Stories from an RN Nurses About Lessons Before Dying

"I was working ICU and caring for a patient with breast Ca who was dying, minimally responsive for days (this was a long time ago when we actually kept dying patients in ICU). Anyway, she suddenly awoke and was very lucid, asking for some water.....I was a little stunned but got her water for her. 

After she drank she said,  

"Do you know what Jesus just asked me?" 

 Of course I got chill bumps all over and asked...

"No, what?" 

"He asked me if I had done everything with love."

  "And what did you say"

 "I told him that I had tried," 

I told her that most likely that is all any of us are capable of doing. I turned her with some pillows and she fell asleep and died about 10 minutes later. Needless to say, this affected me greatly, I want to be able to give the right answer when Jesus asks. 

 

The second incident, we had an older man with a massive heart attack, lots of other problems and he ended up on the ventilator. He was the meanest old coot ever. His granddaughter worked at the hospital and apologized for his behavior and told us he had always been quite a rounder. 

He would bite, kick, spit, and had to be restrained to keep him from pulling every line he had out. We coded him three times during his stay. 

After the third time, his demeanor changed and he became much more cooperative. We explained the change as a bit of ICU psychosis that had resolved. The gentleman became a "frequent flyer" in our ICU, coming in multiple times with CHF and becoming a regular at our outpatient CHF clinic. 

Suddenly, he became a favorite, always smiling, joking, a dear man. One day he asked me...

"Do you remember the first time I was here and how awful I was." 

I assured him that I did indeed remember. He said...

 "Do you know why I changed?" 

I replied that I didn't but just thought that his meanness was related to his illness. He said...

"No, it wasn't that....the last time you guys brought me back when my heart stopped....I woke up all alone in a very dark place....it was awful, beyond terrifying Though, it was totally black the heat was staggering and there was this awful over powering smell of sulfur and rotting meat. Then, there was a sense of dread, like something bad was coming for me, something REALLY bad.  The sense of impending doom kept getting stronger and stronger. I just knew any second my worst nightmare was going to appear.  I was so scared, I called out and called out and no one answered. Then, by the grace of GOD you were able to start my heart and bring me back to life!

Afterwards, I remembered hearing that when people die and then come back a lot of them see a light and a lot of other "good" stuff. I NEVER saw a light and I knew that if I did not want to go back to that place that I had to change." 

He lived a couple more years after telling me his story and when he finally died in our ICU, I had a feeling that he saw the "light" because he died with a smile on his face.

In Hell There are Only Screams

In the year

1707, St. Francis of Jerome was preaching, as was his want, in the neighborhood of the

city of Naples. He was speaking of hell and the awful chastisements that await obstinate

sinners. A brazen courtesan who lived there, troubled by a discourse which aroused her remorse, sought to hinder it by jests and shouts, accompanied by noisy instruments. As she was standing close to the window, the Saint cried out:  

 

"Beware, my daughter, of

resisting grace; before eight days God will punish you."

 

 

The unhappy creature grew only

more boisterous. Eight days elapsed, and the holy preacher happened to be again before the same house. This time she was silent, the windows were shut. The hearers, with dismay on their faces, told the Saint that Catherine -- that was the name of the bad woman

-- had a few hours before died suddenly. 

 

"Died!"  he repeated, 

 

"Well, let her tell us now

what she has gained by laughing at hell. Let us ask her." 

 

He uttered these words in an

inspired tone, and every one expected a miracle. Followed by an immense crowd, he went

up to the death chamber, and there, after having prayed for an instant, he uncovers the

face of the corpse, and says in a loud voice, 

 

"Catherine, tell us where art thou now."

 

At this summons, the dead woman lifts her head, while opening her wild eyes, her face

borrows color, her features assume an expression of horrible despair, and in a mournful

voice, she pronounces these words: 

 

"In hell;For All eternity, without hope,without any end, forever and ever till the stars burn out; I am in hell." 

 

Her visage, eyes gray an ashen, her skin shrunken tight like leather around her skull; frame a face whose expression is one of sheer terror.  Without warning Catherine's jaw creaks open unnaturally wide and from it, slowly at first, then building shrill and high, accompanied by lesser sounds; rips a mournful wale torn from the deepest pit of hell.  

"I'm in HELL! Oh my GOD why didn't I listen? Why didn't I answer the call of Christ?  Better that I was never born..."

3 TESTIMONIES ABOUT HEAVEN AND HELL

The Bible (God's only trustworthy Word for the human race) tells us: All of us were born with a sin nature. We inherited it from the sinful bloodline of Adam and Eve – the first two created people - because of their disobedience (sin) to God. Jesus Christ paid for everyone’s spiritual pardon come Judgment Day by taking their punishment by dying a cruel death on the cross -- that means YOUR punishment.

Jesus paid the ransom payment for your ETERNAL SPIRITUAL FORGIVENESS – YOUR FREE PARDON FROM ETERNAL SPIRITUAL DEATH.

Imagine being in a court room, and the Judge has just sentenced you to death for the crime you committed. Also imagine Jesus Christ being your lawyer. Jesus Christ says to the Judge (or in other words, God the heavenly Father): “Your honor, I want to serve my client’s sentence and pay the price for his/her wrong-doing by dying instead so my client can go free from the crime he/she has committed.” Can you imagine someone doing such a thing for you?!  JESUS DID IT!

Of course you may be saying to yourself also at that moment: I haven’t done anything to be sentenced to die! I’m being falsely accused! “What have I supposedly DONE, God?!” Here’s your answer: God gave 10 commandments for people to keep in the Old Testament Bible. Anyone who breaks just one of those commandments must be punished for breaking them against God. Where does it say THAT?! It says that in Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
Have you ever lied? Lied just one time? Everyone of us has lied at least once. Number 9 of the 10 commandments says: Thou shalt not lie (bear false witness). 

 

You know what that makes us? A disobedient sinning liar against God’s moral law – His 10 commandments. (Revelation 21:8 also tells us what God thinks of lying). 

 

  You just read above what God says about our disobedient sinning against Him by breaking just ONE of His moral laws: The wages of doing so is DEATH. Emotional - spiritual death. Total separation from God and agonizingly suffering for our sins for all eternity -- totally void of any love, peace, hope, joy or forgiveness from God ever again (otherwise known as hell).

BUT HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS! We can receive forgiveness for all our disobedience against God the Father and our sin against others RIGHT NOW and have certainty RIGHT NOW that on the Judgment Day, our sins WON’T be held against us! HOW CAN THAT BE?! By asking Jesus Christ to forgive us for our sins and trusting that He HAS forgiven us of them simply by our asking and trusting! Jesus will do it!  1 John 1:8-9 says: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Thus if we make Jesus our personal Lord and Savior … every time we sin – we have every right to ask Jesus Christ to forgive us of our sin(s) – cleanse us as though we never sinned – so that when our heart stops beating, we can be assured that we won’t have to suffer eternal damnation for our sins. 

 

Jesus Christ did what no other human being has ever done or ever could do. He was the ONLY person on this planet who has never sinned. And because He never sinned, He is the only acceptable sacrifice God the Father would accept to pay ransom payment for each of our sins.

None of us know when our heart will stop beating, do we? Be HIGHLY encouraged to make peace with God the Father through Jesus Christ this very moment. Pray and tell Jesus you are sorry for your sins against God. Ask Him to save you from your sins.  

 

Daily put Him FIRST in everything you think, say and do. As soon as possible, be water baptized, and ask Jesus to fill you with the Holy Spirit so you can be empowered by the Holy Spirit to enjoy reading the New Testament Bible (God's LATEST covenant Word to the human race), and obey the commands God has recorded for followers of Jesus Christ to obey (You will be rewarded for doing so!).  

 

Join with other Christian believers who can help answer the many questions you probably have, and who will pray for and encourage you.  Asking Jesus Christ to be your personal Savior, and making Him Lord of your life is THE WISEST DECISION YOU WILL EVER MAKE.  

 

It will bring you eternal joyous rewards ... and God will be so pleased that you have NOT wasted the eternal purposes God has planned for you!  God never created you to be a wasted creation of His - never forget that - but it is up to YOU to let Him work in your life - daily.  

 

He won't force you.  He must always be invited. (Intimate relationship is never sustained indefinitely with another person without effort; nor so with God. It requires ACTIVE pursuit of the most special person in your life.  God desires YOUR active pursuit of Him more than anything else in your life.  He wants FIRST place - never second.  And in your so doing ...  

 

NO ONE to Him is more desirable than YOU!  He so eagerly desires you to come to that realization, dear one. He truly does.  This life is your starting point with your loving Creator that will last for eternity.)

Don't Cheat on Your Wife

 
The Following is a interior locution given to Maria Valtorta...

 Jesus Christ speaking... 

"Be patient, My dear soul, with regard to the double work.  This is a period of endurance.  You know how tired I was in My last days?!  You see it.  When walking I lean on John, on Peter, on Simon, also on Judas... Yes. And although miracles emanated from Me, even by simple contact with My clothes, I was not able to change that heart!  


Let Me lean on you, little John, to repeat the words which I spoke in the last days to those stubborn dull-minded people who heard the announcement of My torture without being affected by it.  And let the Master preach for hours in the sad plain of the Clear Water.  And I shall bless you twice: for your fatigue and for your pity.  I count your efforts, I gather your tears.  For your efforts on behalf of your brothers you will be rewarded as those who wear themselves out to make God known to men.  The tears shed for My suffering during the last week will be rewarded with Jesus' kiss.  Write and may you be blessed. 

Jesus is standing on a kind of platform made with boards in one of the large rooms, the last one, and is speaking in a very loud voice, near the door, so that He may be heard by those in the room and also by those in the shed or on the threshing floor, which is flooded by the rain.  The people standing there in their large dark coarse mantles, which are proof against water, look like so many lay brothers.  The weakest people are in the room, the women under the shed, the strongest, mainly men, are in the yard, in the rain. 


Peter, barefooted and wearing only his short tunic and with a piece of cloth on his head, comes and goes, and is always in a good humor even if he has to paddle in water and take unexpected showers.  John, Andrew and James are with him.  They are cautiously transferring from the other room sick people and are guiding or supporting blind or lame people.
Jesus is patiently waiting for them all to be settled.  He is only sorry that the four disciples are wet like sponges dipped into a pail of water. 

"It is nothing!  We are like pitched wood.  Don't worry.  We are getting baptized again and the baptizer is God Himself." replies Peter to Jesus' commiserations. 


At last they are all settled and Peter thinks he can go and put on a dry tunic.  And he goes away with the other three. 


But when he comes back again to the Master, he sees the large grey mantle of the veiled woman appear round the corner of the shed and he goes towards her without considering that to do so he must cross the yard diagonally in a heavy shower of rain which is getting heavier and heavier, while the water of the pools splashes up to his knees.  He takes her by the elbow, without displacing her mantle, and pulls her towards the wall of the large room, out of the rain.  He then places himself beside her, as stern and still as a sentry. 

Jesus sees him and He smiles bending His head to conceal the brightness of His smile.  He starts speaking. 


"Those amongst you, who have been coming to Me regularly, must not say that I do not speak orderly, and that I skip some of the ten commandments.  You hear.  I see.  You listen.  I apply My speech to the pains and the sores that I see in you.  I am the Doctor.  A doctor calls first on those who are more seriously ill, on those who are closer to death.  He then visits those who are not so dangerously ill.  I do the same." 

 

"Today I say to you: "Do not commit Adultery!"

"Do not look round endeavoring to read the word "lustful" on somebody's face.  Would you love anyone who read that word on your face?  No, you would not.  Well, then, do not try to read it in the worried eyes of your neighbor or on his forehead that blushes and bows to the ground.  And then... 

Oh! tell Me, especially you MEN.  Which of you has not tasted the sin of Adultery?  It is a bread made with ashes and excrement, this is it's vaule to your Soul.  Love is NOT sexual lust.   And is lust only what carries you for one hour between the arms of anohter man's wife or a prostitute?  Does not lust also  desecrate the Divine union between a man and his wife, desecrated because it is vice which pollutes.  Does NOT getting caught evade its consequences?

 

"Marriage means procreation, trust, and love. The very act is a union between two Souls joined by GOD in HIS favor. Otherwise it is immoral and act of lust which has many unintended consequences.  You must not soil and befoul your nuptial bed.   And that is what it become if it is soiled by lust during the act of Adultery.  The sacrament of marriage is consecrated faithfulness and the divine gift of maternity.  The earth does not reject the seed, it receives it and makes a plant of it.  The seed does not escape from the furrow after being laid there.  But it takes root at once and it strives to grow and bear fruit, that is the vegetable creature born of the union between soil and seed.  


Man is the seed, woman is the soil, the fruit is the offspring.  It is sinful to refuse to bear fruit and scatter strength in vice.  It is Adultery is NOT performed on the nuptial bed, and in no way differs from the other prostitution, on the contrary it is aggravated by disobedience to the commandment that says:

 "Be one flesh and multiply by bearing children. Always be faithful to your wife, to your vows, to your promise to GOD."

"Do you not consider that pleasure outside of marriage is a poison that contaminates every mouth that tastes it?  


Adultery burns with a dark fire that seems to satisfy, instead it falls out of the fireplace and devours, more and more insatiable, leaving a sour taste of ash on the tongue as well as disgust, nausea and contempt both of oneself and of the partner committing Adultery. 

Sinful pleasure consumes the man who betrays his martial vows.  When a Godly man's conscience revives, and it does revive between the acts of Adultery, he can but feel such deep inner-contempt for himself, because he has willingly lowered himself and his nuptial bed below the level of beasts and animals. 


"You shall not fornicate" 

 A great deal of the carnal actions of men are fornication.  And I do not take into consideration the inconceivable.


 But after mentioning the duty of husband and wife in marriage, which is no longer holy when it becomes barren through malice, I am going to speak of the true and proper fornication between man and woman performed out of reciprocal vice or for compensation in money or in gifts." 


"The human body is a magnificent temple that contains an altar.  God should be on the altar.  But God is absent when there is corruption present due to Adultery.  

The act of polluting the wedding bed makes man an impure temple, a desecrated altar absent the presence of God.  

Like a drunken person who wallows in filth and mire, sleeping in his own vomit, man lowers himself in the brutality of lustful fornication and becomes worse than the most impure worm and beast." 

"Tell Me, if among you there is anyone who has perverted himself to the extent of dealing with his body as one deals in animal droppings?  For momentary lust which benefit did he gain?  Take your hearts in your hands, examine them, question them, listen to them, note their wounds, their pangs and then tell Me: 

Was the rotted stinking fruit of Adultery so sweet to inflict such pain upon ones soul?   Not only one Soul but two Souls, the heart and Soul of your wife, the mother of your children?  

Was the momentary lapse of faith worth  blackening a heart that was born Holy and Pure?   Was the act of adultery worth living in an impure body devoid of the light of GOD your Father in Heaven? 

 Tell Me: are you so perverted that you do not sob secretly, hearing the voice of a child calling: "Daddy" or thinking of your wives lost to you for one act of lust.  In the act of Adultery, cheap pleasure you have in your heart run away from home or having been found you, driven out of them. All for the rotten fruit which WILL contaminate with its oozing rottenness all that is good and Holy in your life.  Think of yourself if in the future when you are caught.... You, dying alone and broken-hearted, having to say: 

"I gave birth to sin which tore my house apart! It was my Adultery which shattered my happy, comfortable life.  My partner in sin simply laughed at me when my lies came tumbling down upon my head. Her words to Me...Serves you right Cheater..." 


"Do you not feel your hearts shudder with shame, when you meet an old solemn looking man because of his white hair and you consider that you have soiled your fathers' heads with handfuls of mud and have exposed them to the scorn of their native country?" 

"Do you not feel your entrails writhe with regret when you see a happy wife or an innocent virgin and you have to say: "I have given up all that and I will never be like that again!?" 


"But, above all, Be terrified of the Just Judge Who created you and is waiting for you to ask you:

 "What have you to say of yourself?  Did I not bless you and your household with happiness, trust, and fidelity.  How dare you come to My presence, you nest swarming with worms and putrefaction?  You have had everything of what was your god: Adultery and Lust.  Go! Into outer-darkness to the place of eternal malediction and Hell fire!"