Impossible Proof – A Testimonial

One winter afternoon at our house, my wife Jo Anna asked me to take her to the hospital. It was the first-time during years of marriage that she ever made such a request, despite previous major operations, including three open heart surgeries.

I carried her to my pickup truck and raced to the hospital. There, I carried her into the emergency room. Thirty minutes later, the doctor told us her kidneys were failing and she only had hours to live. This time my Jo Anna would not come home from the hospital.

After we said a prayer together, I went to work. First, because my wife was a believer in God, I got a priest to come to the hospital and hear Jo Anna’s confession and provide her final communion. Meanwhile, I alerted friends and family of the situation. When they arrived or called in from far away, I allowed each person five minutes alone with her to talk to each other privately and honestly.

As she weakened her eyes closed. I encouraged her to hold on because her son and daughter were racing toward the hospital. Others spoke with her, but she responded less. When the son arrived, I told her to open her eyes to see him. And she did!

But I knew time was running out. Now it was my five minutes. Despite the monitor wires and intravenous tubes, I held her in my arms. I thanked her for all the anniversaries that we had enjoyed and that my love for her would last forever.

Abruptly a physical pressure pushed into my chest, surprising me as it gradually moved through chest bones, heart, and then out my back. When the invisible shaft of pressure left my body, the heartbeat and breathing monitors started squawking. At that moment, I realize Jo Anna’s soul had said goodbye to me before she died in my arms on our 31^st wedding anniversary.

After leaving the hospital, it was dark and dismal when I drove down the gravel road to our small ranch. It worsened when I stood in the fireplace room knowing that I would never again warm Jo Anna to ward off the chill caused by her blocked arteries and weak heart. During twenty-three years, I had built 150 or more fires per year in this room to keep her comfortable where she often slept in her recliner chair. That’s over 3,400 fires. But now, I had to face making the first fire just for me and not for her.

To feel closer to my wife, as the fire started warming the room I covered up in her chair while the black grief continued gnawing at me. Eventually, I escaped the pain and tears by falling asleep.

Hours later, I woke in the dark feeling the grief again. But the pain could not erase my need to help my wife as I had done since marrying her, despite knowing her significant health issues. But after your spouse dies you do not have many options.

Before starting to pray for Jo Anna, it came to me that the Holy Mother must have felt the same terrible anguish while watching her son suffer on the cross and then die. I knew Mother Mary would understand my grief and my pleas to help my wife into heaven.

After those prayers, I tried to figure out what more I could do or what offering of merit I could make. I decided, as an author, I could write several books to help spread God’s message. So, I promised God that I would do that. Also, I asked that any good I had done in life be credited to Jo Anna so she could reach heaven. Still, I worried that I was an insignificant spec in the universe and I was not offering enough like spouses who say they would die for their loved ones. That’s when I offered the last thing I had. I offered my soul to the Great Creator to be cast into the darkness for a thousand years if he would allow Jo Anna into heaven.

When I finished my prayer offering, a bright light suddenly filled the room, accompanied by a loud whooshing sound as if something had burst into fire. Shocked, I jumped out of the recliner, trying to determine what could have created a flash fire and continuing light in the room. I spun around and saw that neither the rug nor anything else was on fire outside the fireplace. Nor was there a cloud of smoke — evidence that a flash fire had just made the burning noise.

That is when I saw something that I had never seen before. Something that did not conform to all the fires I had burned using oak, pine, douglas fir, cedar, redwood, eucalyptus, spruce, or manzanita, along with paper and cardboard.

Inside the fireplace, a column of fire burned just beyond the safety screens. I opened them to see the flame better. It was ten inches tall, an inch-and-a-half in diameter, and floating three inches above the firebrick floor of the fireplace. Its bottom two-thirds was translucent blue, while the top third burned yellow.

It was not in the ashes left by the evening’s fire. Instead, it hovered over ash-free and wood-free brick just beyond the screen. And there was no pine sap or kitchen grease stain under it where out-gassing could be fueling the flame. Furthermore, there was no propane, liquid nitrogen gas, or butane to create the blue flame since this was an all-wood fireplace, NOT plumbed for gas heating. But chemically wood, paper, and other carbon items only burn yellow and orange — not blue. Plus, there was no ignition source, like a glowing ember from the wood thoroughly burned away the night before. Only grey-black powder ash common after an evening’s fire lay beyond the flame.

I watched the flame for twenty seconds seeing no fuel source, no ignition source, a hydrocarbon flame in a wood-burning fireplace, with the room still illuminated by the small source of light. As I shook my head, I said to myself, This is impossible! This isn’t a dream or coincidence. It’s a sign in the fireplace where I have built so many fires for her. It’s a sign that Jo Anna is OK. Her soul is in heaven!

When the miracle flame disappeared, I was happy that my wife was safe. God had done as I asked. But seconds later while I walked away to get dressed and start my daily choirs, I knew that I had to fulfill my part of the bargain that I had requested. I had to go into the darkness for a thousand years, away from reaching heaven and Jo Anna. That thought chilled me.

Months passed as I wrote the books I promised before I recognized that I should tell others about the impossible blue flame. That caused me to talk to ministers in different churches about providing a testimonial. During those conversations, the ministers disagreed with my expectation of being sent into the darkness. Those talks moved me to review what in the Bible was said about being in the light or the dark.

I focused on the New Testament using my computer to find “light” information collected from numerous Gospels in the Bible. When I reached the second verse in a long list, I was amazed by how meaningful were the words spoken over 2,000 years ago.

In the Gospel of Luke Chapter 1, verse 79, Zacharias tells family and friends about his newly born son, named John, who would become John the Baptist. Zacharias said John would go forth and teach the people a Messiah would come. “To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

I had sat in the darkness surrounded by the shadow of death. Light had appeared after my prayers confirming that Jo Anna was in heaven. However, I was not at peace.

Continuing my research, I reached John Chapter 8, verse 12. “Then Jesus again spoke to them: ‘I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.’ “

That’s when I realized that though I was committed to going into the dark for 1,000 years — Jesus wasn’t. The light that appeared in the fireplace room was meant for both Jo Anna and me. The magnitude of that kindness still humbles me.

So, I come before you as a witness to physical events, including impossible ones, that proved that we have a soul that will pass through the veil to another realm. Plus, I witnessed events proving that though we are small specs in the universe, Jesus does look over us and does want us to reach heaven.

And I encourage you to come together shoulder-to-shoulder to worship and rejoice in being a man or woman of God, who follows God’s commandments. And as Matthew said in Chapter 5 verse 16: “. . . let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

As important, this testimonial also provides a positive message for those who are not followers of God. It stems from my learning that “darkness” is more than personal anguish and more than the darkness of my surroundings. It included recognizing I was on the wrong path by asking and planning to go into the darkness for 1,000 years.

Similarly, a non-believer may find him or herself on a wrong path for these or for other reasons:

• Choosing what you claim is right for yourself while ignoring what is right for others
• Events or your actions have made a shambles of your life and that of others
• An addiction steals your body and soul away from family and friends
• Lingering regrets dig into you for mistreating or harming others
• Feeling alone without family or friends who trust and respect you
• Feeling empty after chasing the glittering pleasures and lusts of the world
• Feeling you are wandering and your life has no meaningful purpose
• Feeling abandoned, hopeless, or persecuted
• Wishing you had led your life differently but are unsure what to do now

Here is the message to people who recognize they are on one of the wrong paths. Eliminate the dark pain in your life by moving toward the light of God’s commandments and guidance on how to live life according to his rules — not your own.

 Also, go to the altar and accept God’s willingness to forgive anyone who truly repents their sins. Then, join God’s family by being baptized.

And trust what Jesus said during his sermon on the mount as recorded in Mathew chapter 7 versus 24 and 25:

“. . . everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

But change your path quickly because you do not know when you will pass and the gate into heaven is only open to God’s followers.

From: Author Ed Mitchell
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