The Watch

A Man Says He Was Dead for 45 Minutes. Stephen Never Came Back to Tell Us — But He Told Us Anyway.

Mike McKinsey went into the hospital with a fever and a pain in his side. The doctors suspected appendicitis. During the examination the pain turned severe, and he was taken into emergency surgery. What he says happened next is that he died — and that he was gone for forty-five minutes. He describes standing on green grass under a light too bright to account for. Flowers in colors he calls pastel. A city off in the distance with golden domes and white steeples. Tubes of light coming down and striking his forehead, and with them a warmth and a peace he has not been able to put down since. And a figure, walking toward him. "Even though he looked different," McKinsey says, "I knew immediately that it was Jesus." What the figure said to him was this: *"I want to answer your prayer."* McKinsey is a construction superintendent in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is not a minister. He is not selling a book. His account was reported by the *International Business Times UK*, and it has traveled the way these stories travel — fast, and passed hand to hand by people who found something in it. One note, briefly, because we would rather you heard it from us than found it later. The outlet that carried the story says plainly that the medical particulars "have not been independently verified through publicly available hospital records." No hospital named, no physician named. So what you have is Mike McKinsey's testimony, and we are handing it to you as exactly that — a man's account of what happened to him. Which is what testimony has always been, and how every account in this article reached us, including the ones that are in your Bible. That is what happened. Now: is there a single reason on earth to take it seriously? There is considerably more than most people know.

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