The John-Henry Westen Show - ENCORE ｜ Man On Deathbed After Car Crash. Here's What He Saw.

00:00:00.000 If you told me that I had to live another 100 years at the peak of that pain, or I could take

00:00:06.480 one second without God, I would choose the 100 years of pain, and I wouldn't even think twice

00:00:15.780 about it, because one second without God is an unimaginable torture.

00:00:22.140 You know, my friends, today we need examples of God's intervention in life, because for

00:00:37.880 a lot of people, it seems pretty disconnected.

00:00:41.160 It seems like God is up there, and is He really hearing me?

00:00:45.120 Is He really speaking?

00:00:46.320 Because I can't hear Him.

00:00:47.280 And so sometimes He gives to certain people a very powerful experience of His presence

00:00:53.840 and lets them know what the real score is so they can share that.

00:00:59.100 Those are the prophets.

00:01:01.060 In Amos 3, verse 7, He says, God doesn't act unless He lets His prophets know.

00:01:09.440 And there are men and women who are called to give their testimonies of their experience

00:01:15.760 with God, and sometimes those experiences come at a great price.

00:01:24.080 Our next guest is someone who is already living as a Catholic, and then he got into an accident

00:01:32.180 that should, by all rights, have cost him his life.

00:01:35.920 And boy, did he get a glimpse of the heavenly realities.

00:01:41.600 Stay tuned to this episode of The John Henry Weston Show with Ed Joza.

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00:02:47.720 Ed, welcome to the program.

00:02:50.200 Hey, John Henry.

00:02:51.520 Thanks for having me.

00:02:53.100 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:02:56.420 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

00:03:01.460 Amen.

00:03:01.700 So, Ed, your book, The Mystic Next Door, recounts your story, and anybody, by the way, can go

00:03:12.980 get the book for free, if you're in the United States, at themysticnextdoor.org.

00:03:18.340 But tell us your story.

00:03:20.180 This is so fascinating.

00:03:22.340 I think people will be enthralled.

00:03:23.920 You know, the day of that accident, if you would have asked me, are you going to heaven?

00:03:34.340 I would have told you, well, of course I am.

00:03:36.940 I'm Catholic.

00:03:38.180 I go to church most of the time, unless something really important is happening.

00:03:43.160 And I shudder now, knowing what I know, to say things like that.

00:03:46.480 But that's how I live my life.

00:03:47.500 I looked at my life, I judged my life based on the world's standards.

00:03:52.800 And by the world's standards, I was a pretty good guy.

00:03:55.700 And I just assumed that that's what it took to get there.

00:03:59.600 And, you know, I was laser focused.

00:04:03.020 I was building treasures here.

00:04:04.560 I was literally the guy building bigger barns to store my goods.

00:04:08.420 And I had no idea that the Lord was going to call me and ask for my life that night.

00:04:13.940 And I found that I had no treasures built or stored for heaven.

00:04:19.660 And that it takes more than just being a lukewarm Christian if we expect to spend eternity with our Lord.

00:04:28.180 Set this up for us.

00:04:29.200 What date are we dealing with?

00:04:31.840 What's your family situation like at the time?

00:04:34.800 Yeah.

00:04:35.160 So I was happily married, father of three, been married to my wife at the time for 20 some years.

00:04:41.420 Three kids, two boys and a girl, like 16, 17, 15, and 12.

00:04:50.220 Two of my kids were in the car with me and I was taking them to soccer, or I'm sorry, to track practice.

00:04:56.960 And we were in a head-on collision, May 30th of 2017.

00:05:02.280 And, you know, from that moment on, everything about really all of our lives changed physically, spiritually, emotionally.

00:05:12.640 It was devastating.

00:05:15.540 And through all the pain, through all the suffering, through all the trials, I will tell you that it was the best day of my life.

00:05:23.940 And I can assure you, while I may not necessarily wish to go through it again, I wouldn't change a thing about it.

00:05:33.780 It was the beginning of a new life for me.

00:05:37.740 So tell us about your injuries.

00:05:39.340 What exactly happened?

00:05:40.480 So we were driving, we live in Indiana, in a little country area, heavy farming community.

00:05:50.780 And man, the tractors out here are big, you know, the farm equipment, they take up both lanes and more of the little two-lane roads.

00:05:59.700 And we were going one way, the tractor's coming the opposite direction.

00:06:03.000 And he has a small line of cars gone, you know, behind him patiently waiting.

00:06:07.300 And, you know, they only go 10 or 15 miles an hour.

00:06:10.720 And we could see ahead of us, Indiana's flat and the roads are straight.

00:06:16.800 I could see ahead of me a mile and a half and behind me a mile and a half.

00:06:20.320 No one in my lane, in front of me or behind me.

00:06:22.840 And as I passed those cars, as I was passing the last car in line, they were, you know, as I was going opposite direction,

00:06:30.400 that my car, there was a flash of black in it, it exploded.

00:06:34.360 I mean, just absolutely exploded.

00:06:36.120 It was the most violent experience I've ever, you know, that I've ever seen, felt.

00:06:42.080 You know, the car was bucking and bronking and it was spinning and I lost vision.

00:06:47.900 Everything went blazingly white.

00:06:50.320 I couldn't see it all.

00:06:53.160 Found myself as the car came to a stop, the airbag deflated in front of me and I could see again.

00:06:59.400 And oddly enough, I was just a few hundred meters, a few hundred yards from my house.

00:07:08.700 And I knew that I was spun around and I was facing it.

00:07:12.980 I knew that I wouldn't be gone back to that place for a while.

00:07:15.500 But the impact that had occurred because of a woman that was under the influence of marijuana hit the last car in line with her foot on the gas,

00:07:30.360 55 miles an hour, and drove that last car over the yellow line right into us head on.

00:07:35.960 Never saw it coming.

00:07:36.880 And it was, man, it was violent.

00:07:40.740 It was, the impact of the car collapsed around me.

00:07:45.300 And thankfully, in all of this, so it's a three car accident, nine people involved.

00:07:50.180 And I was really the only one that had life-threatening injuries.

00:07:55.320 There were some minor injuries.

00:07:56.740 One of the kids that were in my car, one of the kids I was carpooling, had a concussion.

00:08:02.820 My son had a broken collarbone so that this other boy from the seatbelts, my daughter had a damage to her inner ear.

00:08:09.400 But everybody, including the other two cars, they walked away.

00:08:14.160 And I ended up, I didn't walk again for months, but thankfully, all of that impact, all of that mass chaos was focused on in my body.

00:08:27.100 And, yeah, it ended up, the car collapsed around me.

00:08:31.720 The impact was so hard, it pushed me sideways, pinned me in the pillar behind, you know, that separates the front door to the back door.

00:08:38.460 And my body bowed the door out.

00:08:41.400 If people get the book, they can see on the cover that there is, the door is bowed in half.

00:08:46.860 And that was from the impact of my body.

00:08:48.360 So that's kind of damage that I sustained.

00:08:52.220 And I ended up being trapped in that car for two and a half hours.

00:08:55.720 And, you know, the first thing that came to my mind was the pain.

00:09:00.720 I mean, the pain was so immense.

00:09:02.000 And this was so surreal.

00:09:03.780 It just didn't seem like, it just was fake.

00:09:07.280 And the first thing I thought was I was dreaming.

00:09:10.260 And I thought at any moment, I'm going to wake up because, man, the pain is bad.

00:09:14.440 Right.

00:09:14.780 And you get to a point in your dreams where you say, wow, the pain is really bad.

00:09:18.420 I'm going to wake up.

00:09:19.460 Right.

00:09:19.560 But I wasn't waking up.

00:09:21.320 And then I realized that I couldn't breathe.

00:09:25.160 I mean, panic set in at this point because I was suffocating.

00:09:29.160 I was panting.

00:09:30.980 I couldn't inhale.

00:09:32.200 I couldn't get any oxygen in.

00:09:33.640 And I really thought, yeah, I'm going to I'm like drowning.

00:09:42.260 And then I realized that it wasn't a dream, that it was real.

00:09:44.560 We were in a wreck.

00:09:45.400 I could see I could see the mangled cars on the other side of the road.

00:09:48.360 The impact actually knocked us off the road into the field.

00:09:51.120 It knocked the other cars into the other field across the road.

00:09:53.780 And so I could see these other cars.

00:09:56.120 I realized, you know, slowly piecing it together that we were in a in a head on car collision.

00:10:01.520 And man, we you know, the little country town, our paramedics came to to to get me out and realize I was trapped.

00:10:08.740 They didn't have the jaws of life.

00:10:10.000 It took 20 minutes for them to get there.

00:10:11.680 It took another 20 minutes for the jaws of life to get there before they could even start working on me.

00:10:17.660 You know, the funny thing is about that.

00:10:19.500 When you look at the cars, when you look at the damage, most people would expect that I was dead.

00:10:26.560 And they would think that at the hospital as well.

00:10:30.860 And I should be.

00:10:32.060 I mean, this is a story of absolute miracles, miracle after miracle.

00:10:35.900 And these were miracles that didn't start that day.

00:10:38.220 A lot of these miracles, man, they came into my life decades before the Lord placed these miracles decades before my life because I was going to need them on that day.

00:10:48.120 You know, I didn't put that together at the time, but now I look at it and I see how I was a man that thought that God was out there somewhere.

00:10:55.280 Right. And that he didn't really interfere or work in our lives.

00:10:58.600 And now I can tell you that he works in our lives every moment of every day, never stops, always intervening, always working, always guiding.

00:11:07.640 So I didn't know that at the time.

00:11:08.880 But one thing I did know was I knew I wasn't going to die.

00:11:13.580 See, when I was in that wreck, when I was trapped there, I was almost looking at myself like I was somewhere else and I was stuck.

00:11:21.900 That I that I was stuck somewhere else and I was half here and half there.

00:11:27.100 But I knew I knew and it wasn't it wasn't like it wasn't shock and it wasn't denial.

00:11:35.900 I knew I wasn't going to die.

00:11:37.860 I knew I was going to live.

00:11:39.300 And the only thing I can attribute to is like a God knowing.

00:11:42.060 I knew I was going to be OK.

00:11:43.680 I was the only person I can assure you on site and in the hospital that knew I was going to be OK because the doctors were pretty sure scratching their heads when we finally, you know, the life flighted me to, again, another miracle.

00:11:57.380 I'm not from Indianapolis.

00:11:59.300 I lived in Pennsylvania most of my life and I came here for my first airline job.

00:12:06.360 The Indy 500, you know, it's like one of the biggest races in the world and that they've seen wrecks like mine.

00:12:13.000 They have a team that's dedicated for that here and maybe nowhere else in the world would I have had that care, that team that literally they were all working on me at the same time.

00:12:24.520 You know, that's really unheard of.

00:12:25.520 You very rarely have an operation where more than one doctor is working on you.

00:12:29.320 But they had all the doctors working on me on all different parts of my body inside, outside.

00:12:34.720 Right. And and it was again, I look at it and say, man, with a likelihood.

00:12:39.080 Right. I'm in the right place.

00:12:41.020 That's just not a coincidence because there are no coincidences.

00:12:45.700 The coincidence is just something that a nonbeliever says when God's working in your life.

00:12:51.000 Right. So when I got to the hospital after they freed me, you know, they cut that car apart as much as they could and they still couldn't get me out.

00:13:00.080 They ended up playing tug of war with me, sedated me, played tug of war, put me in the helicopter and flew me down to Indy.

00:13:07.320 They they sent me through the machines.

00:13:12.100 Right. You know, the CAT scans, the MRIs to really see what was wrong.

00:13:16.140 I had self-diagnosed that I knew that I had a broken hip and I knew that I had a broken arm just because I could see that.

00:13:23.260 Right. And but we we weren't sure what was wrong.

00:13:26.140 They weren't sure what was wrong.

00:13:27.020 And so when they sent me through, they realized that my spleen was ruptured.

00:13:31.340 It took about five hours, five and a half hours from the moment of impact to my first surgery.

00:13:38.200 And when they went in and they worked on that spleen, we would later come to find out that it was it was the highest level damage you can have.

00:13:46.840 It was basically disintegrated in an injury like that has a lifespan of about 20 minutes before you before you bleed out and you die is five and a half hours.

00:13:59.960 And doctors, they still have there is no scientific medical understanding of how I could have lived with my spleen in the way that it was.

00:14:12.540 I should have been gone.

00:14:14.320 They found that I had two collapsed lungs, which is the reason why I was suffocating.

00:14:19.380 I broke, you know, both arms.

00:14:23.200 I had the the ulna was driven into my right hand.

00:14:26.420 My left hip was shattered.

00:14:28.060 The femur was driven through the rear socket.

00:14:30.660 Eight ribs were broken, 10 vertebrae, six herniated discs.

00:14:35.080 I had the muscles between my ribs were herniated out.

00:14:37.980 Again, that's an injury that doesn't have a name.

00:14:40.760 They only see those injuries on cadavers.

00:14:42.840 There hasn't been a person recorded that has lived through it.

00:14:46.280 It took them months to figure out how to try to fix it because doctors, surgeons have just never seen the injury, the blunt force trauma that causes the muscles to herniate out from between your ribs has been life ending in everybody else today.

00:15:01.980 The blood loss was was phenomenal.

00:15:05.660 My hemoglobin was down in the fours, which low is 14.

00:15:11.900 So I was in the fours, which is unsustainable.

00:15:14.980 Again, another reason they just with all the other injuries, they had no concept of how I was alive.

00:15:22.100 So it was pretty touch and go for a while.

00:15:24.740 You know, the impact was so hard that the lenses of my eyes folded over.

00:15:28.720 I have a list of injuries.

00:15:30.040 I guarantee you that I I've probably missed a dozen of them.

00:15:33.640 But to date, I've I I had last year was my 23rd surgery for repairs.

00:15:43.480 And I think I'm pretty much at the point now that they're the rest of the injuries will remain.

00:15:49.960 They'll remain unfixable for the rest of my life unless new technology comes along.

00:15:55.540 But I was I was misery, man.

00:16:00.860 I was living.

00:16:01.620 I I didn't know that pain existed on that level.

00:16:06.840 You know, we we all think we understand pain.

00:16:09.360 Right. And one of the reasons I list those that long, you know, laundry list of injuries is because your pain really is a relative.

00:16:17.520 It's a relative thing. Right.

00:16:19.200 You know, what hurts me might not hurt you and vice versa.

00:16:22.480 We it is hard to understand each other's pain.

00:16:25.200 It really is. But we can understand injuries.

00:16:27.420 We understand that a femur being driven through the hip socket or broken ribs and broken vertebrae and, you know, ruptured organs.

00:16:34.700 And, you know, we can understand like, OK, that hurts.

00:16:38.560 Right. So I was in a level of pain that I did not know existed.

00:16:41.900 And it started with the suffocation.

00:16:45.660 Was the pain in the suffocation, it started when I was in that car.

00:16:50.340 It was so awful that I kind of lived from that moment for the first week and a half, two weeks, second by second and telling myself, I can make it one more second.

00:17:06.460 I can make it one more second.

00:17:09.640 And that continued on like that.

00:17:12.240 Like I said, for weeks, I lived second by second in that agony that just it didn't go away.

00:17:17.840 And I was saturated to say I was saturated in pain.

00:17:22.600 And what that means is external stimulus caused pain.

00:17:29.080 So, for example, if a nurse or a doctor walked in the room, it was everything that I could do to not start screaming.

00:17:36.240 The additional stimulus of seeing them come in the room was agonizing.

00:17:41.240 The fact of like when a family member would come and visit me and wanted to hug me, I would start screaming.

00:17:49.580 Well, the first three days I had a I had a breathing tube in.

00:17:52.920 So I I couldn't I couldn't say anything.

00:17:56.560 I just had to endure.

00:17:58.560 But once the breathing tube was out, I would scream for people not to touch me because that additional stimulus of their touch on my skin was more than I could take.

00:18:11.040 I mean, I lived as a man that I wanted to just run away.

00:18:14.900 I just remember thinking I just wanted to run away.

00:18:17.300 But there was no escape and the pain didn't end.

00:18:20.680 It didn't lessen.

00:18:21.520 It didn't lighten.

00:18:22.620 It felt as if the medication they were giving me for it did nothing.

00:18:27.520 And I would live like that on and on for days.

00:18:32.780 So tell me a couple of things.

00:18:34.500 One, your wife and your kids, their reaction, what were they going through at the time?

00:18:40.000 And also, what are the injuries that you still sustain to this day?

00:18:46.040 What what are what what are you like today?

00:18:48.120 OK, so, you know, at the time, my kids, the the at the moment of the wreck, you know, the paramedics, they wanted to take my kids to the local doctor to the local hospital.

00:18:59.440 But we knew that we knew that I was being flight life flighted down to Indianapolis to the city, which is about an hour drive from us.

00:19:06.400 So my wife had to actually sign papers to not take the kids, that the that the EMTs would not take the kids and that she would take them to the hospital that I was going to and check them into that ER. 1.00

00:19:20.040 And we ended up having friends come, neighbors and drove Amy down once they life flighted me. 0.80

00:19:26.520 And so the kids went and got checked out.

00:19:28.520 And their injuries were, like I said, were relatively minor, a couple of broken bones and some damage to my daughter's ear.

00:19:37.080 And they've eventually gotten over it.

00:19:38.600 Their injuries are probably more psychological than anything, you know, just they don't like to drive on that country road that we were on.

00:19:44.820 Right. They avoid it.

00:19:45.960 And I understand that.

00:19:47.420 So the kids went down and the neighbors brought brought them back home that evening, that night.

00:19:54.100 And Amy stayed with me in the hospital, you know, really out of all of this, my wife was an absolute rock.

00:20:02.360 And she and she attributes, you know, the interesting thing about that is.

00:20:10.660 She had been praying.

00:20:12.040 That the Lord would strengthen her faith.

00:20:20.820 And then the wreck happened.

00:20:23.660 And had she not had faith, she would have been lost.

00:20:28.260 And so her faith did indeed.

00:20:31.180 I mean, it strengthened all of my kids, my kids.

00:20:34.640 Everybody came out of this a stronger believer because they witnessed the miracles, the impossibilities.

00:20:43.840 They saw it all.

00:20:45.940 And they saw that the blessings that I have received since.

00:20:52.160 Right.

00:20:52.400 And so it's changed everybody in that way.

00:20:55.540 The injuries that I still have now, the damage to the back was not fixable.

00:21:01.940 So those herniated discs, they, they herniated up into the bone above it and below it.

00:21:09.620 And so that's not surgically repairable.

00:21:13.660 At least it is in small numbers, but because I have six in a row, they can't do the fusion that they would do.

00:21:20.720 It would leave, it would leave my back immobile.

00:21:24.060 And the hip, the hip was shattered into, you know, like a million pieces.

00:21:28.880 Is it like, I don't know how they put it back together, but there's a lot of worry that if they did any fusion at all, that extra pressure on my, my damaged hip would actually cause that hip to break again.

00:21:40.340 So, so the back is, is a lot, the rib injury, they were never really able to fix.

00:21:47.360 And so what they did was they, my, my rib muscles would fall into my internal body, right?

00:21:54.380 And there'd be a big cavity.

00:21:55.420 You could actually stick your hand in my side and make it disappear, right?

00:21:59.520 And then my lung would come out and my lung would come out if I was laying on the other side.

00:22:03.520 So what they did is they, they, they put a mesh in and tried to sew the muscles to that mesh, but they had to leave it flexible because I have to be able to move.

00:22:12.520 So, so my, my left side of my body has no stability because you get, you gain a lot of stability through your intercostal muscles.

00:22:19.780 So that injury causes a lot of pain.

00:22:22.000 And then that causes a lot of pain in my back because of those, because of not having the stability.

00:22:27.760 And then there was a lot of damage to the vertebrae up in my neck.

00:22:31.100 And so I have a pretty tremendous amount of pain, but the residual pain is, is mostly nerve damage, which is what ended up grounding me from the FAA.

00:22:41.000 I can't fly anymore.

00:22:42.680 So I have nerve damage all up and down the spine.

00:22:46.600 And then that damage causes issues in all my limbs and my neck.

00:22:52.900 So it's pretty extensive.

00:22:54.700 So that's just something that will be kind of a forever thing.

00:23:00.260 And in the story, you know, we talk about, I always talk about it.

00:23:05.960 I was, I was very poorly catechized, right?

00:23:08.640 And I was not a, it was not, I didn't have a deep spiritual understanding of our faith.

00:23:13.880 And I had no concept, no clue of redemptive suffering.

00:23:18.780 But the Lord would teach me about that in my, and hopefully we get to talk about that a little bit later.

00:23:24.060 But I have been given a blessing that, that every day is, is an opportunity to, to suffer.

00:23:32.000 And every day is an opportunity for me to be like Simon of Cyrene, to pick up my cross and to carry it with joy and happiness.

00:23:40.140 And no, and, and, and, and I talked to the Lord and I, I asked him if, if he can fill my offering.

00:23:46.960 It's an offering of love that I carry, I carry for the souls in purgatory.

00:23:50.940 I carry it for him.

00:23:52.460 I carry it for whatever needs that he and the Blessed Mother determine are needed that day, right?

00:23:59.020 I carry it as a prayer.

00:24:00.860 And it's an opportunity that we all have, we all have suffering.

00:24:04.340 I mean, everybody suffers.

00:24:05.320 And if you don't think you're suffering, you're just not being honest with yourself.

00:24:08.740 I mean, most people are suffering in one way or another.

00:24:11.620 And there always is an opportunity to be like Simon, to pick up that cross, to carry it.

00:24:16.460 I mean, the Lord tells us that's what, what we need to do if we want to enter into, and if we want to follow him.

00:24:21.520 Right.

00:24:21.980 And, and so I look at it as a great, great blessing.

00:24:26.540 And as St. Padre Pio would say, you know, suffering is a great gift for those who choose to use it wisely.

00:24:31.800 And I've been given a tremendous gift.

00:24:34.820 So most people, when they end up, you know, doing a good deed, taking the kids to an event that they're supposed to go to, and they get blindsided, and their whole life has changed.

00:24:50.140 You lose your career, you've got, you know, you're a pilot, that's great, and it's all gone.

00:24:57.300 Most people say, God, what are you doing?

00:25:00.720 Rather, especially those who are not given to the faith in the robust way you are now.

00:25:06.020 How did God intervene in this to, to use it to his glory, rather than to a rebellious attitude, rejecting God for the horror that he's allowed?

00:25:18.780 Yeah, you know, that's, that's really an interesting question.

00:25:22.620 The doctors all told me that I would get addicted to the drugs and not to worry about it.

00:25:27.600 They had some, they had other drugs to get me off.

00:25:29.760 They told me that I would suffer depression and not to worry about it.

00:25:32.740 They would send me to doctors to deal with that.

00:25:34.220 They told me I'd never walk again, and they told me all these things that were going to be horrible that would happen.

00:25:39.640 See, but they didn't understand.

00:25:44.540 I was in the ICU for seven days, right?

00:25:46.620 And, and in the ICU, they, they, they watch you, they care for you every moment, right?

00:25:53.560 You can't, you can't blink an eye without a doctor or a nurse knowing what's going on and helping you, right?

00:25:58.460 And then when I made it out of the ICU, seven days, seven operations out of the ICU into a step-down unit, it was almost as if I was abandoned.

00:26:07.920 It was like the doctors and nurses all went away.

00:26:10.580 And my family, you know, they were so exhausted.

00:26:13.700 The family and friends that were coming every day.

00:26:15.840 Remember, it's an hour drive for them each way.

00:26:17.880 And, and then they, we all know, anybody that spent time as a caregiver in a hospital knows how draining that is, right?

00:26:26.200 And, you know, my wife, she had been doing it for seven days and taking care of three young kids at home. 0.92

00:26:33.080 I mean, she was exhausted.

00:26:35.660 And my brother was staying with me and another friend, my, my wife's brother, right?

00:26:39.420 They all were taking turns.

00:26:40.400 And so I told everybody when I got into that step-down unit that it would be okay, that I'm, we knew I'm out of the woods.

00:26:46.340 My blood level was growing.

00:26:47.700 It was coming back.

00:26:48.580 I mean, I wasn't going to die, right?

00:26:51.920 At least they, I knew I wasn't going to.

00:26:54.180 Now they knew I wasn't going to.

00:26:56.120 And so I sent them all home.

00:27:00.000 And, and this is a little bit long explanation for it.

00:27:04.040 But, but after this experience, after what I'm going to tell you, I learned that there is nothing, nothing on this earth as bad as what I experienced because I experienced the loss of God.

00:27:18.600 And see, after coming back from that, nothing that I went through could, could even remotely compare.

00:27:26.480 It doesn't scratch the surface.

00:27:28.440 See, nothing was as bad as they said it was because I went to the worst place that there is in all of existence.

00:27:36.140 And then I came back.

00:27:38.600 So everything else was, it was just gravy.

00:27:41.980 It was wonderful because I wasn't there.

00:27:46.080 And so where I went was I was in the, I was in my hospital bed.

00:27:50.420 And this is a very small recovery, very small step down room.

00:27:55.900 And it was cinder block wall, just, just beyond my feet.

00:28:00.140 And on that wall was just, this bright, staggeringly bright, white, little square.

00:28:08.160 And I looked at it and I thought, what is that?

00:28:10.380 And as I looked at that, it was as if I was transported through it and became like, became like a backwards tunnel.

00:28:17.200 It was incredibly bright, white, blindingly bright, bright, white all around me.

00:28:23.600 And at the end, it was like a long tunnel.

00:28:25.160 And I was, I was transporting through it at like an incredible rate.

00:28:28.560 And at the very end was a darkness, a little dark spot.

00:28:31.900 You know, it's a backwards tunnel.

00:28:33.160 You're in a tunnel normally and it's dark.

00:28:34.820 And at the end is light.

00:28:36.020 This is, I'm in the light and there's dark at the end.

00:28:39.040 I come out of that tunnel and I'm, I'm in a room now.

00:28:42.380 And I'm looking down upon a scene that I, I, I suddenly remember.

00:28:48.040 I remember that this happened to me.

00:28:50.540 It happened to me at another time earlier.

00:28:53.480 I believe it happened at the moment of impact.

00:28:56.340 I remembered this scene.

00:28:57.860 And then next thing I know, it was no longer a memory, but I was living it.

00:29:02.360 I was in it.

00:29:03.000 I was no longer looking down.

00:29:04.260 I was living it firsthand as if for the first time.

00:29:07.340 And I was in this room and the first thing that I realized was that I had exited time.

00:29:15.980 Time no longer existed.

00:29:17.640 I was in a place that was timeless.

00:29:21.880 I had unbelievable vision.

00:29:24.920 It was so crystal clear that it, it almost hurt my eyes.

00:29:29.980 Things were so clear.

00:29:31.120 And I realized that the place that I was, was real.

00:29:35.560 This was real.

00:29:36.580 And the world that I had lived my whole life in, that world was like a fake world.

00:29:40.820 It was foggy and it was cloudy compared to this crystal clear vision that I had now in the, in this truth that I lived in this realness.

00:29:51.720 And then I, I knew that I had knowledge and I'm going to call it the knowledge of the world.

00:29:58.060 And when I, what I mean by that is, is if it was ever recorded, written down, stored in a library, fought by a man, I knew it.

00:30:10.540 I didn't have to think about it.

00:30:12.200 I didn't have to recall it.

00:30:13.720 I, it just, it just, it just, all knowledge of the world was an instant access.

00:30:19.760 I didn't even have to access it.

00:30:21.000 I just was aware of it all.

00:30:24.820 For instance, what?

00:30:26.560 Well, we'll get to that.

00:30:30.760 I'm going to get to that.

00:30:32.260 All right.

00:30:32.760 So I realized that I had lost God.

00:30:40.860 Okay.

00:30:41.320 And so when I say that, I was 46 year old man and I never realized that God held my soul.

00:30:48.420 And see, in this knowledge that I had, I was, it was also inferred to me that what I knew and what I understand and what I'm going to tell you about these other worldly experiences, that they don't just apply to me, but they were, they apply to all of us.

00:31:04.860 And so when I tell you that God held my soul in his hand, he holds all of our soul from before our conception until after our death, he places our soul in our body and he never lets go.

00:31:16.020 And it's interesting the way he holds it.

00:31:18.360 He holds it as if we, like we would hold a softball, right?

00:31:22.460 And he holds our soul so that from the back and from the side, his hand protects it.

00:31:28.240 See, evil can't enter our soul from where we can't see.

00:31:32.640 If evil is going to enter into our soul, it enters through the front.

00:31:37.380 We see it and we must invite it in.

00:31:40.280 See, evil can't sneak into us and God protects it from that, right?

00:31:44.200 But he held my soul for my whole life and I had no idea.

00:31:48.580 I had no idea.

00:31:49.820 But then once he let go, all I could feel was his absence.

00:31:54.920 And now I'm going to say words that there are just not words.

00:31:58.140 There are not words in our language, in any language that can convey what I'm going to try to tell you.

00:32:05.280 But to lose God's touch was horrifying.

00:32:10.160 And horrifying is infinitely underrating what I'm telling you.

00:32:14.180 It was horrifying.

00:32:16.900 And it was, there was just such misery and fear.

00:32:21.500 And it was like being timeless.

00:32:24.860 Being timeless is like living in the moment of a startle.

00:32:27.900 I just had someone explain it as, we've all leaned back on our chair too far.

00:32:37.440 And there's that point of no return when suddenly the chair starts to go over.

00:32:45.400 Timelessness, where I was, was in that moment.

00:32:48.260 That startle of knowing that it's too late and the chair is going over.

00:32:52.580 And it's going to be like that forever.

00:32:55.300 And that's where I was.

00:32:56.600 I was in this place of horror forever.

00:33:01.080 Now, there was an entity, a being that was behind me.

00:33:05.500 And I say behind me because, so I didn't have a body.

00:33:08.840 And I could look 360 degrees around in any direction.

00:33:14.920 If, you know, if I wanted to look behind me, I could roll my vision back around.

00:33:22.160 I could see all around.

00:33:23.460 And I knew this entity was there.

00:33:24.960 And I knew that he would speak truth.

00:33:28.920 I knew that what he would tell me was truth.

00:33:30.840 And again, this is just knowledge that was infused to me.

00:33:34.420 And I did not feel love nor hatred from him.

00:33:39.520 If I felt anything, it was indifference.

00:33:41.340 But I know he spoke truth and I knew that I needed to ask some questions.

00:33:47.900 And so, you know, I had always had heard that hell was the absence of God.

00:33:53.200 And see, before I used to think about that, and I would actually think, you know, that's not that bad because God's not with me right now, right?

00:34:05.800 He's out there somewhere, but he's not with me right now.

00:34:09.280 So, how bad would hell be?

00:34:11.920 See, but I had no clue that God holds us.

00:34:15.760 Every moment never lets go.

00:34:19.680 His hand is always touching us.

00:34:21.420 And see, I didn't know that.

00:34:22.940 And now I was without him.

00:34:25.380 And I was terrified.

00:34:28.660 So, I asked this being, is this hell?

00:34:33.840 And he flatly said no.

00:34:36.700 Now, I was a pretty poorly Catholic, but the next step in the hierarchy would be purgatory.

00:34:44.060 And so, I asked him, is this purgatory?

00:34:46.500 And he, again, he flatly says no.

00:34:49.760 And he says, this is forever.

00:34:51.260 And he said, I don't want to be in forever.

00:34:55.920 What do I do to get out?

00:34:57.160 He said, that is up to you.

00:34:59.760 And I said, what do I do?

00:35:01.300 And he said, that is up to you.

00:35:03.700 And then he was gone.

00:35:04.840 And I was alone, alone for the first time.

00:35:07.200 I was absent of God.

00:35:08.520 And I was able to look around the room really and study it.

00:35:12.520 It was a small room, very small cylindrical room.

00:35:14.800 If I had arms, I could reach out and touch each wall.

00:35:18.000 And it was the highest gloss red that, I mean, I can't, it's like so bright, not like anything on this earth.

00:35:27.040 And the walls were made up of doors of all different sizes, flat handles.

00:35:32.360 Not that I had hands that I could open them, but I knew that those handles, those doorknobs, they were useless to me.

00:35:38.240 And then I looked up at the ceiling.

00:35:42.400 And the ceiling was like a white translucent.

00:35:47.280 And on the other side of it was this red viscous liquid, which I believe looked like blood.

00:35:54.900 And once I looked at it, I could never look away.

00:35:58.460 And the sight of it horrified me.

00:36:00.500 And it caused a white hot burning in my soul that went a million miles deep.

00:36:06.860 Like my soul was so much bigger than I ever understood.

00:36:11.200 It just went on and on.

00:36:12.380 And this white hot burning bore down to the core.

00:36:17.920 And see, I was aware of my sin.

00:36:23.700 I was buried under an ocean of it.

00:36:28.480 I could feel the weight, the cumulative weight of a lifetime of my sin crushing down on me.

00:36:35.980 And I was, I was just living, I was misery.

00:36:41.560 You know, when I came back, I thought about it.

00:36:43.860 I was misery.

00:36:45.580 See, I just was misery.

00:36:47.120 And it makes me think about when God spoke to Moses.

00:36:53.340 And Moses asked him his name and he says, I am.

00:36:58.000 See, because God just is.

00:37:00.080 He always is, always was, always will be God.

00:37:04.740 He just is.

00:37:06.420 And see, I was in a state where I just was.

00:37:08.800 I just was misery.

00:37:10.480 I always would be, from now until eternity, misery.

00:37:15.400 Now, I knew I could get out.

00:37:18.840 I had no body.

00:37:19.920 I had no way of moving.

00:37:21.360 The only thing I had was this vast knowledge, all the knowledge in the world.

00:37:25.840 You have to remember, I was an airline pilot, very type A, right?

00:37:30.240 And not only that, I was, I was always a fighter, right?

00:37:35.940 My solution to most things was to take a sledgehammer to it.

00:37:38.760 And with enough muscle, anything could be fixed with a sledgehammer, right?

00:37:42.940 And that's, that's my life.

00:37:44.540 That's how I lived to this point.

00:37:46.780 And so I was going to get myself out.

00:37:50.560 Hey, my friends.

00:37:51.860 You've heard about the Eucharistic revival that's going on.

00:37:55.380 The pilgrimage is going to culminate in Indiana at the Eucharistic Congress.

00:37:59.980 Well, we've got amazing news for you.

00:38:01.720 We are holding a traditional Latin math steps away from the main Congress center because we learned at first there was no traditional Latin mass, not on the schedule.

00:38:11.120 And we thought, oh, no, what we can do.

00:38:13.340 One of our donors said, can you fix that?

00:38:15.460 We found Victory Field right across steps away from where the Congress is being held to hold the Latin mass.

00:38:20.220 And guess what?

00:38:21.000 We learned that since then, there were some announcements of other Latin masses that are going to be in the area on different days.

00:38:28.360 And so it's really awesome.

00:38:30.480 So if you are in the traditional Latin mass, you thought, oh, I can't go to the Congress because they don't have one there.

00:38:36.200 They do have them there now.

00:38:37.940 And it's just wonderful.

00:38:39.880 This is Father Fasching.

00:38:41.000 He's going to be there.

00:38:42.200 And this is Father James Altman, who's going to be there.

00:38:44.960 They're going to be celebrating masses for us.

00:38:47.040 Lifesight's going to be inside the Congress as well, as is Vicki Yamasaki.

00:38:51.880 Vicki, go ahead. 0.95

00:38:52.620 Yeah.

00:38:53.020 We're just so excited.

00:38:54.520 We hope you join us and sign up for this free event, free lunches because of a generous donor.

00:39:03.420 As he said, I'm actually going to be at the Eucharistic Congress, and I'm going to walk away from my booth so that I can enjoy this traditional Latin mass and these three great speakers that will offer insights into why it is that so many Catholics no longer believe in the real presence.

00:39:28.600 As we know, in our Catholic culture, in our Catholic teaching, there's a phrase, lexorandi, lexorgedendi, as we pray, so we believe.

00:39:37.140 And through the traditional Latin mass, it inspires such depth of prayer.

00:39:42.700 No funny business going on up there.

00:39:44.280 People believe, and so we're trying to inspire that belief in the real presence because without which, we do not have life within us.

00:39:50.880 Thus, what we're doing will actually be throwing fuel on the fire of revival, a belief in the real presence of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the Holy Eucharist.

00:40:02.100 Amen.

00:40:03.480 Father, I'm thrilled for the opportunity to remind you what you can be doing to renew your own personal devotion to the Eucharist and also how to get others to remind them to deepen their faith in worshiping our Lord in the Eucharist.

00:40:20.140 So based on my own experience, it's just going to be a great opportunity to remind people of what the church teaches us, that our lives are supposed to revolve around the Holy Eucharist.

00:40:30.260 So I'm looking forward to it.

00:40:31.660 I'm going to walk right across the street to Victory Field and join you for this beautiful traditional Latin mass on July 19th and hear from these three fantastic speakers.

00:40:48.140 And maybe you can catch the other traditional Latin mass the day before with Archbishop Coeur d'Alene, and now that's a little further away.

00:40:59.860 That's just under two miles at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, smaller parish.

00:41:06.740 It can seat about 400, so you better get a seat early there.

00:41:11.220 Victory Field seats about 10,000.

00:41:14.180 So register soon.

00:41:16.140 We can't wait to see you.

00:41:18.220 Join us, our friends, at Victory Field on July 19th, right steps away from the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana.

00:41:27.360 God bless you and look forward to seeing you there.

00:41:30.960 Math problems.

00:41:32.040 We've all seen the movies where the math problems are on the chalkboard and they go like around the entire room, right?

00:41:37.020 Just equation after equation going on forever.

00:41:39.200 I could do those in my head as simple as I'm adding one plus one now, right?

00:41:44.100 I could do these chalkboard problems one after another after another until I exhaust all math.

00:41:52.580 All math.

00:41:53.420 I did it all.

00:41:55.160 Then I moved to poetry.

00:41:56.920 I started reciting poetry, right?

00:41:58.820 Now, I'm not a poetry guy.

00:42:00.260 If you ask me to recite a poem now, I wouldn't have one to give you.

00:42:03.640 But I recited all of the poetry.

00:42:07.260 And then I started the great works from Shakespeare.

00:42:09.740 I recited all of the Shakespeare.

00:42:12.380 I went on.

00:42:13.360 I started doing logic problems.

00:42:15.640 Now, I did have a logic class in college, right?

00:42:18.240 It was like a requirement.

00:42:19.160 And I took a logic class and Venn diagrams and things that I took one class and I passed it.

00:42:26.380 And that's about my limit of knowledge on logic, right?

00:42:29.040 But I was doing complex, multi-level logic problems.

00:42:34.180 I did everything there was to do.

00:42:36.700 I used all the knowledge of the world until I exhausted it all.

00:42:41.560 All of it.

00:42:43.500 I have no comprehension how long I was there.

00:42:46.320 All the while, living in a stark terror, a stark fear, a stark agony of losing God's touch.

00:42:56.600 All the while, never ceasing, never ending, trying everything I could to get out and not being able to free myself.

00:43:05.540 When I exhausted all of that knowledge, I took an evaluation of myself.

00:43:12.360 I looked at the judgment.

00:43:13.760 See, I understood it was a just judgment.

00:43:17.920 I agreed with where I was.

00:43:20.220 I knew I deserved to be there for all of eternity.

00:43:23.320 Because of my actions and the way that I lived my life up until that point, this was a just reward.

00:43:31.000 I agreed with it.

00:43:34.040 And I knew that there was nothing I could do to get out.

00:43:36.600 And so I resigned.

00:43:37.580 And I say to myself, there is nothing you can do.

00:43:40.160 There is nothing you can do to free yourself.

00:43:43.840 And at that moment, that white ceiling got just a little lighter.

00:43:54.080 And the blood changed to a little bit different color.

00:43:57.080 And I even said to myself, oh, my goodness, you're doing it.

00:43:59.800 Don't stop.

00:44:00.560 Keep it up.

00:44:01.060 And then I corrected myself immediately.

00:44:02.700 And I said, no, you're not doing anything.

00:44:05.180 There is nothing, nothing you can do.

00:44:08.040 And at that moment, it was as if I passed through that red viscous, that blood-like liquid.

00:44:15.660 I passed through it, and I found myself on this gentle knoll, this lush green grass, a green like I've never seen, a green, an unearthly green, but most beautiful.

00:44:30.040 And I was staring up into a blue sky that was a blue like nothing I've ever seen.

00:44:38.380 And it was so beautiful and so peaceful.

00:44:44.020 The peace just permeated into me.

00:44:48.060 And that being was back.

00:44:51.360 And he said, I asked him, I said, am I out?

00:44:55.960 And he said, you are out.

00:44:57.720 And I said, is this real?

00:45:00.540 And he said, this is real.

00:45:03.500 Everything went black for a moment.

00:45:05.060 And I found myself back in my bed in the hospital.

00:45:09.960 And I tell you that if a second went by, it would shock me.

00:45:16.320 Everything that I experienced, years, maybe decades that I was in that place, it happened in this sweep of a second hand.

00:45:27.720 And I think to myself, I don't think I'm going to heaven.

00:45:35.600 Man, that is a stark realization.

00:45:38.500 To come to a realization that, you know, you realize that at the moment of impact, right, I had this experience.

00:45:44.620 And I was the man that was sure I was going to heaven.

00:45:49.020 And I didn't go there.

00:45:51.760 You know, and I thought about it quite a bit.

00:45:54.520 But I thought that I might be in purgatory, right?

00:46:01.660 And I wasn't catechized.

00:46:04.500 I knew very little about what purgatory was.

00:46:06.720 See, I learned afterwards.

00:46:09.060 I studied.

00:46:09.620 I changed, right?

00:46:10.680 And I realized that the people, the souls in purgatory, well, they cannot pray for themselves.

00:46:19.160 They can pray.

00:46:20.860 And if you've picked up on one thing that I did not do when I was in that place, I did not pray.

00:46:27.360 See, because I didn't pray because I did not know prayer existed.

00:46:32.280 See, I've also learned since, and I'm going to prove it as we go on, is a prayer wells up in us from God.

00:46:43.460 And so I tell people, if you can pray, then hallelujah.

00:46:46.260 I know this is during Lent, and we're not supposed to say that, but hallelujah, because if you can pray, the Lord is with you.

00:46:56.220 Man, see, I was in a place that I wasn't with the Lord.

00:46:59.560 And see, not only could I not pray, I didn't know prayer existed.

00:47:04.820 See, I knew that I missed God.

00:47:07.640 I knew that I loved God, and I knew that I wished that I could be with Him.

00:47:11.200 I wished that He could be with me.

00:47:13.640 But because of my choices that I made, that couldn't be.

00:47:17.760 See, but I didn't know prayer existed because God was not with me.

00:47:21.240 So, that happened maybe 10 o'clock at night, my first night in the step down.

00:47:34.900 The next morning, I don't know, around 10 o'clock, my wife comes in, and I tell her, I said, hey, I was supposed to get pain medicine at 8 this morning.

00:47:43.120 And I didn't, I didn't get any.

00:47:50.480 And we called, and the nurses said they would bring pain medicine, and they weren't in, man.

00:47:57.380 You know, I told you earlier that I didn't think the pain medicine was doing anything.

00:48:01.200 But I was a couple hours late, and I was noticing that what I thought was, you know, an 11 on the scale of 1 to 10, that's where I was living for over a week.

00:48:13.900 I mean, I was moving up higher and higher.

00:48:16.440 That pain was ratcheting up by the minute.

00:48:19.480 So much so that my wife's presence in the room was more than I could bear.

00:48:25.900 Now, I didn't tell her that because she was so worried, right?

00:48:28.840 I mean, you don't want to, you don't want to share that with her.

00:48:31.420 So I told her I was just really tired.

00:48:33.160 I told her it would be a good day to go spend time with our kids.

00:48:37.160 But in reality, I just needed her out of the room because I was, I was in agony.

00:48:42.600 And I asked her if she would stop by the nursing station and have them bring medicine. 1.00

00:48:47.040 And she said she would, but nobody ever came.

00:48:49.660 I would continue to call.

00:48:51.060 They would not, they would answer, but no one would come.

00:48:53.500 And hours and hours go by and I am, I'm nearly out of my mind where I was living second by second before I couldn't even do that.

00:49:03.020 It came to be evening and a new nurse came in and he said, he's writing on the, on the whiteboard information, you know.

00:49:13.820 And I said, oh, thank God you're here.

00:49:17.120 I said, I'm so far behind on my pain medicine.

00:49:20.500 And he turned around and he said, has no one told you?

00:49:25.180 And he told me what?

00:49:26.700 He said, there was a mistake made this morning.

00:49:29.120 You were given too much of a certain medicine and you can't have anything until eight o'clock in the morning tomorrow.

00:49:36.760 He's like, I can't even give you Tylenol.

00:49:41.620 And I thought, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this?

00:49:45.020 It's six o'clock in the morning.

00:49:46.240 I'm in an absolute dire agony.

00:49:49.500 So he did something that I, I try to emulate.

00:49:52.480 It's one of the reasons why I do what I do.

00:49:56.360 He sat down next to me and he just started to talk to me.

00:50:01.120 We didn't talk about doctors and hospitals and medicine.

00:50:04.460 We, we just talked.

00:50:05.740 And I'll be honest with you.

00:50:06.680 I, I don't remember everything that we talked about, but he told me that he was a traveling nurse and that he goes from hospital, hospital.

00:50:18.220 He's in a different hospital every night and that he would, he wouldn't be back to this hospital until I was home.

00:50:24.760 Now, I didn't think of it at the time, but the doctor's prognosis was that I would spend several months in that hospital.

00:50:33.820 And then I would spend an additional several months in a step-down unit hospital or a rehab hospital.

00:50:41.400 So how he knew I was going to be home in 18 days because I was home in 18 days, which is another miracle, but, but how he thought that he wouldn't be there until I was there.

00:50:53.380 And I, he spent so much time talking to me that the guy that literally is wrapped in casts from head to toe tells him, oh, you have, you have so much to do.

00:51:03.880 You need to move on.

00:51:04.620 You can't spend so much time with me.

00:51:05.980 And he tells me, I have nothing else to do right now.

00:51:10.840 Now I can tell you, anybody that spent time in a hospital knows that there's not a nurse in a hospital that has 45 minutes to sit down with a patient, especially in a step-down unit just off of the ICU.

00:51:21.320 Right.

00:51:21.520 I mean, we know that.

00:51:23.200 And the interesting thing is, you know, I go around the country and I get, I share my story.

00:51:26.780 I tell my story and I've had a lot of nurses, uh, listen and hands down the nurses in Indiana tell me that there is no such position.

00:51:37.840 There is no position where a nurse travels from hospital, hospital every day.

00:51:42.820 And, and it just doesn't exist.

00:51:44.940 And, you know, it's funny because I always thought that he was an angel.

00:51:50.040 And even if he wasn't, he did something, he, he did something that we all can do.

00:51:55.500 And he acted like an angel to me.

00:51:58.560 And it's something that we have the opportunity to do with each other.

00:52:02.500 We can all act like an angel for each other.

00:52:07.620 And so he finally left and he left me with just a great peace.

00:52:15.960 And now I'm in, I'm in really a tremendous amount of pain now.

00:52:20.200 And I think to myself, I don't think I'm going to be able to go to sleep, but if I could close my eyes for a little bit, maybe I would just drift off and maybe some of that time would pass.

00:52:31.440 And so I close my eyes and I drift out as if I'm leaning over an edge and I'm looking over this ledge, this great cliff.

00:52:44.780 And it goes on from horizon to horizon, as far as I can see.

00:52:48.580 And in front of me is just this dark abyss of nothingness.

00:52:53.760 And I look down into this pit.

00:52:56.800 And there are these creatures, there's just so many, uncountable, and they're intertwined, arms and legs, they're twisted together.

00:53:04.920 And their mouths, and they have multiple mouths and multiple eyes on their face, and they're covered in blood.

00:53:11.220 And they're letting out a wailing, it's just like bone-crushing fear coming out of there, and despair, and remorse, sorrow.

00:53:22.440 It's just horrifying, soul-stealing is what I call it.

00:53:27.700 And I open my eyes and I'm back in my bed.

00:53:31.260 So I close them again and I'm right there, leaning over this edge, looking down into the pit of hell.

00:53:39.280 Terrified.

00:53:41.220 Now, losing God was a horror of a different magnitude.

00:53:46.800 This was like a different horror.

00:53:49.080 It was equal because God wasn't there, but it was different.

00:53:52.760 It was a different kind of fear.

00:53:55.400 Maybe it wasn't even fear, but hopelessness.

00:54:00.700 I open my eyes and determine that I'm not going to close them again, and I pray.

00:54:06.540 I ask Jesus to send the Holy Spirit.

00:54:11.220 To take these visions away.

00:54:14.620 But see, I did not close my eyes again, see, because I did not believe that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit.

00:54:23.080 And I was afraid to close my eyes.

00:54:24.840 And again, this is where I proved to you that prayer comes from God.

00:54:31.000 So I decide that I'm going to pray to Jesus.

00:54:35.520 And the first thing that I say is I ask Jesus to take this pain.

00:54:39.360 And I immediately say, no.

00:54:44.540 It is unfair for me to ask.

00:54:46.820 You've already carried my pain once.

00:54:49.580 It's so unfair for me to ask.

00:54:51.580 And I offer you, I will carry my pain.

00:54:54.620 I will carry it for the salvation of the world.

00:54:57.100 Now, see, I tell you that that prayer was a foreign thought to me.

00:55:02.560 I didn't know.

00:55:03.980 I had never heard of redemptive suffering.

00:55:06.440 I had no concept.

00:55:08.880 No concept of it.

00:55:10.700 And yet I made a prayer that was foreign to me.

00:55:14.080 It offered to carry my pain.

00:55:15.580 And I started talking to Jesus about his passion.

00:55:26.760 See, it occurred to me.

00:55:28.160 It felt as if I was being led.

00:55:30.900 So my injuries were so similar.

00:55:34.140 I told him, I said, they scourged your back.

00:55:39.740 The skin on my back has been torn off.

00:55:42.220 I said, they pierced your hands and your feet.

00:55:45.820 I said, my own bones have pierced my hands and feet.

00:55:50.280 I said, you hung on a cross and suffocated for hours.

00:55:54.340 I was trapped in a car and suffocated for hours.

00:55:59.940 You lost so much blood.

00:56:03.100 I know the feeling.

00:56:04.740 I know the fatigue.

00:56:08.200 We talked about the passion.

00:56:09.960 I said, we, I talked.

00:56:14.000 He listened.

00:56:21.060 We talked for a while.

00:56:23.520 I had no idea, no idea what he suffered for us.

00:56:30.580 And then I, I forgot that I was afraid.

00:56:35.200 I told Jesus that I was tired.

00:56:43.980 I was going to close my eyes and go to sleep.

00:56:50.380 And I closed my eyes and right in front of me, right in front of me.

00:56:56.320 Then again, I'm going to use words.

00:56:57.980 And at this point, I fear that they're blasphemous because there are no words to describe what I saw.

00:57:03.920 And the words of this earth are so pale.

00:57:07.940 What I saw is infinitely greater than what I'm going to describe.

00:57:13.240 But in front of me was this beautiful ball of light.

00:57:17.520 Beautiful.

00:57:18.100 It's like the size of a grapefruit.

00:57:19.480 And it was right in front of me.

00:57:23.460 And I opened my eyes.

00:57:26.300 And see, I would later understand that this is where the spiritual battle, this is the first time in my life that I can identify the spiritual battle.

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00:58:32.540 I open my eyes and a voice says, just out of my thought, brain damage.

00:58:40.760 See, now here's the thing about that is, with this horrendous wreck that I was in, all this damage to all the parts of my body, my organs, my spine, my neck, everything.

00:58:53.600 The amazing thing about it is, is I did not have brain damage.

00:58:57.040 They looked.

00:58:58.080 They did all the tests.

00:58:59.680 There was no brain damage.

00:59:00.720 Here's the amazing thing.

00:59:01.660 I didn't even have a concussion.

00:59:03.060 So we knew I didn't have brain damage.

00:59:06.100 And yet the voice tries to lead me away from what was happening.

00:59:12.580 And so I close my eyes again.

00:59:16.140 And I see this beautiful ball of light.

00:59:19.640 And I open them.

00:59:20.700 And the voice says, brain damage.

00:59:25.260 And so now I know I need to call the nurse.

00:59:27.980 I need to let them know that I have brain damage.

00:59:30.200 I'm going to tell them about the vision that I had yesterday that I was afraid to tell, right?

00:59:34.100 And I'm reaching down to push this button, the call button, in an audible voice, in this very small room, in the chair sitting right next to me, speaks.

00:59:45.820 And I hear it with my ears.

00:59:47.660 And the voice says, look at it.

00:59:51.440 It is the Holy Spirit.

00:59:53.540 Now I turn and I look quickly.

00:59:55.320 And there's nobody there.

00:59:56.680 And so now I know 100% that I have brain damage.

01:00:01.620 I have such a doubter, right?

01:00:05.180 And so my finger is moving and my thumb is ready to push that button to call the nurse.

01:00:11.040 And that voice moves into my mind, into the back of my head.

01:00:15.000 And it pleads with me.

01:00:16.800 And it says, look at it.

01:00:20.020 It is the Holy Spirit.

01:00:23.220 See, now I knew that voice.

01:00:25.980 I heard that voice my first time when I was nine years old.

01:00:28.820 The next time I would hear that voice, I was 15, and it helped me save a little girl's life.

01:00:37.580 In my 30s, I heard it.

01:00:40.740 And it spoke to me, and it helped me save my own child's life.

01:00:45.420 And now it was speaking to me.

01:00:47.600 And ultimately, it was going to save my life.

01:00:51.180 See, I knew that voice.

01:00:52.760 It had always spoken truth.

01:00:54.320 And so I trusted it.

01:00:58.980 And I looked at it.

01:01:01.040 Now, forgive me.

01:01:02.740 I'm saying it.

01:01:04.400 And we refer to the Holy Spirit as a he.

01:01:07.420 But you have to remember, I was so poorly catechized.

01:01:11.020 I didn't know that.

01:01:12.800 To me, the Holy Spirit wasn't it.

01:01:15.300 And if that voice would have spoken and said, look at him, I would have not known who he meant.

01:01:20.500 And so the voice spoke to me so that I could understand.

01:01:27.240 So from now on, I will use the proper terminology.

01:01:30.160 But that's where I was at the time.

01:01:35.940 So I trusted the voice, and I closed my eyes.

01:01:39.820 And in front of me again was this beautiful ball of light, the Holy Spirit.

01:01:43.620 But I started to be transported out.

01:01:47.600 And I will call this the vastness of space.

01:01:50.760 Now, I will say, I don't know if there were stars or planets.

01:01:53.420 All I could see was him.

01:01:56.520 And I was moving at a really high rate of speed again, moving out to him.

01:02:01.320 And as I got closer, the Holy Spirit was growing in size, becoming enormous, right?

01:02:07.040 It was much bigger than I thought.

01:02:08.780 It wasn't just the size of a grapefruit.

01:02:10.600 He was large, just huge.

01:02:13.940 And as I get close to him, it's so bright, so unbelievably bright.

01:02:20.380 I can barely look at him.

01:02:22.300 And just as I think that I can barely look at him, this gossamer veil covers him.

01:02:28.380 It's beautiful, just beautiful.

01:02:30.720 And the only thing I can liken it to, now again, I'm a science guy, a physics guy.

01:02:35.440 It looked like plasma, right?

01:02:38.120 And plasma has like this sheer look to it, but it's electric.

01:02:42.420 It's alive, right?

01:02:43.400 And it's just this color.

01:02:45.120 I can't even describe the color of it.

01:02:47.020 But this veil covers the Holy Spirit.

01:02:50.040 And it blocks just enough of the light so that I can look at him.

01:02:55.280 And this gossamer fog was pooled at the poles, north and south, east and west.

01:03:02.640 And it formed a symmetrical cross, beautiful.

01:03:07.760 And I come up to the Holy Spirit and I look at him.

01:03:13.160 You know, the first thing I thought when I saw him being a science guy is that he resembled a star.

01:03:21.060 Like when we look at the science channel and we see our sun and it looks like the surface is moving and alive.

01:03:28.400 Only multiply that by infinity.

01:03:31.900 The beauty is so much more beautiful, but it resembled it.

01:03:38.760 And that was the first thing I thought of.

01:03:40.380 And the voice said, look at him.

01:03:43.800 So I did.

01:03:45.920 I was able to move around him on all sides.

01:03:49.160 And it's funny because it reminded me of when I was a child.

01:03:55.260 And my parents would put the Christmas presents under the tree.

01:03:59.460 And you'd want to like sneak when they weren't looking and look and see if there was anything with your name on it, right?

01:04:05.460 And you're kind of looking over your shoulder while you're peeking, right?

01:04:08.440 And that's what I was doing.

01:04:09.520 And see what I was allowed to look at him.

01:04:11.340 But I don't know why.

01:04:12.100 I always think about that.

01:04:15.980 And I looked at him and I eventually I came head on to him.

01:04:19.440 And the first thing I realized was the power.

01:04:26.980 I felt his power.

01:04:29.580 And see it, I'm going to say it traveled through me, but it didn't travel.

01:04:34.320 It was already there.

01:04:36.060 It reached to the edges of the universe.

01:04:38.420 It took no time to go there.

01:04:40.320 It was already there.

01:04:41.240 It was everywhere.

01:04:42.340 His power was everywhere.

01:04:44.900 And it was vast.

01:04:47.260 Oh, the power was so vast.

01:04:49.880 Right?

01:04:50.040 And that's when I gained such disdain for the enemy to the point to have since that day, I've never called him by his name because it, I looked at it.

01:05:00.900 I was just, I was just a regular man, right?

01:05:04.000 With limited intellect.

01:05:06.200 And the enemy, you know, he was an elevated being.

01:05:09.340 He had a better intellect.

01:05:10.760 And I knew, I knew this power was so vast and so strong that nothing could ever defeat it.

01:05:17.840 Nothing.

01:05:18.640 What would make you think you could fight it and win?

01:05:21.740 Like I lost all respect and I thought your pride.

01:05:24.500 What pride must you have had to think you could win?

01:05:28.640 Nothing.

01:05:29.200 No one could ever defeat this power.

01:05:35.960 And then, then I felt love, love touching me.

01:05:43.340 Now, again, I didn't have a body and my vision was clear again, crystal clear.

01:05:50.360 Only where in that other world, my vision was so clear, it hurt.

01:05:55.640 See here, I was thankful that my vision was so clear so I could see it.

01:06:00.640 And the knowledge.

01:06:02.480 In that other world, I had the knowledge of the world.

01:06:05.520 But see here, I had the knowledge of what I'll call the universe.

01:06:09.320 All the knowledge.

01:06:10.620 Ever.

01:06:11.520 I knew what God knew.

01:06:13.440 He elevated my intellect to the point to where things like our mysteries,

01:06:17.440 I could look at it and understand them.

01:06:20.880 Like I thought, oh, it's so simple.

01:06:23.660 Well, this is so simple.

01:06:24.520 I remember thinking that about the Holy Trinity.

01:06:27.160 Like the Holy Trinity was like the simplest thing.

01:06:29.380 It made such sense.

01:06:30.520 It was so simple.

01:06:31.620 Even a child could understand it, right?

01:06:33.680 Now, sadly, I'm back here.

01:06:36.680 And I, I don't have that same knowledge.

01:06:39.020 And I can tell you this, that any man that says he understands the Trinity,

01:06:44.940 you don't believe him because he can't.

01:06:46.720 We can't.

01:06:47.440 But I'm letting you know that when I was in that place, when I was with our Lord,

01:06:52.400 I understood those things.

01:06:55.600 And so now I feel love touching me.

01:06:59.360 Now, I'm not saying I felt loved.

01:07:01.760 I'm not saying that we've all felt loved.

01:07:05.320 I felt love like it was a physical thing touching me.

01:07:09.720 It was reminiscent of what the rays of sun feel like when they touch our skin, right?

01:07:15.880 That was what I could feel it touching me.

01:07:18.480 And then I felt mercy in the same way.

01:07:22.380 And see, later I would, I would think about this.

01:07:25.660 I would contemplate this.

01:07:26.640 And I, I realized that oddly enough, the catechism describes the Holy Spirit as power.

01:07:34.100 The father is love and the son is mercy.

01:07:37.400 See, coming through the Holy Spirit, I felt all of them through the Holy Spirit.

01:07:44.000 And I felt these things that we think are just abstract as physical, concrete experiences.

01:07:56.240 Then, then scriptures started flooding my mind, right?

01:08:02.100 And so the, the first scripture, and the way it happened is the scripture would flood my mind and I would exclaim an answer.

01:08:08.300 So scripture floods my mind and I say, oh my gosh, how easy it would be for God to pass a camel through the eye of the needle.

01:08:18.340 With this vast power, it would be so easy.

01:08:20.760 It'd be the easiest thing God did.

01:08:22.080 And then I thought, oh my goodness, if we had just a faith, the size of a mustard seed, the tiniest little faith, multiplied against this infinite power, we indeed could make mountains move.

01:08:40.740 And then I saw, I understood the Christmas star.

01:08:45.220 I realized that that's what I was looking at.

01:08:47.620 See, as a kid, I used to always think, how did, how did the wise men find a place where Jesus was?

01:08:52.960 I would look outside up at the stars and I'd see a million stars above my house.

01:08:57.240 And I'd always think, how did they know?

01:08:59.880 See, but the wise men, they saw what I saw.

01:09:04.720 What I looked at, it indeed, the beautiful paintings that we see at Christmastime with that beautiful Christmas star, that's what I was looking at.

01:09:11.820 It would be, just over the next hill, over the next mountain, the wise men would follow it until it came and it rested over a place.

01:09:20.760 And they knew.

01:09:22.220 See, and it explained why, why didn't Herod just follow the same star?

01:09:27.300 Why didn't he follow the star?

01:09:29.780 See, because like Jesus in his ministry, he only showed who he was to the people that needed to see.

01:09:36.440 I understood why Jesus could walk up to a fisherman mending his net and say, follow me.

01:09:42.180 And he would get up and follow him, because for a moment, Jesus would show them something.

01:09:48.640 And then I saw Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

01:09:55.160 And they came to arrest him.

01:09:58.640 And they said, are you Jesus of Nazareth?

01:10:00.720 And he says, I am.

01:10:02.220 See, he used that same name that Moses used.

01:10:07.240 He says, I am.

01:10:08.960 And then he showed them what I saw.

01:10:12.280 See, no man could stand in the presence of that power.

01:10:16.600 And so they fall to the ground.

01:10:19.600 See, he did that for our benefit and for theirs.

01:10:24.720 See, he wanted them to know, and he wanted us to know,

01:10:27.460 that they could not take him.

01:10:29.460 He voluntarily went.

01:10:37.540 You know, and then I, there was a peace.

01:10:41.740 There was a peace just permeating into me.

01:10:46.000 There was no pain.

01:10:48.380 There was no, I just wanted to be there forever.

01:10:52.160 You know, I looked down, I could look down,

01:10:54.340 like to my right and like where my feet would be.

01:10:58.640 And I could, I could see my family.

01:11:02.700 See, I knew they would be okay.

01:11:06.620 I knew that God would take care of them.

01:11:09.480 See, God takes care of all of us.

01:11:11.760 I knew, I knew that God was holding their souls, right?

01:11:16.720 I knew all of that.

01:11:17.840 It would be okay.

01:11:18.920 It would be okay if I stayed there forever

01:11:20.600 because that's where I wanted to be.

01:11:22.120 See, I didn't realize my whole life,

01:11:24.560 I was homesick for this place.

01:11:28.860 And at that moment,

01:11:30.440 one of those beautiful Gossamer Spires

01:11:32.560 reached out and touched me in my soul.

01:11:38.340 And it's really hard to explain,

01:11:41.740 but I felt myself pouring into the Lord

01:11:45.560 and I felt the Lord pouring into me.

01:11:48.300 And it was, it was, again, these words,

01:11:51.640 they're just so pale.

01:11:52.700 It was every good thing.

01:11:55.140 It was, it was joy and bliss and love and peace

01:11:59.880 and ecstasy and happiness and every good thing

01:12:03.420 pouring into me as I was pouring out into the Lord

01:12:06.560 all at the same moment, impossibly.

01:12:09.240 And it was so good.

01:12:13.000 All I could say was more.

01:12:15.720 So I wanted more.

01:12:18.320 And it increased.

01:12:20.480 He increased pouring into me.

01:12:22.100 I increased pouring into,

01:12:23.380 into him until,

01:12:25.280 until I lost consciousness.

01:12:29.340 And again, this happened at maybe 10 or 11 o'clock at night,

01:12:32.440 the night before I found myself waking up.

01:12:35.740 The sun was already up.

01:12:36.780 It was probably seven or eight o'clock in the morning.

01:12:39.920 I had slept the rest of the night, pain-free.

01:12:42.960 I don't even know if doctors or nurses came in

01:12:45.140 to check on me in all of that time.

01:12:48.660 As a matter of fact,

01:12:49.440 I remained pain-free until

01:12:50.820 I took my first pain medicine the next day

01:12:53.760 and then the pain came back.

01:12:58.560 And so,

01:12:59.780 you asked me a long time ago,

01:13:02.800 I tend to talk a lot when I tell this story

01:13:06.220 about the bad things.

01:13:10.000 See, I didn't,

01:13:11.040 I didn't become addicted to the drugs

01:13:13.320 because I realized what benefit there is

01:13:16.600 to having this redemptive suffering.

01:13:18.980 So I didn't use the pain medicine

01:13:20.540 after I got home.

01:13:21.980 They told me that I become depressed.

01:13:25.140 They told me all these things, right?

01:13:27.160 See, but they didn't understand

01:13:29.760 that I went to the worst place

01:13:32.840 that we can't even imagine.

01:13:35.820 And I can tell you this,

01:13:37.400 if you told me that I had to live

01:13:39.980 another hundred years

01:13:41.560 at the peak of that pain,

01:13:43.660 or I could take one second

01:13:45.680 without God,

01:13:48.140 I would choose the hundred years of pain

01:13:50.280 and I wouldn't even think twice about it

01:13:54.680 because one second without God

01:13:57.980 is an unimaginable torture.

01:14:01.220 It's an eternity.

01:14:05.160 And so,

01:14:06.420 I used to think

01:14:08.480 that God is out there somewhere, right?

01:14:11.860 And we prayed to Him

01:14:12.760 and sometimes He answered

01:14:13.760 and sometimes He didn't.

01:14:16.400 But, you know, I look at it now,

01:14:17.820 it's one of the benefits

01:14:20.080 of that red room,

01:14:21.400 one of the benefits

01:14:22.080 of that misery

01:14:22.860 of losing God's touch

01:14:24.240 is that

01:14:24.700 when I came back,

01:14:26.580 I could feel Him holding my soul.

01:14:28.800 I feel it right now

01:14:29.860 while I talk to you

01:14:30.620 and I assure you,

01:14:32.440 remember,

01:14:33.140 I was shown

01:14:34.060 that I am not different

01:14:35.040 than anybody else.

01:14:37.160 God is holding your soul

01:14:38.300 right now,

01:14:39.840 just like He holds mine.

01:14:42.380 He never lets go.

01:14:45.020 And so,

01:14:45.760 there was nothing

01:14:47.400 on this earth

01:14:48.120 that made it

01:14:48.820 too bad.

01:14:51.000 I used to think

01:14:51.960 about that footprint

01:14:53.280 prone, right?

01:14:54.180 And I used to think,

01:14:55.400 yeah, that's kind of cute

01:14:56.500 but it's not real.

01:14:58.420 I look at the impossibilities

01:15:00.340 of what I've been through,

01:15:02.080 the rehab,

01:15:03.840 the years

01:15:04.480 and years,

01:15:05.780 the 23 operations,

01:15:07.640 the loss of career,

01:15:09.280 all those things

01:15:09.980 you mentioned, right?

01:15:12.500 They were

01:15:13.360 unmanageable

01:15:15.980 and I look now

01:15:18.600 and there's only

01:15:19.680 one way

01:15:20.220 that I could have

01:15:20.800 made it through

01:15:21.460 and it was because

01:15:22.800 He truly was

01:15:23.700 carrying me.

01:15:26.080 And so,

01:15:27.160 the footprint

01:15:28.000 poem is absolutely

01:15:29.320 spot on.

01:15:32.380 And the Lord

01:15:33.120 has continued

01:15:33.640 to bless me,

01:15:34.860 letting me have visions

01:15:35.840 and

01:15:36.180 maybe for another time

01:15:38.700 I have another book

01:15:39.960 coming out

01:15:40.540 that explains

01:15:41.780 the red room

01:15:42.500 and why there

01:15:43.080 was that misery

01:15:44.000 and what it means

01:15:46.080 to be washed

01:15:47.200 in the blood

01:15:47.620 of Christ's soul.

01:15:49.080 I have one last

01:15:49.840 question for you, Ed.

01:15:50.820 What does your

01:15:51.660 faith-like

01:15:52.660 look like

01:15:53.300 now

01:15:53.760 after the fact?

01:15:55.920 Before you were

01:15:57.200 still going to Mass

01:15:58.300 but,

01:15:59.220 you know,

01:15:59.700 unless there was

01:16:00.200 something that

01:16:00.840 got in the way,

01:16:01.980 I presume that

01:16:02.700 was Sundays mostly.

01:16:04.660 Don't know

01:16:05.360 if you

01:16:05.860 prayed much

01:16:06.980 Holy Rosary

01:16:07.960 or anything like that.

01:16:09.380 What does your

01:16:10.060 faith-life

01:16:10.420 look like now?

01:16:12.540 Faith-life

01:16:13.200 is completely

01:16:14.020 different.

01:16:14.620 So,

01:16:14.860 I wake up

01:16:15.300 every morning

01:16:15.860 and I do

01:16:16.300 the daily readings

01:16:17.180 and I write

01:16:18.180 a commentary

01:16:19.080 and I put it out.

01:16:20.560 You can sign up

01:16:21.220 for that on my website.

01:16:22.640 I put that out

01:16:23.900 and I

01:16:25.720 put a commentary

01:16:27.380 based on

01:16:28.200 what I saw,

01:16:29.380 what I lived

01:16:30.340 and

01:16:30.700 what it means,

01:16:33.220 what it means,

01:16:34.860 right?

01:16:35.260 And sometimes

01:16:36.420 I say the hard

01:16:37.320 things that we

01:16:37.960 don't always

01:16:38.540 hear

01:16:38.860 in the pew.

01:16:41.120 So,

01:16:41.260 that's how I

01:16:41.600 start my day.

01:16:42.500 I make daily Mass

01:16:43.280 when I can.

01:16:43.880 I still am a father

01:16:44.680 and I

01:16:45.600 am running

01:16:46.640 this apostolate

01:16:47.420 now so it

01:16:48.040 keeps me busy

01:16:48.660 but we don't

01:16:49.320 miss Sunday Mass

01:16:50.140 ever.

01:16:51.600 I make

01:16:52.380 weekday Masses

01:16:53.520 when I can.

01:16:54.720 I'm a junkie

01:16:56.080 for adoration now.

01:16:57.480 There

01:16:57.600 is nothing

01:16:59.000 in the world

01:16:59.420 like adoration.

01:17:00.640 I used to go

01:17:01.220 to confession

01:17:01.820 once a year

01:17:02.660 because it was

01:17:03.260 required to be

01:17:04.000 Catholic to go 1.00

01:17:04.620 once a year.

01:17:05.100 now I have

01:17:06.400 a spiritual

01:17:06.860 director who

01:17:07.520 understands my

01:17:08.740 story that I

01:17:10.040 can go to

01:17:10.420 confession to

01:17:11.040 and I try to

01:17:11.900 go to confession

01:17:12.600 to him

01:17:13.020 often.

01:17:16.160 There's a thing

01:17:16.920 about what

01:17:17.780 I've seen.

01:17:19.980 See,

01:17:20.280 I saw the

01:17:20.860 effects of my

01:17:21.640 sin and now

01:17:23.600 one of the

01:17:24.140 blessings that I

01:17:24.740 have is I can

01:17:25.300 see sin coming.

01:17:26.940 I can see sin

01:17:27.940 coming and yet

01:17:28.540 I still sin,

01:17:29.440 right?

01:17:29.620 So after

01:17:30.800 everything I've

01:17:31.500 seen,

01:17:32.620 I'm still a

01:17:33.840 sinner.

01:17:34.300 And so my

01:17:35.800 sins have a 1.00

01:17:36.500 heavier weight

01:17:37.200 than the

01:17:37.520 average man's

01:17:38.440 because of my

01:17:40.480 knowledge,

01:17:40.920 what I've seen

01:17:41.480 and the fact

01:17:42.220 that I've been

01:17:43.040 blessed to be

01:17:43.560 able to see

01:17:44.100 them coming.

01:17:45.980 And so I go

01:17:46.520 to my own

01:17:47.980 spiritual director

01:17:48.800 because he

01:17:49.660 understands that

01:17:51.000 weight.

01:17:53.200 Confession is

01:17:53.980 big.

01:17:55.140 Mass is big.

01:17:56.320 I mean,

01:17:57.200 I used to

01:17:57.760 think that we

01:17:59.040 went to

01:17:59.420 mass because

01:18:00.440 well,

01:18:01.540 we had to,

01:18:02.160 right?

01:18:03.140 And now I

01:18:03.720 realized that

01:18:04.400 see,

01:18:05.400 that's the

01:18:05.720 place where

01:18:06.240 we get to

01:18:06.740 share in

01:18:07.960 the Lord's

01:18:08.380 sacrifice.

01:18:09.600 And that's

01:18:10.280 the place

01:18:10.700 where he

01:18:11.480 feeds us

01:18:12.100 both physically

01:18:13.500 and spiritually.

01:18:15.640 And without

01:18:16.720 it, we would

01:18:17.320 starve.

01:18:17.900 It is such a

01:18:18.800 blessing,

01:18:19.500 grace.

01:18:20.860 I mean,

01:18:21.260 I was a

01:18:21.800 cradle Catholic. 0.61

01:18:22.940 I had no

01:18:23.400 concept.

01:18:24.260 I was so,

01:18:27.280 I had no

01:18:28.200 idea how

01:18:28.900 spoiled I

01:18:29.500 was, and

01:18:29.840 I overlooked

01:18:30.760 it.

01:18:32.280 And so,

01:18:32.700 yeah, now

01:18:33.200 I pray all

01:18:35.220 the time, but

01:18:35.740 you know, it's

01:18:36.600 a lot easier

01:18:37.080 to pray when

01:18:37.780 you can feel

01:18:39.460 God touching

01:18:41.460 you.

01:18:43.200 So,

01:18:44.960 yeah, my

01:18:45.380 life, my

01:18:46.440 prayer life is

01:18:47.080 better.

01:18:47.440 My marriage

01:18:48.840 is better.

01:18:49.460 My, I

01:18:51.000 look back

01:18:51.360 now, I'm

01:18:51.840 embarrassed at

01:18:52.380 the man that

01:18:52.800 I was.

01:18:54.240 I'm embarrassed

01:18:55.020 of the man

01:18:56.040 that literally

01:18:57.160 was building

01:18:57.920 treasures here

01:18:58.580 and had

01:18:58.880 nothing stored

01:19:00.480 for the

01:19:01.240 kingdom.

01:19:03.280 I'm embarrassed

01:19:04.140 that I

01:19:04.720 focused my

01:19:05.560 life, so

01:19:06.940 much of my

01:19:07.580 life on the

01:19:08.240 wrong things

01:19:09.040 and not at

01:19:10.000 all on the

01:19:10.560 right things.

01:19:12.780 You know, I

01:19:13.740 thought God

01:19:14.840 was out there

01:19:15.460 somewhere, but

01:19:16.740 see, he's not

01:19:17.220 out there

01:19:17.660 somewhere.

01:19:18.080 He's here.

01:19:18.600 He dwells

01:19:19.620 within us.

01:19:20.240 He holds us.

01:19:21.080 He's a real

01:19:22.220 tangible being

01:19:23.500 that reaches

01:19:24.840 through time

01:19:25.680 and space

01:19:26.660 to touch

01:19:28.580 and hold

01:19:29.180 our souls

01:19:29.940 from before

01:19:31.060 our conception

01:19:31.760 until after

01:19:32.960 our death, and

01:19:33.560 he never

01:19:33.960 lets go.

01:19:35.960 I mean,

01:19:36.240 that's,

01:19:37.500 we are so

01:19:39.240 spoiled, all

01:19:40.060 of us, whether

01:19:40.800 we know it

01:19:41.300 or not.

01:19:43.020 And so,

01:19:44.600 my mission

01:19:44.980 now is to

01:19:45.880 awaken people

01:19:47.580 to that, to

01:19:48.440 awaken people

01:19:49.100 to the benefits

01:19:49.900 of suffering.

01:19:51.080 We live in a

01:19:51.720 world that

01:19:52.540 the enemy

01:19:52.920 tells us

01:19:53.600 that this

01:19:54.320 is it.

01:19:54.920 This is

01:19:55.300 where we

01:19:55.700 need to

01:19:56.480 have our

01:19:57.300 joy, our

01:19:57.980 happiness, all

01:19:59.320 of those

01:19:59.720 things, right?

01:20:00.360 We are due

01:20:00.920 all of those

01:20:01.620 things here.

01:20:03.000 And I'm here

01:20:03.760 to tell you

01:20:04.200 that this

01:20:04.560 place is fake.

01:20:05.800 This is not

01:20:06.440 real.

01:20:07.440 But at one

01:20:08.360 point in our

01:20:08.900 life, we

01:20:09.260 are going to

01:20:09.640 go someplace

01:20:10.320 that is real.

01:20:12.000 And what we

01:20:12.760 do and how

01:20:13.480 we behave and

01:20:14.740 how we honor

01:20:15.620 our Lord here

01:20:16.920 and now, it

01:20:19.080 makes a

01:20:19.440 difference of

01:20:19.920 what kind

01:20:21.020 of eternity.

01:20:21.960 I spent an

01:20:22.720 eternity that

01:20:24.780 all I wished

01:20:25.480 would be that

01:20:26.720 it would end.

01:20:28.040 And I spent

01:20:28.640 another eternity

01:20:29.420 that I never

01:20:31.040 wanted to end.

01:20:32.160 And all of us

01:20:33.240 are going to

01:20:33.940 have a choice

01:20:34.520 at some point

01:20:35.200 of which one

01:20:36.420 we spend that

01:20:37.820 eternity in.

01:20:40.480 Indeed.

01:20:41.760 Ed Joza,

01:20:42.840 thank you so much

01:20:43.640 for sharing your

01:20:44.400 story with us.

01:20:45.580 Anyone wants to,

01:20:46.660 again, get more

01:20:47.680 in touch with

01:20:48.220 what Ed is

01:20:48.680 doing.

01:20:48.980 You can get

01:20:49.520 to his

01:20:49.980 website at

01:20:50.820 themysticnextdoor.org.

01:20:53.180 You can pick up

01:20:53.560 his book there as

01:20:54.180 well.

01:20:54.880 It's also

01:20:55.420 available,

01:20:55.860 especially for

01:20:56.260 those outside

01:20:56.700 the United

01:20:57.020 States, on

01:20:57.600 Amazon.

01:20:59.180 Ed, thank you

01:20:59.840 so much.

01:21:00.280 God bless you.

01:21:01.780 Thank you so

01:21:02.480 much, John Henry.

01:21:03.200 I appreciate it.

01:21:03.860 God bless you.

01:21:05.560 And God bless

01:21:06.260 all of you.

01:21:07.540 And we'll see

01:21:08.000 you next time.

01:21:08.440 God bless you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - July 04, 2024

ENCORE ｜ Man On Deathbed After Car Crash. Here's What He Saw.

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