Ron R. my Story...

In 1972 my life was broken. I was a drug addict. I was a criminal. My family was broken. My wife had filed for divorce a couple of times. My children were afraid of me. I really couldn't hold a job, my mental state was terrible. It was in this frame of life that I took my 6 year old son to a little market to purchase some things. On the way in, I met a gentlemen coming out the door. An argument erupted and before I knew it I had hit him and knocked him down. He fell into a pile of bottles. The bottle broke and immediately he leaped up with a broken bottle and began to stab at me. I lifted my left arm to try to stop the blow, and the bottle severed my biceps muscle & the major arteries in my arm. I was bleeding to death in a matter of seconds. But full of anger, hatred and rage, I kept fighting and it kept bleeding. My little son was screaming, he was hysterical.

The owner of the 7-11 store came over and said that if I didn't get to a hospital, I would bleed to death in just a few minutes. So he took me in my own car to the hospital. When we entered the emergency room, I was barely conscious. As the medical staff began to work on me, I could hear their voices, they were saying, We can't help him. He'll have to be transported to another hospital. Probably loose the arm.� By the time they loaded me into the ambulance, my wife had arrived and went with us in the ambulance. But as they pulled out of the parking lot of that hospital, a young paramedic looked down into my face, and I could barely see I was so weak. He said “Sir, you need Jesus Christ.� But I didn't know Jesus, I didn't know what he was talking about, so my reaction to that was to begin cursing. And again he stated to me, You need Jesus!�

As he was talking to me, it appeared that the ambulance literally blew up in flames. I though it had actually blown up. It filled with smoke and immediately I was moving through that smoke, as if through a tunnel. After some period of time, coming out of the smoke and out of the darkness I began to hear the voices of a multitude of people. They were screaming, groaning and Crying. But as I was looking down, it appeared like a volcanic opening. I saw fire, smoke and people inside of this burning place. They were screaming and crying, they were burning, but they weren't burning up, they weren't being consumed. Then I began moving downward into this opening.

[Wife, Elaine R.]

He was thrashing, just thrashing about, moaning and groaning. It was like a battle was going on. I wasn't a Christian at the time, and I didn't know anything about spiritual battles. But it was scary to me because I could feel it. It was like light and darkness. It was like he was fighting against something. I didn't know what, but now I know, he was seeing the vision of hell.

[Ron R.]

But the terrible thing was that I began to recognize many of the people that were in these flames. It was like a camera lens was showing me their faces, close up. I could see their features, I could see their agony, pain and frustration. A number of them began to call my name, and said Ronny, don't come to this place, there is no way out. There is no escape if you come here, no way out.�

I looked into the face of one man who had died in a robbery attempt, he had been shot and bleed to death on the sidewalk. I looked into the face of two others who had died drunk in an automobile accident. I looked into the face of others who had died of drug overdoses, that we partied together. They showed agony and pain, but I believe that the most painful part was the loneliness. The depression was so heavy, that there was no hope, no escape, there was not way out of this place. The smell was like sulfur, like an electric welder, the stench was terrible.

In my life, I had seen people killed, I had been involved in fights where people were killed. I've done time in prison for manslaughter. I grew up in a reform school, and in a jail cell. I was beat unmercifully as a child by a father that had temper and alcohol problems. I was a runaway at 12 years old and I felt that there was nothing in this world that could frighten me. My life was wrecked, my marriage was wrecked, my health was wrecked. But now I was seeing something that scared me to death, because I didn't understand it. And as I am looking into this pit, this place of fire, screams and torment, I fade out into blackness.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital room in Knoxville, Tennessee with my wife is sitting by. There had been multiple stitches put into my body, my arm was spared. I had almost 100 stitches. I looked into the face of my wife. I wasn't concerned about where I was, or anything around me. All I could visualize was what I had just seen.

[Elaine R.]

He had this funny look on his face, and it was a terrifying look. And he said, I don't really know what's happening to me, but I've been in a terrible place.� And I kept telling him I've been in the hospital, you've been in the hospital all this time.� And he kept saying, No, I've been in another place. I don't know exactly what is was, but it was a terrible, terrible place.�

[Ron R.]

I could still hear the screams. I could still smell the terrible smell. I could still feel the heat, and I could still hear the voices of people that I've known screaming for me to go back. Through the days to come, I tried every way to get that out of my mind. I tried to get drunk, I could not get drunk. I tried to get stoned, I could not get stoned, I tried everything that I could to get this off my mind and I could not.

One morning, several months later, I came home to where my wife was. I had been trying to get drunk, but I couldn't. When I walked in the house and went back to the bedroom, the light was on. My wife was sitting up in bed, and she had a large book open on her lap. She looked up at me and her face was literally shining. And she said, Ronny, tonight I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior,"

She didn't have to say a lot to me, our life had been filled with agony. She grew up in Chicago; her father was a bartender on the South side of Chicago. She knew nothing about God, or church or religion. The pain in her face, the wrinkles that I gave her from my abuse, violence, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Sometimes I would be gone for months of time, and she and the kids would have no idea where I was. But now her face had changed. The wrinkles were literally were gone, a smile had replaced the sorrow and agony. She looked at me and said, Jesus saved me tonight. Would you go with me and hear about this man called Jesus.� I thought to myself, I tried everything else in life, nothing has worked for me. The people I love the most, my wife, my children, I'm terrible to them." So I agreed to go with her.

A couple of weeks later on a Sunday morning, November 2, 1972, just before 12 am, a minister stood to read from the bible. I was sitting in the back of the building, I didn't know anything out of the bible. I didn't know how to act to church. But the minister stood to read from the bible, and he read from the Gospel of John. He began to read these words "behold the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world."� When he said the Lamb� he had my attention. It wouldn't have meant anything to me, any other passage, but when he mentioned the Lamb he had this hard hearted sinner's attention.

Because when I was 9 years old, a very poor child in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, with a father who only knew anger, abuse and alcohol, a neighbor had given me a baby lamb. And I had to walk two miles to catch the school bus. One day coming through her yard she stopped me and said, Son I have a gift for you� and she showed me this baby lamb.

I took that lamb home with me, it was my friend, the only friend I felt like I had. It was such a friend, in the days and weeks to come it followed me, and it would meet me when I got off the school bus. It came walking through the woods and fields to meet me.

One evening as I came home, the lamb was missing. I heard my father cursing and screaming, he was working on an old model car, changing a flat tire by hand, the old way. I tried to walk around him because I didn't want to be cursed. I tried to bypass him, but when I got on the other side of the car, I looked down and there was my lamb with blood all over the white wool. There was a tire rod sticking in its body.

The lamb had come around just wanting to be curious, and in a drunken fit of anger, my father had plunged the tire iron though that lamb.

When I saw my lamb, my friend, dead, I began to scream. I ran into the woods screaming, he's killed my lamb, he's killed the lamb!�

At 9 years old, hatred and violence took my life, possessed my life. From that point on, I was never ever the same. By 12 years old I was a runaway. I was in the Juvenile system, arrested time after time. I had no respect for authority. I hated anyone that represented authority over me. By the time I was 15 years old, I had been in Jail for car theft, for stealing. At 15 years old I was sentenced for manslaughter; being involved in a car accident that had killed some and left others crippled. At that time I wondered if life would ever hold anything for me.

But when that minister mentioned The Lamb�he had my attention. He said that Jesus Christ was God's lamb, and He died and shed His blood so that whosoever wants to, can have a new start. They could be forgiven and start over.

That morning, as I stood to try to leave the building, I thought, I don't want anybody to see me cry. I haven't cried since I was 9 years old. I'm not afraid of any living thing on this Earth, and no one is going to see me cry."

I turned to leave, but instead I started down the isle toward the front of that building. I didn't know the sinners prayer, I didn't know the Roman road of salvation. But my prayer was this, God, if You exist, and Jesus, if You are God's lamb, please, please kill me or cure me. I don't want to live anymore, I'm not a husband, I'm not a father, I'm no good.� And at that instant, it was like the darkness and the blackness left my life. Then the tears began to flow and for the first time since I was 9 years old, the tears did run. The guilt left my life, the violence, anger and the hatred left my life. And Jesus Christ became Lord and savior of my life that morning.

Since that time I didn't know what would happen. God healed my mind, my memory, the drug addiction; the alcoholism was instantaneously gone, delivered. And for that moment I knew I had to tell the story of what had happened to me. My life was only spared to tell others about the place that I had seen, and the hope of Jesus Christ to save mankind from this terrible fate.