God Opened My Eyes That Terrible Night

I wanted to know if God was real, and I had just sold a business and decided to spend time doing research. When I’m focused I can work 12 to 14 hours a day on a project. And that is what I did here. I read the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic Gospels, I read literally dozens of books for research, then I read the Bible again. I spent four months, 10 to 12 hours every day seeking the truth. It was exhausting!

But I kept running into all the prophecies in the Bible. Hundreds and hundreds of prophecies, but no mention of how most of them turned out. Yes, Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies, but there were hundreds on cities, peoples and other events that was never explained, and I was blown away by the fact that, besides the end times prophecies, every one of those prophecies happened just as they were described in the Bible. Everyone!

But I consider myself a student of human nature and what I discovered about the disciples completely blew my mind. In every case with the exception of John, who died on the island of Patmos, which was like a prison, the rest of them were murdered in truly horrific fashions. And all they had to do to be let go was to deny Christ’s resurrection. Either that or boiling in oil, crucifixion, having your head cut off, etc, etc.

I grew up in a tough neighborhood. Everyone lied. But no one would die for a lie. And in the end, I couldn’t let that go. And that is what I was thinking about that night I went to that bar. In all my research I couldn’t find one item to refute the Bible, and yet those men who walked with Christ refused to deny what they saw. They chose a horrific form of death over what they believed, and then God opened my eyes.

When I looked around me, suddenly, I could see the evil that pervaded the room. An evil presence was everywhere, and I knew that it was looking directly at me. Even though I had fought in Vietnam, faced death dozens of times, I had never been struck by the fear I felt in that moment. It was terrifying, but I am getting ahead of myself.

After working a very difficult 12 hours, I was exhausted. It was about midnight, and as I was driving my friend home, I saw a bar open and all I wanted at that moment was a cold beer. I had been reading the Bible and trying to figure out if God was real, and was close to making that ultimate decision, but none of that came to mind. All I could think about was my friend’s eventual loss of his business when I saw that bar, and the idea of a cold beer made me whip my car into its parking lot. It was then that I noticed it was a topless bar, which I did not frequent, but all I wanted was one cold beer, then I would take my friend home, go home myself, and end this miserable day.

Gary, suspiciously, looked at me and said that he didn’t feel like drinking when I told him that it was for one beer and then I would take him home. So I parked the car and we went inside. I noticed about twenty people or so, but we made our way to the bar, sat down and ordered ourselves a beer. The girl brought us a beer and it was about that time I remembered the words in the Bible and thought about how close I was to accepting Christ as my Lord and Savior and realized that I was not where I should have been. I knew we should leave but then the music came on and I watched as this beautiful girl came out of some door and approached the stage, which was right next to where we were sitting.

She climbed the stairs and the lights came on highlighting just how beautiful she was. Typically, what you saw in the women who danced in those kind of places was one thing, but this girl was so beautiful she made me freeze in that moment. She literally took my breath away. I mean she wasn’t just pretty; she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

And then she began to undress, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. That’s when, for some unknown reason, I began to pray. I don’t know why I was praying, but I knew God did not want me in there. And since something was still holding me back from accepting Christ, I, in the moment asked God to show me the truth. And that is when my whole world was ripped apart.

One minute I was sitting there next to my friend, and the next I was lifted out of my body and was hovering a few feet above myself. I couldn’t believe it. I looked at myself and I was still sitting in the same spot, but I was actually hovering above myself. I looked at the other people in the room, but all eyes were focused on the girl.

So, I looked back at the girl and watched. Then things started to change. As I watched her dance she went from the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and then she began to grow older. I watched as her flesh went from firm and smooth, to pale and thin and began to sag. Her hair was pure black, but now I saw the grey spread throughout.

I kept looking at the other people in the bar, but it was apparent that it was only I that was witnessing her change. Her face also changed and began to wrinkle. Then I saw her body start to change. Her dancing, from the beautiful fluid movement, started to become stiff and I could see the pain written all over her face. I don’t know what everyone else was seeing, but I was horrified. It looked like she was ravaged by arthritis because I could see her joints swell and warp her frame. Then she got down on the floor and I could tell that her dancing was all but done.

I felt so bad for her, but I knew we were both locked in this nightmare. She no longer tried to dance any longer but instead grew older and her body became twisted and tortured. Then I saw scars that covered her torso and legs, and I couldn’t help but think of how it looked like they were my own. I asked God to stop this madness, and that was when she looked directly at me. Her face was filled with so much fear and pain, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Then she said something to me, but I couldn’t hear her. I don’t know, I think I was in shock myself. By now she was moaning and I could see she was racked in pain. Then as i watched, I saw her curl up and after crying out, she died. Here on this stage, with the room full of people, I watched as this apparent eighty plus year old woman died right in front of me. Then suddenly, I was back in my body.

Yes, as I looked back to the girl, she was beautiful again. And alive. But then everything changed again. It started off as a darkness. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. It wasn’t that everything was dark, but instead darkness was a thing. This was happening very fast, and I didn’t have time to think about it. But then the darkness started to take on shapes and they were around the people sitting in the bar. I must have been in complete shock because I was frozen to my seat.

Then these globs of darkness slowly turned into shapes. Not people, but something far more hideous. I actually watched as they manifested into dark creatures. My mouth must have been hanging open, but then I saw their eyes. And suddenly, at the exact same time, they looked directly at me. I saw nothing but hatred in those eyes, and, before I even took a breath, I grabbed my friend and yelled, “We’re out of here!”

By now my friend was very much into the girl on the stage, and he looked at me like I was crazy. But I also saw that those creatures were now completely focused on me, and a couple of them started to move in my direction. At that moment my friend had no choice because I literally drug him from that bar. Once we were outside and got to my car, I looked over my car and the entire bar was engulfed by a huge black cloud. I was shaking so bad that I stomped on the gas and pealed out of their parking lot almost running off of the road.

Fortunately, it was the middle of the night and there were no cars on the road. I took my friend home, but then on the way home, I saw that same black cloud covering many homes and businesses. I went by this church and I will never forget how that black cloud completely covered it. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but nothing I saw on my way home was going to shock me anymore than what I saw in that bar.

When I got home my wife was sleeping, but I knew it was time. I got down on my knees and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and have never looked back since. Occasionally I will still see that darkness, normally around or in another person. I always pray for them, but my faith has only grown since that night. Other than my family and a few friends, who laughed and thought I had gone crazy, I have never told this story to anyone else.

I always wondered about what that girl had said while I was watching her. I will never forget that she mouthed something but I couldn’t make out what she said. Then about a year ago, after taking a shower I looked into my mirror, which I try to avoid, and her words hit me like a ton of bricks. Several years ago I entered the hospital for an outpatient surgery that should have lasted an hour and a half.

I woke up seven days later with a colostomy attached to my abdomen. I went into the hospital weighing 185 pounds. I came outweighing 113. During that procedure things went terribly wrong, and in those next four days, I had four emergency surgeries where they removed 64% of my intestines. That day a year ago as I looked into the mirror, I saw myself covered in those same scars and I heard that girl say,

“I am you.”

And it was true. As I looked at myself, covered in scars, I remembered seeing that girl lying on the stage–thin as a rail and covered in scars. I didn’t know it then, but I was looking at myself. God showed me my death, and if I didn’t do something about it, that would be the best I had to look forward too.

This story is the absolute truth and my testimony. I tell this story now as a reminder; Heaven and Hell are very real. I don’t know why God doesn’t open everyone’s eyes like He did for me that terrible night, but I do know that He gives everyone a choice. And I can tell you from experience, you don’t want what I saw in that bar. Make the right choice.