by Eric Metaxas
Four days after the accident, the doctors were astounded that the leg was still “alive,” without any vein to provide blood flow. Some capillaries were the only source of blood. But this became increasingly inadequate and an amputation had to be scheduled. But when the time came for the amputation, something odd happened. The orthopedic surgeon took Andy into surgery and had him on the operating table. The doctor marked where he must cut and then placed the saw on Andy’s leg to begin. But somehow he could not begin cutting Andy’s leg. He wasn’t sure exactly why he could not, but even after having come this far, he stopped. He could not continue. In his mind, he reasoned that he could certainly take the leg off the next day if it was necessary, or the day after that, but once it was amputated he surely could never reattach it. So the doctor canceled the surgery and for the time being the leg remained attached to Andy’s body.
But following this near amputation there were weeks and weeks of surgeries, most of them aimed at saving the leg. For Andy, it was a time of never-ending pain. He said that his thumb was almost glued to the button that worked the morphine pump. Every night was filled with pain, so he never really slept properly, and when he did doze off, there were awful flashbacks to the accident. The pain and the surgeries never seemed to end, so it was nearly impossible to be hopeful. Some friends brought headphones and some CDs, containing a combination of Southern Gospel hymns that Andy had learned from his grandparents and others he had sung in choir. He had never in his life felt his own helplessness so keenly. Andy was a man of strong faith and during this period, he found himself thinking over and over of Jesus and of what Jesus had endured for him in his suffering on the cross. Many times Andy sobbed uncontrollably as he thought of it. A number of visitors thought the weeping was from his pain and anxiety, but mostly during this time, Andy recalled, it was out of gratitude for what God had done for him, and for God’s nearness to him during this long trial.
Over time, small improvements occurred, but additional surgeries were always needed. The gastroenterologist said that Andy’s liver was not strong enough to sustain the pressure from anesthesia, so Andy’s leg should come off as soon as possible. He knew that there was little hope Andy could keep it anyway, so to put off the amputation was compromising his ability to survive at all. But for now the gastroenterologist’s advice was not heeded; they would try other things and still hope that the leg could somehow be saved.
One procedure involved grafting skin from Andy’s healthy leg. But shortly after this procedure his body began to retain fluid such that his weight shot up to over 280 pounds. Then his skin turned black, an especially bad sign. At this point the doctors decided on a course of treatment called “debridement,” in which dead and damaged tissue is continually removed in order to increase the potential for healing.
Despite all these heroic efforts, however, the situation was undeniably bleak. His overall health was still poor and not improving. The official hospital report over this time was that he was in “serious condition,” but a number of times things took a turn for the worse, although Andy always seemed to pull back from the brink. Then one day, the doctors saw things take an especially bad turn, one from which they were convinced he would not recover. They now strongly suggested that the family should gather. Andy’s son was at that time in the Grand Canyon, as part of a course he was taking through Calvin College. The college arranged to fly him home. Andy’s daughter was teaching in Florida and she flew home to Michigan as well.
When they were all finally gathered at the hospital, standing around his bed, Andy was unconscious and unaware of their presence. But as Kay and their children stood there, and as his condition worsened, Andy had what he soon understood to be a vivid glimpse of Heaven.
He found himself suddenly in a different place. He remembers looking at a vast panoramic field. He says it was the most beautiful, calm, serene, and vivid place he had ever experienced. There were trees, flowers, and fauna, but everything he saw was in pale colors. The sky itself was a pale color. Then the colors began to deepen and deepen until they became the most vibrant colors he could ever imagine. It was all so visually stunning that he could even see the details in the tree bark. The wildflowers were every imaginable color, yellows and oranges and violets, and the sky was bluebird blue. Then a wind made the wildflowers in the meadow move the way a rolling sea moves. It was all breathtakingly beautiful.
Then Andy noticed a figure at the edge of the field. It looked like a scarecrow or a skeleton, and it began moving from the far corner toward the middle of the field. As it drew closer, the bones started to take on flesh and the musculature became pronounced. And it was skipping. Andy said that in all his years in teaching he had come to know that skipping is the one form of movement that almost always expresses happiness. It’s very rare that someone skips without having a smile on their face. The man—and Andy now saw it was a man—was actually skipping as he moved across the landscape. As the figure drew closer, Andy saw that it was clothed in the type of clothing he had worn himself, years before. The figure wore Levi’s, a Henley-collared shirt with blue and white stripes, and docksider shoes. The face was beaming with joy. As it drew even closer, Andy could see the man’s features. The face seemed familiar. Then he realized he was looking at himself. He was seeing himself in Heaven. For the brief period during which all of this happened, Andy recalled that he felt no pain at all, just joy. He had not been painless for so many weeks. Then suddenly the heavenly moment broke as Andy felt a sharp tug on his ankle.
“Dad! Dad!” the voice called. It was the voice of Andy’s son, Drew. But Andy couldn’t imagine having to leave that glorious, peaceful, joyful place. In his mind, Andy shouted, “No!” But then the colors faded back to pale. A white tunnel now appeared and Andy was “whooshed” through it to return to his hospital bed and his pain. Andy was extremely upset to have left what he knew was Heaven, but for some reason he had come back, and needless to say, he did not die.
But the experience so affected him that ever since it happened, he has absolutely no fear of death. In fact, just the contrary. He says that he looks forward to it with great anticipation, knowing that God has something beautiful and wonderful planned for him. He says that the experience dramatically changed his life.
A few months after all of this, Andy had finally gotten out of the hospital and was making a heroic effort to return to his teaching career at Calvin College. He was in a wheelchair, trying to maneuver through a door and having a difficult time, when an assistant chaplain saw his plight. He hustled over to help Andy get through the doorway and said that he couldn’t believe Andy was back at school. He asked if Andy could remember when the surgeon decided against taking his leg. Andy certainly did, and he told the man the time and place of the surgery. The chaplain looked at Andy. “Do you know what was happening on campus at that time?” he asked. Andy had no idea what he was referring to. The chaplain said that at that very time a prayer vigil for his life and his leg was going on in the chapel. Hundreds who knew his situation were praying for him at that time.
The doctor who had brought Andy into surgery—who had the saw on Andy’s leg—later told Andy that it was as though he “didn’t have the strength to pull the saw.” He said that something kept him from starting the sawing motion. Of course neither he nor Andy knew anything about the hundreds of people that very moment praying that Andy could keep his leg. That night in Sharon’s apartment in Grand Rapids, I saw the leg with my own eyes. It’s still his, all these years later.
THE POWER OF GOD
My friend Brad Stine is a professional comedian. In a profile on him in The New Yorker, he was described as having a comic style that is “frantic, aggressive, and caustic, with echoes of Robin Williams, Sam Kinison, and George Carlin, who is his comedy hero.”
Brad grew up as a Christian, but like so many Christians he never understood why God didn’t seem to behave the same way today that he behaved during the times that the Bible was wri
tten. He believed the events of the Bible, such as the parting of the Red Sea and the miracles of the loaves and fishes and the healings Jesus did and Jesus rising from the dead and everything else. But why weren’t these things happening in his lifetime, where he could witness them? Where was the God who had done those things and whom he knew existed?
Brad had often heard people refer to things as miracles, such as when someone survived what might have been a deadly car crash, but he wondered how we could know those things weren’t just coincidences. What made something a miracle? Brad remembered the amazing stories from the Book of Acts, such as when the apostle Paul and his companion Silas are freed from their chains by angels while the guards nearby are sleeping. Now, that was a miracle. It couldn’t just “happen.” If it happened, there was no doubt it wasn’t a coincidence. But Brad wondered if all of Paul’s and Silas’s friends believed them when they told that story and other amazing stories. Perhaps some of their friends would have been just as skeptical as we would if we heard amazing stories like that from our own friends.
Part of the reason Brad wondered how some of the people in the Bible were viewed by people around them when they told of miraculous happenings is because something happened to him that no one else could ever corroborate. It is his word against the world’s, so to speak. Why should someone believe his story? And yet he knows it’s true.
By way of background, Brad grew up in the 1970s in a church that was very theologically conservative. Brad thoroughly adhered to their teachings and could himself be quite legalistic and rigid. His own beliefs and his church environment were not at all conducive to people sharing about supernatural miracle stories. But there were many other churches blooming in California in the 1970s where such things were more accepted. When Brad was in his early twenties he first experienced something of these “other” churches through the ministry of John Wimber. Wimber had been a musical arranger for the Righteous Brothers, but by the time Brad encountered him, he was the leader of the incredibly fast-growing Vineyard church movement, which was known for its openness to “the miraculous.”
Brad liked what he saw there and slowly drifted in that direction, eventually attending a “charismatic” church every Sunday. Brad took the zeal and intensity he carried with him everywhere right into this church, so he would arrive at the services forty-five minutes early every Sunday to pray for the service, asking God to move powerfully through the pastor and in the congregation.
One Sunday his pastor spoke to the congregation before the service started about their own role during the service. He made it clear that they were themselves “the church,” and they should feel as free to “minister” as he did. It wasn’t supposed to be a one-man show. They were part of what God was doing every Sunday, so they must feel free to act upon anything they felt was God “nudging” them to do something or say something. He made it clear that this was a church where people should never be afraid of “stepping out in faith” and doing something like openly praying for someone if they thought that’s what God wanted them to do. Even if they got it wrong, it was better that they should try than that they should just sit there for fear of making a mistake. He said that unless they all were willing to take some chances and make some mistakes, they would never learn anything, and it was his desire as their pastor to teach them to do what he did and, more important, to do what God wanted them to do. They must learn to “hear” from God and to be able to tell the difference between when God was really speaking to them and when it was just something that was in their own heads. It was an easy mistake to make, so they must be willing to step out “in faith” and learn. God would be with them in the process, and he wanted to reassure them that in this church they should feel free to make mistakes. If their hearts were in the right place, that was all that mattered, because as the Bible says, “God looks on the heart.” He said that after each service, if we believe what you said or did was not from God, we will evaluate what happened and will try to help guide you. But he made it clear that “God would rather you have the faith to act on his direction, even if you’re wrong, than to not practice hearing from the Lord and stepping out in faith.”
So everyone took their seats for the service, ready to act. Brad remembered that the congregation was rather small that day, and things began with what they called a “special” song. To Brad’s horror, it was an elderly woman playing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” on the harmonica. Brad remembered feeling that it was tremendously cheesy and awkward, but he knew that her heart was in the right place and he tried to focus on that.
We should dilate for a moment to say that during this time in his life, Brad was a professional magician, making his living performing sleight-of-hand tricks at tables in restaurants throughout Orange County. He also had a very good friend who was a professional hypnotist. So Brad knew quite a bit about hypnosis and deceiving people through trickery. He generally thought of himself as someone who was especially adept at understanding our ability to deceive others—or be deceived ourselves. So he felt himself part of that “fraternity” of magicians going back to Houdini, who delighted in exposing fake psychics and other kinds of charlatans. He and his friend had even once attended a “spiritualist” church simply to expose the tricks that happened there. So he wasn’t one to be fooled by what many Christians called being “slain in the spirit,” when it was really just a kind of mass hysteria. He was adamant that if he ever would be “slain in the spirit”* it would have to be God himself doing the “slaying.” He wasn’t about to go along with it just because that’s what others expected. Either God was going to knock him down or he wasn’t budging. He had seen much of what seemed like “group-think” in some of the kookier “charismatic” churches and he vowed that he would never be taken in by anything like that.
Brad was in the second row of the service that Sunday, listening to the woman’s awful harmonica interpretation of that wonderful old hymn when his pastor—the one who had just told everyone that they had a key role in the service—sat down right in front of him. Sure enough, no sooner had the pastor sat down than Brad felt a strong sensation that he should put his hands on the pastor’s shoulders and pray. Brad felt that however strong this sensation was—and it was strong—it didn’t make much sense, because just before the pastor had spoken a few minutes ago a whole group of people, Brad included, had “laid hands” on the pastor and prayed for him and the service. Furthermore, they were now in the middle of the service itself, so it would be awkward to do such a thing. It simply didn’t seem the right time. But just as he was thinking this, he recalled the words the pastor had just spoken about learning to trust God. He had said that God wants to teach us to hear his voice and to do things that seemingly make no sense. Part of what God is doing too is trying to get us to respond, especially if what he is saying makes little sense, so we will learn to tell the difference between his voice and our own thoughts.
So Brad worked up the nerve to do what he thought God was telling him to do. He laid his hand on the pastor’s shoulder and began to pray. Just as he did this, closing his eyes and bowing his head, he saw the pastor glance back at him. Brad thought the pastor was probably just thinking Brad was trying to get his attention, but then realized Brad was going into prayer mode. But Brad remembered that it made him feel even more self-conscious about what he was doing, because not only had the pastor turned around, but many of those in the congregation could see Brad doing what he was doing and were probably themselves wondering what was going on. Brad thought that the pastor himself was probably thinking, “Oh, brother. Look at Stine getting all hyperspiritual on me to show his incredible holiness to me and the whole congregation. . . .”
In telling this story, Brad emphasizes that he didn’t want to pray for the pastor, that he felt he was making a spectacle of himself and was extremely uncomfortable in doing what he did, but he felt he had to be obedient to what he thought God was telling him to do, especially after what the pastor had
just said. But Brad had never done anything like this before and he wanted it to be over as soon as possible. He expected nothing to come of it. He just knew one thing: that he had a powerful sense that he should put his hand on his pastor and pray for him. So out of sheer obedience, he did it. But a moment after he “stepped out in faith” and did it, with his thoughts in this blur of contradictions and self-consciousness, something really did happen.
By further way of background, Brad explains that he had many times over the years begged God “in anguished prayer” to reveal himself in some palpable way. He had prayed God would give him a vision or any kind of manifestation that would make him real in a way Brad had never experienced. That had never happened. But now, not praying for anything like that at all, he suddenly began to feel what he very distinctly describes as “a warm sphere” emanating from the center of his stomach. Brad says that he uses the word “sphere” specifically and deliberately, because it wasn’t a vague, “gooey” feeling. “No,” he says, “this was an actual sphere, a ball, an orb that I could tangibly feel.” He describes it as “warm, round, and pulsating.” Then, while this was happening, he became aware of his prayer for the pastor “taking on a life of its own.”
“I was speaking,” he says, “but it seemed out of my control, like an out-of-body experience where I was doing it and being aware it was occurring without my volition. Suddenly the orb began to expand and pulsate while growing throughout my entire body. I literally felt like I couldn’t stop it or control it and I sensed lightning bolts or shafts of light emanating from my body!” Brad says that “it was as though light was bursting out of my being like the grand climax when the Nazi gets exploded by God in the Indiana Jones and the Ark of the Covenant scene.”
