July 8, 2025 • 67 mins
Savannah Muse spent her twenties immersed in Wicca and Pagan beliefs. But in 2023, her heart stopped for 16 minutes - and she saw something that shattered her worldview. In this live interview, John Burke explores her powerful near-death experience and what transformed her spiritual path forever.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I'm John Burke, author of the New York Times
bestselling book Imagine Heaven and Imagine the God of Heaven.
And this is the Imagined Heaven Live series. It's a
series that I'm doing in between seasons of the Imagine
Heaven podcast. So if you haven't listened to season one,
the first ten episodes in it, I cover a lot
(00:21):
of what I discovered in forty years of researching close
to fifteen hundred near death experiences and showing how the
commonalities align with the Bible. I think you'll find it fascinating,
so hopefully you'll listen to that. But in this live series,
I'm just going to let you hear some of the
full live interviews I've done over the years, and today
actually this is one I did just last week, so
(00:44):
I'll stick around to the end. I'm going to make
some comments about it at the end. But Savannah Muse
had never heard of a near death experience when just
about twenty months ago, at the age of twenty nine,
she had one some tragic things that happen up into
Savannah in her life that led her away from God
and into the world of witchcraft wickan paganism. All through
(01:08):
her twenties, and at first it was just out of curiosity.
Then it became a desire for power, even to curse
and hurt those who had hurt her. But in August
twenty twenty three, her heart stopped beating for sixteen minutes,
and as she was dying, one powerful word came to
her mind. Savannah discovered the one name that has power
(01:30):
over all evil. Listen, well, hey, Savannah muse, thank you
so much for talking with us today. Of course, of course,
where are you right now?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I am in Greenville, Virginia.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Greenville, Virginia. Yes, yes, sir, Well, tell us a little
bit of what happened that led up to your near
death experience. Give us a little of the background as well.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
All right. So when I was a child, I was
not really raised in the church. I went like Christmas
in Easter, but I always had a thing for fairy
tales and horror movies from a very young age, watching
things that I should not have been watching, and I
(02:18):
think that possibly paved a way later one in my life.
Around fourteen, I found my way into a church and
joined their youth group. But I wasn't really there for God.
It was just to hang out with my friends and
then kind of bounced around between there and another church.
(02:42):
And then around seventeen, I got raped, and what went
through my mind was, why would a loving God let
that happen to me? So I left the church and
what happened.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It happened at the church. No no, no.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
No, no, it just happened while I was attending the church. Okay, yes,
and so that was extremely devastating to me. I got
put on antidepressant and then it just kind of slowly
pushed me away from God. I guess I just kind
of walked away. I was very confused. So fast forward
(03:29):
a little bit to my twenties. I still believed in God,
although I didn't know anything about Jesus Christ. I didn't
know that it was called, you know, the Holy Bible.
I didn't know the Gospels. I just knew there was
a God and there was a place called Heaven, and
(03:50):
then there was a place called Hell. That was basically
the extent of it. So, when I was twenty one,
my grandmother, who was my everything, my best friend, she
passed away of cancer. And at the time I had
(04:12):
a cousin who was living with me who was into witchcraft,
and so that's kind of how I was more so
exposed to that. And now she has found the Lord,
Praise God. But she had a lot of crystals, and
(04:34):
she was very much into nature and the universe, and
so I kind of took it a step farther and
I started getting into tearor cards and oracle cards. I
still wanted to communicate with my grandmother. I wasn't ready
to go with her, So that last probably until I
(05:00):
was around twenty.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Five that you were doing tarret card, were you actually
doing readings or going to readings.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I was going to readings quite frequently, like paying you know,
to how And I had crystals all over my room
and was really really really into fairy tales and folklore, fables, mythology,
all of that. And I started studying all like hardcore,
(05:36):
studying hours upon hours. I had probably hundreds of dollars
wrapped up in fairy tale books, mythology books, all of
the stuff. And somehow that got me deeper into witchcraft.
(05:58):
I started then studying paganism, Wicca witchcraft.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
And what was your what was your motivation? At that point,
I was just curious, just curiosity.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Just curiosity. I had no real ill intentions of anything.
I just I was just curious.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
It wasn't it wasn't like wanting to have power over.
It was just curiosity.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Okay, yeah at that point, So around twenty six I
started having more friends that were in the witchcraft community.
I was exposed to more and more things. I started collecting.
(06:49):
And this is kind of sound wild, but I pray
that there's someone out there that this is for. I
started collecting little fairry houses and little fairy trinkets and stuff,
and I would put them all around my apartment. And
I had an alter that was had a huge walking closet.
(07:14):
Alter had everything that you could imagine. I had animal veins,
I had skulls, I had animals and jars. I had
all of the slew of terror cards. I had potion bottles.
(07:36):
At this point in time, I had fallen so deep
into it that I actually sold stuff in a meta
physical shot and made money. All the things that I
was selling, which included I would make customized like little
potion models for people. I would get these little miniature
(07:57):
brews and add dried herbs and bribons. Just all this,
all this.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Stuff, and what was the significance of all that? Did
all that play into the yeah magic, I want.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
To say, so I like, I guess I was first
introduced to all the magic and stuff in the fairy tales,
and then later on in life, I guess somehow got
more into it. And at this point in time it
was I was starting to get that the power, like
really kind of getting an understanding for it, you know,
and having like the animal bones and stuff like that
(08:38):
was the honor a life, you know, past live And
at this point in time still had no ill intentions.
I thought everything I was doing was quote unquote helping people,
because I would take stage and pallo santo and I would,
(08:58):
you know, bless all of these items. Essentially, I would
say a little prayer, you know, please let this protect
so so and so, and you know, bring them prosperity
or whatever may have you. So leading up to that,
(09:19):
I think that it had gotten to the point, it
had gotten to the point where I was about to
be at no return. I say. I ended up at
the age of twenty seven, in the midst of all
(09:41):
of this, I'm neck deep in all of this. I
get raped again, and at this point in time, I'm like, Okay,
I have the power. Now you're not going to do
that to me, and then I start putting curses one
this person.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It was someone you knew, it was.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Someone I knew, yes, And so that kind of spiraled
into a lot of PTSD, a lot of more depression anxiety,
and I I basically wanted this person to die. If
I'm being quite honest, I wanted them to make because
it was it was. It was pretty brutal, and actually
(10:28):
pulled jail time over it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Oh I'm so sorry, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
But so after that, it was a couple of months
it was pretty rough. I stayed in bed, it was
very depressed. But that's when I believe that God started
kind of working in me a little bit. My mother
all my life had been either a babysitter or working
(10:58):
in a nursery, and since I had been sixteen, I
kind of in and out had babysats and kids and
you know, worked in a nursery and what have you.
And I woke up one day I was just like,
I think I want to apply to be a preschool teacher.
(11:18):
I don't know where that came from, but I applied
a bunch of places and I started taking little oneline classes.
I enrolled in college and then I actually got hired
at numerous stay cares, and I turned them down for
(11:39):
one that was in a little church, and at the
time it was like, I feel like I do not
belong in church with all of my tattoos and just everything.
And they accepted me and they hired me as a
full time teacher for preschool, and I fell in love,
(12:02):
and I fell in love with each and every little child,
and I my mother will tell you that she had
never seen me so happy before in my life. And
about seven months.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Looking back, you think God was leading you in that way,
that's why you took that.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, that job for sure, for sure, for sure. But
then around seven months and so I started in August,
so this would have been probably around February, I started
getting really really sick in and out of doctors at
this is happening to call out of work all the time,
(12:39):
leaving work early. The last straw for me before I
resigned was I was sick in the next room and
a little kid came up to me and said, miss Savannah,
are you okay? And that it shattered everything in me
(12:59):
and I was like, my kids can't see me like this.
This isn't good.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
You didn't know what it was.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, not at this time. I was just I couldn't
keep anything down. I couldn't eat. I was vaccinated for tuberculosis,
the flu, covid. You know, being a teacher, you have
to be vaccinated for all of that stuff. COVID had
never gone through my mind. I had been to the doctor,
(13:27):
you know, they had done struck theroat tests and all
of this stuff, and just.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Is this when is this this?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
What year was of twenty twenty three?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Oh? So after the big COVID lockdown?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah? Yeah, And I vaccinated I think two different times,
and I had the booster shots. So I'm sick. I
can't keep anything down. Just goes on for months. They
finally removed my gallbladder, and I'm told the hospital, you know,
(14:06):
this is either solving the problem, but if it gets worse,
we have another problem. We're gonna have to figure out
what it is. So I got a lot thicker, and
I stayed that way from February through August.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Oh wow, and I what and were they the symptoms
of covid? Yeah, but nobody Why would they not test you?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I was in and out of so many doctors, so
many hospital visits, it's my records are actually fitting beside me,
and I mean it's like that tall it was, and
it was never tested for the flu. It's never tested
for COVID. I was never tested for anything. I had
(15:03):
to beg just to get an ivy like it. It
was quite honestly, it was terrible.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
What do you think was going on?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I don't know. I think maybe the doctors just maybe
didn't believe me, or maybe they were just you know,
too busy, because every time I went, it would be
just in and out, really quick visits, you know, just
kind of check your you're fine, you have a cold,
you're fine, you're having allergy symptoms, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
But it just never left. It just hung on, It
just hung on.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
So in August, by this point, I've lost like sixty
pounds just being bedridden for months, just constantly sick. I
look like what I would have said that I looked
like a zombie at this point in time. And I
(16:04):
knew somehow that I will that I was actively dying.
My cardiac to rest happened on August fourteenth of twenty
twenty three, so.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
It was just like twenty months ago. Yeah wow, Yeah,
but you knew you had a sense that you were dying.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, somehow, I just I knew and I cried out.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
You know, so many people have told me that they've
told me John, you know when you're dying.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, it's really hard to explain, but I just I knew.
I was scared, and I remember just saying Jesus. That's
the last thing that I remember.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Why Jesus.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I don't know, I don't know. I guess something in
me just all of that, my entire life, you know,
just kind of having God lingering kind of in the background.
I guess maybe that just came back, and I just
knew to just say Jesus. I think that's all the
(17:20):
strength that I could monster up to say, honestly.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And you were literally dying at this point, like in
that moment, Yeah, where were you were at home? Or
where were you.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I was at home. I was in my bed, and
so then.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
You were alone or with someone else there.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
My mom was asleep in the next room, okay, and
she found me the following morning. So this would have
been on August fourteen. I was on my floor, completely comatose,
and I had an antique table had like a really
short edged corner, and I missed hitting my head on
(18:00):
it by again like that much. So that alone was
a miracle because it could have rusted my head open.
When the squad got there, they said that my blood
sugar was in the forties and I was just I
was white as a ghost. So they rushed me to
the ICU, and my mom told me that I probably
(18:25):
had fifteen different doctors in there, just in and out,
in and out, in and out. She had left to
go get something to eat because she just they told her,
you know, we're we're in here, you know, just leave
for a little bit and then come back. So she
had gone up the road and she had come back,
(18:46):
and she told me this was around like five o'clock PM.
And as she's walking into the local hospital, augusta help.
As she's walking in through the doors, they tell that
it comes on the telegram, I blewe and that was
my room number. So she fell to her knees and
(19:08):
a woman came like running to her and was like, honey, honey,
what's wrong. What happened? And she's like, that's my daughter,
that's my daughter. Oh my god, that's my daughter. And
this woman stayed with my mom until a doctor came
in and told my mom, we lost your daughter. We
(19:33):
lost her for sixteen minutes, but praise God, we got
her back. She's comatose, she's on life support, but we
got a heartbeatback. And then I remained comatose for ten days.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
My support. What do you remember during that time?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
During that time, I remember having an absolutely life changing
near death experience. At the time, I wouldn't have even
known what that term was.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
You'd never heard of a near death experience.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I thought it would like somebody, oh my gosh, she
almost got hit by a car or something. I didn't
know that people clinically died and had come back. I
didn't know this for months after I even got home
from the hospital. M Yeah, but I remember seeing a
(20:44):
bunch of doctors. It was as if I was above
and looking down and seeing just all these doctors and
nurses just in and out. And I had so many
courts looked up to me, and my body was puffed up.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Like me.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And then I don't know how I got from one
place to the other. But what I remember next was
I was where I believe was paradise or some form
of paradise. I was surrounded by the most lush, green plants,
(21:28):
trees and grass flowers of different varieties and colors. And
I've heard this and other testimonies about the grass and
you don't you don't walk on it. It's like you
walk through it, but it doesn't wither, it doesn't nothing.
(21:52):
I remember it was like a cool breeze and it
was as if it was a bunch of vines and
trees kind of just coming down like that. And then
there was a tiger. And keep in mind, I really
had no significance to tigers, so at this point in
(22:14):
time still I don't really know the significance of it.
But I was greeted by a tiger and taken through.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Just all greeted. What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Just he was just kind of there, and then I
followed him. Okay, I just kind of followed him through.
It's like tropical paradise. I don't want to say like
a jungle, but imagine like a jungle here. But then
like maximize that, and eventually I'm walking. I guess I'm
(22:53):
walking or floating, I don't really know. But I come
up to the huge waterfall and this waterfall is connected
to this huge, pretty lagoon, and I don't know how
to describe it other than the bluest water that I'd
(23:13):
ever seen. But it was so clear that you could
see to the bottom in the sand. It was like diamonds.
I mean, it just it was mesmerizing. I look up
to what I guess, I'd look up to the right,
and I see a huge tree and in this tree
(23:35):
are nothing hundreds of two cans, no two cans.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
So it is like a tropical place.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
And I can't tell you why, but that's that's the
first things that I saw. And I mean, baby, two
cairns take two cans. You could see even their feathers.
I mean, it was it was crazy. The tiger, I
could tell you, the bluest eyes, I mean, the oranges
(24:07):
of oranges. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
And was it was it vivid?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yes, so vivid, as if like almost as if you
could see every single strand of hate when the time.
That's how vivid it was. And it was as if
you could see up close even if you were far away.
And I don't know how to explain that other than yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Well that's of commonality.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, that was the first thing that I remember. The
second thing that I remember was again, and I don't
know how I got from place to place. I was
in a park like setting and there was a playground,
(25:02):
there were trees, It's like a sandbox. There were families
and little kids playing, and just I don't know how
to describe it other than just pure joy, just pure bliss.
It was as if, again it was here, but so
much more than here. I mean, every single thing was
(25:23):
just radiating love.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Mhm.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And I'm sitting on like a bench type thing, and
I'm just I'm sitting there and I've kind of got
my hands like this, and just kind of I just
remember looking down, and I remember my hands like I
didn't have no polish or anything, but my hands just
(25:49):
looked I guess like they were always meant. I don't
know if that makes any sense or not.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
It just in what way it.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Felt right like it I felt as if I was
like the purest version of me, Like all of my
tattoos had been wiped away, my piercings had been wiped away,
my black hair was its natural blonde hair. And I
just feel so strongly that that's, you know, all of
(26:23):
this just wasn't m Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
And did you have a sense of yourself?
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Were you yourself? I?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yes, but I don't think I knew that I had died, Like,
I don't think that it had resonated that I was
in heaven at this point in time. I think I
was just kind of going with the emotions. I guess,
just kind of enjoying the feeling of love and everything
(26:56):
that I was feeling. So I'm on this bench and
I look over to my left and there's a guy
sitting there. He's got brown hair, he's got green eyes.
He's inn a gray T shirt with a pocket and
(27:18):
lightwashed blue jeets. And he looks at me and he says,
and this is all telepathic, there's no like mouth to mouth.
It was just we just communicated. He said, you don't
know me, but I know you, and I've always known you.
(27:40):
Your brother.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And my mom had had a miscarriage about five years
before I was born.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Wow. Yeah, And did you know that? Had she told
you that?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I knew that she had had a miscarriage, but I
didn't know that it was a boy. All I knew
that she had had a miscarriage. I knew the story
of how it had happened, but that was kind of
all I knew.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
And how old was he?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
I would say, between like twenties and thirties, somewhere in
that air. And he looked he looks like he would
have been related to me, if really makes sense, Like
he had features of my mom, like the dark hair,
the eyes, the smile.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Does she have green eyes?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
She has, they're kind of like a greenish hazel. Yeah,
and she has, you know, dark brown hair. My dad
is blonde, blondish red hair, So I inherited.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That from him.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
But yeah, So I remember being there with him and
again just the feeling of just love. And I don't
remember saying or really thinking anything at that point in time.
I think it was just kind of taking it all in.
(29:21):
The next thing, I remember, I'm sitting at what I
call Heaven's Riverside.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
And it was so, you're you're like somehow transported to
this other.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Place, somehow transported from place to place, and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
How or do you think these are these are just
kind of like the snapshots you were allowed to take back.
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
That kind of makes more sense. That makes a lot
more sense to me.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Because because some people have, you know, have said like
there was a lot more that they knew, they either
experienced or understood yeah, but they were only allowed Karina
as one person. She's like, Lord, why won't you I
know there was so much more? Why won't you let
me remember it?
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It's almost like snapshots that makes so much sense. Yeah,
because again from place to place, it's like, I can't
explain it to you because I don't know. I have
no honestly, I have no idea, right, But so then
I'm transported. You know. It's what I call Heaven's Riverside.
And it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Why was it beautiful?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
The water the water again was so blue, again, so blue,
but so clear. You could just you could see to
the bottom of it. Just the floor. I don't know
if it was sand, but again it just looked like
diamonds and the brass, the trees, everything just looked perfect,
(30:57):
the greenest greens, the cool breeze is swaying again. And
sitting on the side of this river bank and I'm
just looking and you can hear the birds chirping, and
you know, butterflies goe by, and just it was incredible.
(31:21):
And I look over and I'm sorry it might get emotional.
I look over to my left again, and I'm like,
kind of looking down but to the left, and I
tilt my head up and right there was I believe
(31:55):
that it was Jesus Christ. Oh, I'm sorry. It's kind
of a lot, you know. This is the first time
I've publicly talked about it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Oh, I understand completely, Savannah. I mean, very few people
can remember that without it overwhelming their emotions.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
But it was right there, and his hair was brown,
it was about shoulder light, and his eyes were just
mesmerisingly blue, and his smile was.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
So perfect. I mean even his smile was radiating light.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
And he takes my hands and he tas, I love you.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Mm hmm, I love you.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
You were so worthy, you were so.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
Loved, You are mine, And in.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That moment, you were mine. Is that what he said?
You were so worthy, you are so loved, you are mine.
And just think all you said was the name Jesus,
and I felt but that's what he says, All who
call in the name of the Lord will be saved.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And I didn't know that. I had no idea, And
in that moment, I just felt more love than I
had ever felt in my entire life. And you know,
I know my parents love me. You know I know
I'm love. But it was just so overwhelming, but in
the best possible way.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
What was it like?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
It felt like every bad thing that had ever happened
in my life just completely vanished. M It felt like
all the pain, all the sickness, it just fell off.
It was just gone. I didn't feel sick, I didn't
feel scared. I didn't feel like I was dying. I
(34:31):
just knew that I was in the complete presence of God,
and that's all I knew. So I remember, I'm saying
after that, are.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
You standing, are you standing up? Or are you sitting down?
And hold your hands.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I'm sitting down. We're both kind of like kneeling down
the ground, but where.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Other So he came and knelt beside you.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yes, And so at this point we stand up and
he's still holding my hand that he says, have one
more thing that I don't want to show you. TRANSI
transition again. At this point I'm walking and as I'm
(35:31):
walking up, I see coming not out of the shadows,
but they just kind of appeared, and it was my family.
I saw my childhood dog. This game was gruffy. I
(35:55):
saw my dad's mother, my grandmother, murfy, and she was
dressed in a red sweatshirt and it had a dog
on it, and blue jeans just like she would have
been wearing here.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Beside her was my uncle Richard, who again was in
blue jeans, blue and flaid shirt, and he had a
pocket a dollar sticking out of it. He always gave
me a dollar every time I saw him when I
was a kid.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Oh, how funny. So it's kind of like a little
like yeah, yeah, and they had they had already passed away.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yes, yeah, they had already passed on, like many many
years ago. So then beside him, I saw my grandmother,
the one that I had tried and wanted to connect
with so.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Badly mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And again she didn't looked sick. She looked good.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
She looked beautiful, and she was in.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
This very tropical Hawaiian looking shirt and she had one
flax and I can't even tell you down to the
buttons when her shoes. I mean, it was incredible. And
beside her was my granddad, her husband, and he was
(37:28):
dressed up and he had on a black suit, black
top hat. And every time there was a wedding or
a celebration or something, he would be in a suit
and he'd always joked, I need to have a top hat.
I need to have a top hat.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Oh, but he didn't.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
He didn't have a top hat.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
So there he did.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
There he had a top hat. And it was so
many just like little nods to my life. Here.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Did they look the age you knew them when they
passed away? Or did they look younger? Or what?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
He looked the age what they did when they passed away,
But they looked a lot healthier m hm. And they
they looked like younger in the face so recognizable as
to I was like, that's my grandmother, that's my grandfather,
and I knew with every else of my being that
(38:28):
it was them.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah, that's interesting. Sometimes I think people appear to us
sometimes they kind of the norm is like thirty, like
what you were saying, But they can appear to us
at whatever we would feel most comfortable with. So like
a grandparent would be like, yeah, if that's how mainly
(38:51):
you knew them and saw them, Yeah, many times they
will not always though.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, I've heard a lot of the times it's like
in the thirties and yeah, but for me, it was
they just looked like my grandparents, but they looked really good. Yeah,
they looked really happy.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
And did they say anything to you?
Speaker 2 (39:12):
My grandfather? And again all thought thought, mm hmm. He
would always call me granddaughter, granddaughter. I'm the oldest of
I think twelve or thirteen grandkids, and it was granddaughter, granddaughter.
(39:33):
It's not your time. You have to go back home.
And I remember I didn't want. I didn't want to.
I can. I don't know how to explain it as
if I I know that I was being stubborn where
(39:57):
I didn't want to come back. I didn't understand, and
I just I don't remember saying anything back, but I
remember just kind of thinking why m hmm. But I
don't want to. I don't want to stay here. I
don't want to go back. I don't want to go
back to wherever back is. I don't know where I'm
(40:18):
supposed to go back to, but I don't want to go.
And just like that, I was back and the first
words out of my mouth were, can I have a doctor? Pepper?
I mean alert, I was back and everyone's just freaking out, like, what.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
How is she?
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Is she here? She's asking for a doctor Pepper. What's happening?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Because you were ten days in a coma.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah, woke up completely alert.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Wow, Pepper.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
All the things to say, that's that's what came out
of my mouth.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, I used to be a huge Doctor Pepper fan,
so thinking that doctor Doctor Pepper's from heaven. Yeah, I
could see that.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I can't drink it anymore.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
I begged for it for so long they finally.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Left me have it.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I hated it.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah. When I once I was back awake, things are
pretty rough. In a month in the hospital, I formed
two forms of neuropathy, and I was disabled for about
seven to eight months.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Neuropathy where you can't feel in your feet.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yes, it's from It was from my knees down to
my feet those legs.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
You can't walk, You can't.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
It was very difficult. I could take maybe three steps
with a w and that would take me five minutes
and I would just scream and cry and peo. I
was on intense dialysis. My kidneys took a huge hit.
I was in complete renal failure for about three months.
(42:18):
I had dialysis three times a week for four hours
a day, and that was the most terrifying thing to me.
I do not like the sight of blood and even
you know, growing up watching so many horror movies and
stuff side of my own blood. I didn't like that.
So that was it was exhausting and it was hard.
(42:42):
And then overcoming a traumatic brain injury because no brain waves,
you know, for sixteen minutes, I had to go through
the physical therapy and the rehab part of the hospital.
I had to do occupational therapy to learn how to
write again, count money, everything. They would hold up little
(43:08):
flash cards with different colors and shapes like this one's
a doll, this one's a cat, this is a ball.
It was a lot for that moment to me felt
like eternity. I wanted to go home. I in my mind,
(43:29):
I thought I was still teaching, and every day I
would say, you have to let me go. I have
to get back to my class. My best friends had
to break it to me that I had gotten so
sick I had to resign.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Hmmm.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
That absolutely shattered me to the point I reached out
to my boss at the time and I asked her,
I said, hey, what what happened to me? And her
reply was, what you're alive, you know, like you're you're
messaging me right now? What Because at this point, A
(44:10):
lot of my friends had knew what had happened, and
I clinically died for sixteen minutes. In a Facebook post
that one of my friends had made at don viral
around my area. So I had people in churches praying
for me that I didn't even need.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Hmmm. And a girl from why did it go viral? I?
Speaker 2 (44:36):
One person shared it, another person shared it, and it
just kind of blew up in this area, and it
was just you know, please.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Pray for it, to pray for you, yeah that you know.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
This is what had happened. She's fighting for her life.
You know, she needs the strength of God. Please keep
praying for her. And a girl from my church that
I attend now is Jesse. She actually came to the
hospital while I was comatose, and she had never met
(45:07):
me before, and she prayed with my friends and my
family at that hospital for a long time. I mean,
my parents said it was the most beautiful prayer that
they had ever heard in their life. So, as I'm
in the hospital and I'm regaining my strength and my memory,
(45:32):
I hadn't told anybody at this time what had happened.
I wanted to, but I thought, Okay, they're gonna put
me in Crossroads, which is the kind of mental health facility.
And I didn't want that to happen because I wanted
to go home, and I didn't want to speak about
it until I got home because I felt like I
(45:54):
had Sayer there, and I had a nurse and her
name was Colby. She would always come into my room
and she's just so sweet and she I knew she
was a believer. She wore a cross necklace and she would,
you know, she would paint my nails, she would brush
my hair. She was just a friend. And she looked
(46:20):
at me one day and she said, honey, something happened,
and if you ever want to talk about it, you
can share it with me. I promise you I'm safe,
you can talk to me about it.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
So a couple of days passed and she comes in
one morning and she's like, hey, honey, and she's just
all cheery. She's like, I have a story I want
to tell you before I have to fuck out for
my shift. And I said okay, And she ends up
telling me the story of her near death experience. Oh wow,
(47:05):
she went to hell. Oh but she told me, she said,
I just have a feeling that the opposite happened to you.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
And you need to know right now that you are
such a miracle and you are a gift of God
and you're going to overcome all of this. And it
was so wild to have a nurse that had a
near death experience that just because.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
You didn't you didn't really even know anything about that.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
No, I had no idea, not the same.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
So this is one of the first ones you're hearing
about besides just having experienced it. Yeah, and probably were
you probably trying to sort through what was that? What happened?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yes, yes, sir, And I knew at that point in time.
I knew that I wanted to get baptized. Once I
got out of the hospital, I was I was very
adamant that I'm going back to the church I attended
when I was seventeen, and I was going to get
baptized by that pastor. I had it set down like
(48:19):
the day I get out of the hospital, like, you're
not taking me home, You're taking me to that church.
I need to. And I didn't know what baptism meant.
I had no idea. I just it was just on
my heart. So I go home and it's hard. For
(48:40):
about three months, I'm stuck in my living room. My
bed is in my living room. I go from the
bed to the requiner, to dialysis, doctor's appointments, nineteen medications.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
At the time, being Oh my goodness, is.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Thirty at the time. So I was twenty nine when
the cardiact arrest happened, and I was miserable. I won't lie.
I was absolutely miserable. But when I started going to church,
that misery kind of it started falling off, and I
(49:24):
started I didn't really know what prayer really meant at
this point in time, but I would just say, please, God,
if you just take this pain away, like I'll do
whatever you want me to do. I got to be
able to walk, I gotta be able from kidneys to function.
(49:45):
I'm thirty years old like that. I know this is
not what you want for me. This is not it
you brought me back. I'm here, I'm alive. I probably
shouldn't even be sitting at home right now, probably shouldn't
even be able to pray to you right now, So
please just heal me. And that was kind of my
prayer every day for a couple of months. The winter
(50:12):
was rough, but when the spring came around of last year,
it was as if I woke up one day and
the pain wasn't completely gone, but it was gone to
the point that I could start really try to walk again.
(50:35):
And I would use my walker in my apartment and
I would just go from room to room, kitchen, the
living room, back to back, and started building up my strength.
And I was told, you know, you may never walk again,
swim again, you may never teach again. You know, we
(50:58):
don't know. We can't put a time limit when any
of this. And within a year and a half my
kidneys are fully recovered. There's no inkling that I could
ever have cardiac arrest again. They're saying that I've recovered
from a traumatic brain injury. Wow, then a eropathy is gone.
(51:19):
I can walk, swim, I can teach again. I teach
Sunday school.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
I did get baptized. I got baptized twice. The first
time I was just so adamant. I didn't understand. I
just said, I love Jesus, went under the water, came out.
I was like a little kid. And then six months
passed and I decided I'm not on nineteen medicines anymore.
(51:50):
I think at that point I was down to ten.
I wasn't in a wheelchair anymore, so I could walk
myself and get in the pool. So six months had
passed and I got baptized again, and it was such
an incredible moment because I was able to walk through
my church, stand in front of everybody and say, hey,
(52:17):
I'm Savannah. I clinically died for sixteen minutes. I encountered
Jesus Christ and he saved me in every way a
person could be saved. And I went under the water
and it was only for a few seconds, but it
felt like eternity and it felt like glass shattering all.
(52:39):
I mean, it just felt like everything again, just bad.
Just it was gone in that water and it came
up and I just felt I felt like a new person,
I really did. I just it was so refreshed. I
(53:00):
want to say, like renewing.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
I don't know it just rejuvenating.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
That's the worst. That's the word.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah. And when when did you get baptized that the
second time? Just recently May ninth of this past year,
a year ago.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yeah, And it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
I mean, all this is really really fresh still, isn't.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
It really fast. I mean, it's been a very fast process.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
And yeah, I ended.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Up joining a prayer group that we go to we
meet weekly, m hmm, a life group that we meet weekly.
I am a greeter at my church. And I'm also
a Sunday school teacher.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
That's awesome. That's so cool. Can I ask you? Can
I ask you some questions just about Yeah, first of all,
thank you so much for sharing all that, of course,
and you you you know, I've I've heard it. I expected,
But when you teared up thinking about seeing Jesus, I
teared up too, because it's just, you know, I just
(54:14):
I think somebody who listened to these you know, there's
something cathartic when you see the emotion that again and
again and again can't be contained, you know, because of
how wonderful he is. So when you were in his presence,
(54:37):
when you when you saw him, how did you know
who it was?
Speaker 2 (54:42):
It was as if I had known him my entire life.
And the only way I really know how to explain that,
I just kind of just I just knew that I
was in the presence of God.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
So you knew he was God, and you knew Jesus.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Thing about anything, and he looked.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
He looked like Jesus, you said, shoulder linked hair, blue eyes. Interestingly,
that's so, it's so wild to me that it's gonna
be one of the questions I asked the Lord. Do
I get there? Like, Okay, what color are your eyes? Really?
Speaker 2 (55:25):
I've heard green, I've heard brown, I've heard blue, and
for me it was blue.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
And well, and you know, Heidi Barr, who's a friend
of mine now, who she was sixteen year old, didn't
know Jesus. She was Jewish, but she prayed to God
every night. She believed in God, even though her dad
told her there is no God and Jesus Christ is
the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. That's all she heard.
(55:52):
And yet when her horse crushes her, there he is.
And she said, I didn't tell anybody this for years
because he's Jewish. We have brown eyes, she's Jewish, but
he had blue eyes. Yeah, And a lot of people say,
so my working theory. And I don't know if this
(56:12):
is true or not, but is that maybe on earth
he really did. There was a tribe of Israelites that
did typically have blue eyes, or there are a lot
of them did, And so he could have, but then
the glorified Jesus, you know his eyes are I mean,
(56:33):
John described him like like fire, which kind of like
has all the colors, right, you see blues and you
see greens and yellows and reds and everything browns. But
I don't know, So what did he say anything else
to you? No, it was just that.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Yeah, sort fleet and to the point.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Yeah, And and why do you think he said that
to you?
Speaker 2 (57:04):
I think that he I think he knew that I
needed to know that I was loved because I didn't.
I didn't really feel loved. I knew that people loved me,
but I had a hard time accepting it. I would
always kind of push people away and didn't very uh
(57:29):
it's the word skittish, like I didn't mind people like
hugging me, being in my space, and none of it
was as if it was just like a full on embrace,
like I love you, you know. And I think it
was everything that I needed, as as I've told my
(57:49):
friends this, And I think I needed to die in
order for him to save me, in order for me
to get off of the really bad path that I
was on. One and I kind of want to say,
like I'm not here too, you know bash you know,
(58:11):
fairies or fairy tales or like anything like that. Everyone's
you know, convictions are their own. It just for me,
that's my story. And that's just kind of what happened
to me.
Speaker 1 (58:24):
Well, and what do you what do you did you
get any insight about all that now when you were there?
What's your what's your kind of understanding? Now?
Speaker 2 (58:39):
I would say that when I thought that I was
communicating with fairies, when I thought I was, you know,
leaving offerings to fairies and this that, and I think
that I openly invited evil spirits into my home in
(59:03):
some form that I don't know. I just know things
were really bad and when things got really bad, it
escalated very quickly.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
And I don't know if we played a part in me,
you know, getting so sick. I've you know, my mind
has gone through all the theories of what if, what if?
What if? But to me, at the end of the day,
it doesn't really matter, you know what if. What matters
is that God let me have the second chance to
(59:42):
come back here and yeah, get it right.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
Well, and you know, Savannah, having having interviewed others where
in Heaven Jesus showed them all the times that he
showed up to try to intersect their life. Yeah, you know,
like a very clear like come on, follow, let's go.
And I wonder if you know he did that in
(01:00:08):
steering you toward that Christian daycare.
Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
And and the evil that felt like it had a
right to you was like, we got to get her,
we got to get her now. And as a result,
you know, because when when you started telling me they
weren't testing you for COVID or you know, they weren't
(01:00:34):
Like that's not normal, right, that's not normal. That almost
feels like a you know, a conspiracy or something that
I mean, I'm not saying the doctors were conspiring, but
I'm saying just a conspiracy of evil to try to
get you before you Yeah, turned.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
I've been told that many times.
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
And you know, and and and the Lord was pursuing
you that and no doubt, and that's why what came
to your mind was to cry out the name of Jesus.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
I don't have any doubt.
Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Agree. And it's just it's still surreal, you know, to me,
like it hasn't been that long. It's still really fresh.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
And yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
It's with me every day.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
What do you feel like you're taking back from this
that could help others.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
That no matter what diagnosis you have, no matter what
a doctor may say, our God has the final say,
and we'll bring miracles out of absolute disasters. I mean,
I'm still learning scripture, but I know it says that
he brings beauty for.
Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Ashes and works all things together. They're for good for
those who love them.
Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
That's definitely what He's done for me. He has brought
beauty from the ashes.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Yeah. Wow, Well, you have such a powerful story, and
I know that He's going to use you to have
such an influence on so many people and to point
so many people toward the light of God for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Wow pretty cool, huh. I mean, you know, you see
a couple of things in this that I just wanted
to make comment on. First, God was pursuing Savannah, you know,
even though even though she was going far from him,
you know, leading her into this Christian run daycare, the
way the people in it really loved her so that
(01:02:47):
at that moment of when she was dying, she called
on the name of Jesus, and that was the name
over all that had power over the evil that I
believe wanted to take her down, uh forever. But a
couple of interesting things you may have heard. First of all,
the tropical jungle. I honestly I had never heard that
(01:03:09):
except another young woman I just interviewed that you'll hear
from soon said that she saw in heaven that there
are there are places to experience our our favorite seasons,
like whether you like winter or summer, or fall or spring,
and it just it reminded me with the with the
tropical tropical experience or like a Debbie Ali. If you
(01:03:33):
didn't hear her in one of the episodes, I did
you know the beaches of Heaven, that all of it,
all of it is on earth, all the diversity of
beauty on Earth. It's just a foreshadowing of the wonders
to come because God created it all. And you know,
it was interesting the snapshots she said of the jungle,
(01:03:57):
and then she's in a playground, the park bench, and
then the tree by the river. And I tend to
think sometimes, you know, the Lord doesn't allow people to
bring back all that they experienced. So how she got
from one to another, she doesn't know. But I kind
of wonder if you know, the gaps are he didn't
let her bring back everything. He usually doesn't. By the way,
(01:04:19):
Paul talked about this when he had an experience of heaven,
and he said, you know, I experienced things that no
one is allowed to tell. So there's some things that
they're not allowed to bring back. Another fascinating thing is
no tattoos in heaven. Sorry, Ben's sledge. Ben as my
army vet friend who is so proud of his you know,
(01:04:43):
two long sleeves of tattoos, and we always joke about it,
and so I guess it's bad news for Ben. No tattoos,
she said. And she met her miscarried brother, who she
knew there had been a miscarriage, but she didn't know
if it was a boy or a girl. And he
was grown, like she said, in the late twenties or thirties.
(01:05:03):
But above all, I love what Jesus said to her,
you know, because really all she had done is say
that his name Jesus, you know, I think sincerely. And
when she encounters him, he says, I love you, and
you are so loved, You are so worthy, and you
(01:05:24):
are mine, and you know, it just reminds me of
the thief on the cross. You know, there were two thieves,
but on either side of Jesus. One mocked him, the
other said, Jesus, will you remember me when you come
in your kingdom. It was a simple acknowledgment and a
recognition of his need for him. And you know, it's
(01:05:45):
just a great reminder that Jesus is the one who
is God and who is love and loves you, and
he makes us worthy. You might not feel worthy. I
don't feel worthy. Most near death experiencers say the same thing.
I didn't feel worthy. But he makes us worthy because
he paid for all of our wrongs, because what he
(01:06:08):
really wants is our love. He created us to love
God and to walk through this life with God, and
so he makes a way. So I hope that this
has encouraged you, and I hope it will encourage you
to seek God if you don't know him, to walk
with God if you do. And if you've liked this
(01:06:29):
live series, you know, I hope you will dive deeper
into understanding the meaning of near death experiences and how
they relate to the Bible. Check out the Imagine Heaven
podcast and the links below if you want to go
even deeper. I've written books on imagine Heaven, which is
the forty commonalities of these near death experiences, and you
(01:06:50):
hear them, but you also see them in scripture. And
then imagine the God of heaven where you can, you know,
dive into the character and the person of who God is,
and you'll find you haven't yet imagined him as he
truly is. Well till next time, God's blessings,
Well, I'm John Burke, author of the New York Times
bestselling book Imagine Heaven and Imagine the God of Heaven.
And this is the Imagined Heaven Live series. It's a
series that I'm doing in between seasons of the Imagine
Heaven podcast. So if you haven't listened to season one,
the first ten episodes in it, I cover a lot
(00:21):
of what I discovered in forty years of researching close
to fifteen hundred near death experiences and showing how the
commonalities align with the Bible. I think you'll find it fascinating,
so hopefully you'll listen to that. But in this live series,
I'm just going to let you hear some of the
full live interviews I've done over the years, and today
actually this is one I did just last week, so
(00:44):
I'll stick around to the end. I'm going to make
some comments about it at the end. But Savannah Muse
had never heard of a near death experience when just
about twenty months ago, at the age of twenty nine,
she had one some tragic things that happen up into
Savannah in her life that led her away from God
and into the world of witchcraft wickan paganism. All through
(01:08):
her twenties, and at first it was just out of curiosity.
Then it became a desire for power, even to curse
and hurt those who had hurt her. But in August
twenty twenty three, her heart stopped beating for sixteen minutes,
and as she was dying, one powerful word came to
her mind. Savannah discovered the one name that has power
(01:30):
over all evil. Listen, well, hey, Savannah muse, thank you
so much for talking with us today. Of course, of course,
where are you right now?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I am in Greenville, Virginia.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Greenville, Virginia. Yes, yes, sir, Well, tell us a little
bit of what happened that led up to your near
death experience. Give us a little of the background as well.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
All right. So when I was a child, I was
not really raised in the church. I went like Christmas
in Easter, but I always had a thing for fairy
tales and horror movies from a very young age, watching
things that I should not have been watching, and I
(02:18):
think that possibly paved a way later one in my life.
Around fourteen, I found my way into a church and
joined their youth group. But I wasn't really there for God.
It was just to hang out with my friends and
then kind of bounced around between there and another church.
(02:42):
And then around seventeen, I got raped, and what went
through my mind was, why would a loving God let
that happen to me? So I left the church and
what happened.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It happened at the church. No no, no.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
No, no, it just happened while I was attending the church. Okay, yes,
and so that was extremely devastating to me. I got
put on antidepressant and then it just kind of slowly
pushed me away from God. I guess I just kind
of walked away. I was very confused. So fast forward
(03:29):
a little bit to my twenties. I still believed in God,
although I didn't know anything about Jesus Christ. I didn't
know that it was called, you know, the Holy Bible.
I didn't know the Gospels. I just knew there was
a God and there was a place called Heaven, and
(03:50):
then there was a place called Hell. That was basically
the extent of it. So, when I was twenty one,
my grandmother, who was my everything, my best friend, she
passed away of cancer. And at the time I had
(04:12):
a cousin who was living with me who was into witchcraft,
and so that's kind of how I was more so
exposed to that. And now she has found the Lord,
Praise God. But she had a lot of crystals, and
(04:34):
she was very much into nature and the universe, and
so I kind of took it a step farther and
I started getting into tearor cards and oracle cards. I
still wanted to communicate with my grandmother. I wasn't ready
to go with her, So that last probably until I
(05:00):
was around twenty.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Five that you were doing tarret card, were you actually
doing readings or going to readings.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I was going to readings quite frequently, like paying you know,
to how And I had crystals all over my room
and was really really really into fairy tales and folklore, fables, mythology,
all of that. And I started studying all like hardcore,
(05:36):
studying hours upon hours. I had probably hundreds of dollars
wrapped up in fairy tale books, mythology books, all of
the stuff. And somehow that got me deeper into witchcraft.
(05:58):
I started then studying paganism, Wicca witchcraft.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
And what was your what was your motivation? At that point,
I was just curious, just curiosity.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Just curiosity. I had no real ill intentions of anything.
I just I was just curious.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
It wasn't it wasn't like wanting to have power over.
It was just curiosity.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Okay, yeah at that point, So around twenty six I
started having more friends that were in the witchcraft community.
I was exposed to more and more things. I started collecting.
(06:49):
And this is kind of sound wild, but I pray
that there's someone out there that this is for. I
started collecting little fairry houses and little fairy trinkets and stuff,
and I would put them all around my apartment. And
I had an alter that was had a huge walking closet.
(07:14):
Alter had everything that you could imagine. I had animal veins,
I had skulls, I had animals and jars. I had
all of the slew of terror cards. I had potion bottles.
(07:36):
At this point in time, I had fallen so deep
into it that I actually sold stuff in a meta
physical shot and made money. All the things that I
was selling, which included I would make customized like little
potion models for people. I would get these little miniature
(07:57):
brews and add dried herbs and bribons. Just all this,
all this.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Stuff, and what was the significance of all that? Did
all that play into the yeah magic, I want.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
To say, so I like, I guess I was first
introduced to all the magic and stuff in the fairy tales,
and then later on in life, I guess somehow got
more into it. And at this point in time it
was I was starting to get that the power, like
really kind of getting an understanding for it, you know,
and having like the animal bones and stuff like that
(08:38):
was the honor a life, you know, past live And
at this point in time still had no ill intentions.
I thought everything I was doing was quote unquote helping people,
because I would take stage and pallo santo and I would,
(08:58):
you know, bless all of these items. Essentially, I would
say a little prayer, you know, please let this protect
so so and so, and you know, bring them prosperity
or whatever may have you. So leading up to that,
(09:19):
I think that it had gotten to the point, it
had gotten to the point where I was about to
be at no return. I say. I ended up at
the age of twenty seven, in the midst of all
(09:41):
of this, I'm neck deep in all of this. I
get raped again, and at this point in time, I'm like, Okay,
I have the power. Now you're not going to do
that to me, and then I start putting curses one
this person.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It was someone you knew, it was.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Someone I knew, yes, And so that kind of spiraled
into a lot of PTSD, a lot of more depression anxiety,
and I I basically wanted this person to die. If
I'm being quite honest, I wanted them to make because
it was it was. It was pretty brutal, and actually
(10:28):
pulled jail time over it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Oh I'm so sorry, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
But so after that, it was a couple of months
it was pretty rough. I stayed in bed, it was
very depressed. But that's when I believe that God started
kind of working in me a little bit. My mother
all my life had been either a babysitter or working
(10:58):
in a nursery, and since I had been sixteen, I
kind of in and out had babysats and kids and
you know, worked in a nursery and what have you.
And I woke up one day I was just like,
I think I want to apply to be a preschool teacher.
(11:18):
I don't know where that came from, but I applied
a bunch of places and I started taking little oneline classes.
I enrolled in college and then I actually got hired
at numerous stay cares, and I turned them down for
(11:39):
one that was in a little church, and at the
time it was like, I feel like I do not
belong in church with all of my tattoos and just everything.
And they accepted me and they hired me as a
full time teacher for preschool, and I fell in love,
(12:02):
and I fell in love with each and every little child,
and I my mother will tell you that she had
never seen me so happy before in my life. And
about seven months.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Looking back, you think God was leading you in that way,
that's why you took that.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, that job for sure, for sure, for sure. But
then around seven months and so I started in August,
so this would have been probably around February, I started
getting really really sick in and out of doctors at
this is happening to call out of work all the time,
(12:39):
leaving work early. The last straw for me before I
resigned was I was sick in the next room and
a little kid came up to me and said, miss Savannah,
are you okay? And that it shattered everything in me
(12:59):
and I was like, my kids can't see me like this.
This isn't good.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
You didn't know what it was.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, not at this time. I was just I couldn't
keep anything down. I couldn't eat. I was vaccinated for tuberculosis,
the flu, covid. You know, being a teacher, you have
to be vaccinated for all of that stuff. COVID had
never gone through my mind. I had been to the doctor,
(13:27):
you know, they had done struck theroat tests and all
of this stuff, and just.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Is this when is this this?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
What year was of twenty twenty three?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Oh? So after the big COVID lockdown?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah? Yeah, And I vaccinated I think two different times,
and I had the booster shots. So I'm sick. I
can't keep anything down. Just goes on for months. They
finally removed my gallbladder, and I'm told the hospital, you know,
(14:06):
this is either solving the problem, but if it gets worse,
we have another problem. We're gonna have to figure out
what it is. So I got a lot thicker, and
I stayed that way from February through August.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Oh wow, and I what and were they the symptoms
of covid? Yeah, but nobody Why would they not test you?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I was in and out of so many doctors, so
many hospital visits, it's my records are actually fitting beside me,
and I mean it's like that tall it was, and
it was never tested for the flu. It's never tested
for COVID. I was never tested for anything. I had
(15:03):
to beg just to get an ivy like it. It
was quite honestly, it was terrible.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
What do you think was going on?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I don't know. I think maybe the doctors just maybe
didn't believe me, or maybe they were just you know,
too busy, because every time I went, it would be
just in and out, really quick visits, you know, just
kind of check your you're fine, you have a cold,
you're fine, you're having allergy symptoms, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
But it just never left. It just hung on, It
just hung on.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
So in August, by this point, I've lost like sixty
pounds just being bedridden for months, just constantly sick. I
look like what I would have said that I looked
like a zombie at this point in time. And I
(16:04):
knew somehow that I will that I was actively dying.
My cardiac to rest happened on August fourteenth of twenty
twenty three, so.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
It was just like twenty months ago. Yeah wow, Yeah,
but you knew you had a sense that you were dying.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, somehow, I just I knew and I cried out.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
You know, so many people have told me that they've
told me John, you know when you're dying.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, it's really hard to explain, but I just I knew.
I was scared, and I remember just saying Jesus. That's
the last thing that I remember.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Why Jesus.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I don't know, I don't know. I guess something in
me just all of that, my entire life, you know,
just kind of having God lingering kind of in the background.
I guess maybe that just came back, and I just
knew to just say Jesus. I think that's all the
(17:20):
strength that I could monster up to say, honestly.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And you were literally dying at this point, like in
that moment, Yeah, where were you were at home? Or
where were you.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I was at home. I was in my bed, and
so then.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
You were alone or with someone else there.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
My mom was asleep in the next room, okay, and
she found me the following morning. So this would have
been on August fourteen. I was on my floor, completely comatose,
and I had an antique table had like a really
short edged corner, and I missed hitting my head on
(18:00):
it by again like that much. So that alone was
a miracle because it could have rusted my head open.
When the squad got there, they said that my blood
sugar was in the forties and I was just I
was white as a ghost. So they rushed me to
the ICU, and my mom told me that I probably
(18:25):
had fifteen different doctors in there, just in and out,
in and out, in and out. She had left to
go get something to eat because she just they told her,
you know, we're we're in here, you know, just leave
for a little bit and then come back. So she
had gone up the road and she had come back,
(18:46):
and she told me this was around like five o'clock PM.
And as she's walking into the local hospital, augusta help.
As she's walking in through the doors, they tell that
it comes on the telegram, I blewe and that was
my room number. So she fell to her knees and
(19:08):
a woman came like running to her and was like, honey, honey,
what's wrong. What happened? And she's like, that's my daughter,
that's my daughter. Oh my god, that's my daughter. And
this woman stayed with my mom until a doctor came
in and told my mom, we lost your daughter. We
(19:33):
lost her for sixteen minutes, but praise God, we got
her back. She's comatose, she's on life support, but we
got a heartbeatback. And then I remained comatose for ten days.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
My support. What do you remember during that time?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
During that time, I remember having an absolutely life changing
near death experience. At the time, I wouldn't have even
known what that term was.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
You'd never heard of a near death experience.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I thought it would like somebody, oh my gosh, she
almost got hit by a car or something. I didn't
know that people clinically died and had come back. I
didn't know this for months after I even got home
from the hospital. M Yeah, but I remember seeing a
(20:44):
bunch of doctors. It was as if I was above
and looking down and seeing just all these doctors and
nurses just in and out. And I had so many
courts looked up to me, and my body was puffed up.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Like me.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And then I don't know how I got from one
place to the other. But what I remember next was
I was where I believe was paradise or some form
of paradise. I was surrounded by the most lush, green plants,
(21:28):
trees and grass flowers of different varieties and colors. And
I've heard this and other testimonies about the grass and
you don't you don't walk on it. It's like you
walk through it, but it doesn't wither, it doesn't nothing.
(21:52):
I remember it was like a cool breeze and it
was as if it was a bunch of vines and
trees kind of just coming down like that. And then
there was a tiger. And keep in mind, I really
had no significance to tigers, so at this point in
(22:14):
time still I don't really know the significance of it.
But I was greeted by a tiger and taken through.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Just all greeted. What do you mean?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Just he was just kind of there, and then I
followed him. Okay, I just kind of followed him through.
It's like tropical paradise. I don't want to say like
a jungle, but imagine like a jungle here. But then
like maximize that, and eventually I'm walking. I guess I'm
(22:53):
walking or floating, I don't really know. But I come
up to the huge waterfall and this waterfall is connected
to this huge, pretty lagoon, and I don't know how
to describe it other than the bluest water that I'd
(23:13):
ever seen. But it was so clear that you could
see to the bottom in the sand. It was like diamonds.
I mean, it just it was mesmerizing. I look up
to what I guess, I'd look up to the right,
and I see a huge tree and in this tree
(23:35):
are nothing hundreds of two cans, no two cans.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
So it is like a tropical place.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
And I can't tell you why, but that's that's the
first things that I saw. And I mean, baby, two
cairns take two cans. You could see even their feathers.
I mean, it was it was crazy. The tiger, I
could tell you, the bluest eyes, I mean, the oranges
(24:07):
of oranges. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
And was it was it vivid?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yes, so vivid, as if like almost as if you
could see every single strand of hate when the time.
That's how vivid it was. And it was as if
you could see up close even if you were far away.
And I don't know how to explain that other than yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Well that's of commonality.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, that was the first thing that I remember. The
second thing that I remember was again, and I don't
know how I got from place to place. I was
in a park like setting and there was a playground,
(25:02):
there were trees, It's like a sandbox. There were families
and little kids playing, and just I don't know how
to describe it other than just pure joy, just pure bliss.
It was as if, again it was here, but so
much more than here. I mean, every single thing was
(25:23):
just radiating love.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Mhm.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And I'm sitting on like a bench type thing, and
I'm just I'm sitting there and I've kind of got
my hands like this, and just kind of I just
remember looking down, and I remember my hands like I
didn't have no polish or anything, but my hands just
(25:49):
looked I guess like they were always meant. I don't
know if that makes any sense or not.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
It just in what way it.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Felt right like it I felt as if I was
like the purest version of me, Like all of my
tattoos had been wiped away, my piercings had been wiped away,
my black hair was its natural blonde hair. And I
just feel so strongly that that's, you know, all of
(26:23):
this just wasn't m Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
And did you have a sense of yourself?
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Were you yourself? I?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yes, but I don't think I knew that I had died, Like,
I don't think that it had resonated that I was
in heaven at this point in time. I think I
was just kind of going with the emotions. I guess,
just kind of enjoying the feeling of love and everything
(26:56):
that I was feeling. So I'm on this bench and
I look over to my left and there's a guy
sitting there. He's got brown hair, he's got green eyes.
He's inn a gray T shirt with a pocket and
(27:18):
lightwashed blue jeets. And he looks at me and he says,
and this is all telepathic, there's no like mouth to mouth.
It was just we just communicated. He said, you don't
know me, but I know you, and I've always known you.
(27:40):
Your brother.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And my mom had had a miscarriage about five years
before I was born.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Wow. Yeah, And did you know that? Had she told
you that?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I knew that she had had a miscarriage, but I
didn't know that it was a boy. All I knew
that she had had a miscarriage. I knew the story
of how it had happened, but that was kind of
all I knew.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
And how old was he?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
I would say, between like twenties and thirties, somewhere in
that air. And he looked he looks like he would
have been related to me, if really makes sense, Like
he had features of my mom, like the dark hair,
the eyes, the smile.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Does she have green eyes?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
She has, they're kind of like a greenish hazel. Yeah,
and she has, you know, dark brown hair. My dad
is blonde, blondish red hair, So I inherited.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That from him.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
But yeah, So I remember being there with him and
again just the feeling of just love. And I don't
remember saying or really thinking anything at that point in time.
I think it was just kind of taking it all in.
(29:21):
The next thing, I remember, I'm sitting at what I
call Heaven's Riverside.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
And it was so, you're you're like somehow transported to
this other.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Place, somehow transported from place to place, and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
How or do you think these are these are just
kind of like the snapshots you were allowed to take back.
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
That kind of makes more sense. That makes a lot
more sense to me.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Because because some people have, you know, have said like
there was a lot more that they knew, they either
experienced or understood yeah, but they were only allowed Karina
as one person. She's like, Lord, why won't you I
know there was so much more? Why won't you let
me remember it?
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It's almost like snapshots that makes so much sense. Yeah,
because again from place to place, it's like, I can't
explain it to you because I don't know. I have
no honestly, I have no idea, right, But so then
I'm transported. You know. It's what I call Heaven's Riverside.
And it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Why was it beautiful?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
The water the water again was so blue, again, so blue,
but so clear. You could just you could see to
the bottom of it. Just the floor. I don't know
if it was sand, but again it just looked like
diamonds and the brass, the trees, everything just looked perfect,
(30:57):
the greenest greens, the cool breeze is swaying again. And
sitting on the side of this river bank and I'm
just looking and you can hear the birds chirping, and
you know, butterflies goe by, and just it was incredible.
(31:21):
And I look over and I'm sorry it might get emotional.
I look over to my left again, and I'm like,
kind of looking down but to the left, and I
tilt my head up and right there was I believe
(31:55):
that it was Jesus Christ. Oh, I'm sorry. It's kind
of a lot, you know. This is the first time
I've publicly talked about it.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Oh, I understand completely, Savannah. I mean, very few people
can remember that without it overwhelming their emotions.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
But it was right there, and his hair was brown,
it was about shoulder light, and his eyes were just
mesmerisingly blue, and his smile was.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
So perfect. I mean even his smile was radiating light.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
And he takes my hands and he tas, I love you.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Mm hmm, I love you.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
You were so worthy, you were so.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
Loved, You are mine, And in.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That moment, you were mine. Is that what he said?
You were so worthy, you are so loved, you are mine.
And just think all you said was the name Jesus,
and I felt but that's what he says, All who
call in the name of the Lord will be saved.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And I didn't know that. I had no idea, And
in that moment, I just felt more love than I
had ever felt in my entire life. And you know,
I know my parents love me. You know I know
I'm love. But it was just so overwhelming, but in
the best possible way.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
What was it like?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
It felt like every bad thing that had ever happened
in my life just completely vanished. M It felt like
all the pain, all the sickness, it just fell off.
It was just gone. I didn't feel sick, I didn't
feel scared. I didn't feel like I was dying. I
(34:31):
just knew that I was in the complete presence of God,
and that's all I knew. So I remember, I'm saying
after that, are.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
You standing, are you standing up? Or are you sitting down?
And hold your hands.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I'm sitting down. We're both kind of like kneeling down
the ground, but where.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Other So he came and knelt beside you.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yes, And so at this point we stand up and
he's still holding my hand that he says, have one
more thing that I don't want to show you. TRANSI
transition again. At this point I'm walking and as I'm
(35:31):
walking up, I see coming not out of the shadows,
but they just kind of appeared, and it was my family.
I saw my childhood dog. This game was gruffy. I
(35:55):
saw my dad's mother, my grandmother, murfy, and she was
dressed in a red sweatshirt and it had a dog
on it, and blue jeans just like she would have
been wearing here.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Beside her was my uncle Richard, who again was in
blue jeans, blue and flaid shirt, and he had a
pocket a dollar sticking out of it. He always gave
me a dollar every time I saw him when I
was a kid.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Oh, how funny. So it's kind of like a little
like yeah, yeah, and they had they had already passed away.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yes, yeah, they had already passed on, like many many
years ago. So then beside him, I saw my grandmother,
the one that I had tried and wanted to connect
with so.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Badly mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
And again she didn't looked sick. She looked good.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
She looked beautiful, and she was in.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
This very tropical Hawaiian looking shirt and she had one
flax and I can't even tell you down to the
buttons when her shoes. I mean, it was incredible. And
beside her was my granddad, her husband, and he was
(37:28):
dressed up and he had on a black suit, black
top hat. And every time there was a wedding or
a celebration or something, he would be in a suit
and he'd always joked, I need to have a top hat.
I need to have a top hat.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Oh, but he didn't.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
He didn't have a top hat.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
So there he did.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
There he had a top hat. And it was so
many just like little nods to my life. Here.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Did they look the age you knew them when they
passed away? Or did they look younger? Or what?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
He looked the age what they did when they passed away,
But they looked a lot healthier m hm. And they
they looked like younger in the face so recognizable as
to I was like, that's my grandmother, that's my grandfather,
and I knew with every else of my being that
(38:28):
it was them.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah, that's interesting. Sometimes I think people appear to us
sometimes they kind of the norm is like thirty, like
what you were saying, But they can appear to us
at whatever we would feel most comfortable with. So like
a grandparent would be like, yeah, if that's how mainly
(38:51):
you knew them and saw them, Yeah, many times they
will not always though.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, I've heard a lot of the times it's like
in the thirties and yeah, but for me, it was
they just looked like my grandparents, but they looked really good. Yeah,
they looked really happy.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
And did they say anything to you?
Speaker 2 (39:12):
My grandfather? And again all thought thought, mm hmm. He
would always call me granddaughter, granddaughter. I'm the oldest of
I think twelve or thirteen grandkids, and it was granddaughter, granddaughter.
(39:33):
It's not your time. You have to go back home.
And I remember I didn't want. I didn't want to.
I can. I don't know how to explain it as
if I I know that I was being stubborn where
(39:57):
I didn't want to come back. I didn't understand, and
I just I don't remember saying anything back, but I
remember just kind of thinking why m hmm. But I
don't want to. I don't want to stay here. I
don't want to go back. I don't want to go
back to wherever back is. I don't know where I'm
(40:18):
supposed to go back to, but I don't want to go.
And just like that, I was back and the first
words out of my mouth were, can I have a doctor? Pepper?
I mean alert, I was back and everyone's just freaking out, like, what.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
How is she?
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Is she here? She's asking for a doctor Pepper. What's happening?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Because you were ten days in a coma.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah, woke up completely alert.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Wow, Pepper.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
All the things to say, that's that's what came out
of my mouth.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, I used to be a huge Doctor Pepper fan,
so thinking that doctor Doctor Pepper's from heaven. Yeah, I
could see that.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I can't drink it anymore.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
I begged for it for so long they finally.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Left me have it.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I hated it.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah. When I once I was back awake, things are
pretty rough. In a month in the hospital, I formed
two forms of neuropathy, and I was disabled for about
seven to eight months.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Neuropathy where you can't feel in your feet.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yes, it's from It was from my knees down to
my feet those legs.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
You can't walk, You can't.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
It was very difficult. I could take maybe three steps
with a w and that would take me five minutes
and I would just scream and cry and peo. I
was on intense dialysis. My kidneys took a huge hit.
I was in complete renal failure for about three months.
(42:18):
I had dialysis three times a week for four hours
a day, and that was the most terrifying thing to me.
I do not like the sight of blood and even
you know, growing up watching so many horror movies and
stuff side of my own blood. I didn't like that.
So that was it was exhausting and it was hard.
(42:42):
And then overcoming a traumatic brain injury because no brain waves,
you know, for sixteen minutes, I had to go through
the physical therapy and the rehab part of the hospital.
I had to do occupational therapy to learn how to
write again, count money, everything. They would hold up little
(43:08):
flash cards with different colors and shapes like this one's
a doll, this one's a cat, this is a ball.
It was a lot for that moment to me felt
like eternity. I wanted to go home. I in my mind,
(43:29):
I thought I was still teaching, and every day I
would say, you have to let me go. I have
to get back to my class. My best friends had
to break it to me that I had gotten so
sick I had to resign.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Hmmm.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
That absolutely shattered me to the point I reached out
to my boss at the time and I asked her,
I said, hey, what what happened to me? And her
reply was, what you're alive, you know, like you're you're
messaging me right now? What Because at this point, A
(44:10):
lot of my friends had knew what had happened, and
I clinically died for sixteen minutes. In a Facebook post
that one of my friends had made at don viral
around my area. So I had people in churches praying
for me that I didn't even need.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Hmmm. And a girl from why did it go viral? I?
Speaker 2 (44:36):
One person shared it, another person shared it, and it
just kind of blew up in this area, and it
was just you know, please.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Pray for it, to pray for you, yeah that you know.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
This is what had happened. She's fighting for her life.
You know, she needs the strength of God. Please keep
praying for her. And a girl from my church that
I attend now is Jesse. She actually came to the
hospital while I was comatose, and she had never met
(45:07):
me before, and she prayed with my friends and my
family at that hospital for a long time. I mean,
my parents said it was the most beautiful prayer that
they had ever heard in their life. So, as I'm
in the hospital and I'm regaining my strength and my memory,
(45:32):
I hadn't told anybody at this time what had happened.
I wanted to, but I thought, Okay, they're gonna put
me in Crossroads, which is the kind of mental health facility.
And I didn't want that to happen because I wanted
to go home, and I didn't want to speak about
it until I got home because I felt like I
(45:54):
had Sayer there, and I had a nurse and her
name was Colby. She would always come into my room
and she's just so sweet and she I knew she
was a believer. She wore a cross necklace and she would,
you know, she would paint my nails, she would brush
my hair. She was just a friend. And she looked
(46:20):
at me one day and she said, honey, something happened,
and if you ever want to talk about it, you
can share it with me. I promise you I'm safe,
you can talk to me about it.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
So a couple of days passed and she comes in
one morning and she's like, hey, honey, and she's just
all cheery. She's like, I have a story I want
to tell you before I have to fuck out for
my shift. And I said okay, And she ends up
telling me the story of her near death experience. Oh wow,
(47:05):
she went to hell. Oh but she told me, she said,
I just have a feeling that the opposite happened to you.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
And you need to know right now that you are
such a miracle and you are a gift of God
and you're going to overcome all of this. And it
was so wild to have a nurse that had a
near death experience that just because.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
You didn't you didn't really even know anything about that.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
No, I had no idea, not the same.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
So this is one of the first ones you're hearing
about besides just having experienced it. Yeah, and probably were
you probably trying to sort through what was that? What happened?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yes, yes, sir, And I knew at that point in time.
I knew that I wanted to get baptized. Once I
got out of the hospital, I was I was very
adamant that I'm going back to the church I attended
when I was seventeen, and I was going to get
baptized by that pastor. I had it set down like
(48:19):
the day I get out of the hospital, like, you're
not taking me home, You're taking me to that church.
I need to. And I didn't know what baptism meant.
I had no idea. I just it was just on
my heart. So I go home and it's hard. For
(48:40):
about three months, I'm stuck in my living room. My
bed is in my living room. I go from the
bed to the requiner, to dialysis, doctor's appointments, nineteen medications.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
At the time, being Oh my goodness, is.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Thirty at the time. So I was twenty nine when
the cardiact arrest happened, and I was miserable. I won't lie.
I was absolutely miserable. But when I started going to church,
that misery kind of it started falling off, and I
(49:24):
started I didn't really know what prayer really meant at
this point in time, but I would just say, please, God,
if you just take this pain away, like I'll do
whatever you want me to do. I got to be
able to walk, I gotta be able from kidneys to function.
(49:45):
I'm thirty years old like that. I know this is
not what you want for me. This is not it
you brought me back. I'm here, I'm alive. I probably
shouldn't even be sitting at home right now, probably shouldn't
even be able to pray to you right now, So
please just heal me. And that was kind of my
prayer every day for a couple of months. The winter
(50:12):
was rough, but when the spring came around of last year,
it was as if I woke up one day and
the pain wasn't completely gone, but it was gone to
the point that I could start really try to walk again.
(50:35):
And I would use my walker in my apartment and
I would just go from room to room, kitchen, the
living room, back to back, and started building up my strength.
And I was told, you know, you may never walk again,
swim again, you may never teach again. You know, we
(50:58):
don't know. We can't put a time limit when any
of this. And within a year and a half my
kidneys are fully recovered. There's no inkling that I could
ever have cardiac arrest again. They're saying that I've recovered
from a traumatic brain injury. Wow, then a eropathy is gone.
(51:19):
I can walk, swim, I can teach again. I teach
Sunday school.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
I did get baptized. I got baptized twice. The first
time I was just so adamant. I didn't understand. I
just said, I love Jesus, went under the water, came out.
I was like a little kid. And then six months
passed and I decided I'm not on nineteen medicines anymore.
(51:50):
I think at that point I was down to ten.
I wasn't in a wheelchair anymore, so I could walk
myself and get in the pool. So six months had
passed and I got baptized again, and it was such
an incredible moment because I was able to walk through
my church, stand in front of everybody and say, hey,
(52:17):
I'm Savannah. I clinically died for sixteen minutes. I encountered
Jesus Christ and he saved me in every way a
person could be saved. And I went under the water
and it was only for a few seconds, but it
felt like eternity and it felt like glass shattering all.
(52:39):
I mean, it just felt like everything again, just bad.
Just it was gone in that water and it came
up and I just felt I felt like a new person,
I really did. I just it was so refreshed. I
(53:00):
want to say, like renewing.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
I don't know it just rejuvenating.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
That's the worst. That's the word.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah. And when when did you get baptized that the
second time? Just recently May ninth of this past year,
a year ago.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yeah, And it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
I mean, all this is really really fresh still, isn't.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
It really fast. I mean, it's been a very fast process.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
And yeah, I ended.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Up joining a prayer group that we go to we
meet weekly, m hmm, a life group that we meet weekly.
I am a greeter at my church. And I'm also
a Sunday school teacher.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
That's awesome. That's so cool. Can I ask you? Can
I ask you some questions just about Yeah, first of all,
thank you so much for sharing all that, of course,
and you you you know, I've I've heard it. I expected,
But when you teared up thinking about seeing Jesus, I
teared up too, because it's just, you know, I just
(54:14):
I think somebody who listened to these you know, there's
something cathartic when you see the emotion that again and
again and again can't be contained, you know, because of
how wonderful he is. So when you were in his presence,
(54:37):
when you when you saw him, how did you know
who it was?
Speaker 2 (54:42):
It was as if I had known him my entire life.
And the only way I really know how to explain that,
I just kind of just I just knew that I
was in the presence of God.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
So you knew he was God, and you knew Jesus.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Thing about anything, and he looked.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
He looked like Jesus, you said, shoulder linked hair, blue eyes. Interestingly,
that's so, it's so wild to me that it's gonna
be one of the questions I asked the Lord. Do
I get there? Like, Okay, what color are your eyes? Really?
Speaker 2 (55:25):
I've heard green, I've heard brown, I've heard blue, and
for me it was blue.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
And well, and you know, Heidi Barr, who's a friend
of mine now, who she was sixteen year old, didn't
know Jesus. She was Jewish, but she prayed to God
every night. She believed in God, even though her dad
told her there is no God and Jesus Christ is
the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. That's all she heard.
(55:52):
And yet when her horse crushes her, there he is.
And she said, I didn't tell anybody this for years
because he's Jewish. We have brown eyes, she's Jewish, but
he had blue eyes. Yeah, And a lot of people say,
so my working theory. And I don't know if this
(56:12):
is true or not, but is that maybe on earth
he really did. There was a tribe of Israelites that
did typically have blue eyes, or there are a lot
of them did, And so he could have, but then
the glorified Jesus, you know his eyes are I mean,
(56:33):
John described him like like fire, which kind of like
has all the colors, right, you see blues and you
see greens and yellows and reds and everything browns. But
I don't know, So what did he say anything else
to you? No, it was just that.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Yeah, sort fleet and to the point.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Yeah, And and why do you think he said that
to you?
Speaker 2 (57:04):
I think that he I think he knew that I
needed to know that I was loved because I didn't.
I didn't really feel loved. I knew that people loved me,
but I had a hard time accepting it. I would
always kind of push people away and didn't very uh
(57:29):
it's the word skittish, like I didn't mind people like
hugging me, being in my space, and none of it
was as if it was just like a full on embrace,
like I love you, you know. And I think it
was everything that I needed, as as I've told my
(57:49):
friends this, And I think I needed to die in
order for him to save me, in order for me
to get off of the really bad path that I
was on. One and I kind of want to say,
like I'm not here too, you know bash you know,
(58:11):
fairies or fairy tales or like anything like that. Everyone's
you know, convictions are their own. It just for me,
that's my story. And that's just kind of what happened
to me.
Speaker 1 (58:24):
Well, and what do you what do you did you
get any insight about all that now when you were there?
What's your what's your kind of understanding? Now?
Speaker 2 (58:39):
I would say that when I thought that I was
communicating with fairies, when I thought I was, you know,
leaving offerings to fairies and this that, and I think
that I openly invited evil spirits into my home in
(59:03):
some form that I don't know. I just know things
were really bad and when things got really bad, it
escalated very quickly.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:20):
And I don't know if we played a part in me,
you know, getting so sick. I've you know, my mind
has gone through all the theories of what if, what if?
What if? But to me, at the end of the day,
it doesn't really matter, you know what if. What matters
is that God let me have the second chance to
(59:42):
come back here and yeah, get it right.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
Well, and you know, Savannah, having having interviewed others where
in Heaven Jesus showed them all the times that he
showed up to try to intersect their life. Yeah, you know,
like a very clear like come on, follow, let's go.
And I wonder if you know he did that in
(01:00:08):
steering you toward that Christian daycare.
Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
And and the evil that felt like it had a
right to you was like, we got to get her,
we got to get her now. And as a result,
you know, because when when you started telling me they
weren't testing you for COVID or you know, they weren't
(01:00:34):
Like that's not normal, right, that's not normal. That almost
feels like a you know, a conspiracy or something that
I mean, I'm not saying the doctors were conspiring, but
I'm saying just a conspiracy of evil to try to
get you before you Yeah, turned.
Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
I've been told that many times.
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
And you know, and and and the Lord was pursuing
you that and no doubt, and that's why what came
to your mind was to cry out the name of Jesus.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
I don't have any doubt.
Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Agree. And it's just it's still surreal, you know, to me,
like it hasn't been that long. It's still really fresh.
Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
And yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
It's with me every day.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
What do you feel like you're taking back from this
that could help others.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
That no matter what diagnosis you have, no matter what
a doctor may say, our God has the final say,
and we'll bring miracles out of absolute disasters. I mean,
I'm still learning scripture, but I know it says that
he brings beauty for.
Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Ashes and works all things together. They're for good for
those who love them.
Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
That's definitely what He's done for me. He has brought
beauty from the ashes.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Yeah. Wow, Well, you have such a powerful story, and
I know that He's going to use you to have
such an influence on so many people and to point
so many people toward the light of God for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Wow pretty cool, huh. I mean, you know, you see
a couple of things in this that I just wanted
to make comment on. First, God was pursuing Savannah, you know,
even though even though she was going far from him,
you know, leading her into this Christian run daycare, the
way the people in it really loved her so that
(01:02:47):
at that moment of when she was dying, she called
on the name of Jesus, and that was the name
over all that had power over the evil that I
believe wanted to take her down, uh forever. But a
couple of interesting things you may have heard. First of all,
the tropical jungle. I honestly I had never heard that
(01:03:09):
except another young woman I just interviewed that you'll hear
from soon said that she saw in heaven that there
are there are places to experience our our favorite seasons,
like whether you like winter or summer, or fall or spring,
and it just it reminded me with the with the
tropical tropical experience or like a Debbie Ali. If you
(01:03:33):
didn't hear her in one of the episodes, I did
you know the beaches of Heaven, that all of it,
all of it is on earth, all the diversity of
beauty on Earth. It's just a foreshadowing of the wonders
to come because God created it all. And you know,
it was interesting the snapshots she said of the jungle,
(01:03:57):
and then she's in a playground, the park bench, and
then the tree by the river. And I tend to
think sometimes, you know, the Lord doesn't allow people to
bring back all that they experienced. So how she got
from one to another, she doesn't know. But I kind
of wonder if you know, the gaps are he didn't
let her bring back everything. He usually doesn't. By the way,
(01:04:19):
Paul talked about this when he had an experience of heaven,
and he said, you know, I experienced things that no
one is allowed to tell. So there's some things that
they're not allowed to bring back. Another fascinating thing is
no tattoos in heaven. Sorry, Ben's sledge. Ben as my
army vet friend who is so proud of his you know,
(01:04:43):
two long sleeves of tattoos, and we always joke about it,
and so I guess it's bad news for Ben. No tattoos,
she said. And she met her miscarried brother, who she
knew there had been a miscarriage, but she didn't know
if it was a boy or a girl. And he
was grown, like she said, in the late twenties or thirties.
(01:05:03):
But above all, I love what Jesus said to her,
you know, because really all she had done is say
that his name Jesus, you know, I think sincerely. And
when she encounters him, he says, I love you, and
you are so loved, You are so worthy, and you
(01:05:24):
are mine, and you know, it just reminds me of
the thief on the cross. You know, there were two thieves,
but on either side of Jesus. One mocked him, the
other said, Jesus, will you remember me when you come
in your kingdom. It was a simple acknowledgment and a
recognition of his need for him. And you know, it's
(01:05:45):
just a great reminder that Jesus is the one who
is God and who is love and loves you, and
he makes us worthy. You might not feel worthy. I
don't feel worthy. Most near death experiencers say the same thing.
I didn't feel worthy. But he makes us worthy because
he paid for all of our wrongs, because what he
(01:06:08):
really wants is our love. He created us to love
God and to walk through this life with God, and
so he makes a way. So I hope that this
has encouraged you, and I hope it will encourage you
to seek God if you don't know him, to walk
with God if you do. And if you've liked this
(01:06:29):
live series, you know, I hope you will dive deeper
into understanding the meaning of near death experiences and how
they relate to the Bible. Check out the Imagine Heaven
podcast and the links below if you want to go
even deeper. I've written books on imagine Heaven, which is
the forty commonalities of these near death experiences, and you
(01:06:50):
hear them, but you also see them in scripture. And
then imagine the God of heaven where you can, you know,
dive into the character and the person of who God is,
and you'll find you haven't yet imagined him as he
truly is. Well till next time, God's blessings,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!