I Died and Had a 30-Minute Encounter with Jesus in Heaven (feat. Randy Kay)

it's time for another episode of the sean tabit show a podcast where i connect you with thought leaders from across the globe digging into some of my favorite topics like personal development marketing spirituality and pretty much any other shiny object that happens to catch my attention today my special guest is randy k and we're going to do and we're going to be discussing his book dying to meet jesus how encountering heaven changed my life randy welcome to the show thank you sean great to be here well randy let's kick off our conversation with a bit of what we might call the randy k origin story so for the listeners the viewers those who are encountering you for the very first time in our talk today what are a few things they need to know about you i was the saul before paul you know i was an art and agnostic so i was one that tried to disprove christianity at northwestern university i joined a team of fellow agnostics and we plugged in data points to a big computer system at northwestern to invalidate all of the religions of the world and so we thought we would be successful and we were we actually invalidated uh most of the religions of the world as either a fusion of beliefs or as a single founder who espoused some great philosophy or awareness uh there was only one that that we were not able to invalidate and that was the god of the bible of the judeo-christian uh god so um you know that even as a skeptic uh i had to come to the conclusion since i knew that jesus had said on the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but through me that that was an exclusivity that many religions did not have or most if not all so i knew i had to come to terms with that just knowing the pages in the bible wasn't enough however for me i was uh one might call an intellectual skeptic i consider myself now as having been a stupid skeptic and that i knew enough to to disbelieve but not enough spiritually to believe so i had to go through an arduous walk to really come to a personal relationship because i cried out to an unknown god that you know if you're out there if if you're real i need to know you as personally as i know the people that i care for the people in my life the loved ones in my life and until that happened i wasn't going to acknowledge jesus christ as my lord and savior in a moment i'd like to get to your near-death experience but i think it'd be helpful if you would kind of set the stage for us like uh what was going on in your life like what what where were you at career wise and family wise um because i feel like that gives the backdrop uh that is important context for your story yeah i was at one of the highest points one of the lowest points i've always been in the business world business community i was directing in operations for a pharmaceutical company about to launch we never call in pharmaceutical drug a cure but this was as close to a cure as possible for alzheimer's disease we were seeing people just virtually coming alive and so i flew out to washington dc we brought the scientists with us and i had a publicity department and we had booked him on all of the major stations fox cnn abc nbc and so forth this particular drug and the research was on the front cover of time magazine and so we were on top of the world and then what happened is that the drug was withdrawn by the fda because in the final stage of the clinical trials before it went to market uh there was a little bit more of it than a handful of people who developed encephalitis as well in the blood brain that uh you know can or cannot be lethal so they pulled it off and then our cfo had done some off-balance accounting while legal it appeared that he was cooking the books and that appeared on the front page of the wall street journal so the stocks went from the fastest growing pharma company in the world to almost a penny stock and so i started a biotech company with a group uh we had divested that after needing to to raise approximately 60 million dollars to keep that company afloat then of all things i bought a media company which was not in my lane but i did study journalism at northwestern university and i started with chicago tribune writing for them and so i thought well you know it might be fun to to buy a newspaper and i did that and we found that the advertisers were not fully on board unbeknownst to us in acquiring it so we had a number of them that prior to acquiring it had already said that they were going to fall out so that was our revenue stream so it was a series of being in the high you know the mountainside so to speak to now being in the valley and so i had exhausted uh much of my resources uh to the point where i was thinking what what am i gonna do i'm i'm virtually destitute at that point and i remember sitting in a coffee shop with my wife it was a christian coffee shop and i said you know at least we have our health you know you know god seems to have allowed all of it to evaporate with the exception of our health and two weeks later i came back from an interview uh which with a major healthcare company and um i had a soreness of my calf and i was about to find out that um that even that uh would be lost well one of the things i remember and i listened to your story uh in audiobook form uh typically like a lot of us guys you really tried to stick it out and not go to the doctor until uh really the last moment like things got worse and worse you couldn't ignore it and so i guess take us into that part of the journey in terms of you know what was happening what were you experiencing and then you know just bring us into the emergency room the hospital tell us the whole story yeah i should have known better i mean i had led clinical teams so in neurology and cardiology but i we were planning a trip to uh the sierra mountains with my family a long way you know i won't say deserved but a weighted trip and so i did let it go i did not go into the doctor thinking i would until you know my calf had basically swollen to almost uh one and a half times its size and that my breathing worsened to the point where i couldn't go from the kitchen to empty the trash without feeling heaviness in my chest and i have asthma and so i had other breathing conditions copd so i just passed that off as as soreness i had been exercising uh previous to this uh taking a bicycling trip and so i thought it was just from that as well as the calf strained muscle and then the asthma so i went into the orthopedic surgeon for some painkillers um was rushed to the emergency room after that so after an ultrasound cat scan and a number of other tests the dimer test was called to uh to test uh the ability or the the coagulation of the blood meaning blood clotting it was found that i had six blood clots by this time because i had let it go the blood clots had traveled from my calf all the way up through my leg into my what's called a pulmonary artery which is the main airway that allows us to breathe now my biggest fear in life and bar none was the inability to breathe i said god you know before this because i had suffered from asthma and breathing problems i said you know if you want to take me take me with a heart attack or or you know whatever it is i can probably endure that but just let me breathe because i know knew how precious breathing was and at this point i couldn't breathe um my airway was completely blocked and so i needed a airway device to to allow me to to gain oxygen i was deprived of that the decision was whether to keep me there or transfer me to a specialist it was about a little more than half an hour away to perform surgery to crack the chest and remove the blood clots but it was determined by that time that if by the time i had gotten to the hospital i'd be dead because in pulmonary amyloid which is the third leading cause of death you know a patient and end stage which was my case could die in a matter of seconds or minutes and in fact there was a 27 year old surfer because i live in san diego who had died that very day uh from that same thing so it's determined that uh you know it's kind of a wait-and-see game at that point uh and i remember thinking lord you know i don't want to be a vegetable you know if it comes to that point just take thank me excuse me and i you know i had young children at the time and i wanted um desperately to know how they were going to be taken care of and i had all of these worries swirling in my mind so i was waiting in the room and the doctor came in to draw blood i said well this is strange and that's not something a patient wants to hear at that point he said i can't draw any blood from you and what had happened is they left the iv in my arm for too long they hadn't changed it and through the iv entered mrsa which is a drug resistant bacteria and now that was coursing throughout my body so on top of the pulmonary embolism i had mrsa back bacterial infection which caused sepsis which is endemic throughout the entire body and what that did is it caused a state of hypercoagulability which is that i was clotting all over and that's why he couldn't draw the blood out it was like a traffic jam and the arteries you know and they did the the cars were corpuscles red blood cells in this case clumping together so it was at that point that i started convulsing and everything went dark and um and i died my heart stopped and um this was for uh we think a period of about 30 minutes and that's when i met jesus and this is the part where um thinking about it that um i start to become emotional i learned from john burke by the way that i went to a conference he wrote the forward for my book and i just got to meet other nde people and it's with john burke who wrote the definitive uh book i think on nde people from the christian perspective called imagine heaven and he said you know when we go there uh to the time we're in heaven um it is vivid it's unlike any other memory it's not a memory just that like from a dream a faded memory it's you're in the moment and it's as real uh virtually as it was at that time so um i don't know if you want me to continue on just what happened there but this yeah and i'll just say john burke has been a guest on the show in the past and i'll just to vouch for his book imagine heaven is a fantastic book it's probably one of the best books i've encountered in the christian publishing space uh as far as a real balanced and solid view of a biblical understanding of near-death experiences so if you haven't read john's book uh i highly recommend that um randy i would love to have you just take us you know whatever you feel comfortable sharing in terms of your encounter with jesus what'd that look like um what was that experience like we just uh love to hear more about that it's a very ethereal experience you know it's it's um you and i being people of words uh to put much of it in words is extraordinarily challenging because it's a little bit like from my perspective uh looking at a beautiful landscape and then all of a sudden you're in the landscape and what you observed as beauty from a distance now you're immersed in it uh i think john burke uh his analogy is going from you know a uh to uh 2d or 3d to a 4d and so i was um everything had there was a darkness but there was a light that was shining from uh from above and that almost sounds cliche but it was so so bright so brilliant that i i felt as though i couldn't look at it um except i would be blinded and i was in the the light was infusing through the dark space to the point where it was turning as i was rising from above and i could faintly see my body at the inception as i was rising above uh it was turning from from pitch black to to lighter colors and then i looked out in the distance and saw strange figures out in the distance and they seem to be battling each other kind of warrior figures on the on one side or the other and i didn't know what that was about but i did know that um i needed to call out uh jesus the name of jesus christ and i did i just cried and see i'm i'm there um the next um moment um there's a figure that is um that that is soft and um his cheek is against my cheek and um she's holding me really tightly tightly and um i didn't turn um to him but i i i knew that it was jesus and um and he and for a while we didn't have to talk because it was there was a there was a communion he knew my thoughts i knew i knew his and he whispered to me um trust me he didn't have to say i love you because his love the first time in my life i felt the presence of love in a complete way the bible talks about now we see dimly then face to face i knew love in the person of jesus christ in a way that was apart from an action or an emotion or anything of that sort it was an immersion in the presence of the lord jesus christ he was my friend he was my companion i felt like i was an audience of one that there was no one else in the world even though i knew the cares of the world without his were on his shoulders i felt like there was no one else but him and me and um when i looked into his eyes they tunneled through me and everything that was dark was exposed by his light and i knew that all the cares of the world everything that i had worried about every fear and i was a fearful person and i didn't even believe in ndes until i had my own i was a skeptic of that even i i ridiculed some of those stories and i knew that he was going to take care of my children i knew that he was going to i just had perfect peace and comfort comfort is something that again almost sounds cliche but i have never to this day felt absolute comfort and peace as i did then i was so immersed in his presence and and he he carried me through that as his arm was around me he'd never let go and i didn't really look at my surroundings until after some time and when i did the brilliancy of what i was seeing was was just breathtaking to the extreme it was as though you know in this world that we see shades of colors and fragrances and other things that are as though a film was covering them and in heaven that film was pulled and so i saw shades of colors and greens and yellows uh of i had never seen before the fragrances of flowers and that i had never experienced in my lifetime in in my physical i have a nasal blockage so i'd never really smelled fully until then all of my senses were peaked and and my physical ability was was i never felt obviously as good as then but you know there was a landscape as i mentioned before of the hills and everything was alive everything spoke life and life was coming forth before my eyes and the the flowers were growing and there was a river pouring forth and from my perspective it seemed like was coming from jesus everything came alive through the to the waters and the streams and i looked to the right and i could see these figures and they were um joyful and it was a cascading kind of um kind of like a linen columns and and flowing linens amidst the grass and the beautiful colors of the of the hills and and the landscape and the trees and the flowers and so forth and um my sense at that time was that the the joy of the lord was somehow reflective of the life that they lived that was a reward that they had and the children that i saw were um extraordinarily joyful and there was angelic voices just echoing throughout that again more more brilliant more harmonious than i'd ever experienced in the most beautiful symphonies i had attended um times infinity and i was in a place that i never wanted to leave and uh when he said um you're gonna return i just didn't want to and i um i said lord please you know i don't know i felt like a kid you know going down on christmas morning and and then being told by his parent that you can't open up the gift um you're gonna have to go back upstairs and i didn't want to go and i he said your purpose has not been fulfilled as yet so i wanted to know what that purpose was you know why why what is that why how can it be so important that i would have to leave this place and with you with you most importantly and he said i'll reveal it at um at the time that you need it and the moment you need it now some others have accounted that they've he's told them their purpose but for me i'm always the type of person that wants to jump ahead always wants to know impatience and all that so i knew for him that's what i needed um in hindsight and he has revealed to me my purpose just exactly as he said he would and um and i just you know i just he he pulled me even closer and he rested my head on my and uh um i looked one more time than those eyes and then woke up and um excuse me there was a couple i heard this song in heaven this music playing they're not music playing uh singing um there was a couple singing that same song and at my bedside i thought it was this lord was this them or was it your angels that i was hearing and i realized something in um and the first thing that that i that i sensed was the accurate smell of the hospital the disinfectant so here i was i was in paradise and now and i was in the stark room you know people around me and this couple singing at my bedside beautiful song of a praise and i realized that somehow they got it and joined the prayers and the um uh the praises the song of those people and it was the same same exact song that i heard in oven and i realized to some extent that the prayers of the saints were joined in the hallways of heaven if you will such that they were enjoined by by those in heaven and by the lord to enact his will here on earth i will be done on earth as it is in heaven and um and that was the best day of my life and um and one of the worst days and uh little did i know that ahead of me would be some of the even worst days of my life to come ironically but i i had that i had that relationship and solid belief and i could always go to the lord we were friends we were friends it was wonderful well randy thank you so much for just sharing that and just you know just being you and you know and showing the emotion um and as you recall that i just really appreciate the transparency and the honesty with that um you know on a practical level you know a lot of the authors you know friends i work with and whatnot are seers they're prophetic and so i'm curious for you in terms of you processing this experience after the fact you know did you have a lot of context for visions and experiences like that or was that stuff that you kind of had to process and kind of find a grid to put this in afterwards yeah the prophetic and i had the prophetic word i had for everyone was in the context of trusting the lord from the perspective of enacting their purpose that's one thing that is my purpose was really the prophetic and whether it be from an impartation or whether it be to a revelation that the lord might have uh for me to speak into somebody's life uh that uh for their purpose and purpose is we think it of purpose is some you know oftentimes on some grandiose scale you know my career i'm going to be doing this or that it's a moment it's an event or something or a position and from the lord's perspective i believe that our purpose really is enacted in the moment and uh yes there may be a larger picture but that that that is going to give you an example it was a friend of mine went to the to get his haircut and you know the he got there on the wrong dates he got the wrong date on his calendar and so there was somebody there that was um was mourning the grief of uh the loss of her husband and he found out that his purpose at that moment was not to get a haircut but it was really to minister to that individual so you know the eyes wide open for those of us who are in jesus christ is look looking for the opportunities to be the face of christ to really speak into the person whether it be at the grocery store whether it be at uh at work uh wherever it is to always be ready for the moment that the lord speaks and speaks a word of encouragement or truth we don't encourage enough but also we don't uh trust enough in the lord to speak forth the wisdom and a message for somebody that could be ever life-changing i met at a book signing somebody who i hadn't seen for years and she referenced um you know something that was spoken to her that uh you know impacted her for all of those years in between so prophetically i would say that the lord is is drawing cl wants to draw close and don't think of those who are and have had gone through nds like yours truly truly as having um some special uh some well it was special in some context he wants each of us to draw close to him to be intimate with them with us and that is the central message you know people have asked me because i write about you know why does god allow suffering how does he use brokenness you know we go through the valley of darkness but he will never leave us there um and the only answer i can give back to that that really makes any sense whatsoever is that the closer we draw to god the more those questions that we have and those doubts and that we will no longer have those or they'll be assuaged by virtue of the fact that we are so close to the lord that maybe we don't know the answers to the questions but we know who has those answers and that's all that matters and so it's just like being in heaven you know when you're face to face with the lord all of those cares evaporate because when you're in the presence of the lord fully there will be no no crying no my my tears by the way were of joy and just awe but there will be no crying no sorrow no no worries no nothing of that kind and it's the same here on earth that the closer we go grow to the lord the closer closer we immerse ourselves in his presence the more those cares and worries will evaporate and i hope that doesn't sound trite because i can tell you that from my experience in heaven to the experiences i had with the lord jesus christ on earth prior and even subsequent being in my fleshly body were infinitely apart to the point where i can have experiences with the lord in his presence and be immersed here on earth but in heaven it's a complete immersion but the irony is that he wants that he wants that he desires that same level for us here and now and when we're immersed in his presence they have to of life you know i have to do this i have to do that or i want to do this it becomes innate it just spills out of us because the closer we get to god the more he infuses his um his his direction his wisdom through us to just do the things that that um that he's called us to do so that it just spills out of us because it's all about drawing closer to the lord and once that happens you know putting not putting the carp before the horse putting after you know the other things follow so if you're in a hard place you know just draw closer even if you you know are angry at the lord as i have been angry at the lord just draw closer and be honest with him and say you know god you know i don't know why you're doing this i'm angry at you right now i don't i don't feel close to you right now but i'm not going to give up i'm not going to give up i'm going to draw in because i know that you never change but i do so i'm gonna push forward and just push forward in the hardest times because he's i've noticed this one thing and i'll end it with this sean i've noticed in in my life subsequent it took 14 years for me to share this story because um i didn't want to um i i thought it was my personal story it was released actually in an interview that i had for another book and this thing i've learned is that from my life is that those who are closest to the lord seem to and my these are my experiences seem to have gone through a significant brokenness in their life and there are two options that one one goes through brokenness there are two directions that is one can either draw away from god that is blame god and and pull away from him or one can draw closer to god and say you know i don't have all the answers i don't know why but i'm just going to draw closer to you in prayer and just immersion and stillness and getting still with the lord those who who do the uh the latter they draw closer to god are the ones that have this immense immense um love and wisdom uh beyond those who let's say just kind of stroll through life you know he's near to the brokenhearted we know that uh you know john 16 33 um you know he tells us that we're going to have trouble uh but um and he's near to the brokenhearted for theirs is the kingdom of god the beatitude um we know that but it's absolutely true and it's the only way to live and um on that day that we most fear death on that day that we most fear for our loved one them dying will be their best day i can assure you of that and i can testify of that and for anyone who has lost a loved one i can tell you that they don't want to come back well randy i think one of the burning questions for a lot of the viewers listeners right now is did you ever find out what your unfulfilled purpose was yeah i i it was actually ironically to help bring purpose to others to help develop that purpose uh for or in them or for them and also to the brokenhearted you know i went as i mentioned i went through um probably my darkest times subsequent to my um being and ushered into the presence of the lord and i have an affinity now on having worked with the broken hearted we're bringing dying to meet jesus to um to veterans and active military service members for example now you know that are going through ptsd and uh and you know suffering because there has to be an answer and the answer is jesus christ drawing closer to him but my purpose really is to help people get through it because we're not through the hump of you know why does god allow suffering why is he allowing me to go through this valley or why did he you know take you know my loved one if we can't get beyond that then we're not going to get to the larger purpose of okay what am i here for what what is why did this happen you know and i call those um times when we've gone through crises and we've gone have gone through loss and changes loss of a job even they call them seminal moments you know seminal moments are life-changing moments they're cataclysmic they change us forever we lose our job we have to do something else we lose our loved one now what do i do things i've lost my health you know i'm have cancer what is what am i supposed to do now and so i want to encourage people to to kind of do a paradigm shift and look at this and plan those seminal moments in advance instead of waiting for that loved one to pass instead of late waiting for that terminal illness instead of waiting for that loss to the job now presume those having as having occurred because those catapult us to to hopefully a different place and not the same because same is truly never the same but if we truly look at that okay and and open that kind of what if box now you know if i lost that now what could i do uh what would i do that maybe has been on the back burner that maybe was a dream that was lost because the practicality of life got in the way and now i can say okay now without having gone through that seminal moment that uh crisis how about if i think of it in the in the context or the paradigm of okay it's happened so now what would i do with my life because my life changed dramatically i mean i was in the corporate world i was doing business i went into training and development personal development into ministry because some of those people dropped away because you know now they kind of think of me differently now that you know i had never written a quote-unquote christian book and certainly not a near-death experience so some people are looking at me differently so i'm in a whole different arena and i know i didn't have to die to be there um for me i did um but i i now think of things from the context of okay lord i don't want to wait for that i want to plan ahead accordingly for what you want me to do um when the proverbial rug has been pulled out from under my feet uh so that maybe you don't have to do it so i can get through my thick head and i'm supposed to do something that's that's more kingdom has more kingdom impact than what i'm doing uh today um that's that's um that's what i want to help people understand and to help people find that purpose and get through that brokenness so they can strive toward toward uh greater things and growing closer to christ well randy when people hear a story like yours or they read a book like dynamite jesus i think a lot of times they'll get hung up on the near death experience and that'll be the one thing they remember or take away but in terms of you know the reader's journey with this book when somebody gets that lack that last page they close that back flap what's that one thing you want every single reader to take away what do you want them to remember most from the book i want them to remember that our greatest fear is actually our greatest joy because of this one fact and it comes in romans 8 28 all things all all things work for good to those that belong to christ jesus and are called according to his purpose and so that that whatever the bad is the inevitable outcome is good any that means even at the point of death because our best day is not here on earth our best day begins at the point in which we actually physically die so that's our best day but our best day here is is that point at which we then die to self that is we give up you know and oftentimes that takes brokenness to give up and let god do his work you know don't take it personally if somebody you know fires you you know god other people's rejection is god's redirection oftentimes just just go with the flow trust him trust him trust him trust him because always always always bad will be turned for good it's inevitable and even the darkest time he will never never leave us there it's always for a redemptive purpose and he taught us on the cross he redeemed us on the cross and every every tragedy whether it be job or personal tragedies my losses i've had cancer heart disease lung disease obviously as i as i mentioned all of those things have served a redemptive purpose even if it's speaking with whomever is out there now that's a redemptive purpose that i would never want to sacrifice uh in my life so every hardship is the loss of loved ones which i describe in the book um you know that had a redemptive purpose and so nothing bad happens without some redemption for good coming out of that bad thing that happened and so if you think of that from that context then you're going to think of okay now i'm going through the valley but now i'm going to go through something better something good and it's going to be used because i've trusted the lord and uh and that's my takeaway loretta thank you thank you for helping us to wrap up on such an encouraging note uh for the listeners the viewers who'd like to connect with you find out more about the book where are some of the places we can connect with you on the web yeah i have an author site at randycayauthor.com and then i have the the ministry sites i have a training site as well but for those who might want to get engaged more christian oriented on randyk.org and like we do with every episode we'll have detailed links in the show notes places where you can connect with randy and pick up your very own copy of the book it's time to bring this episode of the sean tabit show to a close many thanks for being a part of my conversation with randy kaye once scanner book today was dying to meet jesus how encountering heaven changed my life for more on randy in the book a great place to start is his website randycayauthor.com and as you mentioned if you want to connect with him related to more ministry and speaking engagement sorts of things head on over to randycay.org and randy i just want to say thanks so much for sharing with us today it's been a great pleasure and an honor to have you on the show thank you likewise sean you

Channel: Destiny Image

Views: 407,788

Rating: 4.7807198 out of 5

Keywords: bethel church music, bethel church redding, bethel church service, christian videos, christian songs, it’s supernatural network, jesus christ, top Christian 2018, top Christian 2019, bill Johnson, James goll, Lana Vawser, Jennifer LeClaire, healing, praying

Id: 8x23eAFS4gM

Length: 40min 40sec (2440 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020