🌟 I Died and Saw Jesus – A Life-Changing Testimony 🌟
Heidi Barr didn't believe in Jesus. No one in her Jewish family did, nor did they want to--especially not her father, who told her that Jesus Christ was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind. So when Heidi was in a terrible horseback riding accident and died at age 16, Jesus was the last person she expected to see. Yet she did. And then she returned to life.
This is the incredible true story of Heidi's difficult family life, her sudden death, her unexpectedly loving encounter with Jesus, and her return to life on earth as a person completely and irrevocably changed. This is also the story of Heidi loving her father and mother despite their disbelief of and disagreement with her faith. And this is the gripping, beautiful story of her parents' eventual reconciliation both with Heidi and with God, through the redeeming grace and all-encompassing love of Jesus Christ.
00:00Take us to the day you died. You were 16 years old. You were out at a horse ranch riding your favorite horse, Heather.
00:06Yes.
00:06Your sisters were with you there. Tell us what happened.
00:09We were in an accident caused by another horse, a runaway horse, and she flipped over backwards, fell off a hill, and crushed me.
00:20Immediately, unexpectedly, left my body, and I found myself 30, 40 feet up in the air looking down at my dead body.
00:27And I realized, as I watched everything happening, I felt really bad. I didn't want my sisters to see me die.
00:35But I noticed a light over my shoulder. It was coming over my right shoulder, flowing a golden light.
00:41And I turned to look, and there was a man floating up there with me, and I recognized him immediately, which was kind of unusual.
00:48I shouldn't have recognized him. I was raised in an atheist Jewish family, and I knew this was Jesus.
00:53So, the minute I recognized him, I said, hi, I know you. And he floated right by my side, and that was kind of the beginning of my adventure.
01:06That's amazing. And it's interesting, Heidi, how you recognized Jesus right away.
01:10But as you just said, you grew up in agnostic, a family, Jewish family, atheist Jewish family.
01:17Atheist Jewish family, yes.
01:18So, that's incredible that you even could understand who Jesus was.
01:22And I know our viewers are wondering right now, did he have a physical appearance?
01:26Like, what did he look like?
01:27He had a physical appearance. He was a man.
01:31He was, I knew he was more than a man, but he appeared to be a man.
01:35But he was a perfect man. And I always say I couldn't look away from his face.
01:41His face was the most important thing because of the joy and the love coming from his eyes.
01:45I did not want to look away from his face.
01:47And Heidi, you know, you said that there was so much joy and humor even emanating out of him.
01:52In the next moments, he began to show you a review of your life.
01:56But as you look back, you're seeing him with you in the moments of suffering.
01:59Yes, I'm seeing him with me the entire time.
02:02He was never, I was never alone.
02:05I didn't know, in a sense, I knew that, but I also didn't know that.
02:09So, this life review shows you that Jesus is with you when you're crying, when you're joyful, all throughout your life.
02:14And even in moments, you said he was rocking you to bed at night.
02:17Yes, he did. And I didn't know it was him.
02:19I would just have a sense.
02:21I would talk to God all the time.
02:23I believed in God despite my parents' atheism.
02:25And I talked to him every night.
02:27And I had the sense that after a while, it would be time to go to sleep.
02:31And I would feel as if I was wrapped up in the warmth of a cloud.
02:35And I could feel my bed start to sway back and forth and then even up and down.
02:40And I knew it was God doing that for me.
02:43But I didn't know it was Jesus until I saw him in the life review doing exactly what I pictured God doing.
02:50A lot of people, they think, you know, when I meet Jesus, when I die, I'm going to have questions for him about why I've suffered or why this happened.
02:57Or what was that like for you?
02:59Did you have those questions?
03:00Did you feel like this, you know, you were getting answers?
03:04I didn't have a lot of questions because all of my questions at the time were answered.
03:09Yeah.
03:09They were gone.
03:11And it all made sense.
03:12If you ask me now exactly what made sense, I can't answer that because I can't remember.
03:17But everything made sense.
03:19And I realized even through suffering, God was with me.
03:24There was a purpose to that suffering.
03:27That journey with Jesus was so beautiful.
03:31And it continued until you were with God the Father.
03:34Tell us about that.
03:35It was amazing.
03:37I had so much fun with Jesus.
03:39We surfed on a wave of light.
03:41And I could see this light of all colors underneath our feet.
03:43It was tickling the bottoms of my feet.
03:45It was flowing through my fingers like water.
03:47And we talked and we laughed all the way to heaven.
03:54I guess it was what I can only describe as heaven.
03:57We did pass things, and I detail that in the book.
04:01But a lot of what I saw, I only saw because I was staring at Jesus' face.
04:04I couldn't look away from his face.
04:05And I would see things passing by behind him.
04:09But when we did get to God the Father, we came to a point where there was almost a threshold that we crossed, like a doorway, like entering a doorway.
04:17And once we entered the doorway, we entered a light.
04:21And it was a living light.
04:23The light was love.
04:24And I knew the light was God.
04:26And the next thing I knew, I was sitting on God's lap.
04:29And it was God and it was Jesus.
04:31They're both together.
04:34The Holy Spirit, if it was there, I was not aware of it at that point because Jesus left me with the Holy Spirit later.
04:40But I saw God the Father and Jesus were one and the same and yet separate.
04:45So I was sitting on God's lap like a toddler, kicking her feet.
04:50And I had my face buried in his chest.
04:53And I never wanted to leave.
04:55I just wanted to sit there forever, for all eternity.
04:58He's a big God.
05:00I tried to look up and sneak a look at his face, but I couldn't see it.
05:04It was shrouded somehow.
05:06It was covered somehow.
05:08But, you know, I kept my eyes glued to Jesus' face the entire time.
05:12I couldn't look at God's face.
05:13And it was from God's lap that he showed me what I did see of heaven.
05:21What did you see?
05:22I saw, it was infinitely far away.
05:26If you can imagine looking across an entire universe, I was looking across an entire universe.
05:32And the first thing I saw was grass.
05:35I'm not, I was very nearsighted on earth.
05:38I couldn't see very well, but I could see perfectly.
05:42And I could see green grass.
05:45I could see every single blade of every, of this green grass in this massive meadow, this infinite meadow.
05:52And I heard the grass singing, which was remarkable.
05:59It was amazing.
06:00And it was the thing that left the biggest impression on me was that grass and the song of the grass.
06:05The grass was singing the praises of God.
06:08I looked a little bit farther, and I saw flowers.
06:11And I saw all different colors of flowers, but I kept coming back to these really blue flowers that looked like irises.
06:18I looked farther, and I saw a grove upon grove of trees.
06:22And they look kind of like aspen trees.
06:24That's the best way I can describe it.
06:26And I could see every leaf on every tree and every vein on every leaf on every tree.
06:32And I noticed they were moving.
06:33The leaves were moving.
06:34The leaves were quaking.
06:36The flowers were swaying.
06:37And they were all moving in time to the song of the grass, and everything was moving in the light of God.
06:42It was God's light animating everything.
06:45I looked a little farther, and I saw a pathway.
06:49A pathway now began to open up through the meadow.
06:52And I could hear and see, I could hear people singing.
06:56And they were singing the same song as the grass.
06:59And I could see them coming, but they were veiled.
07:01I couldn't see their faces yet.
07:02I couldn't see them yet.
07:04And it was then that Jesus came back and told me I needed to go back.
07:09And so you are sent back to earth.
07:12Well, I argued with them about it.
07:14You argued.
07:15I get it.
07:16Yeah, I didn't want to go back.
07:17You've seen heaven.
07:17I get it.
07:19Oh, wow.
07:20And you come back to earth with this big experience.
07:22You told your sisters what happened, but you didn't tell many family members.
07:26You tried to.
07:27I tried to initially.
07:28You tried to, yeah.
07:29And Heidi, now today you're sharing your story.
07:33And, of course, your story appears in one of John Burke's books on near-death experiences.
07:39But I'm sharing your story now in your book.
07:41And there are so many life lessons you've learned from this journey.
07:46You know, for our viewers watching right now who may be facing the end of life or are having or in a situation where their family member or a loved one is,
07:57what would you say to them as a word of encouragement given your experience of the reality of God and heaven?
08:04The one word is hope.
08:06I had no hope.
08:08Before my near-death experience, I was hopeless.
08:12I had no hope whatsoever.
08:14So I would say, yes, I took away hope.
08:16It's probably the biggest takeaway, that and God's love and the fact that he is real, that heaven is real.
08:24And I knew that the one thing I needed to do in this life was follow Jesus.
08:32Honestly, follow him and follow, treat my neighbors well, treat myself well, treat my children well, and love God.
08:41But, yes, there's a lot of tragedy in this life.
08:45I'm a nurse.
08:45I'm a hospice nurse.
08:46So I've dealt with tragedy for years, and I understand that.
