Insight into Heaven and Hell

Rick Wendell was a hard-charging, hair down to his neck, womanizing owner of a quite successful construction company. He had been raised a Catholic but had stopped attending Mass after high school. At the age of 30 he cut his neck while working on a home landscaping project. He went to the hospital to receive stitches. As he was leaving the hospital, he suffered an allergic reaction to the anesthesia they had used for the procedure. He went into cardiac arrest.

The doctors tried to revive him with every possible means, to no avail. It looked like he was not going to make it.

Insight into Heaven

While all this was going on Rick suddenly say a beautiful light, one that attracted him strongly. He was compelled to move toward it. He knew he was in the presence of God. He was sure. He wrote later that the deepest aspect of his experience was knowing God is love. He had never known he could be loved that way, with a love so pure, so flawless, so strong, so delightful that “nothing else mattered”... He was in the presence of a love so deep that he cared about nothing else. Nothing else was needed. He wrote, “This Love was absolutely fulfilling in every way, a love that I had always looked for but never found, a love one would never want to be separated from. I was created to love and to be loved because God is Love. This fundamental truth is written into every human heart. Everyone knows what it feels like not to have that place fulfilled, and we will try and fill it with anything that even masquerades as love but isn’t. But there is a place in our hearts, a throne, really, that only this Love can fulfill. I never comprehended such a perfect love until I was immersed in it. In God’s presence, I wanted only to be loved by him and to love him in return.”[1]

Rick was clinically dead for two and a half hours. Then he came back. There was no damage to his body. The doctors were amazed.

Insight into Hell

Rick Wendell not only experienced heaven, but hell too:

A paralyzing terror ripped through my being, causing my heart rate to skyrocket and my blood pressure to shoot up. It was a fear like I’d never known. For a fleeting moment I experienced  the complete abandonment and separation from God and others, without the hope of ever being reunited. I was going to be cast out into a lonely, solitary confinement forever because through my thoughts, words and actions I chose hell without consciously knowing I had. I would not wish this experience on my worst enemy.