A British man restored to life after being clinically dead for nearly an hour during hospital treatment had Armageddon-type visions while ‘out of this world’.
Joe Stevenson, from Doncaster in Yorkshire, has been speaking about his experience at Christian meetings around the country. But in an exclusive interview with this journalist, he has now shared his amazing story for the purposes of media coverage.
The miracle happened six years ago and has been verified by the surgeon involved. And the visions were uncannily descriptive of more recent events in Israel and the Middle East.
Joe was admitted to Doncaster Royal Infirmary for a total knee replacement but, at the initiation of physiotherapy the day after surgery, suffered a massive heart attack.
For the next 55 minutes he had “no cardiac output and no respiratory effort other than what was maintained by the resuscitation team”, according to Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon Mr A S W Bruce.
When informed by the patient’s son-in-law that Joe had died, church friends began to pray – not for the Lord to raise him up, but for his family to be comforted.
His heart started beating again – “spontaneous cardiac output and respiratory effort were returned,” said Mr Bruce – and he was in a coma for the next 72 hours. But there was no brain damage and, although initially suffering acute renal failure, this completely settled in time.
“Having seen him in clinic, he has made an uneventful recovery,” Mr Bruce added in a letter dated January 25th 2011.
Now 75 and in continuing good health, Joe lives in Coniston Road, Askern, near Doncaster, with his wife Wilsie.
Dr David Garrard, a senior lecturer at the nearby Assemblies of God Bible College and a fellow member at the time of the Reachout Christian Fellowship at Christ Church in central Doncaster, said: “The miracle of the resurrection power of Christ is evidenced in what happened to Joe.”
Joe was admitted for his operation on December 9th 2009. The op itself went smoothly, but it was the following morning, as he lay recovering, that he suffered a cardiac arrest.
Wilsie called their five children, who immediately dropped everything and raced down from all over the country. Then the doctor announced: “We have a pulse, but don’t build your hopes.”
“The medical team had fully expected Joe to be a vegetable due to no oxygen supply to his brain for all that time,” Wilsie recalled. “And though his kidneys were not initially functioning, with regular dialysis on the cards, they eventually returned to normal, to the delight of the medics.”
Joe has since revealed that he had a series of extraordinary visions during his hour of ‘death’. This included a scene of “total chaos on the earth” with everyone struggling for power and some arguing over clothing and possessions which had become worthless as money no longer had any value.
“The Lord showed me armies fighting one another, even beginning to kill their own people; young men and women taking people into alleyways, killing them at random and running away, laughing. I saw pillaging and rapes.
“Then I saw millions of dead bodies inside a massive lean-to, all in different uniforms. And giant earth-moving machines pushing the bodies into a quarry – something like a picture of Armageddon described in the Bible.” (Revelation 14.20)
Dr Garrard explained: “I have no difficulty at all accepting what Joe communicates [of his visions] because… they can be backed up by many portions of Scripture.”
Joe and Wilsie are currently members of the Millennium Christian Fellowship in Hemsworth, twelve miles north-west of Doncaster.
Joe says that in the weeks leading up to his operation, he had sought a much closer relationship with God as a result of which he experienced “a deep cleansing and a strengthening of spirit”.
He now realises that we all need to get back to basic Bible principles of loving one another as one body, with Jesus as head.
PHOTO: Much of what was revealed is already happening across the Middle East.
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