Life After Death > One man's journey to Heaven and back

 

Ex-Atheist Artist Nearly Dies, Recalls Jesus Saving Him From Hell—And Returns to Paint Pictures of the Lord

Courtesy of Howard Storm

By Louise Chambers

10/20/2022Updated:10/23/2022

A former atheist attests to how his belief system was shaken to the core when he experienced meeting Jesus during a near-death experience. He recalled his savior transporting him from a hellish realm to the kingdom of Heaven for a glimpse of what could be earned in life. It was here that he also realized the grave error of his old ways.

Howard Storm, now 75, admits that he had an obsession with success in his earlier years. Raised in a suburb of Boston, he attended school in California before taking a job as an art professor at North Kentucky University in 1972. He became a renowned painter and sculptor, and that pursuit consumed him. Today, Storm is a retired ordained minister and lives in Fort Thomas.

“I Was My Own God”

“I was an atheist. I thought that lives were short and sweet and then you die, so the whole point was to be as successful as possible,” he told The Epoch Times. “I was an alpha male ... I was totally self-absorbed. I considered myself to be a good person because I didn’t flagrantly break the law, rob, steal, or murder anybody. I was my own God.”

But on June 1, 1985, at the age of 38, a brush with death changed Storm’s outlook on life completely.

A painting by Howard Storm; (Inset) Howard Storm in his early life and more recently. Courtesy of Howard Storm

He said, “I was taking a group of art students, along with my wife, on a three week tour of Europe. We spent our last week in Paris. The last day ... I exhausted the students, taking them to galleries and museums and some archaeological sites.

“At the hotel ... I collapsed to the floor with the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. My wife called the hotel desk, they called the emergency services, and a doctor came in quite promptly. With a great deal of effort, he got me off the floor and examined me ... I had to have surgery immediately, or I would die.”

Storm had suffered a perforation of the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine where gastric acids enter the digestive system, and was at risk of having sepsis. The cause of this was never determined, but Storm believes his life of excess—alcohol, overeating, and stress—was to blame.

He was rushed to a Paris hospital. Storm has since conferred with doctors in the United States who suspect that he had only two or three hours to live. Yet he survived ten hours; it was a Saturday, and there were no surgeons on the ward. He had to wait in agonizing pain.

Between Life and Death

“I spent hours begging for drugs,” he recalled. “About once an hour, the nurse would come in and ask me how I was doing, and I would say, ‘I’m dying, I need morphine.’ She'd say she was sorry but no—no doctor, no orders.”

Struggling to breathe, Storm felt he was nearing the end. Tearfully, he and his wife said their goodbyes, before Storm lost consciousness.

“I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but the next thing I knew I was sitting next to the bed and I felt wonderful,” he recalled. “I felt better than I ever felt in my whole life. I was overjoyed, amazed, thrilled, excited. ... The next thing I noticed was that my senses were heightened. I could see better, hear better, taste better, feel better—much better than I ever had before.”

Storm performed a “reality check” on his body, feeling his way from his feet to his head. He felt “real.” He tried to communicate with his wife and ward mate; despite raising his voice and even yelling, they stared right through him. Next came a troubling vision: a lifeless body in the bed beside him.

“The sheet went up over the shoulders, the neck, and the head was turned away from me. I bent over and looked at the face of the body, and to my complete horror and surprise it looked like me,” he said.

The horror continued when Storm realized he was not alone in this realm of what he found out was the afterlife.

The Hell Realm

“I heard people calling me outside the room,” he said in a video testimony. “There was a group of people in the dark hallway, back in the shadows, maybe eight ... They said, ‘We know all about you, we’ve been waiting for you for a very long time, and it’s time for you to come with us.’”

Storm wanted to believe these were medics, but as he followed the group into a dark abyss their professional demeanor changed, their numbers increased, and their words became cruel, blasphemous, and mocking. Storm became scared and lost.

He said, “I’m going back!” But the figures wouldn’t have it, and they beat him into a crumpled heap on the floor. He found himself in a hellish place, and Storm was compelled to call out to Jesus, despite his atheism. He remembered the format from Sunday school as a child.

A painting by Howard Storm depicts the strange figures who tormented him in a hellish realm during his near-death experience. Courtesy of Howard Storm

“The prayer was very simple: Jesus, please save me. My prayer was from the heart, out of pure desperation, and it was simple and direct,” Storm told The Epoch Times.

In answer to this, a man in a white robe appeared, causing the cursing figures to retreat. The robed figure had “a beard and long hair,” Storm recalled. He was “very well-built, very athletic” and “exceedingly gentle and kind.” This was Jesus. He led Storm to a safer place, bathed in a comforting light.

A Glimpse of Heaven

“He gave me a tour of Heaven but I was never admitted, I was strictly a tourist,” Storm said. “He said, ‘You don’t have the character to fit into heaven, and that’s why life is the way it is.’

“When I asked Jesus, ‘Am I going to go back into the pain?’ He said, ‘Yes, but you will learn from that. You will suffer a lot.’ He wanted me to fulfill the purpose with which I was brought into this world in the first place: to be a loving, kind person.”

Storm woke up, certain in the knowledge that Heaven is vast and ruled by God’s love, and all that is good, and ever will be, is already there. But he had not yet earned his place with his savior.

Of course, you cannot earn your way to Heaven, Jesus has already paid the price for your tuition.

Google AI Overview > The phrase "be worthy of your calling" in the Bible, often found in Ephesians 4:1, emphasizes living in a manner that reflects and honors the purpose and plan God has for a person's life. It's a call to live according to God's will and to show gratitude for the blessings received, including salvation.

What would have happened if he had died at that moment? Would he have ended up in a Heaven that he wasn't ready for? Are you worthy of your calling?

A painting by Howard Storm depicts a path with a divine destination. Courtesy of Howard Storm

An hour later, Storm was on the operating table. Upon his return to the United States, he was readmitted to the hospital for two months, with complications, before being sent home for a months-long recuperation.

Weak and bed-bound, he had time to contemplate his spiritual experience.

“The only thing I could do was read,” he said. “I got my wife to get me a book on Buddhism, and on Hinduism, and I had a Bible. I came to the conclusion that the Bible was much closer to what I'd experienced than the other books, so I decided that I was going the way of Christianity.”

When Storm was strong enough to walk, he took an old colleague up on an invitation to join her at a local church. Storm attended with his wife, and quickly felt at home in the company of others seeking God. Yet finding his own spiritual path was easier than convincing his friends and colleagues in the art world.

Conviction

“Everybody made fun of me and told me I needed to see a psychiatrist,” he said. “All my friends, all the other university professors were atheists. One of our favorite topics was making fun of people that were religious, as they were the equivalent of adults who believed in fairy tales.”

To be loving toward those who attack you and do not share your same values is a life-long journey, he added, but Heaven is the final destination.

“We’re just really raw amateurs at love,” he said. “When we go to Heaven, as we become perfect, are holy, sanctified, fully and wholly in love, we are given responsibilities. In time, we may be ruling and working in cooperation with God over other systems: people, maybe some cities, maybe some countries, maybe some worlds.”

A depiction of Jesus by Howard Storm Courtesy of Howard Storm

The year after having his near-death experience, Storm returned to the university. In 1989 he left to attend seminary, eventually becoming an ordained minister. His longest service was 14 years at Zion United Church of Christ in Norwood, Ohio.

His work, he said, even involved exorcising “demonic entities,” counseling people following “demonic attacks,” and championing the power of prayer. “It’s got to be sincere, it’s got to be from the heart, it’s got to be forceful,” he said.

A heavenly landscape painting by Howard Storm. Courtesy of Howard Storm

Now retired, Storm works with a village mission in San Victor, Belize. He has written four books based on his experiences: “My Descent into Death” (2005), “Befriend God: Life with Jesus” (2019), “Lessons Learned: A Spiritual Journey” (2014), and “It’s All Love” (2014).

He has rendered several oil paintings about his experience, including portraits of Jesus. But capturing the luminous eyes of the Lord escaped him. “They are radiance, coming from His love and light, and I haven’t figured out how to depict them,” he said.

Today, Storm’s doctrine is simple. He echoes the words of his savior: “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter

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Islam - Current Day - Wife Beating in Abu Dhabi; Sri Lanka Youth Poet a Terrorist? Nigerian Military Shuffle, Will It Help? French Islamic Prison Programme

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Abu Dhabi man ordered to pay Dh30,000 to wife for beating,

insulting her

..

Woman complained that husband abused her in front of others

Published:  January 25, 2021 17:23

Samihah Zaman, Senior Reporter, Gulf News

  

Abu Dhabi: A man has been ordered by an Abu Dhabi Court to pay his wife Dh30,000 for insulting and assaulting her.

The Abu Dhabi Civil Court announced the final verdict as compensation for the moral, material and physical damage inflicted upon the Arab woman by the abuse.

According to court records, the woman had complained to authorities that her husband beat her, inflicting bruises on her person. She alleged that he also insulted her in front of others in a manner that was demeaning and hurtful, and damaging to her reputation.

The Court of First Instance convicted the man of the insult and assault charges, and ordered him to pay Dh10,000.

Following this, the defendant’s wife filed a civil lawsuit demanding Dh400,000 for the moral, material and physical damage she had endured. The defendant argued that the complaint was baseless, but the Civil Court found in her favour and ordered the defendant to pay an additional Dh20,000. This increased the final compensation to Dh30,000.

That's about $8,000 USD. I wonder why he didn't argue that he had a right to beat her from the Quran. Perhaps things are changing in the UAE.

Sri Lanka youth poet in TID custody:

Defence counsel complain of lack of access

1 hour ago

By Ruwan Laknath Jayakody

Legal counsel appearing on behalf of Mannar-based poet Mannaramudhu Ahnaf Jazeem, who is presently detained by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID), have complained of being denied access to their client, despite multiple written and verbal queries made from the TID including its Director, The Morning learnt.

The 25-year-old is being detained under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act (PTA) for allegedly promoting Islamist extremism and terrorism.

This complaint was made when the case (B 13101/19) was taken up at the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court yesterday (27) in connection with the case of Attorney-at-Law (AAL) Hejaaz Hizbullah who is also detained at present in connection with the investigations into the Easter Sunday bombings on 21 April 2019.

A team of counsel including President’s Counsel A.A.M. Illiyas and AALs Swasthika Arulingam, Jayantha Dehiattage, Sanjaya Wilson Jayasekera, and Tharindu Rathnayake appeared on behalf of Ahnaf. Although Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and TID officers were present for the prosecution, there was no representation from the Attorney General’s Department yesterday.

The case was fixed for 24 February.

Razmin added that they will be filing a fundamental rights petition before the Supreme Court in this regard, and Wilson Jayasekera noted that at present, the petition is being drafted. Article 14 (1) (a) of the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech and expression including publication. 

“This is completely anti-democratic and is a death-blow to the freedom of expression and art. This is a continuation of attacks on artists and writers who are critical of the society and the political system. Ahnaf is the latest victim in a series of such arbitrary arrests and prosecutions involving a short story writer, a film director, a commentator and social media activist, a lawyer, and journalists under this Government. The Police or the prosecutors cannot understand literature and arbitrarily arrest writers to impose fear and to subjugate critical thinking. These arrests and the whole campaign are directed at entrenching anti-Muslim racism to divide the working people and the masses along racial lines. All those who value democratic rights and the freedom of art should protest against this arrest and detention and demand the immediate and unconditional release of Ahnaf,” claimed Wilson Jayasekera, who is also the President of the Action Committee for the Defence of the Freedom of Art and Expression.

The complaint lodged with the mobile office of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) in Mannar by the family of Ahnaf, has been transferred for inquiries to the HRCSL head office in Colombo. Meanwhile, in opposition to the arbitrary arrest and detention of Ahnaf, the Sri Lanka Young Journalists’ Association has also lodged a complaint with the HRCSL seeking the latter’s intervention.

Nigerian military reshuffle belies serious security concerns

As Nigeria battles a domestic insurgency and wilting trust in its armed forces, President Buhari's overhaul has exposed exasperation with the military's ineffectiveness to guarantee security for the country.

Soldiers from 21 Brigade and Army Engineers clearing Islamic militant group Boko Haram camps at Chuogori and Shantumari in Borno State, Nigeria

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has replaced four of the country's top military heads following months of pressure over the nation's worsening security crisis. 

Buhari, who took office in 2015 with a pledge to stamp out the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency, had long ignored advice to dismiss the commanders of Nigeria's army, navy and air force, as well as the chief of defense staff. He announced their resignation and replacements on Twitter on Tuesday.

A recent spate of skirmishes in south-eastern Nigeria between the army and the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra group (IPOB) has further deepened Nigeria's security woes. 

Coupled with Boko Haram's continued presence in the north and a spike in armed banditry, swathes of Nigeria remain near-ungovernable.

Let's not forget the Fulani Herdsmen in the northwest.

"Nigeria is probably more insecure than it's been in recent history," Ryan Cummings, the director of analysis for the Africa-focused risk management consultancy Signal Risk, told DW.

New chiefs face 'high expectations'

The reshuffle saw Major General Lucky Eluonye Onyenuchea Irabor become Chief of Defense Staff and Ibrahim Attahiru become Chief of the Army. The air force and navy now have new leaders in Air Vice-Marshal Isiaka Oladayo Amao and Rear Admiral A.Z. Gambo, respectively.

Presidential spokesman Malam Garba Shehu said the reshuffle was "routine" and endorsed the new leaders.

"None have them have served less than 30 years in the armed forces," he told DW. "I think they are well-equipped to carry out the task at hand as long as the government gives them support."

General Ibrahim Attahiru has been appointed chief of the Nigerian Army

Kole Shettima from the Center for Democracy and Development told DW the new chiefs will be facing "high expectations, especially given that three of the four were at one point deployed to the north-east."

Shettima believes coordination and personal understanding between the new leaders would be a big factor in their potential success.

"I think everyone probably knew the previous service chiefs were not even on talking terms and that undermined their ability to prosecute the war against the insurgency," he says. 

Good grief!

For Cummings, the reshuffle is a sign of Buhari's "exasperation and toughness." "The buck has been passed on to the four figures that have been removed from their respective offices rather than the president himself," he says.

Cummings adds that many of Nigeria's security threats are "rooted in systemic issues," such as resource challenges. "This is not an issue where a simple change in military leadership all of a sudden addresses both symptoms and causes of insecurity in the country," he explains.

Perhaps the most significant systemic issue is corruption, which runs rampant in the government and military. I think it is safe to say that a very small portion of the military budget makes it down the soldiers on the ground.

President Buhari reshuffled his defense chiefs, but securing lasting stability across Nigeria is proving elusive

Fighting ongoing in southern Nigeria

Developments in south-eastern Nigeria have taken a violent turn this week, with clashes between members of IPOB's newly formed armed wing, the Eastern Security Network, and the Nigerian military.

There are reports of deaths on both sides. The origin of the flare-up is disputed, but correspondents say the Nigerian army retaliated after IPOB members allegedly killed soldiers.

In the town of Orlu near the Imo state capital Owerri, eyewitnesses said there was sporadic shooting, with residents taking cover to avoid stray bullets. The Imo state government has since imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in affected areas.

Resident Nawwal Yusuf placed the blame on IPOB "agitators." "They attacked the northerners and killed four of them," he told DW. "We discovered four dead bodies. They have already been buried."

Peter Uche, a member of IPOB, told DW the separatist group had been repeatedly harassed by the government since starting a security outfit in their region.

"The soldiers and this government have been kicking against the IPOB members," he said. "I am not happy about it. Other regions in this country have their own security outfit. But we have been fighting, they have been fighting us, trying to eliminate us."

The Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970 came after the secession of Biafra

Separatist movement remains active

Historically, south-eastern Nigeria has been a hotbed for Biafran separatist agitation.

The Nigerian Civil War, which lasted from 1967 to 1970, pitted southern separatists — who wanted to form the independent nation of Biafra — against the Nigerian government.

There are also religious divisions between predominantly Muslim northerners and southerners, who are largely Christian.

Currently, numerous splinter groups in south-eastern Nigeria are loosely united, demanding the right to form their own state. IPOB's leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is in exile. 

The region is one of Nigeria's richest in terms of mineral resources, specifically oil. But with oil prices currently low, the Nigerian government is struggling to finance its budget.

"You have a population and Igbo population that feels somewhat disconnected from Nigeria's federal government structures," says Cummings. "They feel that President Buhari does not specifically represent their interests."

But despite the increasingly loud calls from the IPOB for the formation of the state of Biafra, Cummings adds that, despite dissatisfaction with the Nigerian government, wider polls show there is "not much resonance" for separatism in the region.

Inside France’s pioneering deradicalisation programme

Other governments fear that imprisoning extremists gives them the opportunity to

convert other inmates. The French claim to have devised the best system of prevention,

largely because of their greater experience of terrorist attacks

France has been on high alert since October, when a teacher was beheaded in an Islamist attack

KIRAN RIDLEY/GETTY IMAGES

Adam Sage, Paris

Wednesday January 27 2021, 5.00pm GMT, The Times

Three years after leaving France for Syria to become the second wife of a polygamist Islamic State terrorist, Leila had had enough of the bloodshed and the brutality.

She fled across the border into Turkey from Syria with her two young children, now eight and six, along with her “husband” and his existing wife. She spent four months in a Turkish jail and was flown to Paris, where she was met by an elite police unit at the airport. She was charged with belonging to a terrorist group and remanded in custody.

During the 16 months Leila, which is not her real name, was detained in Fleury-Mérogis prison outside the capital before being granted bail, she met a Muslim chaplain who invited her to reflect on her hitherto fundamentalist approach to religion.

‘You have a brain. You can think for yourself,’

France has been forced to address the issue because of its long experience of terrorism,

including the Bataclan attacks in 2015

PHILIPPE WOJAZER/REUTERS

“He simply said to me, ‘You have a brain. You can think for yourself,’” she said.

She said she started to question what she had been told about women being inferior to men, about them “thinking with their hearts rather than their heads” and about them being “cursed all night if they refuse intercourse when their husbands want”.

“Prison was very hard because I was separated from my children,” she said in a telephone interview with The Times. “But I think I had to go there to be liberated from all that. With hindsight, I think it did me good.”

Leila, 26, who is now living with her two sons in her native northern France while awaiting trial, is among several hundred inmates to have endured what the French authorities claim is a pioneering scheme to wean Islamists off their violent radicalism.

Leila was detained in Fleury-Mérogis prison outside the capital

ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

It is a question with which many countries are struggling.

Other governments fear that imprisoning religious extremists gives them the opportunity to convert other inmates. However, locking them in special units — jails within the jail — often leads to them becoming even more extremist.

Both Britain and France employ a range of professionals, including religious mentors, to try to limit the risk that terrorists reoffend.

But the French argue that they are succeeding where others are failing, largely because their greater experience of terrorist attacks has enabled them to develop a more sophisticated procedure to identify risks and to turn inmates away from jihadist gurus.

Jules Boyadjian, justice department director for Groupe SOS Solidarités, an association involved in the programme, said that the specificity of the French approach involved the “deconstruction of the references of jihad”.

In Britain Jonathan Hall, QC, the government’s reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the prison service was failing with convicted terrorists preaching radicalism and inciting violence inside jail. He has announced an inquiry. In November 2019 and last February convicted Islamist terrorists freed on licence carried out attacks in London and were shot dead by the police.

The French are familiar with such difficulties. François Toutain, the head of the Mission for the Fight Against Violent Radicalisation at the Direction of the Penitentiary Administration in Paris, said: “Even in jail, the Salafist jihadist continues to be impregnated with his ideology and continues to try to contaminate other inmates. No matter who he has in front of him, he will try to promote his ideology. Even if he is faced with a white supremacist, he will try to do it.”

He said such inmates were also dangerous because they continued to heed Islamic State calls to “strike wherever you are”, including within jails, where Islamist radicals have conducted six attacks, notably on officers, since 2016.

Yet French officials claim they have developed a scheme that reduces the radicalisation risk. It involves assessing Islamist inmates before placing the most fanatical in solitary confinement, those who are marginally less extreme in “radicalisation prevention” units where they are kept apart from other prisoners, and the least dangerous in ordinary cells.

The assessment is followed by a deradicalisation programme during which religious extremists are overseen by a dedicated team of probation officers, psychologists, counsellors and Islamic studies experts — often Muslim chaplains — who seek to lead them towards moderation and re-integration in society.

Sceptics worry that this represents an unrealistic attempt to re-educate terrorists before letting them loose again.

But officials in Paris claim that the approach appears to be working. Three years after the launch of the deradicalisation programme, none of the inmates put through it has been charged with or convicted of another terrorism offence, they told The Times.

People gather and lay tributes on the Promenade des Anglais after the Nice attack in 2016

PATRICK AVENTURIER/GETTY IMAGES

“We are containing the risk,” said Naoufel Gaied, the deputy head of the Mission for the Fight Against Violent Radicalisation, adding that France had been forced to address the issue because of its long and painful experience of terrorism, with more than 260 people killed in Islamist attacks since 2015.

“Its France’s misfortune that has produced our expertise,” he said.

French jails contain about 1,100 Islamist radical inmates, just under half of whom have been incarcerated in connection with terrorism offences. The most dangerous include Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the group which carried out the Bataclan attacks that killed 131 people in Paris in November 2015, who is due to go on trial with 17 others this autumn.

In addition, at least 700 Islamists are being followed by the probation service after being released on bail or probation.

Of these, about 90 have been ordered to go on a programme organised by Groupe SOS Solidarités, which has been chosen by the government to continue working on the deradicalisation of inmates after they leave prison.

“We get a lot of different types of people, from trained fighters to adolescents keen on radical religiousness to girls dreaming of bearded princes,” Mr Boyadjian said.

He said that a central aim was to tackle the Islamist doctrine that Muslims can “only live their faith in a country that practises Sharia law and that where there is Sharia law there is corporal punishment”.

Those on the programme are taken to the Islamic Arts Department at the Louvre to “show them that there is room for Islam in France”, for instance. They are also seen by Islamic studies experts who offer another interpretation of the Quran to show how the radicals “truncate its verses and take them out of context”, Mr Boyadjian said.

A Republican Guard lowers the French flag at half-mast at the Élysée Palace on the day after the Nice attack

CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON/REUTERS

“The aim is not to make them less Muslim, it is to accompany them towards intellectual autonomy and away from their habit of repeating slavishly what they have been told,” one person involved in the project said.

The source rejected suggestions that Islamists could exploit the system by pretending to have abandoned extremism whilst secretly maintaining a commitment to violence. He said the radicals on the Groupe SOS Solidarités programme were seen by a range of team members for between three and 20 hours a week for many months, adding: “You have to be particularly talented to fool everyone all the time.”

Leila, for her part, insists that she has changed since the days in 2013 when she went on to a Facebook group for disabused French Muslims and started chatting to a woman who had left France for Syria. The woman explained that she could now practise Islam without hindrance and was living a peaceful life unaffected by the war. She asked Leila if she wanted to join her to become her husband’s second wife. Leila accepted because “I was very naive at the time and I saw men like him as heroes” and within a month she had left France with her 14-month-old son to join the man and his wife in Syria.

It did not progress as expected. Not only did she find herself in the midst of bombings but she was surprised that the Islamic State was a violent, brutal network given to using slaves “which particularly shocked me because I am partly of African origin”. She says she was relieved when her husband announced that they should leave Syria, telling his two wives: “We’ve made a big mistake. Islamic State is evil.”

“We’ve made a big mistake. Islamic State is evil.”

During her time in Syria, she bore a second child to her husband.

Leila, who faces up to ten years in jail for belonging to a terrorist group, said: “I used to think that France didn’t want me. But it held out its hand to me when I needed it [on her return from Syria]. I dread to think what would have happened to me in many other countries.”