The unconditional Love described by the Dead Saint testimonials are these same living waters. They are sacred and their writings and experiences are as holy and as important as ancient near-death / born-again experiences of the Apostles. They add significantly to our understanding of Christianity and Scriptures of all Faiths.
Dead Saint face-to-face encounters with Light / Light Beings / God and Jesus Christ should give you comfort of the ONE TRUTH:
Our consciousness SURVIVES death. There is only the continuation of LIFE Everlasting IN HEAVEN FOR ALL WHO BELIEVE IN LOVE.
The testimonies of the Dead Saints are the crunching of the mountain gravel beneath our feet. Their stones speak out just as Christ declared in Luke 19:40, “And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” Remember, not all follow the same granite path, but all granite paths have one destination—which is the Light. So there you are. You have your walking stick. The gravel is crunching underfoot. In the quiet between footsteps, hear the miracles sparkling in the quartz hidden among the granite stones. Walk in Faith. Call on Him when you are sick, weary, fighting, or fearful. Remember Matthew 11:28-30:
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Ask for help. The Being of Light WILL respond. Christ proved it to my family and me in the final two weeks preparing a printing proof for our publisher. He added one last exclamation point to the last two pages of the book in a dramatic sequence of events occurring over a five-day period beginning January 23, 2016 and ending on January 28:
~Last night, January 23, 2016, as I was on my way to my 57th birthday party at Mom’s around 4:30 pm, Delynn was driving her car to meet us, slid on the ice on a rural road during a snowstorm and plunged into several feet of ocean bay water. Because of the accident, she never arrived at the party. Her phone was lost under the freezing bay water and we never heard from her. Ben and I assumed, when Delynn didn’t call, she would meet us at the birthday party. Two hours passed. No word. What happened to her? We called all the Hospitals and emergency room clinics. No one, not even her best friends had heard anything. No texts. By 7:00 pm, we thought the worst.
Was she dead?
From Delynn’s memory of events, a passer-by helped her get home by 5:30 pm. Everything was a blur after that. Some things she remembered, other things she did not. Without going into personal details, Delynn, as caregiver and wife, had reached a mental breaking point that had been building for weeks.
My MRI was set for 4:00 pm Monday, January 26 at the Hampton, VA. After two-years of relative stability requiring no chemo, my brain tumor awoke from the dead and began growing explosively. MRI’s over seven months revealed tumor growth from 3mm (pea sized) on May 26, 2015, to 1.5cm x 1.8 cm (15mm x 18mm) on December 1. At that time, our VA neuro-oncologist, Dr. Gupta, and Dr. Randazzo at Duke, sadly told us we had limited treatment options. I did not qualify for Avastin or any clinical trial. It was either heavy chemo or radiation. Both would sedate and depress my ability to think and talk clearly. I refused both.
Delynn was mentally drowning. Would the MRI Monday reveal further growth? Would it reveal the proverbial “handwriting on the wall?”
Now the accident.
Although Delynn was physically unhurt, her mind had reached its limit, and its ability to cope with anything. She literally “blacked out” and could only remember parts of her experience. Our family was in crisis and we desperately needed God’s help. I prayed harder than I ever remember praying in my life. While Delynn was recovering from her accident, Mom took me to the Hampton VA medical center for my 4:00 pm MRI. Scan results showed the brain tumor had grown again to 2.2cm x 2.1cm, (22mm x 21mm) a 20% growth rate in seven weeks. T2 Flair, which is an indication the brain cancer was spreading, had increased dramatically.
It certainly did not look good.
Our brains can only take so much tumor growth before they begin to shut down. While the thinking part of my brain was very sharp, the brain tumor was putting pressure on the motor skill areas of my legs. I was beginning to have constant pressure headaches that felt like a vise-grip on the left side of my head. My right leg was becoming numb. I could still walk, but it felt twice as heavy as my left leg. I was losing more balance almost daily.
I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz with the sandglass of time running out. My fear was that I would not have time to finish the Chronicles. I had projected my fears onto Delynn. I didn’t listen to Great Grampa’s advice in June during his visit from Heaven that I should be like a Terrapin, a turtle – write slow and steady. I had become a hare, writing like a maniac, because I feared I would not have enough time to finish writing. I did not pay attention to my wife, my caregiver and her fears and feelings about losing the love of her life. Delynn wanted me to spend more quality family time with my kids and with her before I died.
It took a couple of days, but Delynn slowly recovered from her “breakdown.” Mom was driving us around while we waited for a rental car replacement from our insurance company. On the evening of Monday, January 26, while out and about, we saw a black man shivering in the cold who seemed lost. He had just been released from the city jail and was holding only a plastic baggy containing his cell phone. Without thought, Mom handed him a $50.00 bill she had tucked away in her purse for a rainy day.
That’s when our eyes met.
I asked this gentle man with kind eyes, “What is your name?”
He said, “Immanuel.” God is with us. ~Chronicle 955
January 23, 2016
The tragic accident forced long held issues with my family to surface for Delynn and me. Dying is hard on everyone. Nobody talks about it. Resentments and misunderstandings build to a crescendo. Our family had reached that critical note. Then, God sent a message like thunder answering our prayers. Immanuel is with you in this very moment. These are the granite stones speaking! Hear them! See them! Dismiss them not! Healing will take time, but I am absolutely certain the process has begun.
However, God was not done with us yet. Another miraculous set of events occurred two days later on January 28, 2016:
12.01am. Text from Dannion Brinkley: David, [the Foreword] is on my computer in LA. I will try to get Kathryn to find the file and send it Sunday night (Jan 31)
12.06am. Five minutes later. A text came in from my 17-year-old daughter Angela: I LOVE YOU DADDY. YOU’RE AMAZING AND I LOVE YOU. I 100% forgive you…
She had had a hard time accepting the divorce between her mother and I. I had asked many times for Angela’s forgiveness. This was a blessing to my heart and I know her’s as well. I subsequently discovered Angela was awarded a life changing/life altering, first-of-a-kind, Internship from a national media company for her music and artistic video work. If she does well, it will most likely become her career...cementing University decisions here on the East Coast.
4:30pm: Final Editing. Maggie and Steve Courter come over to work on the final editing before book layout of the Chronicles. I pulled out the book by Pin van Lommel M.D, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience and showed it to Maggie, because I wanted to use it as an example for the Chronicles Bibliography.
6:15pm: Before leaving, Maggie told me a story about a miracle of kindness that happened to her the day before at grocery store. A total stranger walked up to her and gave her a dozen red roses! To Maggie, this “random act of kindness” was a sign from God. Their house in the Blue Ridge Mountains hadn’t sold, straining their finances. The roses were a nod from God, ‘I am aware of your burden. I am with you.”
6:30pm: When Maggie and Steve left, I did my daily check on the NDERF.org website for new NDE updates. The last NDERF posting was January 22, 2016. When I checked ag
ain, lo and behold, a new NDE blog dated January 28, 2016. #4087 posted by Anna NZ’s had the mention of Pin van Lommel. As I glanced through her Dead Saint experience, tears ran down my face. I could hardly believe what I was reading. Anna, a physician, stopped breathing and died for 8 minutes during standard laparoscopic surgery. During her “death,” she finds herself flying through a black tunnel before ending up in a brightly lit roofless hall made of glass that looked like the Greek Pantheon. She was sitting by a table with young people talking who looked 30-40 years old dressed in very bright colors of green, red, blue, and gold. Anna’s NDE continues:
I sat at a wall and just looked around. I saw a dark passage with a table like in the Last Supper. The stools are placed like in a theatre… Sometime during this experience, my life was tested and I answered different questions [The Life Review and Judgment]. At the end of the table, I see my mother sitting, who died when she was 88 years old, except now she looks like she is 40 years old. She wears a dress that I know to be dark blue in reality, but this dress was white with red roses…. From above, through the opening in the ceiling, I saw a great brightness like a beam of non-blinding, white Light.
I kept saying repeatedly the whole time, ‘My God, where am I?’
Suddenly, I get it. I put two and two together; my mother, The Light, the table, and those people. I was dead. I said, ‘No! No! I don’t want to be here. I got here by mistake. What about my husband, my children and my grandchildren? And my patients?’
My mother rose from the table, comes over to me and takes my hand. She leads me to the corridor and says, ‘It’s not your time yet. We must part. You must go back.’
Then I remember I looked just like a ghost in a comic book, looking around the operating room and seeing my own heart defibrillation. I saw the way a woman was lying on the bed in the surgery room. I was wondering who it is lying there. The doctor said to the assisting staff, ‘Now get away.’ Then, he used the defibrillator on the woman.
It was me.
I also remember a priest giving me the last sacrament. The priest said, ‘You’ll go to Heaven.’ 14
It took 18 months for Anna to get back to normal from brain damage (neuroplasticity) caused by 8 minutes without breathing. During her recovery, she describes being “cared for by Heaven” and full of love, even to people to whom she shouldn’t have any love. She read many books about love, but Anna was afraid of telling other people because she didn’t want them to think she was crazy. She ends the January 28 blog by saying, “In my opinion the most invaluable piece is ‘Consciousness Beyond Life’ by Dr. Pim Van Lommel. I attended one of his conferences. The people I told about my experience, they say that I should not keep it to myself. I changed, and my life changed.”15 ~Chronicle 960.
Dr. Pin Von Lommel’s name has NEVER been mentioned on the over 4000 NDERF postings since 1998 until this FIRST POSTING on January 28, 2016.
I read about Anna’s NDE two hours after discussing Dr. Lommel’s book with Maggie. Then, there is Anna’s mother’s white dress with red roses and Maggie receiving Red Roses from a complete stranger the day before. I have never read of a dress of similar description posted on NDERF.
Two coincidences within two hours? God invoked the Law of 2’s…showing His breadcrumbs again!
What did I think God was saying to Delynn and me?
I believe God was saying, “Be at peace. Everything is unfolding EXACTLY as planned.”
Zen Closing to the Christian Afterlife
My wish for your journey remains; that beyond Faith, the Chronicles give you comfort that death is not the end--a realization that is the first step of a thousand miles. Take the walking stick and step forward. Hear the granite gravel crunch underfoot until you have a real EXPERIENCE of the BEING OF LIGHT, JESUS CHRIST, OR GOD. And whether the EXPERIENCE of the LIGHT is Born-Again Christian, Mystical-death, Holy Spirit, (non-religious or religious), Dead Saint, or Near-Death Lightning, the EXPERIENCE will forever transform your Heart.
From that moment on, it becomes a journey of following “the still small voice” that leads you like a child to the “living waters” of Life Everlasting. Cultivate these thoughts. Lessons you have struggled with your entire life will suddenly become easier to overcome, especially your ability to forgive. Then, as the Zen saying goes, you will begin to truly “see, hear, think, and speak” the TRUTH, the same freedom spoken of by Christ in John 8:32 (NIV): And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
Death is Graduation from Earth University
Death will be my graduation from Earth University… and what a fine Day it will be!
Remember when you graduated from High School, Military School, or University? I remember that day like yesterday, when all 683 seniors of the Princess Anne High Class of 77’ graduated. It was awesome! After the last word was given, we threw our blue graduation caps high into the air. Classes were over! Thank God!
According to one Dead Saint, there are “announcement centers in Heaven and people are notified their loved ones are about to arrive.”16 It’s a sad parting for friends and family. Goodbyes and farewells are difficult, BUT we will see each other again, sooner than we think. That’s what I expect dying will feel like.
But not yet!
I certainly look forward to reuniting with long lost friends and the great cloud of witnesses17 sitting in the bleachers welcoming me home at my appointed time. I suspect Great Grandpa Sarge has already alerted everyone to my upcoming arrival in the not-to-distant future. How long must they wait?
It is up to God and me. May the Lord Bless you all.
Maranatha.
—
Endnotes
1Afshin Javid 2012. You Tube Video interview of Afshin Javid. Excerpted and transcribed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe7fJOb9XGU
2Bridget F NDE, #1654, 07.21.08, NDERF.org
3Robyn F NDE, #3666, 05.03.14, NDERF.org
4D.C. Lau 2001. Tao Te Ching. (New Bilingual Edition). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
5Barry C NDE, #3236, 01.14.13, NDERF.org
6Stephanie L NDE, #1005, 02.03.07, NDERF.org
7Mary Jo Rapini, describing her near-death experience, http://ndestories.org/mary-jo-rapini/
8Teri R NDE, #2301, 08.10.10, NDERF.org
9Bobby H’s NDE, #776, 02.19.06, NDERF.org
10D.C. Lau 2001. Tao Te Ching. (New Bilingual Edition). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
11Bobbie D NDE, #1936, 07.09.09, NDERF.org
12Maria R NDE, #917, 07.29.06, NDERF.org
13My Story, #92, aleroy.com/board92.htm
14Anna NZ NDE, #4087, 01.28.16, NDERF.org
15Anna NZ NDE, #4087, 01.28.16, NDERF.org
16Richard Sigmund 2004 & 2010. My Time in Heaven: A True Story of Dying…And Coming Back. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House. p. 20.
17Hebrews 12:1-2, Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Foreword to the Afterword
By David Solomon
Cancer diagnosis June 13, 2013… Eleven days after a brain biopsy on July 1, 2013, we met with neuro-surgeon, Dr. Gwinn. He recommended surgery and we scheduled it for August 2 to remove the 20mm brain tumor. According to Gwinn, the resection of my tumor would likely leave my right leg, and possibly my right hand permanently nerve-damaged. Translation: following surgery there was a good chance I would be wheelchair bound.
If this turned out to be the reality, I wanted to get in as much physical activity as I could while I still could.
Walking! For instance…
In addition, as many of the other normal things I had always taken for granted. Sharing days camping, biking, hiking, skiing with my children. Caring for my gardens; or now, wrapping things up with my business partners; getting my affairs in order in case the worst went wrong with the surgery. Even if I survived, they said I might never be able to walk again. We wrote out a bucket list. I’d traveled the world the last twenty years, but had never been to Yellowstone Park or seen the Grand Tetons. So we plotted out an impromptu four-day trip there. Anna, my ex, loaned me her SUV. We stuffed all seven of us in, Patrick, Nathan, Angela, Matthew, Benjamin, Delynn and myself and off we went 12-hours to Yellowstone.
Departing for Yellowstone & Grand Tetons -- Old Faithful & Prism Lake
The long drive sped by and we checked into our appropriately named Hotel Terra. Yellowstone geysers are scattered around a closed 75-mile-long loop. It’s a full day of driving, “Old Faithful” of course, and a half-dozen other gorgeous, crystal clear boiling geysers. The most amazing was Prism Lake. A half-mile wide and 160 degrees, its intense deep blue was bordered by pumpkin orange, green and white sulfur crusts. A spooky mist wafted continuously over the lake. It looked like a scene out of a monster movie. ~Chronicle 37
River Rapids
Last minute, we arranged a white water rafting trip. The rapids were low, level 2 or 3—nothing compared to the level 6 and 7 Grand Canyon rapids last year. But it was good for all of us to be together for this calm trip downstream. I remember the moment the huge yellow rubber raft came to rest at the end of the white water and I asked the tour leader if they ever allowed wheelchair-bound tourists aboard.
He said, “No.”
Hearing that from the raft leader, Angela and I locked eyes for a moment. I could see her trying to accept what might be in store for me. It hit me in the gut. We both were in tears without a word being said.
The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife Page 43
