Sid Roth - I Died and Found Myself Between Heaven and Hell
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it is naturally supernatural. My guest was brain dead for 11 hours, went to Heaven, sent back with a message from Heaven. We have a Hebrew word, it's called "bashert", it means it's meant to be. I tell you it is bashert that you be watching right now. My guest, I've just gotten to really know over the last day, he's a retired pilot. You put it in a lot of hours flying. How many hours?
Jim Woodford: Just over 20,000.
Sid Roth: Just over 20,000. He's not, he was not a believer in the Messiah. His wife was a believer. Is it fair to say that your god was things, T-H-I-N-G-S?
Jim Woodford: Yes, Sid, and I'm ashamed to admit it. I mean, I lived what I thought was the quintessential American-Canadian dream of a successful career, successful businesses. And yet I would wake up in the middle of the night and I'd have this yearning inside of me, and I foolishly interpreted that as meaning I needed a faster plane, a bigger car, a larger boat.
Sid Roth: But one day, again, he's his own god, so to speak, he wakes up and something unusual, his arms and his legs are numb. He gets diagnosed with a disease, frankly I've never heard, is it Gillian Barre?
Jim Woodford: It's Guillain Barre.
Sid Roth: I'm close. And if I understand this right, this is life-threatening and you could end up paralyzed. But actually if you don't get treatment right away, which you did not, what did they tell you to expect?
Jim Woodford: Well it's often fatal and Guillain Barre is the deterioration of the myelin sheath on your brainstem and it's similar to if you strip the insulation from an electrical cord and all the signals from your brain become pain and interrupted. And I went from being a guy that flew jets and raced cars to someone completely dependent on nurses and my wife who is a nurse for my care.
Sid Roth: You told me that the pain was so bad that you had pain when you blinked your eyes.
Jim Woodford: I actually trained myself to blink one eye at a time.
Sid Roth: Because of the time.
Jim Woodford: Because every blink of my eye was pain, not just in my eyes, but through my whole body. My whole nervous system had been interrupted by this incredible debilitating disease.
Sid Roth: And all of a sudden, the pain gets so bad that you take a whole bottle of pain medicine. I mean, but didn't you realize that could be fatal?
Jim Woodford: You know Sid, it was a gradual thing and yet to give me some semblance of normalcy, some ability to sleep two or three hours a night I began to take more of the medication than I should have. And I was trying to get up the energy to get under the truck and inspect the field that I was trying to sell, and I saw a vial of prescription medication. I should have known all I was consumed with stopping the pain. As I took the last of the medication that evening and I'm facing the setting sun, for some reason, I didn't plan it that way, all of a sudden my feet began to burn as though they were in fire. My hands and fingertips started to burn and as that burning sensation made its way up my body in my arms toward my chest I knew that I had done something truly catastrophic. And it was then that I said the first three of the six words that I believe are responsible for me being here today along with the prayers of my family. And in that last instant in my consciousness I looked at the setting sun and I raised my hand, and I remember it was shaking violently. I cried out, "God, forgive me". I cried out from a part of me that I didn't even know existed, not out of fear. I faced death a couple of times as a pilot, never flinched, but I had this overwhelming sense in those last nanoseconds of my life that I had wasted this beautiful life that the Creator had given me, and I had never honored him for that life. And I was just trying to express my sorrow for not having led a better life.
Sid Roth: After that prayer, which is half of the prayer that got you back, what do you remember?
Jim Woodford: And suddenly I became aware that the horrific pain that I had endured for all those years since the onslaught of the Guillain Barre was gone. I felt more alive than I had ever felt before and the pain was gone. I felt so great. I slid under the truck, I walked about 15 feet away and I'm feeling as though a heavy wet overcoat has been taken off from me, and all the pain has gone with it. And then I look back at the truck and there's someone in my truck, and I'm absolutely enraged, who would dare get in my truck, and not only that, he's sleeping on the steering wheel. The moment when I realized that the guy in the truck was me was truly earth shattering.
Sid Roth: The next thing that happened you're flying but there's no airplane.
Jim Woodford: Finally I'm saving on fuel. But I began to rise. I can look through the rear window of the truck and see my body slumped over the wheel and over the truck I can look down in the bed of the truck, Sid, and see my toolbox. And being a former pilot I'm a good judge of altitude, and I'm suddenly a hundred feet, 200 feet, I'm drifting slowly backwards and I'm rising. I'm rising, and I am terrified. I can look out over the countryside.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what, hold that thought. He finds himself in a very unusual place, almost a crossroads between Heaven and Hell. When we come back we'll find out what he did about it. Hell was actually, he actually heard Hell and demons calling him by his name. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Now people are on the edge of their seat right now. So you start going up. It sounds, I've heard this story from others before, sort of like a tunnel you're going through. What is this?
Jim Woodford: Well I got to about 1200 feet. I tilt my head and this beautiful golden circle appeared in the sky and then the center filled with gold, it opened and suddenly it was though I had put all the thrusters on the jet engines. I went zipping into this tunnel of light, which I'm sure many people have heard of, and I'm traveling a tremendous speed. I'm leaning back at about 45 degrees. I have an incredible sensation of speed. But typically you feel the wind in your face. There was wind and there was no rushing noise of the sound of travel, and no jet engines, and tremendous speed. I'll bet, I'm guessing Mach 1, possibly. And within a very quick period of time I recognize that there's a brilliant light at the end of this tunnel, I come to it, it's covered in mist. I step out because I feel the tunnel closing behind me. I put my foot down, the mist cleared, I look down and I can't believe it. I am standing on the most incredible green grass you could ever imagine. I now know where the saying comes from, "The grass is always greener on the side". They're talking about Heaven.
Sid Roth: But I've been told the colors are, it's greener than any green we have here.
Jim Woodford: If we have a spectrum of colors on Earth, Heaven has 10,000 times, 10,000 more. It is a feast for the eyes.
Sid Roth: Okay. But then you see some darkness.
Jim Woodford: I look up from that beautiful grass that radiated light from underneath my feet and there is as though a dividing line. A median has been drawn in front of me. To the right there's this beautiful mist-colored field. The mist is laying over it. We pilots call it ground effect. There's beautiful flowers showing through it. But then to the left of that line, Sid, it was so different because that beautiful green grass went from green to brown, to scorched, to black and then dropped off in a crevasse. And I stepped forward and looked down into this cold black blackness, and then I saw something like a dim light at the bottom, like a light of fire, red fire. And suddenly I heard the strangest sound like two massive iron doors opening and screeching on hinges that had not be used in a long time. And suddenly emerging from those doors was the most hideous creature you could ever imagine. Hollywood could never duplicate what I saw. So I'm looking. I can't believe, I see this thing coming out and suddenly I'm assailed by this horrific smell that comes out of that pit, an odor of death and decay, and of things long dead, things that should never see the light of day. And it gazed up at me and when its fiery eyes looked at me it started to make its way up the wall of that pit. But its body, Sid, was formed of like a rolling mass of dark cloud with a face of it. And I heard the most horrific things, something screaming within the body of this creature. And then what absolutely horrified me was I heard my name, my name being called. This creature knew me. It knew me and it was coming for me, and I was terrified. I mean, I want to tell you I stood there and wanted to do battle. I was terrified. And it reared up under that pit over me and the most hideous face imaginable, massive in its size, snarled at me. And there was this feeling of an anticipation of glee that it couldn't wait to get its claws on me. And I was so horrified I turned from the darkness toward the light. We are creatures of the Light. And I automatically turned toward the Light, and when I did I sensed this creature, its breath on the back of my neck, the stench of its breath and I felt a sharp claw move down my back. And it was at that point, remember I said there are six words in the prayers of my family that make it possible for me to be here today, and the first three words I cried out in the truck, "God forgive me"! In my absolute terror, and I had no reason to expect any help from God, I turned myself toward that mist with that creature breathing up my back, and I looked at both hands and I cried out, "God help me! Help me"! And Sid, instantly three stars appeared in that mist like distant points of light, but coming rapidly toward me, and I focused on them to keep my mind off what was snarling behind me because I could hear the saliva from his jaws dropping on the ground behind me. And I concentrated on those lights. They came so rapidly, Sid, incredible speed. My pilot instincts took over. I was afraid they were going to make too fast a landing, but they did a beautiful job. They took form. They were angels. As they approached me, this beautiful light fluttered over me, went beyond me and struck that creature. And when the light of the angels struck the creature it scrambled back down in that hole like a rat running for cover. God had heard the cry of someone that had never turned to him in his life.
Sid Roth: When we come back I want Jim to share about what Jesus as well as the angels have: transferrable sticky love. I've never heard about sticky love. Have you?
Sid Roth: You know, there is so much that this man experienced, but when I was reading about your experience I was reading the chapter on sticky love. Tell me about that.
Jim Woodford: The sticky love of God.
Sid Roth: Yes.
Jim Woodford: The angels came forward and they spoke to me through thought transference, and as they put their wing around me and held me close I felt so safe and protected. And I reached out to touch the angel's arm, and Sid, when I did I felt I had been impolite in doing that, and so I pulled my hand back, and when I did, the light of the angel's body clung to my hand until I got it back about six to 10 inches, and then let go and went into its body. And that's why I tell people every chance I get the love of God is sticky. It wants to cling to you.
Sid Roth: And you told me that God was in process of replacing all your selfishness, all your greed, all your lust for love. Explain that.
Jim Woodford: I don't think a human, a soul or spirit can go through this experience and not be profoundly changed, and I feel as though I have been truly born again. Not only have I come back from the grave, my soul has come back from despair. My spirit has found God again and I will be eternally grateful.
Sid Roth: Tell me about the Hall of Knowledge.
Jim Woodford: Heaven, you have to suspend your, all that you've been taught about physics and gravity, and time, and linear space, and spatial references. They simply do not exist in Heaven. But I was shown the Holy City, I mean, these incredible buildings of light, not hued from stone, Sid, but hued from blocks of light that exuded this warmth and love. And I saw the Halls of Knowledge, the Halls of Music, the Halls of Learning, the halls of everything that you wanted to learn about the mysteries of God. And then they showed me the nursery, the nursery, Sid. I think it speaks to the compassion of our God that little souls that are aborted, God gathers their spirit back and they're raised in the nursery in Heaven.
Sid Roth: Tell me about the size of your book of life.
Jim Woodford: I'm ashamed to talk about it, but in the Hall of Records they keep a record of everything that you've done in and with your life, and it's not decreed an I gotcha moment. It's for when you are shown the book of your life. And when they pull, the angel pulled mine out of his robe and opened it for Jesus to read, I was absolutely shamed and mortified that all I had to show for a life lived that I thought was the ultimate in success was this small thin book no bigger than a diner, roadside diner menu. And I was ashamed that I should have, with all the resources and the time that I had, I should have had a book as thick as the Bible filled with all the goods, all the good deeds that I could have done. You know, as Charles Dickens said in his novel, "Mankind should have been my business". And instead I was only involved in my self-ego. I am determined now that if I have the opportunity to go back again to do everything good I can so that when Jesus reads the book of my life again he's going to need three angels and a forklift to open it.
Sid Roth: Now you have got to tell me, when you looked in the eyes of Jesus, what did you see?
Jim Woodford: It was the apex of everything that happened to me because when his eyes locked on mine and he smiled at me, Sid. Jesus smiled at me. But when I looked into those eyes of grey and green, and blue, I was lost in eternity because in those eyes I saw sadness for the way I had lived my life. I saw sadness for the way we as mankind have rejected his Father's message, but I saw incredible love for me, for me, someone that deserved none, nothing. For me. And I also saw mixed in with that love in the eyes of Jesus forgiveness for me, forgiveness for the life that I had lived, and a chance to do it again. I am eternally grateful. My life, our lives, Lorraine's life and mine, are now his.
Sid Roth: Let me tell you a couple of things that you need to know. While all this is going on his wife and family are praying and he sees it. He can see them praying. He comes back and guess what happened to his incurable illness? Went out the window.