ARE WE DESTINED

Introduction

Many years ago I found myself in a life and death struggle with Satan. Only through the Grace of God, did I live to share this life changing story with you. I pray that you never find yourself in a struggle as tough as this, but I fear there are many who are struggling with Satan in this way, or some other way just as tough to deal with. For this purpose I am sharing this with you. I pray it will be an encouragement and a Blessing to all who read it.

I pray it will also strengthen your faith in the fact that we have a spirit that will live on forever.

Written to Glorify God,

God Bless,

In Christian Love,

Kenneth M. Bee

OBE (Out of Body Experience) We Are All Destine

Out of Body Experience, we are all going to have one. We all have a living spirit that is going to spend eternity some where. This is not only the belief of all Christians, It is a true fact. A fact that I learned first hand by the grace of God. This is my true life story.

First, I am assuming the reader is already in a saved relationship with our Lord. If not PLEASE look into getting there before it is too late. God loves you.

To come into a Saved relationship, we need to study the Bible and get to know our Lord and the price he paid on the Cross for our sins. Then we need to except him into our hearts and realize that we are all sinners and need a savior.

We need to repent of our old way of life and be reborn again by being obedient, by confessing our belief that Jesus is indeed the son of God, and then being baptized. A point where we put on Christ, are buried with Him and then rise up, born again to walk in the newness of life. Read Romans, 6:3-5 to understand about being baptized.

OK this being said let us look in to this Out of Body Experience a little farther. In studying the Bible we read in Matt. 10:28, Jesus himself is speaking and makes a distinction between the two.

(Do not fear them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.)

We Have a Body and Also a Soul, and or Spirit

Here is a scripture where Paul is writing to the church at Corinth. He tells of a friend he knew earlier that was swept up to heaven. He does not know if this was an OBE (out of body experience) or if body and spirit went together. The thing is, Paul is pointing out that it is possible. This is also what I am trying to do, explain that on rare occasions, there has been separation of body and spirit. Proving the fact and supporting our belief.

Here it is in 2 Cor. 12:2-3 The Message Bible

(For instance, I know a man who, fourteen years ago, was seized by Christ and swept in ecstasy to the heights of heaven. I really don't know if this took place in the body or out of it; only God knows. I also know that this man was hijacked into paradise—again, whether in or out of the body, I don't know; God knows.)

This man was able to see Heaven; he also was able to see Paradise, the dwelling place of the spirit. Here we wait for the day of Judgment when we will be resurrected and go on to Heaven. Luke 16:19-31 explains it well. Here Jesus teaches what happens when the soul or spirit leaves the body at our death. This is Jesus teaching the parable about the rich man and Lazarus.

Luke 16:19-31

(Luke 16:19 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.

It is very easy to understand that it was not the beggar’s body, but his spirit that was carried by the Angels to Abraham’s Bosom. (In Paradise)

The rich man also died and was buried.

23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.

The same with the rich man, his body was buried and his spirit was carried off to the torment side of Hades, (the dwelling place of the spirit).

24 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.

There are two sides to Hades. On one side is Paradise and on the other side is Torment.

When we die we are prejudged and our spirit is taken there and stays there until the Day of Judgment. Then we are reunited with our bodies and raised up to meet Jesus in the sky.

Then we stand before God on the Day of Judgment and then it’s off to Heaven or Hell.

26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’

Here Jesus completes the picture of Hades by explaining the two sides are separated by a large gulf fixed where the spirits can not pass back and forth. This also explains how Jesus could talk to those in Torment and still be in Paradise while he was out of his body between the crucifixion and the resurrection. They can not pass back and forth, but they are communicating back and forth.

27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’

They had Moses and the prophets, we have the Bible.

30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 but he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’

You could say, “If they do not believe the Bible neither will they be persuaded, etc.”

Jesus told the thief on the cross,

(Luke 23:43 today you will be with me in Paradise.)

When Jesus and the thief died that terrible Friday, Angels carried them off to Paradise. It is so easy to except it for what it says. Jesus went to Hades, the Paradise side for three days and then went back to his grave sight and was resurrected, showing us what will happen to us at the rapture when we are resurrected and rise up to meet him in the sky. It is not clear weather Jesus spent time in Hell during that time but we know he spent time in Paradise because he said so.

The Bible is full of teachings of the soul or spirit leaving the body for a period of time and returning. Read about Lazarus in John 11: 42,43. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus had had an out of body experience that lasted several days. Jesus had an out of body experience that lasted three days when he went to Paradise with the thief on the cross. Then Jesus returned and arose on Easter Morning.

If there is any doubt in your mind about having a spirit that will leave this body when we die and live on for ever, then please study on in the Bible, because there is plenty of scripture to back it up.

OK, I believe that we can all agree that we have a living spirit that lives on after we die. After all, isn’t that what this is all about? Our spirit ending up in Heaven for eternity.

Now I would like to point out the fact that on occasion, the soul or spirit has been known to leave this body and return, at a near death experience. Here is a study done by a man by the name of Raymond Moody. The interesting point here is that this study is covering people who may or may not have any idea what they are experiencing.

I find it fascinating that these people have had experiences along the same lines and have felt that there is a defiant separation of body and soul when they don’t necessarily have any connection with Bible teaching on the subject.

Quoted From Mr. Moody’s Report

Raymond Moody interviewed many people who had been resuscitated after having had accidents and he then put together an idealized version of a typical near-death experience. He emphasized that no one person described the whole of this experience, but each feature was found in many of the stories. Here is his description:

A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a 'body,' but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind.

Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before -- a being of light -- appears before him. This being asks him a question, non-verbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life.

At some point he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.

Later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place, he can find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds that others scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still, the experience affects his life profoundly especially his views about death and its relationship to life.

The parallel between this kind of account and many OBEs is clear. There is the tunnel traveled through as well as the experiences of seeing one's own body from outside and seeming to have some other kind of body, and the ineffability is familiar.

One is tempted to conclude that in death a typical OBE, or astral projection, occurs, and is followed by a transition to another world, with the aid of people who have already made the crossing, and that of higher beings in whose plane one is going to lead the next phase of existence.

Although Moody's work gave a good idea of what dying could be like for some people, it did not begin to answer questions such as how common this type of experience is.

I am 72 years old as I write this, and for me it happened once in my life time, and it changed my life for ever, and I can not thank God enough for what He has done for me. I feel that it is God’s will that I share this with you. It taught me a great lesson in life. It taught me that no matter where we find ourselves, no matter how bad things get, God is there for us, if we will just turn to Him. Here is that experience.

My OBE (Out of Body Experience)

Have you ever felt the world was caving in around you and that you were powerless to stop it? This is one of those times. My Mother was having a hard time with her health and as she looked for answers, she turned to drinking. To make it worse, my brother was caring it in to her. She was living alone and not taking very good care of her self. She was taken to a Doctor that decided she needed to be put in a nursing home and that she needed a guardian appointed to take care of her affairs. I was appointed to take care of this. A job I was not prepared to handle. As time went on things snowballed to the point of disbelief.

The Doctor would not release my Mother from the nursing home so she began to hate me. With Doctors orders, I had to stop my brother from taking her out on visits because of the drinking. He also hated me. When things became more then I could bare I dropped out of going to Church. We seem to do this when times are bad, we turn away from the very friends we need the most. I also turned away from God. I didn’t pray like I used to. When I though things couldn’t get any worse, they did. My youngest brother got killed in a car wreak. As I spiral out of control on a downhill slide toward destruction, the Church we had attended sent me a letter stating they were going to remove my name from their membership.

I felt a big door had been closed behind me; I felt cut off from the help I desperately needed. There was no one to blame but myself; I had cut myself off from Gods help.

Soon after this, I ruptured a disk in my lower back and ended up in the hospital in traction. I was off work for eight weeks. Loosing eight weeks pay was a disaster when you live from one week to the next. When I went back to work it was plain to see that they were replacing me. The boss had me teaching a replacement fellow to take my job. I went to the boss and told him that my back was fine, but he said, you may think so but it will never be fine again. He said, once you have back trouble, you always have back trouble, only a period of time and you will be off work again. I ended up quitting a job I had worked at for 7 years. Oh how I missed how things were before my world came crashing down around me ...

Somewhere along the line a voice had entered my head. I became bombarded with things like, your stupid; you are an idiot, a complete failure. You can’t do anything right, on and on and on. It drug me down, I had forgotten God, and it was destroying me. I found another job but it did not work out well so I was off to another garage to work. This to, soon fell through, and I had had it. I was fed up with life, I had reached bottom. The heart ache, the pain, the constant voice chopping me down, I wanted it all to stop.

I started listening to the voice; I was hatching out a plan to end it all, a life that God had given me, a life that Jesus had paid for with his own life on the cross. How could I have reached this point when God had been so good to me?

I was dealing with the power of Satan. He was seeking to destroy me. He was lying to me, saying there is no God, there is nothing after death, nothing but peace, and everything will stop. One little shot and everything will stop ... What a LIE, nothing would have stopped; it would have been the beginning of the second death in Hell. Thank you God for saving me from this, Thank you.

I fear that Satan is destroying many, many lives in the world as I write this down. I read of young people taking their lives almost every day. God help us.

To continue ...

The day after I quit my job, not important why, I went in to pick up my tool chest, with around $3,000.00 worth of tools in it. I was in a very low state of mind and the voice had hammered me all day, things like, you no good worthless piece of trash, it's time to do it, end it all.

I started to load my tool chest and a fellow worker asks me to sell him my short tester. I said here, you can have it, I won’t need it. Another fellow came out and ask, selling your tools? I said, yes, first $300.00 dollars can have the whole works. Would you believe it, he had $300.00 dollars in his pocket, and I had just burnt my last bridge. Now I have no tools to go to work anywhere. I couldn’t change my mind now. Do you see how Satan works?

On the way home, I stopped and picked up a box of 22 rifle shells. When I got home I put into motion, the plan to take my own life. I removed everything from my pockets. I put the money on the TV for Mary to find. I told her I would see her later and was off to go groundhog hunting, or that is the way it was to appear. I could not say good bye, good bye meant for ever, we would never say that.

Then I disappeared into a corn field west of the house. From there, I had mapped out a path in my mind that would be virtually impossible to follow. This included wading up a creek for several hundred yards. Then across several open fields. Then I came to a large woods at least 2.5 to 3 miles from home. This was the largest woods in our area and very seldom visited by anyone. Deep in the woods, I found a stump on the edge of a cliff. I had reasoned out that when I shot myself, I would end up rolling down over the cliff and it would look like an accident. I am not sure why I was concerned about this; I had no life insurance anyway after loosing my job. I guess that if it looked like an accident at least maybe my wife and family could forgive me.

As I set there on that stump, gun to my head, thumb on the trigger, the voice started screaming, DO IT, GET IT OVER WITH, YOU ARE WORTHLESS, YOU ARE NO GOOD, DO IT.

I heard another soft voice pleading, NO, NO; DON’T DO THIS, YOU ARE SENDING YOUR SOUL TO HELL. DON'T DO THIS.

The other voice kept screaming, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT.

I remember thinking, maybe God is real, and maybe it really was God that had helped me all these years.

If God is real then I am making a very big mistake. Oh God, if you are real, Help Me, Help Me.

At that moment, I cried out in a loud voice; “OH DEAR GOD, IF YOU HAVE EVER HELPED ME IN THE PAST, YOU HAD BETTER HELP ME NOW.”

As I cried out this prayer, a miracle happened that has changed my life for ever. I was suddenly out side my body, looking down at myself setting on that stump, with my gun pointed at my temple.

I could not hear voices anymore, everything was quiet and peaceful. I appeared to look the same as the one setting on the stump, but suspended in mid air.

I felt the presents of someone beside me. He took hold of my left hand. I turned to see a figure in a pure white robe. I never raised my head. I was too ashamed to look him in the face. It was enough to just know he was there. I believe with all my heart, that it was an Angel sent from God to help me.

He spoke in a very soft quiet voice, COME, LET ME SHOW YOU. And then we flew up out through the tree tops and headed toward my home. I remember thinking, Wow, this flying stuff is great. We then flew over my friends house and I though Wow, I never saw Doug’s farm from this angle.

I cannot believe that I would even think of something like this when I am flying across the sky with a Spirit holding onto my hand. I know it sounds strange, but all I can do is tell it, just like it happened. I remember it like it was yesterday, there is nothing more vivid in my life, then what happened to me that day. I do not drink or take drugs. I was wide awake, drug free, stone cold sober, and I was not hallucinating. It happened just this way, believe me.

When we reached my home, we came in over my wife; she was crying and looking up and down the road. I knew that she was fearing the worst, while watching and waiting for me to come home. It broke my heart to see her so upset. We then flew up to be over the corn field, where I was last seen. The corn was tall and I could not see who was in the corn, but I could hear crying. As we got closer, I could make out my son Jeff. He had tears running down his face and he was crying, DAD, DAD, WHERE ARE YOU? DAD, DAD, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? My heart was crushed. I said, God forgive me, look what I am doing to them. They DO love me and I love them. How could I be doing this?

The next moment I was back in the woods, standing out side my body. I looked at the gun still pointing at my temple and I said, NO, I have got to stop this. Instantly I was drawn back inside my body. I was then looking out through my human eyes. I jerked that gun away from my head and through it down over the cliff. I then ducked down because I was just sure the Gun would go off when it hit the bottom of the cliff, and it would still end up shooting me.

A moment later, I jumped up crying my eyes out and thanking God for saving me. A moment later, as I crawled up out of there and headed for home, the voice started in again as bad as before, YOU ARE SO STUPID, YOU EVEN FAILED AT KILLING YOURSELF. YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT.

I cried, GOD, PLEASE STOP THIS THING FROM TORTURING ME. The scripture popped into my head, and I spoke it allowed, SATAN, GET THEE BEHIND ME. When I spoke this, the voice left me and to this day, has not returned. As I weep, I thanked God over and over again. Thank you God Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

I walked up out of there, crying one moment laughing the next, my emotions were going wild. I was very happy to still be alive.

I run as much as I could to get home to my wife Mary. I come up across the yard, trying not to show any sign of what I had almost done, but she knew. We hugged, kissed, and wept, it was over. Never would I do anything like that again.

This happened to me in the summer of 1985, 25 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. I still cannot talk about it without tears running down my cheeks. I now look at each new day as a gift from God. Each time I see the sun rise, each time I see a deer run across the meadow, every time I pick up a grandchild, kiss my wife, hug my sons, see a friend, I could go on and on, I thank God that he had intervened, and that HE seen fit to take me by the hand and lead me out of the depths of despair.

Not only did I see the power and love of God that day, I also realized the power and influence of Satan. He seeks to destroy us every day. I can see it with our children. Satan is working hard to take over our children with the movies and video games that are being sold. The taking of God out of our schools,even the TV programming available on Saturday morning for the kids to watch, etc, etc. We need to watch, very carefully, what they are doing. Their souls are being laid wide open for Satan to step in. When I was crying out to God for help, that day in the woods, I was being driven by Satan to take my life.

Only through God's power to stop this, and me reaching the point of crying out for Gods help, did I live to write this down.

This was a very short period of time in my life as I look back on the 72 years God has given me. God has blessed me with Mary, a very fine wife for the past 53 years. Two great sons who married and gave us seven grandchildren. They are also married and have so far given us six Great-Grandchildren. Gods Blessings are far too many to count. Life has been very, very good.

Thank You God

Dear Friend, I pray you never find yourself in this situation. But if you do I pray that you remember that God is always there, waiting for you to turn to Him. He Loves You.

I learned a great lesson that day in the woods. One of the ways that God has shown us how much He loves us, is by coming to earth in the form of Jesus,

(Colossians 1:15) God was manifest in the flesh, and then going to the cross, to be a sacrifice for our sins.

God wants our love, and He wants that Love toward Him, to be totally our choice. To receive this from us, He has given us total freedom to make that choice.

Picture having a bird in a cage. We can feed and care for that bird and it sings to us but it is caged, no freedom. What would it do if you give it its freedom? First it would realize that it is free to do as it wants, and may fly off.

Then again, it may make the choice to fly back, and set on top of the cage and sing to us, and accept our love and care, and in this way, show it’s Love toward us.

This is what God wants from us, Our Love. We could not show this Love if God had not given us this freedom. God gave us this freedom of choice from the very beginning.

I had been a Christian for years before this incident in the woods but I had backslidden. I hate to think what would have happened, had I continued my actions. By having a free choice, I believe with our own actions, we can send our selves to Hell. Something I fear I would have done, had I not turned back to God.

It seems that there needs to be a seeking, asking, knocking at the door, that needs to come from us, to get the response we need from God. And that is because He waits on us to make that free choice to turn to Him, to ask for help. And then He is reaching out with open arms, Welcome Home, Welcome home my child.

God answers prayer every day, and He has many, many times, but He wants to be asked. It least, this has been my findings. God loves us dearly, but he won’t take away that freedom to choose.

If you are not a Christian, you are just as lost as I was that day in the woods. You need to turn your life around, accept Jesus into your heart, repent of your sins, be born again in a watery grave of baptism, and then live for Jesus. Jesus died on the Cross to take away our sins so we can be ready for that, Out of Body Experience, when we leave this body behind, to go home for good.

In Christian Love,