{"id":10902,"date":"2024-06-17T13:49:29","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T17:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=10902"},"modified":"2024-06-18T08:33:50","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T12:33:50","slug":"how-one-mans-death-allowed-him-to-really-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/06\/how-one-mans-death-allowed-him-to-really-live.html","title":{"rendered":"How One Man\u2019s Death Allowed Him to Really Live"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_10917\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10917\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10917\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/06\/man-sees-heaven_credit-Lightstock-550x413.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"413\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10917\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lightstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It all began with a sore calf. Randy Kay assumed it was a strained muscle and ignored it, until it swelled during a bike ride and he went to see his doctor. What had seemed like a strained muscle turned out to be a blood clot, which then led to contracting Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and septic shock. \u201cThe doctor said I was a walking dead man,\u201d Kay recalled to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.faithwire.com\/2024\/06\/06\/man-says-he-visited-heaven-met-jesus-during-near-death-experience-i-was-a-walking-dead-man\/\"><em>Faithwire<\/em><\/a>. The situation was literally dire, with Kay\u2019s heart stopping for 30 minutes and 49 seconds, making him clinically dead. Despite being dead, Kay remained conscious. \u201cEverything went dark initially, and the next moment of recall, I was looking down on my body. I was being pulled by this light. I know that sounds clich\u00e9 almost, but it\u2019s absolutely true,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was seeing things, hearing things beyond which I would be able to do otherwise in my body,\u201d he said. At one point, he called out for Jesus, who then showed up. \u201cI was so overwhelmed with emotion, and my first thought was, \u2018So, this is love?\u2019 And I just caved. And I started shouting every superlative I could think of \u2014 \u2018Praise you, Lord God!\u2019 And then He reached down, and He wrapped His arms around me,\u201d he said. On his <a href=\"https:\/\/randykay.org\/randys-afterlife-experience\/\">website<\/a>, he described seeing his grandmother and animals in Heaven, including his old family dog. When he was told he had to go back to Earth, he was disappointed. \u201cI did not want to go. I was returned because I had not fulfilled my purpose and it was the most disappointing statement from Jesus that I heard in all of heaven but was also one that I knew I had to do, because I had to be obedient to the Lord,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>But Kay didn\u2019t go telling the world right away about his experience. In fact, other than a few close individuals, no one knew about what he\u2019d seen until 14 years later. Prior to his own experience, he wasn\u2019t the sort of person to take stock in after life, or near-death experiences (NDE). \u00a0\u201cI would have said, \u2018You know \u2026 they may have believed that they had that experience, but that the mind can play tricks, essentially. You know, some of them, I would say, were looking for attention,\u201d he said. He was also a very rational person prior to his experience. \u201cI was considered as a very logical and practical business professional not prone to any fanciful thinking. I knew that would all change, and in fact my life has been dramatically altered as a result. However, my blessings have far outweighed my financial sacrifices in being able to share the hope of heaven and Jesus Christ to people. No amount of money can surpass the joy of giving someone hope by helping them to realize that God and heaven are absolutely, positively real,\u201d he wrote on his website. He chronicled his experience in a book, entitled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Dying-Meet-Jesus-Encountering-Changed\/dp\/080079950X\"><em>Dying to Meet Jesus.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It all began with a sore calf. Randy Kay assumed it was a strained muscle and ignored it, until it swelled during a bike ride and he went to see his doctor. What had seemed like a strained muscle turned out to be a blood clot, which then led to contracting Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":10917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How One Man\u2019s Death Allowed Him to Really Live<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Randy Kay shares his incredible near-death experience.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/06\/how-one-mans-death-allowed-him-to-really-live.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How One Man\u2019s Death Allowed Him to Really Live\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Randy Kay shares his incredible near-death experience.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/06\/how-one-mans-death-allowed-him-to-really-live.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christ News Today\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-06-17T17:49:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-06-18T12:33:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/06\/man-sees-heaven_credit-Lightstock.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta 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