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| My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 68 reviews)
Sales Rank: 30077
Category: Book
Author: Howard Storm
Publisher: Doubleday
Studio: Doubleday
Manufacturer: Doubleday
Label: Doubleday
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0385513763
Dewey Decimal Number: 133.9013092
EAN: 9780385513760
ASIN: 0385513763
Publication Date: February 15, 2005
Release Date: February 15, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Not since Betty Eadie?s Embraced by the Light has a personal account of a Near-Death Experience (NDE) been so utterly different from most others?or nearly as compelling.
In the thirty years since Raymond Moody?s Life After Life appeared, a familiar pattern of NDEs has emerged: suddenly floating over one?s own body, usually in a hospital setting, then a sudden hurtling through a tunnel of light toward a presence of love. Not so in Howard Storm?s case.
Storm, an avowed atheist, was awaiting emergency surgery when he realized that he was at death?s door. Storm found himself out of his own body, looking down on the hospital room scene below. Next, rather than going ?toward the light,? he found himself being torturously dragged to excruciating realms of darkness and death, where he was physically assaulted by monstrous beings of evil. His description of his pure terror and torture is unnerving in its utter originality and convincing detail.
Finally, drawn away from death and transported to the realm of heaven, Storm met angelic beings as well as the God of Creation. In this fascinating account, Storm tells of his ?life review,? his conversation with God, even answers to age-old questions such as why the Holocaust was allowed to take place. Storm was sent back to his body with a new knowledge of the purpose of life here on earth. This book is his message of hope.
"This is a book you devour from cover to cover, and pass on to others. This is a book you will quote in your daily conversation. Storm was meant to write it and we were meant to read it."
-From the foreward by Anne Rice
As I lay on the ground, my tormentors swarming around me, a voice emerged from my chest. It sounded like my voice, but it wasn?t a thought of mine. I didn?t say it. The voice that sounded like my voice, but wasn?t, said, ?Pray to God.? I remember thinking, ?Why? What a stupid idea. That doesn?t work. What a cop-out . . .?
That voice said it again, ?Pray to God!? It was more definite this time. I wasn?t sure what to do. Praying, for me as a child, had been something I had watched adults doing. It was something fancy and had to be done just so. I tried to remember prayers from my childhood experiences in Sunday school. Prayer was something you memorized. What could I remember from so long ago? Tentatively, I murmured a line, which was a jumble from the Twenty-third Psalm, ?The Star-Spangled Banner,? the Lord?s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and ?God Bless America,? and whatever other churchly sounding phrases came to mind.
?Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. For purple mountain majesty, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Deliver us from evil. One nation under God. God Bless America.?
To my amazement, the cruel, merciless beings tearing the life out of me were incited to rage by my ragged prayer. It was as if I were throwing boiling oil on them. They screamed at me, ?There is no God! Who do you think you?re talking to? Nobody can hear you! Now we are really going to hurt you.? They spoke in the most obscene language, worse than any blasphemy said on earth. But at the same time, they were backing away.
?From My Descent into Death
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| Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...
 Stunning, shocking, brought me back to Joy January 8, 2009
I'm a lazy (non-churchgoing) Christian, who forgot about Joy and who found it again through this book. Joy is, in short, the realization that everything that happens to you, no matter how bad, will end up being positive, if you love God. Joy means you're content in the darkest hours, and that you're ecstatic in times when others might just be content. All because you can pray to God, and you Know that He is listening.
I don't mean to sound like some eveangilistic holy-roller, because I'm NOT that.
Just read this book, and decide for yourself.
Incredible journey! January 4, 2009
I've read this book twice and recommended it to probably 10 people. It packs a wallop due to the uncanny nature of what happened to a very obtuse and non-spiritual person. And what happened to him after his unworldly excursion is the most meaningful of all such experiences I've read.
An excellent Testament December 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a medium and clairvoyant I teach many spiritual classes and do many readings connecting with the other side. I truly enjoyed this book and his testement. I wish more people lived life with the thought of how they could give back to God and what is in store for them. I found this writer to be sincere and to carry a very strong powerful message. It was a great book that I truly enjoyed and I highly recommend it.
Immortality Witness December 3, 2008
Howard Storm's My Descent into Death: A Second Chance at Life (New York: Doubleday, c. 2005) is a fascinating near-death account. A university art professor, a "self-sufficient" Stoic with no religious inclinations, Storm was in Paris in 1985 when he suffered a life-threatening perforation of his stomach, much like a burst appendix. He'd hoped for artistic fame. To become a "great artist" he'd been willing to sacrifice everything, and everyone. "I didn't believe in life after death. When you died, it was like having the switch turned off. That was it, the end of your existence, finished, just darkness" (p. 23).
But that belief all changed in a moment! His wife rushed him to a hospital, but it was a week-end when most of the staff enjoy their leisure, so he lay, untended for some 10 hours. Lying there, he confesses to giving up on life: "Saying to myself, `Let it end now,' I closed my eyes. . . . . I knew that what would happen next would be the end of any kind of consciousness or existence. I knew that to be true. The idea of any kind of life after death never entered my mind because I didn't believe in that kind of thing. I knew for certain that there was no such thing as life after death. Only simpleminded people believed in that sort of thing. I didn't believe in God, or heaven, or hell, or any other fairy tales. I drifted into darkness, a sleep into annihilation" (p. 9).
What followed was not "annihilation" but a "descent" into another realm of Reality, a descent that totally transformed Howard Storm. He was aware of moving about the hospital, seeing others while being unseen. He saw himself, looking like a "wax replica of me" (p. 112), lying unconscious under a sheet in the bed. Leaving the hospital, he encountered various people, taking a journey, feeling deep despair and hopelessness. He was surrounded by creatures who "were once human beings" (p. 17) who jeered and screamed and attacked him. Immersed in darkness, he experienced some of the horrors of Hell.
All alone, lying on the ground, under lethal attack, something inside him urged him to pray, to ask God for help. As a child he had prayed, as taught in Sunday school. But for years he had never even though of praying. But his world had dramatically changed! So he tried to remember how to pray, cobbling together fragments from the Lord's Prayer, the 23d Psalm, and "God Bless America."
To my amazement, the cruel, merciless beings tearing the life out of me were incited to rage by
my ragged prayer. It was as if I were throwing boiling oil on them. They screamed at me, "There
is no God! Who do you think you're talking to? Nobody can hear you! . . . . But at the same
time, they were backing away . . . . I realized that saying things about God was actually driving
them away.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I was alone in that darkness for time without measure. I thought about what I had done. All my life I had thought that hard work was what counted. My life was devoted to building a monument to my ego. My family, my sculptures, my painting, my house, my gardens, my little fame, my illusions of power, were all an extension of my ego. All of those things were gone now, and what did they matter? All those things that I had lived for were lost to me, and they didn't mean a thing (pp. 19-21).
Fortunately, his prayer (however feeble) delivered him. He also remembered a song, "Jesus Loves Me," and began singing the bits of it he remembered. He suddenly knew how much he needed such love!
"For the first time in my adult life I wanted it to be true that Jesus loved me. I didn't know how to express what I wanted and needed, but with every bit of my last ounce of strength, I yelled out into the darkness, `Jesus, save me.' I yelled that from the core of my being with all the energy I had left. I have never meant anything more strongly in my life" (p. 24). Then came the Light, brilliant and beautiful! But "it wasn't just light. This was a living being, a luminous being approximately eight feet tall and surrounded by an oval of radiance. The brilliant intensity of the light penetrated my body Ecstasy swept away the agony. Tangible hands and arms gently embraced me and lifted me up. I slowly rose up into the presence of the light and the torn pieces of my body miraculously healed before my eyes. All my wounds vanished and I became whole and well in the light. More important, the despair and pain were replaced by love. I had been lost and now was found; I had been dead and now was alive" (p. 25).
The Light was Jesus. "I was unconditionally loved and accepted. He was King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Christ Jesus the Savior. Jesus does love me, I thought" (p. 25). Never before had he been so loved.
Still more: "This person of blinding glory loved me with overwhelming power. After what I had been through, to be completely known, accepted, and intensely loved by this beautiful God/man of light surpassed anything I had ever known or could possibly have imagined. I had called out to Jesus and he came to rescue me" (p. 26). Jesus delivered him.
In the presence of Jesus and the angels, Storm then went through an honest "life review," presenting the often painful and disgraceful aspects of his past. He realized how all of us, in time, will be judged. The truth about us will be revealed. Storm realized that only God's love will save us. But unless we live in that love and live rightly we will not fare well in the Judgment. Full of questions, he wondered "what happens when we die" and learned:
When people die, they don't know that they have died. The world looks the same to them, and they feel completely alive. Whatever trauma a person experienced in dying is only a vivid memory. The suffering is gone and the person feels physically better than he or she ever did in life.
There is disturbing confusion, however, because the individual cannot interact with other people or his surroundings. No one can hear or see him. Nothing responds to her touch. Most people are not ready to die and can't accept the fact they have died. Some people are ready and are relaxed and eagerly anticipate the reunion with loved ones who have preceded them. This is the condition that makes their transition beautiful and advances them toward heaven.
After death, you will be receptive to God's love or you will not, depending on how you have lived your life. Only God knows what is in a person's heart. How we judge people has little to do with how God knows us. We judge people by their actions, and God knows us by our intentions. God knows every deed, every thought, and every motivation that we have. If we have loved God, loved the one that God has sent to us, loved our fellow person, and loved ourselves, we are drawn toward God. If we have not loved God, God's son, our fellow person, or ourselves, we are repulsed by God's love. There is nothing in between. Every person knows inside whether or not he or she has lived lovingly. God knows (pp. 49-50).
Hopefully, Storm says, while still on earth we will come to terms with God's will and walk His way. We need to ever remember, he says, that:
This life that God has given us is a precious gift. We are to use it wisely because this opportunity to prepare ourselves for heaven is given only once. No one will ever be given this exact opportunity again. God does not bestow the gift of life on us frivolously or arbitrarily. We are given this life opportunity to prepare ourselves for our continuing spiritual growth in heaven. Failing to use our life opportunities wisely and lovingly is a rejection of God. Throwing one's life away is a rejection of God and is not preparation for heaven. The choices we make in this world determine whether we are candidates for heaven or not. In each of us we know whether we are going to heaven or not. If you don't know the answer, you are in big trouble and need to ask God to show you the way immediately Fortunately God wants us to come HOME, and God has sent us someone to show us the way home. His name is Jesus (p. 59).
Jesus is the answer! He alone is the "way, the truth, and the life," the "resurrection and the life." Faith in Him brings us eternal life. That Storm met Jesus in his near-death experience has made all the difference in his life. And though he wanted to stay with Jesus and the angels, he was sent back to earth with a mission. So he awakened in the Paris hospital, discovering that against all odds he had survived 10 hours with a medical problem that should have killed him much earlier. Surgeons finally operated and the perforated stomach mended. Somewhat miraculously, he managed to leave the Paris hospital and fly home to the U.S, where he soon found himself in another hospital, fighting double pneumonia, a collapsed lung, hepatitis, and a horrendous fever. This resulted in a weeks-long, excruciating time. Again his life was at risk. And yet the realities he'd earlier encountered were sustained.
Several times during this period, when I was awake, believing that I would die soon, an angel came into the room. The room would fill with radiant white light, and the most beautiful figure of a luminous angel would appear by my bed. This happened only when I was awake, and I was amazed by the angel's appearance. The angel would assure me that I was going to live and that God was watching over me. I would immediately feel better physically and emotionally. The angel never came when someone else was in the room and always left before someone arrived. A nurse would often come into the room immediately after an angel had departed. I would be sitting up in bed, tears running down my face, and I would tell her that an angel had just been in the room. The nurses would always laugh and tell me to get some rest; I knew they didn't believe me. I also knew that the only reason I was alive was because the angels were helping me heal (p. 93).
Storm suffered much pain in the hospital, but he discovered that prayer often brought more comfort when drugs (which he generally refused to take so as to stay alert to what was taking place). In praising Him, in vowing to serve Him in any way possible, he found peace. He also began to read--especially the Bible, which became a fountain of truth. Rightly read, listening for God to speak through His written Word, tells us what we really need to know. The writings of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton became a special blessing. In time he visited Merton's grave in Kentucky. While praying there, a young man came into the cemetery and gave him a copy of Merton's poems. He read, appreciatively, one of the poems. He then noticed that the young man was gone. He asked a friend who was with him if he had seen him, and he had. A bit later, "when I was looking at photographs of Thomas Merton, I saw a picture of him when he was in his early twenties. He looked just like the young man in the cemetery!" (p. 119). Given his awakened sensitivities to the eternal world, Storm says: "I believe the spirit of Thomas Merton had visited me and consoled me at his grave. He reassured me that he understood my struggle of living in limbo between heaven and earth" (p. 119). Just as he discerned Merton's presence, so too he sensed angels, God's special messengers, in our world. He finds God speaking to him through nature and other people as well. Indeed, rather than astounding us with their glory and power, "Angels sometimes appear to us as people" (p. 137).
After regaining his health, he attended United Theological Seminary and received a Master of Divinity degree. Much that he studied, however, he had already learned from Jesus and the angels in his near-death experience. He began to tell his story and attending church, finding a home in a United Church of Christ. Before long, his university work became less and less interesting, and he embarked upon a pastoral ministry in that denomination.
In her laudatory introduction to this book, Anne Rice says, "This is a book you devour from cover to cover, and pass on to others. This is a book you will quote in your daily conversation. Storm was meant to write it and we are meant to read it." That's high praise from a highly successful writer and recent convert to Christ. And she sums up nicely my commendation as well. There are some underlying theological issues I could criticize (Storm is, after all, a minister in perhaps the most liberal of American denominations), but as long as one simply listens to his story it is most persuasive and edifying.
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read this book! November 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I came across this book recently in my local library. I couldn't put it down once I began reading... I have always had a fascination with near death experiences. This book will satisfy those seeking answers to many life and death questions. I am not a conservative Christian by any means. But I am Christian. This book confirms my beliefs in God and that the meaning of life to to love. A must read for anyone.
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