By Alex Brick –
Heidi Barr grew up in a small Iowa community and attended an Orthodox synagogue with 150 other families.
Heidi’s father was an atheist. His mantra to Heidi and her little sisters was, “There is no God, There is no Heaven. There is no hell. You are an accident of science; your life has less significance than the tiniest, most microscopic speck of dust in the universe,” she recounted on a Jews for Jesus video.
“We were only allowed to discuss God in our home if we were denying his existence,” she adds. Jesus was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind, her father always told her.
For the ritual and friends, Heidi loved synagogue. That is, she loved synagogue until the rabbi molested her when she was 12. Then she hated synagogue, no longer prayed, and started using drugs.
“It set off this spiral in my life,” she says. “I prayed for death. My life was still pretty miserable, other than riding my horse.”
At age 16, she was horseback riding when a wild Arabian mare went charging down the path she was on, startling her horse, who reared up.
“She flipped over backwards onto me she, fell across my body, fracturing my pelvis, breaking my back,” Heidi relates. “Neither of those were fatal injuries; they were bad, but they weren’t fatal. When she rolled across my chest crushing my chest, I left my body and I found myself up in the air looking down from 30, 40 feet up in the air.”
She didn’t feel pain. But she felt pangs of remorse that her little sisters witnessed her death. She also saw Charlie, the owner of the barn, come out and look over her prone body. He was praying.
A light from behind shined over her shoulder, and she turned and saw Jesus.
Even though for all her life she had been told that neither God nor Jesus existed, she immediately recognized Jesus. “Every cell in my soul knew him. Why would I see Jesus? I was Jewish. And yet there he was there, and all I could think about was I knew him, I had known him my entire life, and I loved him with everything in me.”
“He came closer until he was right next to me,” Heidi relates. “He is joy, he is love; he is everything good in the universe in one person. He’s everything that is good and joyous and happy and life-giving. He is funny.”
Then Jesus performed a life review. He brought to her mind the time Heidi made fun of another child because he was short. Jesus caused her to feel his pain. She knew she was a sinner.
Not everything in the life review was bad. Jesus was there sitting on the edge of her bed when she prayed. They laughed together over some funny scenes.
After the life review, Jesus took her by the hand and they started flying. They were actually surfing on waves of light with beautiful colors, she says. “We were going faster and faster. I like speed. We surfed through the Universe.”
They came to some sort of threshold, and she sat on the lap of the Father.
“I have my arms around him. He’s got his arms around me. I’ve got my face buried in his chest and I couldn’t see his face,” she says. “I have never felt so loved, so cherished. God was every single molecule of love in the universe. I could have sat there forever.”
After a bit, she somehow knew that God wanted to show her something. The light that emanated from an omnipresent God receded in one area to reveal a field of grass.
“The grass was singing the praises of God,” Heidi says. As she watched people and trees singing to God, suddenly Jesus appeared behind her.
“You didn’t die,” Jesus said. “You have to go back.”
“Nope, I’m not going back,” she argued. She didn’t want to go back. Heaven was too wonderful. God was too loving. Jesus was awesome.
Why would she want to go back to a fallen, miserable world?
“You don’t tell Jesus, no,” she observes. “It was really hard to resist Jesus.”
Reluctantly, she went back. Jesus stuffed her into her body. She opened an eye. “Charlie,” she said to the rancher leaning over her praying.
As a result of her serious fractures and crushing injuries, she should have been paralyzed for life. But God miraculously healed her.
Her parents, diehard atheists, dismissed and denied her NDE. It was a hallucination or delusion, they said.
Undaunted by their unbelief, Heidi accepted Jesus as her Messiah and Lord and was born again.
She accelerated her high school studies and took a year off to live in Israel.
She graduated from university with a major in creative writing and a minor in Jewish studies, before pursuing nursing.
Heidi worked as a nurse for 30 years in coronary care and later in intensive care. Heidi and her husband have three children and two grandchildren.
Today as a Jewish Christian, she still walks with Jesus.
If you want to learn more about a personal relationship with God, go here
Related content: Do near death experiences prove eternity?, Jeff Durbin, Dr. Mary Neal, Jim Anderson.
Thanks for sharing this, it’s a beautiful testimony. Charlie’s prayers for Heidi brought her into an encounter with Jesus! He took away the lies of her father, in an instant. Yes, he is full of life,joy and light! I had an encounter with Him in 1975, that caused me to go after Him and seek Him with all my heart. I found Him, got saved, and had many wonderful times with Him since. He’s been very merciful and long-suffering toward me, I love him deeply for it.