WHAT TO MAKE OF MYSTIC MOMENTS
Helping people understand their mystical experiences as God-encounters.
Chuck Smith, Jr.
July 1, 1991
A few months ago, a young woman wrote me about an experience she had while lying in the intensive care unit. Severely battered in an automobile accident, she had suffered many broken bones and lacerations. "Suddenly I felt my bed rising," she wrote. "And when it stopped, my body continued to rise. Instantly, my pain vanished, and I felt wrapped in peace." She was conscious of nurses running around frantically, and one of them was saying, "We're losing her!" At one point, she said, she stood face to face with Jesus. "He asked me if I was ready to go with him. I then realized my life didn't amount to good 'heaven material,' so I told him, 'No, I'm not.' "He told me, 'If you go back, it will be hard and painful.' When I repeated that I wasn't ready to go with him, I came back to consciousness." She closed her letter by telling me how much she needed to tell someone about the experience. Although her story sounds like many other "near death" experiences, her husband had refused to let her talk about it-he was afraid their friends would think her crazy. But she wanted to tell someone who understood. Many people have been profoundly influenced by a spiritual experience, but they have no one to tell. George Gallup writes, "Over the past decade or more, a consistent one-third of the American people have reported having had a 'religious experience,' or 'a moment of religious insight or awakening that changed the direction of their lives.' This is one of the most significant survey results ever uncovered" (The People's Religion: American Faith in the 90's, Macmillan, 1989). The number of people who have had God-encounters could be higher, but experiences that are not valued, or receive only negative reaction, tend to be forgotten. Often our ...
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