The John-Henry Westen Show - March 14, 2024


Man Died After Car Crash. Here’s What He Saw.


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 16 minutes

Words per minute

161.25616

Word count

12,334

Sentence count

948

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ed Joza's life changed forever when he was in a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer on May 30th, 2017. In this episode, Ed shares the story of God's intervention in his life and how it changed his life forever.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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.
00:00:41.300 It seems like God is up there, and is He really hearing me?
00:00:45.100 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.
00:01:09.420 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.
00:01:45.760 Dear LifeSite family, Lent is a time of reflection and renewal, a time to examine one's own
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00:02:13.040 When others were intimidated into silence, we spoke out boldly.
00:02:17.920 Truth is what we live for.
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00:02:41.920 Ed, welcome to the program.
00:02:44.440 Hey, John Henry.
00:02:45.740 Thanks for having me.
00:02:47.300 Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:02:50.600 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:02:55.660 Amen.
00:02:55.900 So, Ed, your book, The Mystic Next Door, recounts your story, and anybody, by the way, can go
00:03:07.200 get the book for free, if you're in the United States, at mysticnextdoor.org.
00:03:12.660 But tell us your story.
00:03:14.380 This is so fascinating, I think people will be enthralled.
00:03:19.680 Yeah.
00:03:20.000 You know, the day of that accident, if you would have asked me, are you going to heaven?
00:03:28.540 I would have told you, well, of course I am.
00:03:31.180 I'm Catholic.
00:03:32.380 I go to church most of the time, unless something really important is happening.
00:03:37.240 And I shudder now, knowing what I know, to say things like that.
00:03:40.680 But that's how I live my life.
00:03:41.780 I looked at my life.
00:03:43.040 I judged my life based on the world's standards.
00:03:46.340 And by the world's standards, I was a pretty good guy.
00:03:49.800 And I just assumed that that's what it took to get there.
00:03:53.820 And, you know, I was laser focused.
00:03:57.220 I was building treasures here.
00:03:58.760 I was literally the guy building bigger barns to store my goods.
00:04:02.680 And I had no idea that the Lord was going to call me and ask for my life that night.
00:04:08.680 And I found that I had no treasures built or stored for heaven.
00:04:13.120 And that it takes more than just being a lukewarm Christian, if we expect to spend eternity with our Lord.
00:04:22.380 Set this up for us.
00:04:23.420 What date are we dealing with?
00:04:26.060 What's your family situation like at the time?
00:04:29.000 Yeah.
00:04:29.360 So I was happily married, father of three.
00:04:32.660 Been married to my wife at the time for 20-some years.
00:04:35.620 Three kids, two boys and a girl, like 16, 17, 15, and 12.
00:04:44.480 Two of my kids were in the car with me and I was taking them to soccer, or I'm sorry, to track practice.
00:04:51.260 And we were in a head-on collision, May 30th of 2017.
00:04:56.500 And, you know, from that moment on, everything about really all of our lives changed physically, spiritually, emotionally.
00:05:06.820 It was devastating.
00:05:09.760 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.
00:05:18.140 And I can assure you, while I may not necessarily wish to go through it again, I wouldn't change a thing about it.
00:05:28.160 It was the beginning of a new life for me.
00:05:31.820 So tell us about your injuries.
00:05:33.580 What exactly happened?
00:05:35.900 So we were driving.
00:05:37.660 We live in Indiana in a little country area, heavy farming community.
00:05:44.300 And, man, the tractors out here are big, you know, the farm equipment.
00:05:49.700 They take up both lanes and more of the little two-lane roads.
00:05:53.920 And we were going one way.
00:05:55.420 The tractor's coming the opposite direction.
00:05:57.360 He has a small line of cars gone, you know, behind him patiently waiting.
00:06:01.500 And, you know, they only go 10 or 15 miles an hour.
00:06:04.540 And we could see ahead of us.
00:06:08.740 Indiana's flat and the roads are straight.
00:06:11.080 I could see ahead of me a mile and a half and behind me a mile and a half.
00:06:14.300 No one in my lane in front of me or behind me.
00:06:17.020 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, my car, there was a flash of black and it exploded.
00:06:28.540 I mean, just absolutely exploded.
00:06:30.340 It was the most violent experience I've ever, you know, that I've ever seen, felt.
00:06:36.300 You know, the car was bucking and bronking and it was spinning.
00:06:39.500 And I lost vision.
00:06:41.940 And everything went blazingly white.
00:06:44.500 I couldn't see it all.
00:06:47.380 Found myself as the car came to a stop, the airbag deflated in front of me and I could see again.
00:06:53.620 And oddly enough, I was just a few hundred meters, a few hundred yards from my house.
00:07:02.900 And I knew that I was spun around and I was facing it.
00:07:07.180 I knew that I wouldn't be gone back to that place for a while.
00:07:09.680 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, 55 miles an hour, and drove that last car over the yellow line right into us head on.
00:07:30.180 Never saw it coming.
00:07:31.080 And it was, man, it was violent.
00:07:34.940 It was the impact of the car collapsed around me.
00:07:39.500 And thankfully, in all of this, so it's a three car accident, nine people involved.
00:07:44.380 And I was really the only one that had life-threatening injuries.
00:07:49.520 There were some minor injuries.
00:07:50.940 One of the kids that were in my car, one of the kids I was carpooling, had a concussion.
00:07:57.040 My son had a broken collarbone so that this other boy from the seatbelts, my daughter had a damage to her inner ear.
00:08:03.620 But everybody, including the other two cars, they walked away.
00:08:08.360 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.
00:08:21.320 And, yeah, it ended up, the car collapsed around me.
00:08:25.900 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.
00:08:31.960 And my body bowed the door out.
00:08:35.600 If people get the book, they can see on the cover that there is, the door is bowed in half.
00:08:41.060 And that was from the impact of my body.
00:08:42.600 So that's kind of damage that I sustained.
00:08:46.280 And I ended up being trapped in that car for two and a half hours.
00:08:50.100 And, you know, the first thing that came to my mind was the pain.
00:08:54.700 I mean, the pain was so immense.
00:08:56.160 And this was so surreal.
00:08:57.980 It just didn't seem like, it just was fake.
00:09:00.480 And the first thing I thought was I was dreaming.
00:09:04.440 And I thought at any moment, I'm going to wake up because, man, the pain is bad, right?
00:09:09.000 And you get to a point in your dreams where you say, wow, the pain is really bad.
00:09:12.460 And I'm going to wake up, right?
00:09:13.940 And that I wasn't waking up.
00:09:15.500 And then I realized that I couldn't breathe.
00:09:19.340 I mean, panic set in at this point because I was suffocating.
00:09:23.340 I was panting.
00:09:24.800 I couldn't inhale.
00:09:26.440 I couldn't get any oxygen in.
00:09:28.480 And I really thought, yeah, I'm going to, I'm like drowning.
00:09:36.460 And then I realized that it wasn't a dream, that it was real.
00:09:38.780 We were in a wreck.
00:09:39.620 I could see the mangled cars on the other side of the road.
00:09:42.620 The impact actually knocked us off the road into the field.
00:09:45.360 It knocked the other cars into the other field across the road.
00:09:47.980 And so I could see these other cars.
00:09:50.340 I realized, you know, slowly piecing it together that we were in a head-on car collision.
00:09:55.780 And, man, we, you know, the little country town, our paramedics came to get me out and realized I was trapped.
00:10:02.740 They didn't have the jaws of life.
00:10:04.200 It took 20 minutes for them to get there.
00:10:05.900 It took another 20 minutes for the jaws of life to get there before they could even start working on me.
00:10:11.880 And, you know, the funny thing is about that, when you look at the cars,
00:10:14.900 when you look at the damage, most people would expect that I was dead.
00:10:20.740 And they would think that at the hospital as well.
00:10:25.060 And I should be.
00:10:26.260 I mean, this is a story of absolute miracles, miracle after miracle.
00:10:29.980 And these were miracles that didn't start that day.
00:10:32.440 A lot of these miracles, man, they came into my life decades before the Lord placed these miracles.
00:10:38.880 Decades before my life, because I was going to need them on that day.
00:10:42.340 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, right?
00:10:49.940 And that he didn't really interfere or work in our lives.
00:10:52.820 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.
00:11:01.920 So I didn't know that at the time.
00:11:03.080 But one thing I did know was I knew I wasn't going to die.
00:11:07.780 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, that I was stuck somewhere else and I was half here and half there.
00:11:21.060 But I knew, I knew, and it wasn't, it wasn't like, it wasn't shock and it wasn't denial.
00:11:30.140 I knew I wasn't going to die.
00:11:32.060 I knew I was going to live.
00:11:33.500 And the only thing I can attribute to is like a God knowing.
00:11:36.300 I knew I was going to be okay.
00:11:37.900 I was the only person, I can assure you, on site and in the hospital that knew I was going to be okay because the doctors were pretty sure scratching their heads when we finally, you know, they life-flighted me to, again, another miracle.
00:11:51.500 I'm not from Indianapolis.
00:11:53.720 I lived in Pennsylvania most of my life and I came here for my first airline job.
00:11:58.860 And the Indy 500, you know, it's like one of the biggest races in the world and they've seen wrecks like mine.
00:12:07.540 They have a team that's dedicated for that here.
00:12:10.420 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.
00:12:18.640 You know, that's really unheard of.
00:12:19.680 You very rarely have an operation where more than one doctor is working on you, but they had all the doctors working on me on all different parts of my body, inside, outside.
00:12:28.860 Right.
00:12:29.120 And, and it was, again, I look at it and say, man, with a likelihood, right.
00:12:33.760 I'm in the right place.
00:12:35.760 That's just not a coincidence because there are no coincidences.
00:12:39.900 The coincidence is just something that a non-believer says when God's working in your life.
00:12:45.200 Right.
00:12:46.400 So when I got to the hospital, uh, after they freed me, you know, they cut that car apart as much as they could and they still couldn't get me out.
00:12:53.560 And they ended up playing tug of war with me, uh, sedated me, played tug of war, put me in the helicopter and flew me down to Indy.
00:13:03.840 They, uh, they sent me through the machines, right.
00:13:06.560 You know, the CAT scans, the MRIs to really see what was wrong.
00:13:10.060 And I had self-diagnosed that I knew that I had a, a broken hip and I knew that I had a broken arm just because I, I could see that.
00:13:17.360 Right.
00:13:17.800 And, uh, but we, we weren't sure what was wrong.
00:13:20.340 They weren't sure what was wrong.
00:13:21.220 And so when they sent me through, they realized that my spleen was ruptured.
00:13:25.300 Um, it took about five hours, five and a half hours from the moment of impact to my first surgery.
00:13:32.300 And when they went in and they worked on that spleen, um, we would later come to find out that it was, uh, it was the highest level damage you can have.
00:13:41.040 It was basically disintegrated, uh, in an injury like that has a lifespan of about 20 minutes, uh, before you, before you bleed out and you die.
00:13:52.260 It was five and a half hours and doctors, they, they still have, there is no scientific medical understanding of how I could have lived with my spleen in the way that it was.
00:14:06.760 I should have been gone.
00:14:07.520 Um, they found that I had, uh, two collapsed lungs, which is the reason why I was suffocating.
00:14:14.000 Uh, I broke, uh, you know, both arms.
00:14:17.340 I had, uh, the, the ulna was driven into my right hand.
00:14:20.620 My left hip was shattered.
00:14:22.260 The femur was driven through the rear socket.
00:14:24.640 Eight ribs were broken, 10 vertebrae, uh, six herniated discs.
00:14:29.180 I had the muscles between my ribs were herniated out.
00:14:31.900 Again, that's an injury that doesn't have a name.
00:14:34.960 They only see those injuries on cadavers.
00:14:36.880 There hasn't been a person recorded that has lived through it.
00:14:40.480 It took a month to figure out how to try to fix it because doctors, surgeons have just never seen the injury, the, the blunt force trauma that causes the muscles to herniate out from between your ribs has been life ending in everybody else today.
00:14:54.740 Uh, the blood loss was, was phenomenal.
00:14:58.640 Uh, I, my, my, my hemoglobin was down in the fours, which low is 14.
00:15:06.000 So I was in the fours, which is unsustainable.
00:15:09.740 Um, again, another reason they just, with all the other injuries, they had no concept of how I was alive.
00:15:16.240 So it was pretty touch and go for a while.
00:15:18.220 Um, you know, the impact was so hard that the lenses of my eyes folded over.
00:15:23.000 I have a list of injuries.
00:15:24.220 I guarantee you that I, I've probably missed a dozen of them.
00:15:27.820 Uh, but to date I've, uh, I, I had, um, last year was my 23rd surgery, uh, for repairs.
00:15:37.660 And I think I'm pretty much at the point now that, uh, they're the, the rest of the injuries will remain, uh, they'll, they'll remain unfixable, uh, for the rest of my life.
00:15:47.220 Unless new technology comes along.
00:15:49.740 But, uh, I, I was, I was misery, man.
00:15:55.060 I was living, I, I didn't know that, uh, pain existed on that level.
00:16:00.820 You know, we, we all think we understand pain, right?
00:16:03.820 And one of the reasons I list those, that long, you know, laundry list of injuries is because your pain really is a relative.
00:16:11.720 It's a relative thing, right?
00:16:13.400 You know, what hurts me might not hurt you and vice versa.
00:16:16.520 We, we, it is hard to understand each other's pain.
00:16:19.360 It really is, but we can understand injuries.
00:16:21.620 We understand that a femur being driven through a hip socket or broken ribs and broken vertebrae and, you know, ruptured organs.
00:16:28.720 And, you know, we can understand like, okay, that hurts.
00:16:32.600 Right.
00:16:33.460 So I was in a level of pain that I did not know existed.
00:16:36.100 And it started with the suffocation was, um, the pain and the suffocation.
00:16:42.960 It started when I was in that car.
00:16:44.560 It was so awful that I, 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.
00:16:59.960 And I, and that, that continued on like that.
00:17:05.760 Uh, uh, like I said, for weeks, I lived second by second in that agony that just, it didn't go away.
00:17:12.060 And I was saturated to say I was saturated in pain.
00:17:16.800 And what that means is, uh, external stimulus, uh, caused pain.
00:17:22.880 So for example, if a nurse or a doctor walked in the room, it was everything that I could do to not start screaming.
00:17:30.020 The additional stimulus of seeing them come in the room was agonizing.
00:17:35.840 The fact of like when a family member would come and visit me, uh, and wanted to hug me, I would start screaming.
00:17:43.660 Well, the first three days I had a, I had a breathing tube in, so I, I couldn't, I couldn't say anything.
00:17:50.800 I just had to endure.
00:17:52.760 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.
00:18:05.220 I mean, I lived as a man that I wanted to just run away.
00:18:09.000 I just remember thinking I just wanted to run away, but there was no escape and the pain didn't end.
00:18:14.880 It didn't lessen.
00:18:15.720 It didn't lighten.
00:18:16.700 It felt as if the medication they were giving me for it did nothing.
00:18:20.560 And I would live like that on and on for days.
00:18:27.040 So tell me a couple of things.
00:18:28.700 One, um, your wife and your kids, their reaction, what were they going through at the time?
00:18:34.640 Also, um, what are the injuries that you still sustain to this day?
00:18:40.200 What, what are, what, what are you like today?
00:18:42.320 Okay.
00:18:43.260 So, you know, at the time my, my kids, the, the, the, at the moment of the wreck, you know, the paramedics,
00:18:49.100 they wanted to take my kids to the local doctor, to the local hospital.
00:18:53.560 Um, but we knew that the, you knew, we knew that I was being flight, life flighted down
00:18:57.300 to Indianapolis to the city, which is about an hour drive from us.
00:19:01.020 So, uh, my wife had to actually sign papers to not take the kids that the, that the EMTs 1.00
00:19:07.820 would not take the kids and that she would take them to the hospital that I was going 1.00
00:19:12.220 to and check them into that ER.
00:19:13.680 Uh, and we ended up having, uh, friends come, neighbors and drove Amy down once they life 1.00
00:19:19.480 flighted me.
00:19:20.540 Um, and so the kids went and got checked out, uh, their injuries, uh, were, like I said,
00:19:26.680 were relatively minor, a couple broken bones and, and some damage to my daughter's ear.
00:19:31.240 And they've eventually gotten over it.
00:19:32.800 Their injuries are probably more psychological than anything, you know, just, uh, they don't
00:19:37.160 like to drive on that country road that we were on.
00:19:39.000 Right.
00:19:39.220 They, they avoid it.
00:19:40.140 Uh, and I understand that.
00:19:41.520 So, uh, the kids went down and the neighbors brought, brought them back home that evening,
00:19:47.700 that night.
00:19:48.620 And Amy stayed with me in the hospital.
00:19:50.900 Um, you know, really out of all of this, my wife was an absolute rock and she, uh, and
00:19:58.340 she attributes, you know, the interesting thing about that is, um, she had been praying.
00:20:09.000 That the Lord would strengthen her faith.
00:20:14.920 And then the wreck happened.
00:20:17.760 And had she not had faith, she would have been lost.
00:20:22.920 And so her faith did indeed, I mean, it, it strengthened all of my kids, my kids, everybody
00:20:30.080 came out of this, uh, a stronger believer because they witnessed the miracles, the impossibilities.
00:20:37.620 They saw it all.
00:20:39.680 And they saw that, that it, the, the, the blessings that I have received since.
00:20:46.100 Right.
00:20:46.560 And that, so it's changed everybody in that way.
00:20:49.340 Um, the injuries that I still have now, um, the damage to the back was not fixable.
00:20:56.160 So those herniated discs, they, they herniated up into the bone above it and below it.
00:21:03.380 Um, and so, um, that's not surgically repairable at least it is in small numbers, but because
00:21:10.320 I have six in a row, um, they can't do the fusion that they would do.
00:21:14.940 It would leave, it would leave my back immobile and the, the hip, the hip was shattered into,
00:21:21.940 you know, like a million pieces.
00:21:23.080 Is it like, I don't know how they put it back together, but there's a lot of worry that if
00:21:27.360 they did any fusion at all, that extra pressure on my, my damaged hip would actually cause that
00:21:33.540 hip to break again.
00:21:34.380 So, so the back is, is a lot, the, the rib injury, uh, they were never really able to fix.
00:21:41.560 And so what they did was they, my, my rib muscles would fall into my internal body, right?
00:21:48.600 And there'd be a big cavity.
00:21:49.740 You could actually stick your hand in my side and make it disappear.
00:21:53.360 Right.
00:21:53.740 And then my lung would come out and my lung would come out if I was laying on the other
00:21:57.400 side.
00:21:57.720 So what they did is they, they, um, they put a mesh in and tried to sew the muscles to
00:22:03.940 that mesh, but they had to leave it flexible because I have to be able to move.
00:22:06.720 So, so my, my left side of my body has no stability because you get, you gain a lot of
00:22:11.680 stability through your intercostal muscles.
00:22:13.960 So that injury causes a lot of pain.
00:22:16.220 And then that causes a lot of pain in my back because of those, because of not having the
00:22:21.080 stability.
00:22:21.960 And then there was a lot of damage to the vertebrae up in my neck.
00:22:25.300 And so I have a pretty tremendous amount of pain, but the residual pain is, is mostly
00:22:31.340 nerve damage, which is what ended up grounding me from the FAA.
00:22:35.220 I can't fly anymore.
00:22:36.720 So, um, I have nerve damage all up and down the spine.
00:22:40.820 And then that damage causes issues, uh, in all my limbs, uh, in my neck.
00:22:46.840 Uh, so it's pretty extensive.
00:22:48.600 So, uh, that's just something that will be a kind of a forever thing.
00:22:54.080 And in the story, you know, we talk about, I always talk about it.
00:23:00.160 I was, I was very poorly catechized, right?
00:23:02.800 I was not a, it was not, I didn't have a deep spiritual understanding of our faith and I
00:23:08.620 had no concept, no clue of redemptive suffering.
00:23:12.760 Uh, but the Lord would teach me about that in my, and hopefully we get to talk about that
00:23:17.640 a little bit later.
00:23:18.260 But, uh, I have been given a blessing that, that, uh, every day is a, is an opportunity
00:23:25.140 to, to suffer.
00:23:26.140 And every day is an opportunity for me to be like Simon of Cyrene, to pick up my cross 0.61
00:23:32.020 and to carry it with joy and happiness.
00:23:34.360 And no, and, and, and, and I talked to the Lord and I, I asked him if, if he can fill
00:23:40.560 my offering, it's an offering of love that I carry, I carry for the souls in purgatory.
00:23:45.360 I carry it for him.
00:23:46.680 I carry it for whatever needs that he and the blessed mother determined are needed that
00:23:52.740 day.
00:23:52.940 Right.
00:23:53.220 I carry it as a prayer.
00:23:55.020 Um, and it's an opportunity that we all have, we all have suffering.
00:23:58.580 Everybody suffers.
00:23:59.540 And if you don't think you're suffering, you're just not being honest with yourself.
00:24:02.960 I mean, most people are suffering in one way or another, and there always is an opportunity
00:24:07.400 to be like Simon, to pick up that cross, to carry it.
00:24:10.680 I mean, the Lord tells us that's what, what we need to do if we want to enter into, and
00:24:14.440 if we want to follow him.
00:24:15.720 Right.
00:24:16.180 And, and so, um, I look at it as a great, great blessing.
00:24:20.740 And as St.
00:24:21.600 Padre Pio would say, you know, suffering is a great gift for those who choose to use it
00:24:25.240 wisely.
00:24:26.020 And I've been given a tremendous gift.
00:24:29.040 So, most people, when they end up, you know, doing a good deed, taking the kids to an event
00:24:37.180 that they're supposed to go to, and they get blindsided, and their whole life has changed.
00:24:44.520 You, you lose your career, you're, you're, you've got, you know, you're a pilot, that's
00:24:49.320 great, and it's all gone.
00:24:51.500 Most people say, God, what are you doing?
00:24:54.420 The, the, rather, especially those who are not given to the faith in, in, in the robust
00:24:59.560 way you are now, how did God intervene in this to, to use it to his glory, rather than
00:25:07.060 to a rebellious attitude versus rejecting God for the horror that he's allowed?
00:25:12.940 Yeah, you know, that's, that's really an interesting question.
00:25:15.860 Um, the doctors all told me that I would, uh, get addicted to the drugs and not to worry
00:25:21.480 about it.
00:25:21.780 They had some, they had other drugs to get me off.
00:25:23.960 They told me that I would suffer depression and not to worry about it.
00:25:26.940 They would send me to doctors to deal with that.
00:25:28.480 They told me I'd never walk again.
00:25:29.820 And they told me all these things that were going to be horrible, that would happen.
00:25:33.600 See, but they didn't understand.
00:25:36.560 Uh, I was in the ICU for seven days, right?
00:25:40.920 And, uh, and in the ICU, they, they, they watch you, they care for you every moment, right?
00:25:47.600 You can't, you can't blink an eye without a doctor or a nurse knowing what's going on
00:25:51.780 and helping you.
00:25:52.460 Right.
00:25:53.540 And then when I made it out of the ICU, seven days, seven operations out of the ICU into
00:25:59.000 a step-down unit, it was almost as if I was abandoned.
00:26:02.040 It was like the doctors and nurses all went away.
00:26:04.700 And my family, you know, they were so exhausted.
00:26:07.480 The family and friends that were coming every day.
00:26:10.080 Remember, it's an hour drive for them each way.
00:26:13.120 And, and then they, we all know we, anybody that spent time as a caregiver in a hospital
00:26:18.660 knows how draining that is.
00:26:20.120 Right.
00:26:20.400 And so my wife, she had been doing it for seven days and taking care of three young kids 1.00
00:26:26.280 at home.
00:26:27.260 I mean, she was exhausted.
00:26:29.780 And my brother was staying with me and another friend, my wife's brother, right?
00:26:33.640 They all were taking turns.
00:26:34.620 And so I told everybody when I got into that step-down unit that it would be okay, that
00:26:38.940 I'm, we knew I'm out of the woods.
00:26:40.540 My blood level was growing.
00:26:41.900 It was coming back.
00:26:42.800 I mean, I wasn't going to die, right?
00:26:46.140 At least they, I knew I wasn't going to.
00:26:48.400 Now they knew I wasn't going to.
00:26:50.340 And so I sent them all home and, and this is a little bit long explanation for it, but,
00:26:58.400 but after this experience, after what I'm going to tell you, I learned that there is
00:27:03.900 nothing, nothing on this earth as bad as what I experienced because I experienced the loss
00:27:11.140 of God and see, after coming back from that, nothing that I went through could, could even
00:27:19.760 remotely compare.
00:27:20.880 It doesn't scratch the surface.
00:27:22.640 See, nothing was as bad as they said it was because I went to the worst place that there
00:27:27.540 is in all of existence.
00:27:30.380 And then I came back.
00:27:32.820 So everything else was, it was just gravy.
00:27:36.200 It was wonderful because I wasn't there.
00:27:40.320 And so where I went was I was in the, I was in my hospital bed and this is a very small recovery,
00:27:48.220 very small step-down room.
00:27:50.020 And it was cinder block wall, just, just beyond my feet.
00:27:54.380 And on that wall was this, this bright, staggeringly bright white little square.
00:28:02.380 And I looked at it and I thought, what is that?
00:28:04.580 And as I looked at that, it was as if I was transported through it and became like, became
00:28:10.180 like a backwards tunnel.
00:28:11.720 It was incredibly bright, white, blindingly bright, bright white all around me.
00:28:17.400 And at the end, it was like a long tunnel and I was, I was transporting through it at
00:28:21.280 like an incredible rate.
00:28:22.780 And at the very end was a darkness, a little dark spot, you know, it's a backwards tunnel.
00:28:27.360 You're in a tunnel normally and it's dark.
00:28:29.040 And at the end is light.
00:28:30.280 This is, I'm in the light and there's dark at the end.
00:28:33.220 I come out of that tunnel and I'm, I'm in a room now and I'm looking down upon a scene
00:28:39.100 that I, I, I suddenly remember.
00:28:42.240 I remember that this happened to me.
00:28:44.560 It happened to me at another time earlier.
00:28:47.720 I believe it happened at the moment of impact.
00:28:50.600 I remembered this scene.
00:28:52.080 And then next thing I know, it was no longer a memory, but I was living it.
00:28:56.580 I was in it.
00:28:57.220 I was no longer looking down.
00:28:58.460 I was living it firsthand as if for the first time.
00:29:02.320 And I was in this room.
00:29:04.760 And the first thing that I realized was that I had exited time.
00:29:10.380 Time no longer existed.
00:29:11.700 I was in a place that was timeless.
00:29:16.220 I had unbelievable vision.
00:29:19.200 It was so crystal clear that it, it almost hurt my eyes.
00:29:24.200 Things were so clear.
00:29:25.220 And I realized that the place that I was, was real.
00:29:29.740 This was real.
00:29:30.800 And the world that I had lived my whole life in that world was like a fake world.
00:29:34.880 It was foggy and it was cloudy compared to this crystal clear vision that I had now in that, in this truth that I lived in this realness.
00:29:45.940 And then I, I knew that I had knowledge and I'm going to call it the knowledge of the world.
00:29:52.260 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.
00:30:04.740 I didn't have to think about it.
00:30:06.400 I didn't have to recall it.
00:30:07.920 But I, it just, all knowledge of the world was an instant access.
00:30:13.960 I didn't even have to access it.
00:30:15.220 I just was aware of it.
00:30:16.900 All.
00:30:19.580 For instance, what?
00:30:23.620 Well, we'll get to that.
00:30:24.980 I'm going to get to that.
00:30:26.480 All right.
00:30:26.960 So, I realized that I had lost God.
00:30:35.340 Okay.
00:30:35.540 And so, when I say that, I was a 46-year-old man and I never realized that God held my soul.
00:30:43.240 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,
00:30:54.240 that they don't just apply to me.
00:30:56.960 But they were, they apply to all of us.
00:30:59.380 And so, when I tell you that God held my soul in his hand, he holds all of our soul.
00:31:04.440 From before our conception until after our death, he places our soul in our body and he never lets go.
00:31:10.700 And it's interesting the way he holds it.
00:31:12.520 He holds it as if we, like we would hold a softball, right?
00:31:16.680 And he holds our soul so that from the back and from the side, his hand protects it.
00:31:22.440 See, evil can't enter our soul from where we can't see.
00:31:26.960 If evil is going to enter into our soul, it enters through the front.
00:31:31.580 We see it and we must invite it in.
00:31:34.480 See, evil can't sneak into us.
00:31:36.460 And God protects it from that, right?
00:31:38.420 But he held my soul for my whole life and I had no idea.
00:31:42.800 I had no idea.
00:31:44.040 But then once he let go, all I could feel was his absence.
00:31:49.120 And now I'm going to say words that there are just not words.
00:31:52.340 There are not words in our language, in any language.
00:31:56.120 That can convey what I'm going to try to tell you.
00:31:59.560 But to lose God's touch was horrifying.
00:32:04.380 And horrifying is infinitely underrating what I'm telling you.
00:32:08.380 It was horrifying.
00:32:11.140 And it was, there was just such misery and fear.
00:32:15.700 And it was like being timeless.
00:32:17.380 Being timeless is like living in the moment of a startle.
00:32:22.120 I just had someone explain it as, we've all leaned back on our chair too far.
00:32:31.600 And there's that point of no return when suddenly the chair starts to go over.
00:32:39.520 Timelessness, where I was, was in that moment.
00:32:42.400 That startle of knowing that it's too late and the chair is going over.
00:32:46.400 And it's going to be like that forever.
00:32:49.520 And that's where I was.
00:32:50.940 I was in this place of horror forever.
00:32:55.280 Now, there was an entity, a being that was behind me.
00:32:59.920 And I say behind me because, so I didn't have a body.
00:33:03.000 And I could look 360 degrees around in any direction.
00:33:09.160 If, you know, if I wanted to look behind me, I could roll my vision back around.
00:33:16.400 I could see all around.
00:33:17.700 And I knew this, this entity was there.
00:33:19.260 And I knew that he would speak truth.
00:33:23.140 I knew that what he would tell me was truth.
00:33:25.040 And again, this is just knowledge that was infused to me.
00:33:28.600 And I did not feel love nor hatred from him.
00:33:33.720 If I felt anything, it was indifference.
00:33:36.020 But I know he spoke truth.
00:33:37.600 And I knew that I needed to ask some questions.
00:33:41.900 And so, you know, I had always had heard that hell was the absence of God.
00:33:48.260 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?
00:34:00.000 He's out there somewhere, but he's not with me right now.
00:34:03.500 So, how bad would hell be?
00:34:06.140 See, but I had no clue that God holds us every moment, never lets go.
00:34:13.880 His hand is always touching us.
00:34:15.620 And see, I didn't know that.
00:34:17.140 And now I was, I was without him.
00:34:20.280 And I was terrified.
00:34:21.780 So, I asked this being, I, is this hell?
00:34:28.060 And he flatly said no.
00:34:30.820 Now, I was a pretty poorly catechized Catholic, but the next step in the hierarchy would be purgatory.
00:34:38.280 And so, I asked him, is this purgatory?
00:34:40.700 And he, again, he flatly says no.
00:34:44.000 And he says, this is forever.
00:34:46.900 And he said, I don't, I don't want to be in forever.
00:34:50.100 What do I do to get out?
00:34:51.260 He said, that is up to you.
00:34:53.940 And I said, what do I do?
00:34:55.500 And he said, that is up to you.
00:34:57.880 And then he was gone.
00:34:59.040 And I was alone, alone for the first time.
00:35:01.400 I was absent of God.
00:35:02.720 And I was able to look around the room for, really, and study it.
00:35:06.720 It was a small room, very small cylindrical room.
00:35:09.000 If I had arms, I could reach out and touch each wall.
00:35:13.160 And it was highest gloss red that, I mean, I can't, it's like a, so bright, not like anything on this earth.
00:35:21.260 And the walls were made up of doors of all different sizes, flat handles.
00:35:26.580 Not that I had hands that I could open them, but I knew that those, those handles, those doorknobs, they were useless to me.
00:35:32.440 And then I looked up at the ceiling.
00:35:36.560 And the ceiling was, was like a white translucent.
00:35:41.440 And on the other side of it was this red viscous liquid, which I believe looked like blood.
00:35:47.740 And once I looked at it, I could never look away.
00:35:52.680 And the sight of it horrified me.
00:35:55.560 And it caused a white hot burning in my soul that went a million miles deep.
00:36:01.040 Like my soul was so much bigger than I, than I ever understood.
00:36:05.400 It just went on and on.
00:36:06.560 And this white hot burning bore down to the core.
00:36:10.380 And see, I was, I was aware of my sin.
00:36:19.380 It, I was buried under an ocean of it.
00:36:22.700 I could feel the weight, the cumulative weight of a lifetime of my sin crushing down on me.
00:36:30.220 And I, I was, I was just living.
00:36:33.500 I was misery.
00:36:34.700 You know, and when I came back, I thought about it.
00:36:38.160 I was misery.
00:36:39.780 See, I just was misery.
00:36:42.160 And it makes me think about when God spoke to Moses.
00:36:47.820 And Moses asked him his name and he says, I am.
00:36:52.200 See, because God just is.
00:36:54.300 He always is, always was, always will be God.
00:36:58.700 He just is.
00:37:00.540 And see, I was in a state where I just was, I just was misery.
00:37:05.140 I always would be from now until eternity, misery.
00:37:11.200 Now I knew I could get out.
00:37:13.000 I had no body.
00:37:14.120 I had no way of moving.
00:37:15.580 The only thing I had was this vast knowledge, all the knowledge in the world.
00:37:19.900 You have to remember, I was the airline pilot, very type A, right?
00:37:24.460 And not only that, I was, I was always a fighter, right?
00:37:30.220 My solution to most things was to take a sledgehammer to it.
00:37:32.980 And with enough muscle, anything could be fixed with a sledgehammer, right?
00:37:37.020 And that's, that's my life.
00:37:38.820 That's how I lived to this point.
00:37:41.160 And so I was going to get myself out.
00:37:44.140 And so I used this knowledge.
00:37:45.540 And so you asked me earlier, what?
00:37:47.820 So I, math problems.
00:37:49.320 We've all seen the movies where the math problems are on the chalkboard and they go like around the entire room, right?
00:37:54.060 Just equation after equation going on forever.
00:37:56.840 I could do those in my head as simple as I'm adding one plus one now, right?
00:38:01.380 I could do these, these chalkboard problems one after another, after another until I exhaust all math, all math.
00:38:10.960 I did it all.
00:38:12.540 Then I moved to poetry.
00:38:14.220 I started reciting poetry, right?
00:38:16.100 And I'm not a poetry guy.
00:38:17.220 If you asked me to recite a poem now, I wouldn't have one to give you.
00:38:21.960 But I recited all of the poetry.
00:38:24.540 And then I started the great works from Shakespeare.
00:38:27.040 I recited all of the Shakespeare.
00:38:29.600 I went on, I started doing logic problems.
00:38:32.940 And I did have a logic class in college, right?
00:38:35.520 It was like a requirement.
00:38:36.460 And I took a logic class and Venn diagrams and things that I, I took one class and I passed it.
00:38:43.620 And that's about my limit of knowledge on, on logic, right?
00:38:46.300 But I was doing complex, multi-level logic problems.
00:38:51.340 I did everything there was to do.
00:38:53.980 I used all the knowledge of the world until I exhausted it all, all of it.
00:39:00.660 I have no comprehension how long I was there.
00:39:04.520 All the while living in a stark, stark terror, a stark fear, a stark agony of losing God's touch.
00:39:13.500 All the while never ceasing, never ending, trying everything I could to get out and not being able to free myself.
00:39:21.500 When I exhausted all of that knowledge, I took an evaluation of myself.
00:39:29.720 I looked at the judgment.
00:39:31.740 See, I understood it was a just judgment.
00:39:34.940 I agreed with where I was.
00:39:37.380 I knew I deserved to be there for all of eternity.
00:39:40.280 Because of my actions and the way that I lived my life up until that point, this was a just reward.
00:39:48.360 I agreed with it.
00:39:51.400 And I knew that there was nothing I could do to get out.
00:39:53.900 And so I resigned.
00:39:54.840 And I say to myself, there is nothing you can do.
00:39:57.660 There is nothing you can do to free yourself.
00:40:00.020 And at that moment, that white ceiling got just a little lighter.
00:40:11.380 And the blood changed to a little bit different color.
00:40:14.380 And I even said to myself, oh, my goodness, you're doing it.
00:40:17.100 Don't stop.
00:40:17.860 Keep it up.
00:40:18.360 And then I corrected myself immediately.
00:40:19.980 And I said, no, you're not doing anything.
00:40:22.820 There is nothing, nothing you can do.
00:40:25.320 And at that moment, it was as if I passed through that red viscous, that blood-like liquid.
00:40:32.940 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.
00:40:48.080 And I was staring up into a blue sky that was a blue like nothing I've ever seen.
00:40:55.320 And it was so beautiful and so peaceful.
00:41:01.380 The peace just permeated into me.
00:41:05.420 And that being was back.
00:41:08.660 And he said, I asked him, I said, am I out?
00:41:13.320 And he said, you were out.
00:41:15.560 And I said, is this real?
00:41:17.800 And he said, this is real.
00:41:19.020 Everything went black for a moment, and I found myself back in my bed in the hospital.
00:41:27.340 And I tell you that if a second went by, it would shock me.
00:41:33.660 Everything that I experienced, years, maybe decades that I was in that place, it happened in this sweep of a second hand.
00:41:44.540 And I think to myself, I don't think I'm going to heaven.
00:41:52.880 Man, that is a stark realization.
00:41:55.760 To come to a realization that, you know, you realize that at the moment of impact, right, I had this experience.
00:42:01.920 And I was the man that was sure I was going to heaven.
00:42:06.300 And I didn't go there.
00:42:09.040 You know, and I thought about it quite a bit.
00:42:15.400 I thought that I might be in purgatory, right?
00:42:18.960 And I wasn't catechized.
00:42:21.800 I knew very little about what purgatory was.
00:42:24.000 See, I learned afterwards.
00:42:26.360 I studied.
00:42:26.920 I changed, right?
00:42:27.960 And I realized that the people, the souls in purgatory, well, they cannot pray for themselves.
00:42:36.440 They can pray.
00:42:38.240 And if you've picked up on one thing that I did not do when I was in that place, I did not pray.
00:42:44.660 See, because I didn't pray because I did not know prayer existed.
00:42:49.560 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.
00:43:01.060 And so I tell people, if you can pray, then hallelujah.
00:43:03.540 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.
00:43:12.500 Man, see, I was in a place that I wasn't with the Lord.
00:43:17.280 And see, not only could I not pray, I didn't know prayer existed.
00:43:22.100 See, I knew that I missed God.
00:43:24.940 I knew that I loved God, and I knew that I wished that I could be with Him.
00:43:28.480 I wished that He could be with me.
00:43:30.940 But because of my choices that I made, that couldn't be.
00:43:34.980 See, but I didn't know prayer existed because God was not with me.
00:43:38.520 So that happened maybe at 10 o'clock at night, my first night in the step-down.
00:43:52.180 The next morning, I don't know, around 10 o'clock, my wife comes in, and I tell her, I said,
00:43:58.140 hey, I was supposed to get pain medicine at 8 this morning, and I didn't.
00:44:02.640 I didn't get any.
00:44:03.660 And we called, and the nurses said they would bring pain medicine, and they weren't in, man.
00:44:14.680 You know, I told you earlier that I didn't think the pain medicine was doing anything.
00:44:19.120 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.
00:44:28.540 And that's where I was living for over a week, man, I was moving up higher and higher.
00:44:33.500 That pain was ratcheting up by the minute, so much so that my wife's presence in the room was more than I could bear.
00:44:43.200 Now, I didn't tell her that because she was so worried, right?
00:44:46.160 I mean, you don't want to share that with her.
00:44:48.720 So I told her I was just really tired.
00:44:50.360 I told her it would be a good day to go spend time with our kids.
00:44:54.460 But in reality, I just needed her out of the room because I was in agony.
00:45:00.020 And I asked her if she would stop by the nursing station and have them bring medicine, and she said she would, but nobody ever came.
00:45:06.940 I would continue to call.
00:45:08.380 They would answer, but no one would come.
00:45:12.280 Hours and hours go by, and I am nearly out of my mind.
00:45:15.940 Where I was living second by second before I couldn't even do that.
00:45:20.340 It came to me evening, and a new nurse came in, and he said, he's writing on the whiteboard information, you know.
00:45:31.920 And I said, oh, thank God you're here.
00:45:34.420 I said, I'm so far behind on my pain medicine.
00:45:36.880 And he turned around, and he said, has no one told you?
00:45:42.480 And he said, told me what?
00:45:44.000 He said, there was a mistake made this morning.
00:45:46.400 You were given too much of a certain medicine, and you can't have anything until 8 o'clock in the morning tomorrow.
00:45:55.360 He's like, I can't even give you Tylenol.
00:45:58.900 And I thought, oh, my gosh, how am I going to do this?
00:46:02.300 It's 6 o'clock in the morning.
00:46:03.520 I'm in an absolute dire agony.
00:46:05.140 So he did something that I try to emulate.
00:46:09.820 It's one of the reasons why I do what I do.
00:46:13.600 He sat down next to me, and he just started to talk to me.
00:46:18.360 We didn't talk about doctors and hospitals and medicine.
00:46:21.800 We just talked.
00:46:23.120 And I'll be honest with you, I don't remember everything that we talked about.
00:46:26.400 But he told me that he was a traveling nurse and that he goes from hospital to hospital.
00:46:35.500 He's in a different hospital every night, and that he wouldn't be back to this hospital until I was home.
00:46:42.040 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.
00:46:51.100 And then I would spend an additional several months in a step-down unit hospital or a rehab hospital.
00:46:58.680 So how he knew I was going to be home in 18 days because I was home in 18 days, which is another miracle.
00:47:07.600 But how he thought that he wouldn't be there until I was there.
00:47:10.760 And he spent so much time talking to me that the guy that literally is wrapped in casts from head to toe tells him,
00:47:19.520 oh, you have so much to do.
00:47:21.160 You need to move on.
00:47:21.900 You can't spend so much time with me.
00:47:23.240 And he tells me, I have nothing else to do right now.
00:47:28.140 Now, I can tell you, anybody that's 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,
00:47:35.460 especially in a step-down unit just off of the ICU, right?
00:47:38.860 I mean, we know that.
00:47:40.480 And the interesting thing is, you know, I go around the country and I share my story.
00:47:44.160 I tell my story.
00:47:45.780 And I've had a lot of nurses listen. 0.95
00:47:49.120 And hands down, the nurses in Indiana tell me that there is no such position. 0.68
00:47:55.180 There is no position where a nurse travels from hospital to hospital every day.
00:48:00.120 And it just doesn't exist.
00:48:02.340 And, you know, it's funny because I always thought that he was an angel.
00:48:07.340 And even if he wasn't, he did something.
00:48:10.660 He did something that we all can do.
00:48:12.840 And he acted like an angel to me.
00:48:15.600 And it's something that we have the opportunity to do with each other.
00:48:19.820 We can all act like an angel for each other.
00:48:24.940 And so he finally left.
00:48:28.280 And he left me with just a great peace.
00:48:33.300 And now I'm in really a tremendous amount of pain now.
00:48:37.500 And I think to myself, I don't think I'm going to be able to go to sleep.
00:48:42.920 But if I could close my eyes for a little bit, maybe I would just drift off.
00:48:46.820 And maybe some of that time would pass.
00:48:49.640 And so I close my eyes.
00:48:52.360 And I drift out as if I'm leaning over an edge.
00:48:58.980 And I'm looking over this ledge, this great cliff.
00:49:01.840 And it goes on from horizon to horizon, as far as I can see.
00:49:06.160 And in front of me is just this dark abyss of nothingness.
00:49:11.040 And I look down into this pit.
00:49:14.160 And there are these creatures.
00:49:15.720 There's just so many, uncountable.
00:49:18.480 And they're intertwined.
00:49:20.120 Arms and legs, they're twisted together.
00:49:21.940 And their mouths, they have multiple mouths and multiple eyes on their face. 0.99
00:49:27.500 And they're covered in blood.
00:49:28.620 And they're letting out a wailing.
00:49:32.220 It's just like bone-crushing fear coming out of there.
00:49:35.740 And despair and remorse, sorrow.
00:49:39.740 It's just horrifying.
00:49:42.060 Soul-stealing is what I call it. 0.97
00:49:45.000 And I open my eyes, and I'm back in my bed.
00:49:48.600 So I close them again.
00:49:49.840 And I'm right there, leaning over this edge, looking down into the pit of hell.
00:49:56.580 Terrified.
00:49:58.500 Now, losing God was a horror of a different magnitude.
00:50:04.100 This was like a different horror.
00:50:06.360 It was equal, because God wasn't there, but it was different.
00:50:10.060 It was a different kind of fear.
00:50:12.680 Maybe it wasn't even fear, but hopelessness.
00:50:18.000 And I open my eyes, and I determine that I'm not going to close them again.
00:50:22.340 And I pray.
00:50:23.820 I asked Jesus to send the Holy Spirit to take these visions away.
00:50:30.160 But see, I did not close my eyes again, see, because I did not believe that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit.
00:50:39.700 And I was afraid to close my eyes.
00:50:42.140 And again, this is where I proved to you that prayer comes from God.
00:50:48.280 So I decide that I'm going to pray to Jesus.
00:50:52.820 And the first thing that I say is, I ask Jesus to take this pain.
00:50:56.620 And I immediately say, no, it is unfair for me to ask.
00:51:03.580 You've already carried my pain once.
00:51:06.000 It's so unfair for me to ask.
00:51:08.860 And I offer you, I will carry my pain.
00:51:11.920 I will carry it for the salvation of the world.
00:51:14.380 Now, see, I tell you that that prayer was a foreign thought to me.
00:51:20.100 I didn't know, I had never heard of redemptive suffering.
00:51:23.740 I had no concept, no concept of it.
00:51:28.040 And yet I made a prayer that was foreign to me, offered to carry my pain.
00:51:32.880 And I started talking to Jesus about his passion.
00:51:44.060 See, it occurred to me, it felt as if I was being led.
00:51:48.180 So my injuries were so similar.
00:51:51.440 I told him, I said, they scourged your back.
00:51:57.040 The skin on my back has been torn off.
00:51:59.500 I said, they pierced your hands and your feet.
00:52:03.120 I said, my own bones have pierced my hands and feet.
00:52:07.560 I said, you hung on a cross and suffocated for hours.
00:52:11.620 I was trapped in a car and suffocated for hours.
00:52:17.220 You lost so much blood.
00:52:20.380 I know the feeling.
00:52:22.040 I know the fatigue.
00:52:25.480 We talked about the passion.
00:52:27.260 I said, we, I talked.
00:52:31.300 He listened.
00:52:38.360 We talked for a while.
00:52:40.900 I had no idea, no idea what he suffered for us.
00:52:47.880 And then I, I forgot that I was afraid.
00:52:52.500 I told Jesus that I was tired.
00:53:01.260 I was going to close my eyes and go to sleep.
00:53:04.840 And I closed my eyes and right in front of me, right in front of me, then again, I'm going to use words.
00:53:15.280 And at this point, I fear that they're blasphemous because there are no words to describe what I saw.
00:53:21.760 And the words of this earth are so pale.
00:53:24.040 What I saw is infinitely greater than what I'm going to describe.
00:53:30.520 But in front of me was this beautiful ball of light.
00:53:34.800 Beautiful.
00:53:35.400 It's like the size of a grapefruit.
00:53:37.080 And it was right in front of me.
00:53:38.600 And I opened my eyes.
00:53:43.560 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.
00:53:52.400 I opened my eyes.
00:53:54.520 And a voice says, just, just out of my thought, brain damage.
00:54:00.560 So, you know, 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, my spine, my neck, everything.
00:54:13.400 The amazing thing about it is, is I did not have brain damage.
00:54:16.760 They looked, they did all the tests.
00:54:19.380 There was no brain damage.
00:54:20.520 Here's the amazing thing.
00:54:21.440 I didn't even have a concussion.
00:54:23.600 So we knew I didn't have brain damage.
00:54:25.880 And yet the voice tries to, to lead me away.
00:54:30.560 From what was happening.
00:54:32.380 And so I closed my eyes again.
00:54:35.940 And I see this beautiful ball of light.
00:54:39.440 And I open them.
00:54:41.500 And the voice says, brain damage.
00:54:45.040 And so now I know I need to call the nurse.
00:54:47.780 I need to let them know that I have brain damage.
00:54:50.000 I'm going to tell them about the, the vision that I had yesterday that I was afraid to tell, right?
00:54:53.900 And I'm reaching down to push this button, the call button in an audible voice.
00:55:00.560 In this very small room, in the chair sitting right next to me, speaks.
00:55:05.620 And I hear it with my ears.
00:55:07.480 And the voice says, look at it.
00:55:11.240 It is the Holy Spirit.
00:55:13.340 Now I turn and I look quickly.
00:55:15.140 Then there's nobody there.
00:55:16.500 And so now I know 100% that I have brain damage.
00:55:21.420 I have such a doubter, right?
00:55:25.000 And so my finger is moving and my thumb is ready to push that button to call the nurse.
00:55:30.880 And that voice moves into my mind, into the back of my head.
00:55:34.840 And it pleads with me.
00:55:36.600 And it says, look at it.
00:55:39.640 It is the Holy Spirit.
00:55:42.940 See, now I knew that voice.
00:55:44.440 I heard that voice my first time when I was nine years old.
00:55:51.120 The next time I would hear that voice, I was 15 and it helped me save a little girl's life.
00:55:57.380 In my 30s, I heard it.
00:56:00.560 And it spoke to me and it helped me save my own child's life.
00:56:05.220 And now it was speaking to me.
00:56:07.420 And ultimately it was going to save my life.
00:56:11.000 See, I knew that voice.
00:56:12.280 It had always spoken truth.
00:56:16.100 And so I trusted it.
00:56:18.720 And I looked at it.
00:56:20.840 Now forgive me.
00:56:22.440 I'm saying it.
00:56:24.180 And we refer to the Holy Spirit as a he.
00:56:27.160 But you have to remember, I was so poorly catechized.
00:56:30.820 I didn't know that.
00:56:32.600 To me, the Holy Spirit wasn't it.
00:56:35.000 And if that voice would have spoken and said, look at him,
00:56:38.480 I would have not known who he meant.
00:56:40.280 And so the voice spoke to me so that I could understand.
00:56:47.040 So from now on, I will use the proper terminology, but that's where I was at the time.
00:56:53.980 So I trusted the voice and I closed my eyes.
00:56:58.500 And in front of me again was this beautiful ball of light, the Holy Spirit.
00:57:05.040 But I started to be transported out.
00:57:07.420 And I will call this the vastness of space.
00:57:10.460 Now I will say, I don't know if there were stars or planets.
00:57:13.220 All I could see was him.
00:57:15.200 And I was moving at a really high rate of speed again, moving out to him.
00:57:21.160 And as I got closer, the Holy Spirit was growing in size, becoming enormous, right?
00:57:26.840 It was much bigger than I thought.
00:57:28.600 It wasn't just the size of a grapefruit.
00:57:30.720 He was large.
00:57:32.900 It's just huge.
00:57:33.620 And as I get close to him, it's so bright, so unbelievably bright.
00:57:40.180 I can barely look at him.
00:57:42.120 And just as I think that I can barely look at him, this gossamer veil covers him.
00:57:48.180 It's beautiful, just beautiful.
00:57:50.320 And the only thing I can liken it to, now again, I'm a science guy, a physics guy.
00:57:55.240 It looked like plasma, right?
00:57:58.160 Plasma has like this sheer look to it, but it's electric.
00:58:02.140 It's alive, right?
00:58:03.200 And it's just this color.
00:58:04.920 I can't even describe the color of it.
00:58:06.820 But this veil covers the Holy Spirit.
00:58:09.920 And it blocks just enough of the light so that I can look at him.
00:58:13.920 And this gossamer fog was pooled at the poles, north and south, east and west.
00:58:22.620 And it formed a symmetrical cross, beautiful.
00:58:27.520 And I come up to the Holy Spirit, and I look at him.
00:58:33.040 You know, the first thing I thought when I saw him being a science guy is that he resembled a star.
00:58:40.860 Like when we look at the science channel and we see our sun, and it looks like the surface is moving and alive.
00:58:48.200 Only multiply that by infinity.
00:58:51.700 The beauty is so much more beautiful, but it resembled it.
00:58:58.560 And that was the first thing I thought of.
00:59:01.400 And the voice said, look at him.
00:59:03.600 So I did.
00:59:05.720 I was able to move around him on all sides.
00:59:08.700 And it's funny because it reminded me of when I was a child.
00:59:15.060 And my parents would put the Christmas presents under the tree.
00:59:19.300 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?
00:59:25.260 And you're kind of looking over your shoulder while you're peeking, right?
00:59:28.240 And that's what I was doing.
00:59:29.760 See, I was allowed to look at him, but I don't know why.
00:59:32.020 I always think about that.
00:59:33.340 And I looked at him, and eventually I came head on to him.
00:59:39.240 And the first thing I realized was the power.
00:59:46.860 I felt his power.
00:59:49.360 And see, I'm going to say it traveled through me, but it didn't travel.
00:59:54.100 It was already there.
00:59:55.480 It reached to the edges of the universe.
00:59:58.640 It took no time to go there.
01:00:00.120 It was already there.
01:00:01.040 It was everywhere.
01:00:02.120 His power was everywhere.
01:00:04.700 And it was vast.
01:00:07.060 Oh, the power was so vast.
01:00:09.680 Right?
01:00:09.840 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 I looked at it.
01:00:20.700 I was just a regular man, right, with limited intellect.
01:00:26.140 And the enemy, you know, he was an elevated being.
01:00:29.140 He had a better intellect.
01:00:31.700 And I knew.
01:00:32.840 I knew this power was so vast and so strong that nothing could ever defeat it.
01:00:37.640 Nothing.
01:00:38.520 What would make you think you could fight it and win?
01:00:41.600 Like, I lost all respect, and I thought your pride.
01:00:44.280 What pride must you have had to think you could win?
01:00:48.540 Nothing.
01:00:48.980 No one could ever defeat this power.
01:00:55.760 And then I felt love.
01:01:01.840 Love touching me.
01:01:03.140 Now, again, I didn't have a body.
01:01:06.060 And my vision was clear again.
01:01:09.540 Crystal clear.
01:01:10.460 Only where in that other world my vision was so clear it hurt.
01:01:15.420 So here I was thankful that my vision was so clear so I could see it.
01:01:18.980 And the knowledge.
01:01:22.080 In that other world, I had the knowledge of the world.
01:01:25.340 But see, here I had the knowledge of what I'll call the universe.
01:01:29.100 All the knowledge.
01:01:30.400 Ever.
01:01:31.340 I knew what God knew.
01:01:33.300 He elevated my intellect to the point to where things like our mysteries, I could look at it and understand them.
01:01:40.300 Like, I thought, oh, it's so simple.
01:01:43.460 Well, this is so simple.
01:01:44.320 I remember thinking that about the Holy Trinity.
01:01:46.960 Like, the Holy Trinity was like the simplest thing.
01:01:49.220 It made such sense.
01:01:50.320 It was so simple.
01:01:51.420 Even a child could understand it, right?
01:01:53.500 Now, sadly, I'm back here.
01:01:56.560 And I don't have that same knowledge.
01:01:58.900 And I can tell you this, that any man that says he understands the Trinity, you don't believe him because he can't.
01:02:06.400 We can't.
01:02:07.080 But I'm letting you know that when I was in that place, when I was with our Lord, I understood those things.
01:02:13.700 And so now I feel love touching me.
01:02:19.060 Now, I'm not saying I felt loved.
01:02:21.560 I'm not saying that we've all felt loved.
01:02:25.120 I felt love like it was a physical thing touching me.
01:02:30.040 It was reminiscent of what the rays of sun feel like when they touch our skin, right?
01:02:35.680 That was what I could feel it touching me.
01:02:39.220 And then I felt mercy in the same way.
01:02:42.180 And see, later, I would think about this.
01:02:45.540 I would contemplate this.
01:02:46.560 And I realized that, oddly enough, the catechism describes the Holy Spirit as power, the Father as love, and the Son as mercy.
01:02:58.160 See, coming through the Holy Spirit, I felt all of them through the Holy Spirit.
01:03:03.800 And I felt these things that we think are just abstract as physical, concrete experiences.
01:03:18.040 Then scriptures started flooding my mind, right?
01:03:21.860 And so the first scripture, and the way it happened is the scripture would flood my mind, and I would exclaim an answer.
01:03:28.140 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.
01:03:37.820 With this vast power, it would be so easy.
01:03:40.560 It would be the easiest thing God did.
01:03:43.160 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.
01:03:57.840 And then I saw, I understood the Christmas star.
01:04:05.280 I realized that that's what I was looking at.
01:04:08.160 See, as a kid, I used to always think, how did the wise men find a place where Jesus was?
01:04:12.760 I would look outside up at the stars, and I'd see a million stars above my house.
01:04:17.040 And I'd always think, how did they know?
01:04:19.680 See, but the wise men, they saw what I saw.
01:04:22.680 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.
01:04:32.620 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.
01:04:40.560 And they knew.
01:04:42.060 See, and it explained, why didn't Herod just follow the same star?
01:04:47.080 Why didn't he follow the star?
01:04:48.640 See, because like Jesus in his ministry, he only showed who he was to the people that needed to see.
01:04:56.740 I understood why Jesus could walk up to a fisherman mending his net and say, follow me.
01:05:01.980 And he would get up and follow him, because for a moment, Jesus would show them something.
01:05:08.440 And then I saw Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
01:05:15.000 And they came to arrest him.
01:05:18.640 And they said, are you Jesus of Nazareth?
01:05:20.580 And he says, I am.
01:05:23.040 See, he used that same name that Moses used.
01:05:27.120 He says, I am.
01:05:28.800 And then he showed them what I saw.
01:05:32.160 See, no man could stand in the presence of that power.
01:05:36.420 And so they fall to the ground.
01:05:39.400 See, he did that for our benefit and for theirs.
01:05:43.680 See, he wanted them to know, and he wanted us to know, that they could not take him.
01:05:51.980 He voluntarily went.
01:05:57.360 You know, and then I, there was a peace.
01:06:01.540 There was a peace just permeating into me.
01:06:05.800 There was no pain.
01:06:06.840 There was no, I just wanted to be there forever.
01:06:12.040 You know, and I, I looked down, I could look down, like, to my right and like where my feet would be.
01:06:18.420 And I could, I could see my family.
01:06:22.500 See, I knew they would be okay.
01:06:26.380 I knew that God would take care of them.
01:06:29.280 See, God takes care of all of us.
01:06:30.880 I knew, I knew that God was holding their souls, right?
01:06:36.540 I knew all of that.
01:06:37.660 It would be okay.
01:06:38.720 It would be okay if I stayed there forever, because that's where I wanted to be.
01:06:42.380 See, I didn't realize my whole life, I was homesick for this place.
01:06:48.760 And at that moment, one of those beautiful gossamer spires reached out and touched me in my soul.
01:06:55.960 And it's really hard to explain, but I felt myself pouring into the Lord, and I felt the Lord pouring into me.
01:07:08.220 And it was, it was, again, these words, they're just so pale.
01:07:12.520 It was every good thing.
01:07:14.920 It was, it was joy and bliss and love and peace and ecstasy and happiness and every good thing pouring into me.
01:07:24.620 And it was, I was pouring out into the Lord all at the same moment, impossibly.
01:07:31.260 It was so good.
01:07:32.800 All I could say was more.
01:07:35.440 So I wanted more.
01:07:38.100 And it increased.
01:07:40.260 He increased pouring into me.
01:07:41.900 I increased pouring into him until, until I lost consciousness.
01:07:46.320 And again, this happened at maybe 10 or 11 o'clock at night, the night before.
01:07:53.300 I found myself waking up.
01:07:55.540 The sun was already up.
01:07:56.640 It was probably seven or eight o'clock in the morning.
01:07:59.700 I had slept the rest of the night, pain-free.
01:08:02.760 I don't even know if doctors or nurses came in to check on me in all of that time.
01:08:06.420 As a matter of fact, I remained pain-free until I took my first pain medicine the next day, and then the pain came back.
01:08:18.260 And so, you asked me a long time ago, I tend to talk a lot when I tell this story, about the bad things.
01:08:28.340 See, I didn't, I didn't become addicted to the drugs, because I realized what benefit there is to having this redemptive suffering.
01:08:38.800 So I didn't use the pain medicine after I got home.
01:08:42.220 They told me that I'd become depressed.
01:08:44.920 They told me all these things, right?
01:08:48.060 See, but they didn't understand that I went to the worst place that we can't even imagine.
01:08:54.480 And I can tell you this, if you told me that I had to live another hundred years at the peak of that pain, or I could take one second without God,
01:09:07.500 I would choose the hundred years of pain, and I wouldn't even think twice about it,
01:09:14.740 because one second without God is an unimaginable torture.
01:09:20.940 It's an eternity.
01:09:24.480 And so, I used to think that God is out there somewhere, right?
01:09:31.660 And we prayed to Him, and sometimes He answered, and sometimes He didn't.
01:09:36.200 But, you know, I look at it now, see, one of the benefits of that red room,
01:09:41.160 one of the benefits of that misery of losing God's touch is that when I came back, I could feel Him holding my soul.
01:09:48.020 I feel it right now when I talk to you, and I assure you, remember, I was shown that I am not different than anybody else.
01:09:56.960 God is holding your soul right now, just like He holds mine.
01:10:02.160 He never lets go.
01:10:04.840 And so, there was nothing on this earth that made it too bad.
01:10:09.640 I used to think about that footprint prone, right?
01:10:14.000 And I used to think, yeah, that's kind of cute, but it's not real.
01:10:18.160 I look at the impossibilities of what I've been through, the rehab, the years and years, the 23 operations, the loss of career, all those things you mentioned, right?
01:10:30.720 They were unmanageable, and I look now, and there's only one way that I could have made it through, and it was because He truly was carrying me.
01:10:45.800 And so, the footprint prone is absolutely spot on.
01:10:50.560 And the Lord has continued to bless me, letting me have visions, and maybe for another time, I have another book coming out that explains the red room, and why there was that misery, and what it means to be washed in the blood of Christ's soul.
01:11:08.840 I have one last question for you, Ed.
01:11:10.620 What does your faith-like look like now, after the fact, before you were still going to Mass?
01:11:18.100 But, you know, unless it was something that got in the way, I presume that was Sundays mostly.
01:11:24.540 Don't know if you prayed much, the Holy Rosary, or anything like that.
01:11:29.200 What does your faith-life look like now?
01:11:32.360 Faith-life is completely different.
01:11:34.420 So, I wake up every morning, and I do the daily readings, and I write a commentary, and I put it out.
01:11:40.320 You can sign up for that on my website.
01:11:42.460 I put that out.
01:11:43.500 Um, and I, I put a commentary based on what I saw, what I lived, and what it means, what that, what it means, right?
01:11:55.000 And, and sometimes I say the hard things that we don't always hear in the pew.
01:12:00.580 So, that's how I start my day.
01:12:02.140 I make daily Mass when I can.
01:12:03.680 I still am a father, and I am running this apostolate now, so it keeps me busy.
01:12:08.480 But we don't miss Sunday Mass, ever.
01:12:11.320 I make, I make, uh, weekday Masses when I can.
01:12:14.460 I'm, I'm a junkie for adoration now.
01:12:17.240 There, there's nothing in the world like adoration.
01:12:20.300 I used to go to confession once a year because it was required to be Catholic to go once a year.
01:12:25.520 Now I have a spiritual director who is, understands my story that I can go to confession to,
01:12:30.840 and I, I try to go to confession to him often.
01:12:34.980 Um, there's a thing about what I've seen.
01:12:39.580 See, I saw the effects of my sin, and now one of the blessings that I have is I can see sin coming.
01:12:46.680 I can see sin coming, and yet I still sin, right?
01:12:49.520 So, after everything I've seen, I'm still a sinner.
01:12:53.840 And so, my sins have a heavier weight than the average man's because of my knowledge,
01:13:00.740 what I've seen, and the fact that I've been blessed to be able to see them coming.
01:13:05.540 And so, I go to my, my, my own spiritual director because he understands that weight.
01:13:12.080 Um, confession is, is big.
01:13:14.580 Uh, Mass is big.
01:13:16.040 I mean, I used to think that we went to Mass because, well, we had to, right?
01:13:22.120 And, and now I realized that, see, that's the place where we get to share in the Lord's sacrifice.
01:13:29.420 And that's the place where he feeds us both physically and spiritually.
01:13:35.420 And without it, we would starve.
01:13:37.680 It is such a blessing, grace.
01:13:40.600 I mean, I was a cradle, cradle Catholic.
01:13:42.740 I had no concept.
01:13:43.660 I was so, uh, I had no, I had no idea how spoiled I was, and I overlooked it.
01:13:50.900 And so, yeah, now I pray all the time, but, you know, it, it's a lot easier to pray when, um, you can feel God touching you.
01:14:02.420 Uh, so, yeah, my, my life, my prayer life is better.
01:14:07.220 My marriage is better.
01:14:09.200 My, I look back now, I'm embarrassed at the man that I was.
01:14:13.140 I'm embarrassed of, of the man that, that literally was building treasures here and had nothing stored for the kingdom.
01:14:23.120 I'm embarrassed that I focused my life, so much of my life on the wrong things and not at all on the right things.
01:14:32.640 You know, I, I thought God was out there somewhere, but see, he's not out there somewhere.
01:14:37.780 He's here, he dwells within us, he holds us, he is a real tangible being that reaches through time and space to touch and hold our souls from before our conception until after our death.
01:14:53.280 And he never lets go.
01:14:55.760 I mean, that's, we are so spoiled, all of us, whether we know it or not.
01:15:01.540 And, uh, so my mission now is to awaken people to that, to awaken people to the benefits of suffering.
01:15:11.120 We live in a world that the enemy tells us that this is it.
01:15:14.740 This is where we need to have our joy, our happiness, all of those things, right?
01:15:20.140 We are due all of those things here.
01:15:22.780 And I'm here to tell you that this place is fake.
01:15:25.440 This is not real.
01:15:26.640 But at one point in our life, we were going to go someplace that is real in what we do and how we behave and how we honor our Lord here and now.
01:15:38.420 It makes a difference of the, what kind of eternity I spent an eternity that all I wished would be that it would end.
01:15:47.120 And I spent another eternity that I never wanted to end.
01:15:51.900 And all of us are going to have a choice at some point of which one we spend that eternity in.
01:16:00.320 Indeed.
01:16:01.660 Ed Joza, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
01:16:05.380 Anyone wants to, again, get more in touch with what Ed is doing, you can get to his website at themysticnextdoor.org.
01:16:12.980 You can pick up his book there as well.
01:16:14.120 So it's also available, especially for those outside the United States, on Amazon.
01:16:18.980 Ed, thank you so much.
01:16:20.080 And God bless you.
01:16:21.600 Thank you so much, John Henry.
01:16:23.000 I appreciate it.
01:16:23.660 God bless you.
01:16:25.360 And God bless all of you.
01:16:27.320 And we'll see you next time.
01:16:28.220 Thank you.