Life after death is something that is pondered by everyone, and few have had a chance to experience it. However; there have been a few cases where people have died, gone to heaven, and come back to life sharing their stories with us all.
Landon Whitley was 8 years old when he and his parents were in a harrowing car accident. The boy died 3 times as rescue crews worked to save him. And when he came back, he had vivid memories of Heaven, including the two siblings he’d never known!
The terrible accident occurred as Landon and his parents, Julie and Andy, headed home from church. An ambulance, on its way back to the station, t-boned their car in an intersection.
Landon’s father, Andy, died instantly. His mom, Julie, was seriously injured, but rescuers were able to get her stabilized at the scene. Landon, who was sitting behind his father, was another story.
Because of the severe damage done to the driver’s side of the car, rescuers didn’t realize there was a third passenger right away. It wasn’t until they saw Landon’s shoe that they started searching for his body.
By the time they pulled him out, Landon wasn’t breathing.
Rescuers went to work right away on Landon. The boy died 3 times in total as medical staff fought to stabilize him. Once they succeeded in keeping him alive, doctors still didn’t have much hope for the little boy.
“They told me that if he lived. . . he would be like an 8-year-old baby. That he would not know how to walk or talk or to eat because of all the brain damage,” Julie recalled. “I was so desperate that that was okay. I would take that just to have him. He was all that I had.”
At her husband’s funeral, she felt abandoned by God.
But faith was never lost, prayers never halted, and after two weeks in a coma, Landon opened his eyes — startling doctors when it became immediately apparent he had no brain damage.
As the groggy boy got his bearings, Julie realized she would have to tell him about his father. When she did, the boy, almost nonchalant, replied: “Yes, I know where he’s at. I saw him in Heaven.”
“I remember being in Heaven and seeing my dad and also his friend Olin Palmer, who had died less than a month before, also in a car accident, and Olin’s son, Neil, who had died on a four-wheeler years before,” he now recalls. “Not one of us said a word to each other. We were just standing there” — in a place that had “streets of gold.” Eye has not seen!
Landon also told his mother: “Oh yeah, mom, I forgot to tell you. I saw your other two kids.”
Julie just looked at him. “I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. But I had two miscarriages before Landon was born. We had never shared that with Landon. He did not know that we had lost two children before him!”
Now he did. And though he had no knowledge of them, when he encountered them in eternity he “just knew they were my siblings.”
He also met Jesus. That occurred before the final resuscitation — the third time he had “died” — and during the encounter, he says he saw a movie-like preview of his future life and was given a mission. It was a simple one. Go, Jesus told Landon, and tell others about me.
He has spent the years since — more than two decades now — doing just that. He and his mother also help others who struggle with the tragic loss. They realize they are living out His plan for them — tragic as it may have seemed (in Heaven, nothing of earth, save for condemnation, is tragic — but rather learning) and know too that even at times when they feel abandoned, they are watched and protected.
“I’ve seen Jesus. I know He’s there,” says Landon. “I just want people to realize Jesus is real, there is Heaven, to follow His life and the Bible, and life does get better at the end.”
Sources: OpposingViews, Fox News
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