HOWARD STORM,S EXPERIENCE

It was the 1st June 1985, and I was in France. I was
leading a group of students on an art tour. My wife was
with me, and it had come to the last day of our trip. In
mid-sentence, I fell to the ground, screaming with intense
pain in my stomach. An ambulance came and I was
rushed to hospital. The doctor told me that I had a hole in
my duodenum.
After some time, with the pain getting increasingly worse,
a nurse came into the room and told me and my wife that
I was going to have an operation. At that point, because I
had suffered so much, I was ready to die. I had thought,
during the day, that I was going to die but had hung on by
my fingernails, as it were, trying to stay alive.
The problem for me was that I was an atheist. As a teenager I was brought up in a liberal Protestant
church. I had lost faith at college and had become a scientific atheist. Now, facing death, I felt nothing
but hopelessness, depression and despair. I told me wife, who was not an atheist, and did have some
faith. She was in tears.
I closed my eyes and went unconscious. I do not know how much time elapsed, but I found myself
standing next to my body. I opened my eyes and there was a body in my bed. I could not understand
how it was possible to be outside of my body, and yet looking at my body. I was extremely agitated and
upset, because I was yelling at my wife to get her attention. She neither saw nor heard me, and did not
move at all.
I turned to my roommate but received the same reaction. He too was oblivious of me, and I became
more and more angry and agitated. It was at that point that I heard voices calling me by name, from
outside the room.
I was afraid, but the voices seemed friendly. When I went to the doorway of my room I could see
figures moving around in a haze, and I asked them to come closer. They would not come close
enough for me to see them clearly. I was able to make out only their silhouettes and general features.
Whether or not I was dead at this point, I do not know. These beings kept asking me to come with
them. Although I asked a lot of specific questions, they evaded them all, giving only general, vague
answers. They insisted that I went with them. So, with a great deal of reluctance, I did so.
I continued to ask questions, such as, where were we going. They replied that I would see when we
arrived. I then asked who they were, and they responded saying they had come to take me. So I
followed them, and we went on a journey that I know lasted many, many miles. There was no
landscape or architecture, just an ever thickening, ever darkening, haze. Even though they refused to
tell me where we were going, they implied they would take care of me, and had something for me. And
I wanted it, not knowing what it was.
Gradually they became increasingly cruel, as it began to get even darker. The creatures also started
making fun of me. Some would say to others, ‘Hey, be careful, don’t scare him off’, or, ‘Hush up, it’s
too soon for that’. What was even worse, they started making vulgar jokes about me. It seemed at first
there were about a dozen of these creatures, but later on I thought maybe forty or fifty. Later still it
appeared as if there were hundreds or more.
At this point, I said I was not going any further. This was bluff on my part, because I did not know
which way was back, or where I was. I could not figure out how I could still be in the hospital, and have
walked so far. The creatures responded by pushing and shoving me. At first I fought back well. I was
able to hit them in the face and kick them, except I could not inflict any damage to them. They simply
laughed. Then they began to pick little pieces off me with their fingernails and teeth. I experienced real
physical pain, and this went on for a long time. I was fighting, trying to fend them off. I was in the
centre of a huge crowd, hands and teeth all around me. The more I screamed and struggled, the
better they liked it.
The noise was terrible, with loud laughter and constant torment. They went further, insulting me, and
violating me in other ways to horrible too talk about. Their conversation was fouler than could ever be
imagined.
Eventually I no longer had the strength or ability to fight any more, and I fell to the ground. They
seemed to lose interest in me. People seemed to be coming by and giving me a kick, but the intense
fury had gone. As I lay there I had the strangest experience. It seemed that a voice came from my
chest that spoke to my mind. This was an internal conversation. My voice said to my mind, ‘Pray to
God’.
I proceeded to argue with my voice. I said that I did not believe in God, so how could I pray to Him? My
voice said, ‘Pray to God’, and I thought, ‘But I don’t know how to pray, I don’t know what praying
means!’ For a third time my voice said, ‘Pray to God!’, and I thought I had better try. I started to think
things like, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd; God bless America’. Just little things that I could remember
which sounded holy. Soon the thoughts became mutterings. As they did the creatures around me
started screaming and yelling at me that there was no God, and that I was the worst of the worst. They
said nobody could hear me, so what did I think I was doing?
Because these evil creatures were so strong in their protest I started to say more. I shouted things at
them like, ‘God loves me. Get away from me. In the name of God, leave me alone!’ They continued to
scream at me, except now they were retreating back into the darkness. I finally came to the point
where I found myself screaming all the things I could think of that sounded religious, but I was
completely alone in the darkness.
The creatures had retreated as if my words were scalding water on them. Although I was shouting little
pieces of Psalm 23, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil’, and the Lord’s
Prayer, I did not believe them. I meant them in the sense that I could see they were having the effect
of driving these creatures off, but I was not convinced in my heart about the truth of them.
I was there alone, for how long I do not know. I sank into greater hopelessness, deeper than I could
imagine possible, because here I was, in the dark, with nothing. Somewhere, out in the darkness,
were the evil creatures. I could not move or crawl, and did not know what to do. In fact I got to the
point where I really did not want to exist any more.
So it was at the moment of deepest despair that a tune from my childhood, when I had gone to
Sunday School, started going through my head. ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’, and I wanted that to be
true, more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. With every ounce of my being, I screamed into
the darkness, ‘Please Jesus, save me!’ I meant it. I did not question or doubt it, I just meant it with
every fibre of my being. Upon doing that a small faint star appeared in the darkness. It grew rapidly,
brighter and brighter, and soon it was a large, indescribably brilliant light that picked me up into itself.
As it lifted me up I looked down at myself. All my rips, tears and wounds slowly disappeared. As I
continued to be lifted up, I became whole and well. I can only describe the light as something of
inexplicable beauty. I knew that it was good.
One minute I was an atheist, and in the next minute every part of me wanted Jesus. I lost all my pride,
my egotism, my self-dependence, and my reliance on my much-exalted intellect. All of these had
ceased to serve me any more - they had failed me. All the things I had lived my life for, had made my
god, and had worshipped, had let me down. What I came to cry out for was a hope that was planted
within me as small child many years before.
I knew that the light knew me better than anyone knew me. I knew that it loved me in a way I had
never experienced love before, and I began to cry. I was completely purging myself of everything that
had ever happened to me. Until that time I had probably only cried two or three times. I considered it a
show of weakness, and this was the first real cry of my adult life. Now I consider crying to be very
important, so I give myself permission to cry if it is appropriate.
This light, which I now refer to as the Angel of Light, was surrounded by other lights, which were
angels who came and went. ‘Angel’ means a messenger from God, and this was indeed the case. He
held me, and we rose up out of that place of darkness and started to travel through space. I saw, far
off in the distance, what I thought was a sky full of stars. As we moved towards it I realised they were
all in motion, moving towards or away from the centre.
These angels were patient, good teachers, and constantly made me feel loved and accepted. But they
had some very hard lessons to teach me. One of the first things they wanted to do was to reveal
certain details of my life. I told them I did not want to do that, because I was ashamed of it. I had spent
my life blaspheming and denying the truth, yet here I was being confronted by it. I felt the weight of all
the people I had scoffed at, and as a teacher, turned away from God. I had denied the truth. I could
not even bear to think of the damage I had done by my cynicism and self-worship.
Together we looked at my life, projected out in front of us in chronological order, from beginning to
end. Some parts went by very rapidly, others very slowly. Some parts we watched several times, from
different points of view. There was no distinct background, just images of my life. It was the people
who were important, not the settings. We were able to go backwards and forwards in time and see
different places, yet not really be there.
Whenever we saw areas in my life when I had worked hard for to achieve approval from other people,
the angels had no interest in them, and passed by them. I would tell them to stop, because I wanted
them to see how hard I had worked to win that award, and to see all the people watching me. But they
would say, ‘Yes, but that is not important’. When they came upon some incident that was bad, and
there tended to be more bad incidents than good ones, the angels would show it in detail. For
example, one of the ways I had sinned, that I had failed in my life, was the way I interacted with
people. I saw people as things to get things from. In other words, I manipulated my relationships. I saw
how I aggravated my father, because of this I was jealous of his interest in business. I was not doing it
intentionally. It was teenage jealousy of the attention my father gave to his work, and not to me.
Another situation concerned how a beautiful young woman came into my life, and gave herself and her
love to me. But I abused her psychologically, not physically. I took for granted this love of another
human being, the gift God had given me.
I saw the children that God had given me as a gift, with a wife to raise them. But I had seen them as
extensions of my own ego. If they did what I wanted them to, in other words, if they were like me, they
pleased me. But if they acted in ways unlike me I would hate them, and show my anger. I also saw
myself constantly withdrawing more and more from people, and living in my own selfish world. I
became increasingly unhappy, although I was getting along in the world. I was successful, getting
promotions at my work. I was making good money, and everybody thought I was a wonderful guy.
Many times the angels had to stop and simply let me know that they loved me, even though I knew
how much I hurt them with the life I had led. I knew how much I had failed their expectations and
hopes of what I could have been. I had seen that when I was a young child I had been taught to be a
loving, giving, trusting person. But I had turned away from that. It was nobody’s fault by my own.
They showed me how I had turned away from the Lord. It was all pride. I did not get good, faithful
teaching when I was a teenager. I received a lot of extremely liberal, humanistic rationalism instead of
faith. I saw myself asking people in my church if they believed in Jesus, or in Heaven and Hell. They
would say, ‘Well, no, not really’. I saw myself searching for answers. When I entered college I found
Marxists and atheists. They seemed to have all the answers about how they were going to change the
world through socialism, and their high-minded ideals. That was what I bought into.
There were points in my life when I could see how God had tried to reach me in so many ways. He
had tried to reach me through songs on the radio, in stories and novels I had read, and in biographical
sketches in history books. He had also tried to reach me through good people loving me, trying to
open up my heart, and to be close to me. It seemed that every day of my life, God had reached out for
me. Before this experience, if people had asked me whether God was a good God, I would have
laughed at them. But now I realise that God is so much better than that which we perceive is good.
Good is but a small reflection of that quality.
Having seen my whole life brought in front of me, the angels asked if I had any questions, and I had
millions of them! I asked them good questions, absurd questions, intellectual questions, and
philosophical questions. Whatever I asked, they answered clearly and simply. People often ask how
long I was with the angels. I often say, ‘Longer than my graduate education’. I know that is absurd, but
that’s how long it seemed. I told them I wanted to go into Heaven, but they said I was not ready. They
said I had to go and live the way God wanted me to live. I argued as strongly as I could, but they were
very gentle but adamant. They said that for me, at that time, Heaven was not an option.
I found myself back in my body, and I wanted to tell my wife what had happened. But my body was so
racked with pain, and I had come from such peace and joy, that I could not speak to her. The nurses
and orderlies came in at this point. It was now about 9.30 in the evening, and they said that the doctor
was going to operate on me immediately. I went down to the operating theatre.
The following day when my wife came to the recovery room, I had tubes seemingly everywhere in my
body. I tried to tell her about God’s love, and how she had to give herself to Jesus. I told her just to
say, ‘Yes’ to him. She thought I was completely mad! When I next saw her, I tried again to tell her
more calmly, but I became very emotionally agitated. When the nurses came into the room I would say
to them that they were doing the work of God. I told them that because they helped and loved people,
and that God smiled upon their work. Needless to say I got the reputation of being a mad man. Then I
got my hands on a Bible and began to read Scripture. I began to recite it to people when they came to
see me, because I thought maybe my words were not good enough, but of course people did not like
that either.
I had to learn, over many months, that my very hot zealous approach to try and convert the world was
not having much success.
At first, I would make my wife sit and I would read the Bible to her, in what I now call ‘thunder reading’.
It would scream it at her, and go on for hours and hours. After several months she said she was
leaving. She said, ‘I love you, but can’t take any more of this’. I could not believe it. Good Christian
friends told me that my wife was a gift from God, and that it was sinful for me to drive that gift away. So
I learned to moderate, and show her through love, rather than trying to beat Scripture into her. Praise
God, she did not leave. I told her I would change my ways, and she too became a believer.
People have asked many times whether I could have dreamed all this, and there were times when I
almost thought I had.
This experience changed my life completely. Not only did I eventually become a full time minister, but
it changed the way I felt. Before there used to be melancholy and cynicism, but now there is genuine
joy, all the time. That’s not to say I don’t have my ups and downs. But behind every day there is a
joyfulness. I try, as best I can, to spread that joy and peace.
After a time I was invited to speak to a Bible Study group, and they told me that my story reinforced
their faith. I felt such love and acceptance from them that it encouraged me. From there other
opportunities began to open up. I am not important, and my story is not important. What is important is
that I can encourage someone in their faith. For someone who has no faith, I can get them to re-
examine who they are, and what they are. It is my hope that I will be an instrument in leading them to
Christ. I do not really know why God chose me to go through this experience, but, as a teacher I had
an ability to express things clearly. Because I was a well-known, confirmed atheist, I think God is trying
to show people His power.
I have done a lot of research in books, and have interviewed people who have had near death
experiences. I have found that many are reluctant to talk about their experience because of ridicule.
Other people have gone off the deep end and made gross, wrong interpretations of what they have
experienced. For example, I saw a woman on TV talking about her experience. She said, ‘It’s all light
and love. There is no Hell and no judgement, just perfect love and light’. I felt sorry for her because
she had experienced perhaps a moment of the divine, and had then made very erroneous conjecture
from that.
What we do in this world determines where we go out of this world. People try not to face the
consequences of their actions. They try to deceive themselves into saying, “I can do whatever I want
and it does not matter”. It does matter. Everything that we do in this world matters. We can be forgiven
of our wrongdoing but we must converted. This means we must renounce our sins and our guilt. Most
importantly, we must accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour.
Howard Storm’s full testimony may be read in his book,
“My Descent into Death.”
Howard Storm is now an ordained minister