Near Death Experience of B. W. Melvin

Author of, A Land Unknown: Hell’s Dominion, published by Xulonpress

July 1980, Tucson Arizona: I contracted Cholera by drinking contaminated water someone had left in a thermos while I was working at a local construction site. The progression on this disease left me in a severe dehydrated state which became terminal.

I was at home and lying in bed when it happened. My breathing was becoming a series of protracted wheezing gasps. Looking around the room, I was amazed that I could see so pristine clear without my glasses. The alarm clock ticked. It was ten minutes till noon. Everything became surreal. 

With a sudden swoosh, I floated above my body. Hovering there, I fully realized I had died. At that time, I was not a Christian and fell into a naturalistic agnostic atheistic belief system. Despite growing up in a loving Southern Baptist family, I did not believe in the Christian concept of God. I knew very little about Jesus, the afterlife, and God. All this was about to radically change.

I floated above my body and felt no more pain from the effects of cholera. While gazing at the room, I turned and faced the ceiling. Suddenly, I felt myself drift through the ceiling’s textured drywall and was engulfed in an extremely peaceful blackness. In this pleasant darkness I heard the most astounding humming/singing sounds. I was floating in this pitch blackness listing to the resonances while slowly moving toward a speck of light that was slowly growing bigger and bigger as I neared.

Soon this dazzling brilliant light began dispelling this pleasant darkness in hues of colors never before seen. The light was being emitted by an individual standing upon what appeared to me to be a huge rock suspended in space. This person wore beautiful whitish robe like garments and seemed to be sitting on a chair craved out from the rock. I landed below this person. He stood up and walked down several steps to where I had landed. I wept and fell like a heavy sack of wheat. Someone touched my shoulder. I stood up.

This marvelous person showed me my life course, which revealed I was without excuse. It was then I knew I was being judged and deserved my fate. You could do nothing but stand directly before him, whose robe’s drooping hood concealed his face, and receive your sentence. 

As I looked at him, I noticed that he bore terrible trauma to his hands and feet. Around the wrist were gnashes deeply cut therein. The bones clearly showing that the very joints had been ripped apart by bearing a great weight. He just stood there. I felt ashamed.

He began to speak to me by the agency of thought and told me I was to see another land for an appointed time. After arriving there, I was to speak his name and title and see what I would see. He went on and revealed that it was prearranged once for a person to die but returning is an option decided by his Father’s will. Children were raised; others were raised, for God’s glory and purposes when it was not their hour. He stated that I would return the way I had come, and then he pointed towards an entrance of a tunnel off to his left.

Seeing it, I was lifted by some gentle force and floated toward it, feet first. When this occurred, I noticed I was wearing robe like garments. I entered the tunnel and was engulfed within a violently spinning vortex heading toward a yellowish dint of light. Reaching it, I found myself falling from its sky and landed with a thud upon the ground.

I stood up and looked around. I saw a house on a hill, smelled horrible odors, and heard strange sounds. People came from the house and neared me with joyous shouts of welcome. Where was I? Heaven? Hell? At first, I thought I was in a paradise but the sounds and smells were all wrong.

Something was not right about these people either. For some reason they began appear translucent. With this, I began to see them for what they really were – strange foul creatures emitting the illusions of people. Upon seeing this, two words erupted from my mouth like the staccato of a machine gun: Jesus Christ. I said these two words non-stop till I left this place. I was in a state of stark terror as the reality of where I was hit home.

One creature began to speak to me in a heavy unknown accent and told me to follow it. What choice did I have? It walked to the horizon’s skyline, which appeared painted on a wall, reached out, and parted the yellowish sky. It walked through the torn hole it had made, bidding me to follow.

(The Following five paragraphs are a direct quote from my book: A Land Unknown: Hell’s Dominion,Chapter Seven, used with my permission)

“I followed the rank creature and immediately emerged on the other side of the horizon. A wide, dirty, flat, barren expanse of land gently sloped downward, betraying an endless circular spiral of misery. On the left side of the coiled grade were rows and rows of cubes with more cubes columned high, forming a wall of ten-by-ten foot partitions mirroring the events displayed inside.

Each cube was stacked six high, marring each ascending and descending spiraling level’s wall like a dirty mirror. The wide expanse was a road. Strange entities were traveling on it. This wide dusty road ended at a circular void, highlighting the center of this hellish domain.

The cubes appeared encompassed by thin smoke-tinted, gelatin-like walls. Each cube appeared to be about ten feet by ten feet square. You could see into these but not out of them. Within every chamber resided an individual person, trapped, unable to escape as I had.

Looking through the torn wall of the cube I had just stepped out of, the house and tree within were hauntingly calling my name to return. Perplexed, I stepped back for another glance at this cubicle. I was surprised that it was so small. Inside it had seemed so large!

Turning, I saw the lizard-like entity a few feet from me, reaching its ugly, greenish-yellow arms as if to drag me away to a desperate fate. Boxer style, I blocked the attempt. This fiend stepped back, grinning ear to ear.” End Quote.

What I saw is best described in the Holy Bible within the pages of Ezekiel 32:17-32. This chapter describes hell as a circular burial pit where the dead are buried within the walls of a pit in accordance to his or her deeds. Each individual is placed in a chamber described symbolically as a bed chamber (Ezekiel 32:24-25) where the resident restlessly rest experiencing recompense for his or her deeds (Note context of Ezekiel 32:30) performed on earth.

Inside each cube, I spied individual people in various stages of boredom, anguishes, and hideous various torments. Ghoulish entities were inside these cubes giving the illusions of people, places, and things to each trapped soul enacting the scenes from each person’s life. I also traveled between these cubes to more cubes that lay behind as the journey continued.

The creature before me began speaking to me again with such foul language and curses that I cannot record what it really said for you. I began understanding its speech and could sort out the general theme it was speaking from its cursing. It then began showing me around this domain.

Out from the cubicle wall’s was a large dusty plain or road. Both ugly and beautiful beings roamed in lose packs on this plain. During the duration of my stay, many of these entities attempted to engage me in conversation. I was too terrified to respond but only spoke out the words, “Jesus Christ” non-stop.

I was taken on a hellish tour of this place by the ghastly creature in front of me. We descended to the lower levels of the spiral road as well as observed what was happening inside the cubes to each lost soul we passed. This hellish journey seemed to last forever. I wanted to wake up so bad, but could not (For more details please see my book: A Land Unknown: Hell’s Dominion, published by Xulonpress).

Each trapped soul reaped in full measure whatever they had sown during their lives. Many entered this pit and into the cubes by means of spinning vortexes. I also noticed another entrance. All those people trapped resided totally alone and were not aware of each other. The only thing each was aware of, were the creatures residing with them and the scenes enacted within their own personal square nightmarish abode.

I would say that each person trapped there felt a peculiar separation from God in the form of feeling banished forever from the loving nature of God and true life. Each knew fully that they deserved his or her fate because each chose to walk away from God and now resided in place without God as they desired during his or hers life lived on earth. God, in his great justice, fairness, and unfathomable love gave them what they desired: a place without God and where each was receiving the fruits of his or her own doings.

When many of these individuals entered their private abodes, they were first deceived into thinking they had arrived in a paradise. As eternity passes – the real nature of this place was fully revealed to them. Others entered into instant anguish. It is truly a place of doom, despair, and unending nightmares.

I felt greatest fear when the beastly guide tried to entrap me inside a unique cubicle. It is here, I was rescued while screaming out the words, Jesus Christ. I felt someone coming for me and arrive behind me and then lift me up.

(Quote from Book) “One arm was under my shoulders and the other under the bend of my knees. Oh! A sensation of love, mercy, authority, power, justice, and righteousness overwhelmed me. I no longer had any need to speak the two words that I previously spoke without ceasing. I turned my head into the cleft of the being’s shoulder and wept profusely against the white garb.

The Person who held me fast said not a word. I glanced at the hand gripping my shoulder. There was an ugly gash near the wrist close to the hand as though a great pulling weight had made this mark and separated the bones above the wrist. A hole went straight through, then the tear. You could easily have placed a finger through the gash, with your fingertip protruding to the other side, but to do so would have been very disrespectful and inappropriate at a time like this.” (End Quote)

I wept as the redeemer carried me back to the cube I arrived in and then through the vortex back to the rock. He set my feet upon that Huge Rock where I was granted a glimpse of Heaven and was told that none can enter Heaven unless they come through the gate which was the robe clad personage standing before me.

Many things were revealed to me there, on that rock, to numerous to record. I was told it was time to leave and return. I floated back the way I had come. I was soon in my room above my body looking at the scene below. I glided back into my body and awoke with a start. I could not regain my breath until someone began hitting me on my back. I was rushed to a Hospital for further treatment and recovery.

The duration of my NDE, was about four hours. I remember seeing a clock when I first left my body stating the time was 11:50 AM and when I returned, it was close to 4 PM. I still suffer several health effects from this. My heart makes a nice clicking sound. My short term memory suffered as well. Afterwards, my speech was slurred a bit but has returned to normal with the passage of time.

My experience has left me a deep appreciation for the work of Jesus Christ and His salvation. I became a born again Christian because of it. I have renewed understanding of God’s profound love, justice, righteousness, grace, and mercy. Jesus came to save that which is lost. You see, heaven is real and hell is real. Eternity is without end. Do you really want to spend eternity without God? Or with God? That choice is yours alone – the decision is yours? What will it be? What will it be?

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