My name is Rev. Peter Baldwin Panagore and I died and saw heaven. It was a month after my 21st birthday and I decided to climb up a world-famous ice pitch in Alberta, Canada. At 8:00 p.m. the temperature drastically dropped and without any equipment to keep me and my companions warm, we decided to get off the mountain 150 feet down. We repelled in the air on this overhang to a large area where we got stuck.
I remember feeling so cold to the point that I had frostbite on my fingertips, on my nose, my cheeks, toes, and my chin. I had hypothermia then I fell asleep. Only this time I didn’t lose consciousness but I knew that I had fallen asleep. I felt myself being sucked out of my core like a vacuum and I resisted with all this strength that I had built up through the survival journey that I was on. I tried to stay in my body and I couldn’t. It pulled me out and I died and I found myself in a great dark void infinite without a body but with full consciousness like a sphere of consciousness.
Then I saw this gigantic door in front of me around 30 yards wide and 70 yards tall. The proverbial tunnel that people talk about was through this gateway and I said “Am i dead?” and the voice of God with no voice and no language said to me, “Yes, you’re dead” and I said, “I haven’t gone through the door yet” and he replied “no you haven’t.”
I asked if I should go inside and told him that I don’t want to go since I don’t want to break my mother’s heart. God then spoke to me about love and told me how He loves me, my family, each person on earth with fullness of love and forgiveness and knowing and mercy. God told me that everything will be well for my family and the next thing I knew I was being screwed back into my body and it was painful as I got screw back into my body from my stomach. When i woke up my friend TIm was shaking me telling me not to die.
That near-death experience taught me that death is not the end but only the beginning. It is the passage through real life until we get to go home with God in heaven.