by Don Piper
The praise was unending, but the most remarkable thing to me was that hundreds of songs were being sung at the same time—all of them worshiping God. As I approached the large, magnificent gate, I heard them from every direction and realized that each voice praised God. I write voice, but it was more than that. Some sounded instrumental, but I wasn’t sure—and I wasn’t concerned. Praise was everywhere, and all of it was musical, yet comprised of melodies and tones I’d never experienced before.
“Hallelujah!” “Praise!” “Glory to God!” “Praise to the King!” Such words rang out in the midst of all the music. I don’t know if angels were singing them or if they came from humans. I felt so awestruck and caught up in the heavenly mood that I didn’t look around. My heart filled with the deepest joy I’ve ever experienced. I wasn’t a participant in the worship, yet I felt as if my heart rang out with the same kind of joy and exuberance.
If we played three CDs of praise at the same time, we’d have a cacophony of noise that would drive us crazy. This was totally different. Every sound blended, and each voice or instrument enhanced the others.
As strange as it may seem, I could clearly distinguish each song. It sounded as if each hymn of praise was meant for me to hear as I moved inside the gates.
Many of the old hymns and choruses I had sung at various times in my life were part of the music—along with hundreds of songs I had never heard before. Hymns of praise, modern-sounding choruses, and ancient chants filled my ears and brought not only a deep peace but the greatest feeling of joy I’ve ever experienced.
As I stood before the gate, I didn’t think of it, but later I realized that I didn’t hear such songs as “The Old Rugged Cross” or “The Nail-Scarred Hand.” None of the hymns that filled the air were about Jesus’ sacrifice or death. I heard no sad songs and instinctively knew that there are no sad songs in heaven. Why would there be? All were praises about Christ’s reign as King of Kings and our joyful worship for all he has done for us and how wonderful he is.
The celestial tunes surpassed any I had ever heard. I couldn’t calculate the number of songs—perhaps thousands—offered up simultaneously, and yet there was no chaos, because I had the capacity to hear each one and discern the lyrics and melody.
I marveled at the glorious music. Though not possessed of a great singing voice in life, I knew that if I sang, my voice would be in perfect pitch and would sound as melodious and harmonious as the thousands of other voices and instruments that filled my ears.
Even now, back on earth, sometimes I still hear faint echoes of that music. When I’m especially tired and lie in bed with my eyes closed, occasionally I drift off to sleep with the sounds of heaven filling my heart and mind. No matter how difficult a day I’ve had, peace immediately fills every part of my being. I still have flashbacks, although they’re different from what we normally refer to as flashbacks. Mine are more flashbacks of the sounds than the sights.
As I’ve pondered the meaning of the memory of the music, it seems curious. I would have expected the most memorable experience to be something I had seen or the physical embrace of a loved one. Yet above everything else, I cherish those sounds, and at times I think, I can’t wait to hear them again—in person. It’s what I look forward to. I want to see everybody, but I know I’ll be with them forever. I want to experience everything heaven offers, but most of all, I want to hear those never-ending songs again.
Obviously, I can’t really know how God feels, but I find joy and comfort in thinking that he must be pleased and blessed by the continuous sounds of praise.
In those minutes—and they held no sense of time for me—others touched me, and their warm embraces were absolutely real. I saw colors I would never have believed existed. I’ve never, ever felt more alive than I did then.
I was home; I was where I belonged. I wanted to be there more than I had ever wanted to be anywhere on earth. Time had slipped away, and I was simply present in heaven. All worries, anxieties, and concerns vanished. I had no needs, and I felt perfect.
I get frustrated describing what heaven was like, because I can’t begin to put into words what it looked like, sounded like, and felt like. It was perfect, and I knew I had no needs and never would again. I didn’t even think of earth or those left behind.
I did not see God. Although I knew God was there, I never saw any kind of image or luminous glow to indicate his divine presence. I’ve heard people talk about going inside and coming back out the gate. That didn’t happen to me.
I saw only a bright iridescence. I peered through the gate, yearning to see what lay beyond. It wasn’t an anxious yearning, but a peaceful openness to experience all the grace and joy of heaven.
The only way I’ve made sense out of that part of the experience is to think that if I had actually seen God, I would never have wanted to return. My feeling has been that once we’re actually in God’s presence, we will never return to earth again, because it will be empty and meaningless by comparison.
For me, just to reach the gates was amazing. It was a foretaste of joy divine. My words are too feeble to describe what took place.
As a pastor, I’ve stood at the foot of many caskets and done many funerals and said, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord to those who love him and know him.”
I believed those words before. I believe them even more now.
After a time (I’m resorting to human terms again), we started moving together right up to the gate. No one said it, but I simply knew God had sent all those people to escort me inside the portals of heaven.
Looming just over the heads of my reception committee stood an awesome gate interrupting a wall that faded out of sight in both directions. It struck me that the actual entrance was small in comparison to the massive gate itself. I stared, but I couldn’t see the end of the walls in either direction. As I gazed upward, I couldn’t see the top either.
One thing did surprise me: On earth, whenever I thought of heaven, I anticipated that one day I’d see a gate made of pearls, because the Bible refers to the gates of pearl. The gate wasn’t made of pearls, but was pearlescent—perhaps iridescent may be more descriptive. To me, it looked as if someone had spread pearl icing on a cake. The gate glowed and shimmered.
I paused and stared at the glorious hues and shimmering shades. The luminescence dazzled me, and I would have been content to stay at that spot. Yet I stepped forward as if being escorted into God’s presence.
I paused just outside the gate, and I could see inside. It was like a city with paved streets. To my amazement, they had been constructed of literal gold. If you imagine a street paved with gold bricks, that’s as close as I can come to describing what lay inside the gate.
Everything I saw was bright—the brightest colors my eyes had ever beheld—so powerful that no earthly human could take in this brilliance.
In the midst of that powerful scene, I continued to step closer to the gate and assumed that I would go inside. My friends and relatives were all in front of me, calling, urging, and inviting me to follow.
Then the scene changed. I can explain it only by saying that instead of their being in front of me, they were beside me. I felt that they wanted to walk beside me as I passed through the iridescent gate.
Sometimes people have asked me, “How did you move? Did you walk? Did you float?” I don’t know. I just moved along with that welcoming crowd. As we came closer to the gate, the music increased and became even more vivid. It would be like walking up to a glorious event after hearing the faint sounds and seeing everything from a distance. The closer we got, the more intense, alive, and vivid everything became. Just as I reached the gate, my senses were even more heightened, and I felt deliriously happy.
I paused—I’m not sure why—just outside the gate. I was thrilled at the prospect and wanted to go inside. I knew everything would be even more thrilling than what I had experienced so far. At that very moment I was about to realize the yearning of every human heart. I was in
heaven and ready to go in through the pearlescent gate.
During that momentary pause, something else changed. Instead of just hearing the music and the thousands of voices praising God, I had become part of the choir. I was one with them, and they had absorbed me into their midst. I had arrived at a place I had wanted to visit for a long time; I lingered to gaze before I continued forward.
Then, just as suddenly as I had arrived at the gates of heaven, I left them.
4
FROM HEAVEN
TO EARTH
Even when I walk
through the dark valley of death,
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me.
PSALM 23:4
The EMTs pronounced me dead as soon as they arrived at the scene. They stated that I died instantly. According to the report, the collision occurred at 11:45 a.m. The EMTs became so busy working with the others involved, that it was about 1:15 p.m. before they were ready to move me. They checked for a pulse once again.
I was still dead.
Above: Don’s Ford Escort after the accident. The roof was removed to extract Don and was laid back on top after the car arrived at the wrecking yard. Below: The accident scene.
The state law said they had to pronounce me dead officially before they could remove my body from the scene of the accident. Unless they declared me dead, an ambulance would have to transport my body to a hospital. That county didn’t have a coroner, but I learned later that a justice of the peace could declare me dead, and then they could remove my body.
Ambulances had come from the prison, the county, and Huntsville. Except for one, all of them left without taking back any patients. The last one was preparing to leave. From information I’ve pieced together, someone had arranged for an unmarked vehicle to take my body to a mortuary.
They had called for the Jaws of Life1 to get me out of the smashed car. Because I was dead, there seemed to be no need for speed. Their concern focused on clearing the bridge for traffic to flow again.
When the truck came in at an angle and went right over the top of me, the truck smashed the car’s ceiling, and the dashboard came down across my legs, crushing my right leg. My left leg was shattered in two places between the car seat and the dashboard. My left arm went over the top of my head, was dislocated, and swung backward over the seat. It was still attached—barely.
That left arm had been lying on the driver’s side door, because I had been driving with my right hand. As I would learn later, the major bones were now missing, so my lower left arm was just a piece of flesh that held the hand to the rest of the arm. It was the same with the left leg. There was some tissue just above my knee that still fed blood to the calf and foot below. Four and a half inches of femur were missing and never found. The doctors have no medical explanation why I didn’t lose all the blood in my body.
Glass and blood had sprayed everywhere. I had all kinds of small holes in my face from embedded glass. The steering wheel had pounded into my chest. Blood seeped out of my eyes, ears, and nose.
Just from seeing the results of the crash, the EMTs knew I had to have sustained massive head injuries and that my insides were completely rearranged. When he first felt no pulse, one of the EMTs covered me with a waterproof tarp that also blocked off the top of the car. They made no attempt to move me or try to get me out immediately—they couldn’t have anyway, because it would have been impossible for them to drag or lift me out of the vehicle without the Jaws of Life.
One thing that sped help to the scene was that the two prison guards in the pickup truck immediately called for emergency assistance from the prison. Otherwise, we would have been too far away for any emergency vehicle to get to us quickly.
They examined the drivers of the other two cars; both of them were uninjured and refused medical attention. The prisoner who drove the truck sustained no injuries. As soon as the EMTs determined he was all right, they transported him back to the prison. Police halted all traffic on the bridge and waited for the ambulance to arrive. While they waited, traffic backed up for miles in both directions, especially the direction I had come from. It was only a narrow two-lane bridge, not wide enough for a car to turn around. Even if the waiting traffic could have turned around, they would have had to drive an extra forty or fifty miles around the lake to reach another road leading to their destination.
From the backed-up traffic, Dick and Anita Onerecker walked at least half a mile to the scene of the accident. Dick and Anita had started a church in Klein, which is north of Houston. Both had spoken at the conference I’d just attended. I’m not positive we actually met at Trinity Pines, although we may have. For years I had heard of Dick Onerecker, but that conference was the first time I had ever seen him.
On Wednesday morning, the Onereckers left Trinity Pines a few minutes before I did. By Houston standards, that January morning was extremely cold. As they sped along, Anita said, “I’m really chilled. Could we stop for coffee? I think that would warm me up.”
Dick spotted a bait shop right on Lake Livingston, so they pulled over. Apparently, while they were buying coffee, I drove past them.
Many times afterward, Dick would bury his face in his hands and say, “You know that could easily have been us. It should have been us, but because we stopped and you drove past us, you got hit.”
Before the Onereckers reached the bridge, the accident had occurred and traffic had started to back up. People got out of their cars and milled around, asking questions and sharing their limited information.
After Dick and Anita got out of their car, they asked fellow drivers, “What’s going on up there?”
The word had passed down that there had been a serious auto accident. “A truck crashed into a car” was about all anyone knew.
Dick and Anita stood around a few minutes, but nothing happened, and more cars lined up behind them. Sometime between 12:30 and 12:45, they decided to walk to the accident site. When they saw a police officer, Dick said, “I’m a minister. Is there anybody here I can help? Is there anyone I can pray for?”
The police officer shook his head. “The people in those two cars,” he said and pointed, “are shaken up a little bit but they’re fine. Talk to them if you’d like.”
“What about the other vehicle? The one with the tarp over it?”
“The man in the red car is deceased.”
While Dick talked to the officer, Anita went over to the other vehicles. She gave her barely touched coffee to the old man.
Dick would later tell it this way: “God spoke to me and said, ‘You need to pray for the man in the red car.’” Dick was an outstanding Baptist preacher. Praying for a dead man certainly ran counter to his theology. I can’t do that, he thought. How can I go over there and pray? The man is dead.
The rain had become a light drizzle, but Dick was oblivious to his surroundings. Dick stared at the officer, knowing that what he would say wouldn’t make sense. Yet God spoke to him so clearly that he had no doubt about what he was to do. God had told him to pray for a dead man. As bizarre as that seemed to him, Dick also had no doubt that the Holy Spirit was prompting him to act.
“I’d like to pray for the man in the red car,” Dick finally said to the officer.
“Like I said, he’s dead.”
“I know this sounds strange, but I want to pray for him anyway.”
The officer stared at him a long time before he finally said, “Well, you know, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead, but I’ve got to tell you it’s an awful sight. He’s dead, and it’s really a mess under the tarp. Blood and glass are everywhere, and the body’s all mangled.”
Dick, then in his forties, said, “I was a medic in Vietnam, so the idea of blood doesn’t bother me.”
“I have to warn you—” The man stopped, shrugged, and said, “Do what you want, but I’ll tell you that you haven’t seen anybody this bad.”
“Thanks,” Dick said and walked to the tarp-covered car.
From the pictures of that smashed-down car, it’s almost impossible to believe, but somehow Dick actually crawled into the trunk of my Ford. It had been a hatchback, but that part of the car had been severed. I was still covered by the tarp, which he didn’t remove, so it was extremely dark inside the car. Dick crept in behind me, leaned over the backseat, and put his hand on my right shoulder.
He began praying for me. As he said later, “I felt compelled to pray. I didn’t know who the man was or whether he was a believer. I knew only that God told me I had to pray for him.”
As Dick prayed, he became quite emotional and broke down and cried several times. Then he sang. Dick had an excellent voice and often sang publicly. He paused several times to sing a hymn and then went back to prayer.
Not only did Dick believe God had called him to pray for me but he prayed quite specifically that I would be delivered from unseen injuries, meaning brain and internal injuries.
This sounds strange, because Dick knew I was dead. Not only had the police officer told him but he also had checked for a pulse. He had no idea why he prayed as he did, except God told him to. He didn’t pray for the injuries he could see, only for the healing of internal damage. He said he prayed the most passionate, fervent, emotional prayer of his life. As I would later learn, Dick was a highly emotional man anyway.
Then he began to sing again. “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!”2 The only thing I personally know for certain about the entire event is that as he sang the blessed old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” I began to sing with him.
In that first moment of consciousness, I was aware of two things. First, I was singing—a different kind of singing than the tones of heaven—I heard my own voice and then became aware of someone else singing.
The second thing I was aware of was that someone clutched my hand. It was a strong, powerful touch and the first physical sensation I experienced with my return to earthly life.
