Jose Hernandez’s experience of dying and coming back to life changed him forever. What he thought was just a void into the darkness turned out to be an afterlife where he received the shock of his life.
After having the most peaceful and mesmerizing experience of seeing the heavenly realm, Hernandez saw his father, which completely changed his perspective and mended a broken heart.
“I see a man in the water. He’s like knee deep in the water and he’s got six children holding on to his right hand in a string, right? In a line. And one child on his left hand,” Hernandez said. “And I said, ‘Wow, that’s pretty amazing! Let me go down and see what that’s all about. So I moved down, and maybe I’m about 10 feet…15 feet away? And he turns around. That was my father.”
Hernandez shared that he and his father had a rough relationship with one another, and there was very little affection or appreciation shared between the two of them.
“It was amazing to see him, but what was more amazing was that, me and my father had a very, very hard relationship. We used to bump heads tremendously…I don’t ever remember saying to my father, in life that, ‘I love you,’ or he to me.”
However, this reunion in heaven allowed Hernandez to heal the damaged pieces inside of him and repair what was broken between the two of them.
“What an opportunity to say to my father what I could never say to him in life,” Hernandez said. “And so we had this exchange that was very emotional to me…but I understood that he loved me. And I think he understood that I loved him. So, it kind of reunited us in a strange way.”
Hernandez had the opportunity to not only reconnect with his father, but he also had the chance to experience the perfect peace and beauty of heaven itself.
“My expectation when I died was that I would encounter nothing and become nothing,” Hernandez said. “Now I’m beginning to see things that were mind-boggling, in the sense that this color was alive!”
Part of the beauty Hernandez saw was the striking landscapes all around him.
“I saw these mountains, and I could see the shadow that the clouds make on the mountains, and they were so dark and contrast, and I could see these wild herds of animals just running and I found that I was kind of hovering. I saw this amazing vista, and I’m looking up and I’m seeing that mountain, and I’m realizing that I’m flying.”
It’s stories like Hernandez’s that show how our lives here on this earth is just the beginning of our eternal story. Bill Wiese’s powerful testimony of how he spent 23 minutes in hell also provides the reality that just as there is a heaven, there is also a hell.
“My experience gave me an eternal perspective,” Wiese previously said. “This life is short, but He will never forget what we do for Him. It should cause every Christian to want to please God and fulfill His will.”
Each of us will face the day before the Lord where we will either hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” or “depart from me; I never knew you.” It is our time here on this earth right now that we must decide to either follow Him forever, or forever be separated from the risen King.