Sid: Now one thing is for sure, everyone unless the Messiah returns quickly, everyone is going to most likely exit their earth suit and goes to Heaven or Hell when they die. And if we can get some insight into Heaven from a Biblical perspective and experimental perspective that lines up with the Bible there’s a lot of things that will make more sense on this earth. And my guest, Dean Braxton on May 4th 2006 went into the hospital and he actually had prolonged cardiac arrest for an hour and forty-five minutes. He had what the medical term is prolonged cardiac arrest and what is the first thing Dean Braxton that you remember happened to you while this seven days of you literally being out and not knowing what was going on while your wife was interceding and friends for you to live, what ‘s your first memory?
Dean: Oh, the first memory I had you know is telling somebody right after they took the breathing tube out of my mouth that I’d seen Jesus three times and He told me to go back each one of those times. As I was telling them, you know that was you know the conversation with this person was so real to me still in the sense that I just felt the power of God all over me still and I remember being at the feet of Jesus. And just being in His presence, so those were the first things that were going through my mind and no one could tell me, no one could convince me, no one could say that Jesus was not real. I had believed He was real before, I had that conviction, but there was something else that just happened to me like I know that Jesus is real. There is no way that you can tell me anything different.
Sid: Now, could you remember anything beyond what you just said to me at that moment?
Dean: Oh yes, I can remember in the sense of looking at Jesus and a lot of times when I first came back, I’ll be honest with you I was telling people that I went to be where the Father and Jesus is. And people said, “Well you went to Heaven.” And I said, “You know if that’s Heaven, that’s great but I was where the Father and Jesus is.” I wasn’t so much looking at so much that it was Heaven, I was where Jesus, my Lord was and so I wanted to be in His presence and I would tell people, “If Heaven doesn’t have Jesus or the Father, you don’t want to be there; you want to be where Jesus and the Father is.” Matter of a matter of fact I came to understand that inside of us we are longing to really be with Jesus and the Father. Sometimes we say that we want to go to Heaven were really wanting to be in the presence of Jesus and the Father, that’s what we want. And so I came to really understand…
Sid: So, you’re home you’re real home if I were to put it in my words, is not this earth, it’s in the presence of God.
Dean: It is in the presence of God, it’s a great way of putting it. My real home is in the presence of God. Now I can tell you right now, because of experiencing that when I go on praying, I always tell people now I’m going home because I’m in the presence of God.
Sid: But, wait a second now, you pray, you were born again, you were Spirit Filled, you prayed for the sick you saw them recover, you had words of knowledge, you knew about the presence of God, what’s the difference now?
Dean: I started looking at it from a Heavenly point of view instead of from an earthly point of view. A lot of times we are describing things or we’re experiencing things from an earthly point of view and yet each and every one of us have the Holy Spirit inside of us to be able to really experience God from a Heavenly point of view.
Sid: Do more people, do some people have more of the Holy Spirit than others?
Dean: For me, I came to understand that we have the fullness of God in us in His fullness. We don’t have a part of Him, or some of Him, we have a fullness of Him. You know probably before this happened I would have said that some people have more some people you got to do this you got to do that to get more of God.
Sid: You have to pray more in tongues, you have to read the Bible more you know those sort of things?
Dean: Yeah, those sort of things. But when I was before Jesus and He looked at me, saw himself inside of me, as I tell people I was in. There was nothing else I had to do, His fullness was in me now I understand how much of Him is in me so when I am ministering and I’m going out there to talk to others, even talking to you right now, I know that Jesus is in me working, I know it.
Sid: Okay, well tell me some of your experiences.
Dean: Well, some of the experiences, you mean in being in Heaven?
Sid: Yes.
Dean: Okay, some of the experience of being in Heaven was really experiencing the love of Jesus to the fullness. I tell people I looked at His feet, His feet loved me, what I mean by that is if all I saw of Jesus was His feet, nothing else but His feet and they looked just like John talks about them, being that goldish brass and just talking about the glory that’s coming off of it but what got me was His feet loved me and if I didn’t see another part of Jesus but just His feet I experienced the fullness of His love for me through His feet. Now there is a word that I’m using and it’s called experience and I like using that because it wasn’t so much a feeling it was experience I experience everything there.
Sid: So when the Bible says God is love, you comprehended what it meant.
Dean: Yes. I comprehended what it meant to its fullness, I looked at His hands and they do have the nail prints I tell people, but if I just saw His hands, his hands love me. Every part of His being, when I looked at Him He love me, not only did He love me but it was like I was the only one He loved. Knowing that He loved all of God’s creation you know, but coming to the understanding of how much He loves me so much that it is not taking from anybody else that the love He has for me is directed at me and His fullness and it’s not taking it from anyone else.
Sid: What about His eyes?
Dean: When I looked into His eyes they are just like John describes them, that flaming fire but again, I got lost in His eyes, even talking to you I have to hold back because I can stop and look into His eyes even now and get lost in them because the love…
Sid: You’re provoking me to jealousy! How can I do that?
Dean: Well…
Sid: And by the way the job of the gentile believer in Jesus is to provoke the Jew to jealousy so you’re just living up to your job description, but go ahead.
Dean: Well, I really believe that we all have the Holy Spirit and He show us how to do that and I believe that there are times when you are praying that literally you are experiencing what I experienced and it may not be in the length that I experienced it but it’s still you’re experiencing it. When I looked into His eyes and I saw that love that he has for me, just for me it was like no one else in this entire universe existed in the sense of that moment He was looking at me. And I knew that He loved others, but I knew that the love that He was showing for me was that He had for me; it was like it was created just for me.
Sid: And yet as you just said, He has that same quantity of love for everyone listening to us.
Dean: Correct, correct everyone that’s listening. You know that’s what’s changed part of my prayer life more than anything else about praying for people. I go places and I take a list of names and people probably don’t know this and I’ll share it with you. I’ve got over 16,000 names that I have on a piece of paper that I spend time and praying. I don’t pray for everyone every day I split them up into different areas and I pray for them as the week goes through. But I believe that when I’m praying for these people, because of the love that I experienced from God and seeing the love of the Father and seeing the love of Jesus toward me and when I communicated with Jesus and communication there was just a thought going back and forth. I just tell people that it was like a computer downloading; He communicated to me and I communicated back to Him. And I remember looking in to His eyes and after I thought about myself I would think about someone else and I would think about the love for them. I would think about someone else and I would see the love for them, and it was like He only loved them. That changed my prayer life so that when I pray for people I know how much the Lord loves them, He loves them more than I could even imagine or they can think. It goes on and on and on.
Sid: You said that you were kind of surprised at who made Heaven and who missed Heaven of people you knew that had died.
Dean: Well, and that was a surprise to me because there was certain people that I thought would make it and didn’t make it and there are certain people that I didn’t think would make it and made it. What I mean by that is that God knows the heart. He takes it out of our hands.
Sid: So the heart is more important than the façade, what we see on the outside.
Dean: Correct, I say that to you because I tell people that about Aunt Barbara was a lady in my life my Dad’s sister and loved her dearly and I would have probably told people over and over that Aunt Barbara did not make it to Heaven, but she was there when I got there, she was there.
Sid: Who was the first person that greeted you?
Dean: The first person that besides Jesus, I went to the feet of Jesus was my Grandmother Mary and I tell people a lot of times that the reason I believe my Grandmother Mary greeted me was because she was the only one when I was growing up that I knew that loved Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and she spent a lot of time praying for me and my brothers and my mother and my Dad and I really believe I came into the kingdom because of her prayers. Well right after I accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior my Grandmother died. So I never really got to communicate with her or talk to her about the faith that I had or the belief that I had. So when I got there Grandmother Mary she was shiny she had a tear of joy and she had a big smile on her face and she was there to greet me.
Sid: And she really wanted you to do something when you got back to earth. We’ll pick up there on tomorrow’s broadcast.
