Sid Roth - I Died and Came Back with an Urgent Message from Jesus
My guest died of a heart attack. He knows what happens when you die, the whole process. Now, he knows what Heaven is like, and he returned physically healed with an urgent message for us, for you.
Sid Roth: I've never had this happen before. A Messianic Jewish Rabbi, Rabbi Halpern. I'll tell you, Felix, I've never had anyone call me up and say, "Sid, I have an angel here right now". That wasn't a norm before that medical mistake occurred. Tell me about that.
Felix Halpern: By no means to go through the process of dying from a medical mistake, consuming 7 1/2 months of medication in 29 days...
Sid Roth: That's quite a mistake.
Felix Halpern: Thrust my body for 1 month into a toxic state, which doctors called an inner storm. And the final week, things began to accelerate where my body was on fire, my chest was in pain, my back, every muscle was hurting. And all had typical signs of a heart attack. But for some reason, I just kept thinking it would go away. Until one night, it was the worst night of the whole process where I couldn't take any more pain. At 3 a.m. I go down to the living room and my heart stopped. It had too much. And in an instant, in an instant... Actually, in the twinkling of an eye, which is only 1/3 of a second, like that, my soul stepped out of my body, it began to rise in the spiritual realm. And at one point, I could see my body on the couch lifeless. An angel came as I'm lying horizontally in the spiritual realm, and he's moving his hand on me. I could see his body, powerful with authority. And in the right side of my vision where I was lying down in the spiritual realms again, I stress, was a white light. A distant light through a tunnel-like tube, if you will, or a tunnel.
Sid Roth: In this process, were you fearful at all?
Felix Halpern: When death took place, all the night's pain, all the months was gone, but there was an incredible peace and joy and there was absolutely no fear. But then the journey continued. And the next thing I knew that I was before the throne of Heaven.
Sid Roth: What did you see?
Felix Halpern: A ring of fire.
Sid Roth: Are you feeling emotion right now. Why?
Felix Halpern: When I came before the throne and I get emotional with that- because you're before the throne. A ring of fire encircles the throne. Ripples of fire and ripples of glory with depth, width, protecting the throne. And I immediately went down upon my face. I remember covering my eyes because I could not stand the glory, the brilliance, the fire. I had to cover my eyes. To this day, when I'm in the presence of God and I come into his glory and I'm worshiping, it's common for me to cover my eyes now. But I laid before the throne of God. I saw the throne, I saw the feet of our Lord. And the throne rested on a crystal sea, a crystal firmament, that separated the Third Heaven from the Lower Heavens. And so, as I'm in Heaven, I was by a river. The river flowed, it seemed from the throne. And I don't know to where it went, but it was flowing. What was remarkable was the waters of the river were so crystal clear, clearer than any water that I would imagine that if I could go to some highest mountain point on the Earth and see water running down the stream, it would not be as clear. The water seemed to be life-giving in its natural state. And under the river, the riverbed, sparkling gemstones and minerals, semiprecious, precious stones, that had a glow and a sparkle to them, diamonds and rubies and emeralds, everything in its perfect state. There is life in the air. There's life everywhere. Everything is life-giving. Everything has a natural rhythm to it by the Creator.
Sid Roth: How free did you feel?
Felix Halpern: I felt like a bird that had just taken flight for the first time. I imagine a bird that leaves the house, the birdhouse, and it's the first time he feels, the bird feels the wing, the wind under its wings and takes flight. I felt what it feels like in the incorruptible state to have no resistance, to move through air, no Earthly boundaries whatsoever.
Sid Roth: All right, let me take in now, you, when you were sent back, you went back to your body. Was there any pain in that process? Any fear in that process?
Felix Halpern: No. But the moment it was time for God to breathe life back into me, a rush of wind came out of nowhere. Keep in mind, I'm in my family room. A rush of wind entered through my nostrils and mouth, went down into the deepest recesses of my lungs, threw my head back. I took a gasp of breath like, coming out of being underwater and you have your last breath, otherwise you'll drown. I broke and took a deep breath and my head was jolted backward. And when it happened, I shook my head like this, I said "What in the world just happened"? And then I realized what happened. The Lord had brought me back to life.
Sid Roth: After you came back to life, you got your final doctor's report. What did they say about your health and your heart condition, everything?
Felix Halpern: The doctor said to me, "I don't know what to make of your bloodwork, but of a 68-year-old man, you have the bloodwork of a young stag".
Sid Roth: I don't know what's the message? I can't wait until we get to Heaven, but we have work to do here. I know you're more than ready for Rabbi Felix's urgent message. He was sent back to give you. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Three days, Rabbi Halpern, after you returned from dying, going to Heaven, coming back into your body, being given a perfect body from a very imperfect body that went up to Heaven, God revealed something that I'm more excited about this than even his Heaven experience. What did God tell you about the Psalms?
Felix Halpern: My heart was trying to discover what my new life is going to be like. I knew my old life was gone. When Paul said, "I knew a man," I understand his words quite honestly, Sid. He knows a man, but he speaks in the past tense. With Paul, that person was gone. That man that I was before this happened is no more. I asked the Lord, "Is it possible that those here can experience, Lord, what you're showing me"? I knew my life and death is not transferable. But the glory and the peace that came and that the Lord showed me, He said is transferable, it is for my people, my children. And the Lord said in the first 3 days, you are going to eat from one book. One book in the entire Bible. I love God's word, I study God's word.
Sid Roth: Me too.
Felix Halpern: I read all the books of the Bible.
Sid Roth: Me too.
Felix Halpern: This is the first time in my life that I am to spend time in one book, and I will say that it's been since September of 2019, can I tell you that I'm still in the same book? Because the Lord is still showing me things? But the Lord said, "I'm going to keep you in the Book of Psalms. And as you go through what I'm going to show you," the Lord said "I'm going to show you my glory psalms. The words that I have recorded that give me glory, that give me honor, and magnify me". So essentially, 3 days led to 30-days, 30-days led to 90 days, and on and on. What God was having me do was starve my soul of the natural order of things, of worries, needs, things that we normally are conditioned to constantly go to the Lord for prayer, which is important that we do. We know that the word of God teaches importunity in prayer. We are to go to tug on the hem of His garment. We are to continually come before Him. However, I realized immediately that my prayer culture before, my prayer models were modeled after what I had been taught, which is wrong. Seventy-five to 80 percent of an average person believer's life, 80 percent of their life is spent on need-based prayers, transacting with God, asking God for things, for stuff, for healing, legitimate things, I'm not judging that, legitimate things. But what it does, I realized and the Lord showed me, that it breeds and nurtures a needy spirit. So, we can never be free and move into the life of abundance. It comes against thankfulness because when we come into a transformational realm where we'll no longer dictated by our needs, do you know what happens?
Sid Roth: No.
Felix Halpern: Thankfulness, gratitude, pleasure, everything you see begins to take on a different look. And I would say, and I tell people that 80 percent of their prayer life should be in the glory Psalms or the glory of magnifying God and 20 percent should be in need-based prayer.
Sid Roth: So, you take selected Psalms having to do with the glory of God and worship of God, and you just substitute your normal, whatever you did normally for prayer with this?
Felix Halpern: The Lord said when I get up in the morning and praying, every time I began to fall back into the default model of asking, he had me stop. He said, "You are not to ask. You are now to glorify me".
Sid Roth: Give me an example. I want you to take a psalm right now and just, I'm putting you in your house, in your secret place. What are you doing and do it. More than what are you doing, just do it.
Felix Halpern: Oh, Lord. The heavens are telling of the glory of God. The expanse of Heaven cannot be measured, but it declares the work of Your hands that are immeasurable, that are incomprehensible. You, Father, are glorious and mighty. Day after day, You pour forth speech, night after night, You reveal knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words from even the stars in the sky that you, oh Lord, have placed there by Your sovereign will, by Your sovereign design. Their voice cannot be heard. Yet, they give evidence that have gone throughout all the Earth. I need to only look, Lord, to the night sky and see, Father, Your glory, for Father, You are the bridegroom that is coming, and I am the bride that's waiting for You. Those are the types of meditations that began to form my morning time with the Lord.
Sid Roth: And I can tell you as a fact, I've started doing that. I believe that I'm going to have more of my prayers answered by worshiping God and glorying God and living in the glory than if I spend all my time praying those prayers.
Felix Halpern: Sid, that's what happened. My prayers have been being answered by the Lord as I continue to remain in exhalation and giving Him glory. Because the truth of the matter is, Earth is difficult, Heaven is easy. Earth by its design, by its fallen nature, you would agree is a need-based environment. Will you and I or all those listening ever be without needs? No. If our prayers are answered today, it just makes room for new prayers tomorrow. Could be my children, my grandchildren, the ministry, life, the country, on and on and on. There's always prayers because by nature, we are needy because we're fallen. We live in a corruptible state. So Father, we are weak. The Lord says, "Who is man that you are mindful of him". We are as vulnerable as a little ant. I walk on the Earth sometimes. I walk outside, quite frankly, and I stop. And you know what, I feel like an ant on the globe under the majesty of God. Now Sid, you asked me what was the feeling of freedom? And I mentioned it felt like a bird that was set free for the first time. But my entire life has changed in the realm of freedom. I feel as I am an observer visiting Earth. I live detached, which is a level of freedom that I have never experienced. The words of Yeshua in B'rit Hahadashah, in the New Testament is it tells us clearly that we are in this world, but we are not of it. But now more than ever before, I no longer feel part of this on a level that I have never felt before. That was difficult for some time. I felt almost a disadvantage for my family to adjust. They would watch me go out on a windy day and I need to feel the wind. There's something about the wind in the air, the freedom of it, I could feel it from when I was in that spiritual state. The freedom of the flow of it. I go out on a rainy day, and I let the rain fall on my head. I look meshugana, I look crazy, but I don't care because it's the Lord that sends the rain, the refreshing rain.
Sid Roth: You know what it is? You come to learn you really only have an audience of one.
Felix Halpern: Yes, yes.
Sid Roth: And that is our Creator. That's who you you're pleasing.
Felix Halpern: And the outside has become also an extension of my sanctuary. There have been times I take a walk and it's around sunrise, I'm up at 3 a.m. every morning. I walk and the sun is beautiful, and I bow down on the sidewalk to worship the Lord. Sid, I don't care. I let someone ask me, someone asked me what I was turning, it turned out to be a Muslim girl. And I began to share about God, I began to witness to her one morning. Where did she come from? I have no idea. But I happened to be on the street, on the sidewalk that morning worshiping the Lord. My perception of detail is magnified. I can look at trees from a distance and see the detail of the tiniest branches and leaves.
Sid Roth: This was not before you went to Heaven?
Felix Halpern: No, no. I take my grandson for a walk and I say, "Hudson, we're going out to see the beauty of God's hand". And we stop and I say, "I want you to look". And we picked up perfectly shaped tiny little acorns. I know this may sound crazy to people. And I pick up little flowers or little this or we look at a little bug, I say, "God created that, Hudson. It came from Him". Everything and anything and everything of the natural creation, I admire and the...
Sid Roth: You're glorifying God everywhere.
Felix Halpern: And I study God. I don't worship nature. I worship the Creator of it all. And so, every day, Sid, is an adventure. My eyes are wide open, my ears hear, I don't speak as much as I used to. I listen more. I'm in the store or I meet someone, I listen to people, I observe them. The Lord's given the ability for me to see into the soul of an individual and I can see the condition of the soul.
Sid Roth: And you didn't see this before you went to Heaven?
Felix Halpern: No, and I can see many times what happened to them as a child. I see them in their childlike state, falling through things that have happened in their life. And I begin to pray for them. I begin to pray for healing for them.
Sid Roth: Do you have more compassion for people now?
Felix Halpern: Completely, 100 percent.
Sid Roth: Are you more interested in people knowing the Messiah now than before?
Felix Halpern: 100 percent. It's my life's call. It's the messaging of what God has given me. How can I not?
Sid Roth: You used an even stronger word. You say there's an urgency for people to know.
Felix Halpern: There's an urgency. No one knows when eternity calls. We think we have our life scripted out. We think we have all the plans. The Bible says, "Measure your days". Our life is like the grass of the field. It can be gone today, the wind can blow it away tomorrow. My life ended like that. I didn't plan it. In a twinkling of an eye, my soul left. And thank the Lord, my God, that he brought me back,. If the Lord didn't restore life, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be talking together. I would be gone. And that reminded me... or "reminded me" is too weak of a word. It was branded upon my mind, upon my heart that people need to get right with God. People need to know that they know that they know that should they leave tomorrow, whether it's a car accident, whether it's a diagnosis, whatever it may be, you can't plan death. Where will they go? Because I realize the glory and the peace and the joy of when I rose is not going to be experienced by those who do not know the Lord. You either rise up to the glories of Heaven or one descends to Hell. And Hell is blacker than black. That grips my soul. That grips my soul, that I cannot rest until the message is constantly declared.
Sid Roth: You know, we all intellectually know this, but there's a difference between intellectually knowing it and every cell in your body worshiping God. Look, Rabbi Felix did not think he was going to die, but he did. Oh, yes, it was a medical mistake. Bu the truth is you could walk out in front of the car, you could be in your, driving, as so many people tell me and a car crashes into them. There's just, you just don't know when your end is going to come. But I do know this, I do know that God is so good that if you say this prayer out loud with me right now and mean it to the best of your ability, not because you deserve anything, but because God is so good, period. That's it. Say this prayer out loud: "Dear God". Out loud. "Dear God I'm a sinner against you and you alone have I sinned and I'm so sorry. I believe the blood of Messiah washes away all of my sins and you remember my sins, no more. And now that I am clean, Jesus come and live inside of me, be my Savior. I make you my Lord. I want my own experiential knowledge of you. Amen".