." He cannot fall so deep in distress and affliction but what the covenant grace of an ever faithful God will still encircle him. The Christian may be sinking under trouble from within through fierce conflict, but even then he cannot be brought so low as to be beyond the reach of the "everlasting arms"—they are underneath him; and, while thus sustained, all Satan’s efforts to harm him avail nothing.

This assurance of support is a comfort to any weary but earnest worker in the service of God. It implies a promise of strength for each day, grace for each need, and power for each duty. And, further, when death comes, the promise shall still hold good. When we stand in the midst of Jordan, we shall be able to say with David, "I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." We shall descend into the grave, but we shall go no lower, for the eternal arms prevent our further fall. All through life, and at its close, we shall be upheld by the "everlasting arms"—arms that neither flag nor lose their strength, for "the everlasting God fainteth not, neither is weary."