In constantly thinking on and writing about Bible prophecy, one can lose sensitivity to the reality that people –even the saved– often view such matters as gloomy at best and terrifying at worst. Maybe “lose” is the wrong word. We who believe we are given the assignment by our Lord to write on these topics perhaps “misplace” sensitivity to the fact that things are gloomy or terrifying to people, rather than “lose” that understanding. We easily forget believers need to be uplifted, not terrified. And there is a way in presenting Bible prophecy to accomplish the former rather than the latter.
In speaking not long ago to a good number of people, I was nudged in my spirit to begin by trying to make it clear that while I was there to talk about things involved in Bible prophecy, the ultimate outcome of all the end-times things we see going on only point to the glory that is to come.
Paul, the great apostle and writer of much of the New Testament, for example, wrote:
Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.
We are told that there is a “crown of righteousness” for those who love Christ’s appearing. Jesus, Himself, told us through the Apostle John that He –Jesus—will keep us from the time of the great trouble that is coming (Revelation 3: 10). Now all that encapsulates a glorious prospect, not gloom and doom!
I was told recently that my friend Dr. Ed Hindson, one of the greatest Bible prophecy teachers of our time, in his last moments of life opened his eyes and exclaimed something like: “I had no idea it was so glorious!”
I can relate perhaps only slightly to Dr. Hindson’s reported last-moments vision of Heaven, but certainly agree from firsthand experience. Many know of my dying clinically on Good Friday of 2011, April 22. What I saw was indeed glorious. (I don’t apologize for here over using the term “glorious”. One can’t overuse the term because there is none more appropriate to convey Heaven’s…well…glory!) I was, it has become apparent, “sent back” to tell exactly that truth to all who will listen. I cannot help but do so. Going to that place of glory was and remains something that comes to my mind at moments, particularly when things look to be gloomy, prophetically speaking. The trip to that sphere on three occasions of my heart stopping was truly glorious, and it was instantaneous upon each heart stoppage.
My thoughts on recalling those heavenly visits always go back to Paul telling us that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. There isn’t even a twinkling of an eye of time between the last heartbeat and bursting onto that glorious scene –not one fraction of a second.
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as he was being stoned, saw the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, stand from the right hand of God’s throne to welcome Stephen into glory. I am certain that, had God intended to keep me on that Good Friday, I would have been instantaneously in His holy presence. This will be the indescribably glorious reception each believer will experience when the final heartbeat instantaneously transfers us from this fallen sphere into the presence of the eternal magnificence our God has prepared for us.
Jesus said the following.
Let not your heart be troubled. Behold I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you I will come again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also (John 14:1-3)
The glorious dwelling place Jesus has prepared for you and me is beyond comprehension, as Paul has assured. We can get but an inkling of that stupendous vista that will burst in our super-enhanced eyesight. Being blind for more than 30 years now, I’m particularly looking forward with great expectation and Anticipation to that scene, whether experiencing it through the instantaneous portal of death or the even-swifter entry into that heavenly presence in the Rapture.
Like the song lyrics of “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” express: “The things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
The Lord is not willing for anyone to perish; He wants all to come to repentance. This desire to bring the lost to Christ should be in the deepest reaches of our own spirits. That’s why we must always carry out the Lord’s Great Commission to all who are lost in sin.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28: 18-20)
The future is glorious for all who put their trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. Here is how to become part of God’s eternal, heavenly family. Let us who are in that family point the unsaved in the direction of the heavenly gates with Scripture like the following.
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10: 9-10)
Terry James Prophecy Line 
Thank you so very much for this article!! My father went on to Glory January 31st 2024. He is a believer and is right now at the right hand of the Father just waiting to meet his new body in the atmosphere with all of us!! This article gave me great comfort!! Thank you!!
Shawn I’m sorry for your loss and yet I’m so happy you will soon see your dad in Heaven, for eternity.
I just got done reading “Hereafter” and I strongly recommend it to everyone out there. It is especially timely as we see everything rapidly falling apart all around us. I have spoken to two other people face-to-face who were clinically dead and remember the experience. One man met his Dad and saw multitudes of angels in an indescribably beautiful place. Another remembers seeing her body from above after bleeding out at childbirth, but not going past this.
I, too, have spent ten minutes “off-world” due to cardiac arrest back on June 2, 2023, but have zero recollection of it. This really bummed me out for months until two wonderful people at this site, Terry James and Robin, helped me out with their kind and insightful words which just rang true. Up to that point, I figured that maybe I was just unworthy to be given a look at heaven and, based on more than one flaw in my nature, it seemed a viable possibility, though I believed my salvation was still intact, based on my belief in Jesus’ and his atoning sacrifice on my behalf. Yet wasn’t Moses saved (proven by his appearance at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-3) but not allowed to enter the promised land for falling short over what appeared to be a minor infraction (Numbers 20:7-13), despite all that he did to give God’s words to a rebellious people for 40 years?
Terry and Robin suggested, if I understood them correctly, that it wasn’t necessary for me to remember what happened in order for me to do whatever it is I’m supposed to do now that I’m back. In fact, recalling the wonders of heaven and having to leave it might have been such a letdown as to compromise whatever it might be, rather than some kind of disapproval by God.
I truly am grateful to both of these Spirit-filled people and their wise counsel which has greatly relieved my mind!
Ed, it is such a blessing to hear of your relief over a question you’d wrestled with that is now settled. You must know my words came at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, so He gets the credit. I love how the Lord uses His people to help one another, often when we have no idea that is what is happening! Praise His name!
Your account, and Terry’s, do encourage us as we wait. We have firsthand assurance that what we are longing for far exceeds our imaginations. (Before today, I hadn’t heard Dr. Hindson’s amazing final words.)
I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that my distress about end times prophecy comes, not from a fear for my future, but for all those who will be left behind. I have far too many friends and family who aren’t saved. (If it were possible to throw them on the floor and push the Spirit into them, I’d do it…lol.) It makes me terribly sad and worried for them because WE know what is coming…all of it. No one, no matter how much money/gold, or guns and beanie weenies they have stored up, is going to want to survive it. It’s like watching a speeding train going full speed toward a cliff. We know the ending and are helpless to stop it. Only the Lord can change hearts.
The afternoon I was saved, on January 16th, 2018 at 4 pm, while I was in my home office, I had a stark vision. It only lasted for maybe 10-15 seconds, I can’t be sure. (BTW, I had been praying for many weeks, begging God to reveal Himself to me. I had been lost in New Ageism, Occultism…I had both a world-class psychic and a famous astrologer on speed dial…and believed in Universalism, for years! But in 2017 something shifted in me and I was desperately searching to find the real God because I sensed what I believed was ‘off.’ Now I realize that was God drawing me to Himself.)
Anyway, as I was being shown the Truth that day, I started crying and couldn’t stop. I cried for almost 6 straight hours, until I went to bed that night, completely brokenhearted over my sin and clearly understanding that my sin grieved God. When I had the ‘vision’, this is what I saw. The earth was a hellscape, literally, dry and barren and it was covered as far as my eyes could see with masses of people lying on the ground. About every 100 yards or so there was a person standing, and looking up hopefully, but all others were on the ground, looking up and they were sobbing and groaning and gnashing their teeth. The sky was almost black, there were roiling gray clouds and strong wind and I remember thinking, “Now, Jesus is coming right now!” Then I came out of the vision. I didn’t see Jesus but I knew He was ready to burst through the sky. What was most memorable was the pain and agony I could feel coming off of the people on the ground. It was a visceral sorrow that I can not explain in words. It was so powerful; I felt what they felt and it was profound suffering we can’t imagine. (It is hard for me to talk about, or even type it, without crying…I am tearing up right now.) I was sobbing even harder when it passed and I was shaken to my core.
There have been many times I’ve wondered why God showed that vision to me. It isn’t a new revelation, nothing I saw isn’t already written in the Bible. (And I had never read the Bible at that point.) When I did start reading the Bible and came to Matthew 24:30 I realized THAT VERSE was what I saw. “Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” You could have knocked me over with a feather the first time I read that verse, and naturally, I bawled my eyes out again. I have come to believe there are many reasons the Lord showed me what I saw. One, to make me more compassionate toward the unsaved, as I can be judgmental and hard of heart. There is NO human being I have ever heard of in the history of the world, no matter what they have done, that I would wish that kind of sorrow upon, let alone for eternity. Two, to show me what Jesus has saved me from. And three, He is trustworthy: He is very real and He sees me. My vision was very personal.
Some people get very upset when they hear of a story of visions and dreams and say those don’t come from the Lord. Often, I am a skeptic myself because there are so many fakers today. For that reason, and because I usually start crying as I tell it, I don’t often share this story. But as His coming gets closer, and as distressing as what I saw was, I am comforted; I realize I will be one of the multitude of Saints riding on a horse behind Jesus when that scene unfolds. I will not be among the earth-dwellers who are separated by the Holy Angels as a goat, hallelujah!!! (It is quite evident I don’t want anyone to go to Hell. Before I was saved I’ll admit I occasionally wished an enemy would, but I can promise you from 1/16/2018, I have NEVER wished that upon anyone.)
There is no question, there is good and bad in what is to come. I pray the bad will be motivation to speak up to the unsaved, and to live for Christ while we are still here.
Hi, Robin.
Thank you very much for sharing your story. I think that God will reach out to whomever is looking for him in the way that suits the person the best. For me, it was as a six-year old in Sunday school and the memory of that event has returned more times in the 60+ years since than I can count, even when I was messing up big time.
Some verses that struck a particularly responsive chord for me were these:
Hebrews: {11:15} And truly, if they had been mindful of that [country] from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. {11:16} But now they desire a better [country,] that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.
I have always been something of a loner, never completely fitting in down here. I’m not depressed about it, being alone suits me, yet there’s forever been a sense of no place ever totally being “home.” You can see how the passage above absolutely applies to me. I had found my answer.
Maybe this is the reason I’m also kind of a hard nose when it comes to people who willfully reject the truth even when they’ll readily accept other things with a lot less evidence. This certainly applies to biblical truth and the worst of these naysayers I’ve personally dealt with wore clerical collars. I have a pretty low tolerance for people who have heard the word accurately presented and arrogantly refuse to accept it.
It reminds me of what Paul and Barnabas faced here and their response to it:
Acts {13:44} And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God. {13:45} But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. {13:46} Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.
As Johnny Cash once sang, “The time has come to sing a travelin’ song!” It was time for them to find new and fertile ground in which to plant the Word.
Nevertheless, I take Jesus’ words to “occupy” until he returns very seriously and avail myself to make the most of whatever opportunities come my way – and I am surprised how they do come many times. How well I do is open for debate, I suppose.
So, until it is our time to sing that travelin’ song, God bless!
First Christian Martyr: correct spelling is “Stephen”. I know because I researched the name before I chose it for my son who is 62 now. Check it out and the meaning, big difference! Love your insights and share your posts.
Fixed it! Thank you!
Dear Brother in Christ, this email in particular Blessed me so much as well as it was more comforting to me than you will ever know. It brought heaven closer to me then I’ve ever known in my 66yrs of walking with the Lord through bumpy roads and smooth roads, valleys deep and glorious mountain top experiences. I lost my husband in 2017 of over 51yrs of marriage and I lost my son who was 52yrs old in 2020 a long with a very close relative. 2020 was the most difficult year for me, I never thought I would out live my son or this relative. But it was also the time the Lord moved me closer than I’ve ever been to Him in all my years if salvation. Each year since then
He has grown so much more special to me as I approach 88yrs old. I never thought I would live to see all these end time things I’ve known about since I got saved in 1958 and was decipled in the Word of God, I knew about dispensationalism, the pre tribulation rapture and so many things taught to me back then. Now I’m looking so forward to seeing Jesus my beautiful Savior and what He has prepared for all of us believers. Thank you so much for your beautiful email that lifted me to heights of glory. I will meet you there. MARANATHA!
Lovingly,
Gayle Ingram