What's In YOUR Hands?
Transcript text from MUSLIM Nurse Dies For 23 Minutes | JESUS Exposed The Truth About Salvation And Repentance (NDE). I think I have seen three separate postings of the same story, which is that while temporarily dead, Miriam Hussain (or Maryam Hassan--AI is not real sure about it) got to speak with Jesus. He showed her that she had been trusting something that she was doing, something "in her hands", to save her. In her mind, that thing was her demonstration of faithfulness, her defense against condemnation, her proof of worthiness of heaven.
But the only thing that gets us into heaven is Christ's faithfulness. He adhered to God's will to his death, the Manifestation of God revealing to us God's love for us. His shed blood and forgiving grace to us are the only things that get us into heaven--nothing ever in "our hands."
Then he held out his hand and he said, "Come. I want you to see what you've been carrying."
Then he said, "Get up, Mariam. There's something else you need to see." I felt the heat. It hit my face before I saw anything. That dry, scorching, skin-tightening heat. I knew it instantly. It was the heat of my father's oven when he opened the door at 4 in the morning and I'd be standing too close, and he'd put his hand on my shoulder and pull me back. Only this was a thousand times worse. We were standing on a kind of path, hard, dry ground like clay that's been baked in the sun. And way out ahead of us, the path went down into what I can only call a furnace. An enormous furnace so wide I couldn't see the edges of it. It glowed a deep angry orange and it roared. It was so loud. It wasn't like a campfire crackling. It was a roar, low and steady, like standing next to a jet engine. I've tried to find words for the smell. I can't. It wasn't like smoke. It was something worse, something that felt wrong in a way that went past your nose and right into your soul.
I grabbed onto Jesus's arm. I said, "I don't want to be here. Please, I don't want to be here." He didn't pull me away. He said, "I know. Look anyway." I looked. There were people on the path walking toward that furnace. Hundreds, thousands, more than I could count, walking one after another in a long, long line that stretched back behind us as far as I could see. Here's what I didn't expect: nobody was pushing them. Nobody was dragging them. There were no demons with pitchforks. They were walking there on their own. Every single one of them was holding something, holding it tight against their chest the way you'd hold a baby or a purse in a bad neighborhood. I saw a man in a nice suit holding a stack of papers. I saw a woman holding a Bible with her knuckles white around it. I saw an old man holding a trophy. I saw a young man holding a phone. I saw a woman holding prayer beads just like mine. I understood what they were holding. I don't know how I understood, but I did. They were holding the thing they were counting on, their good works, their record, their religion, their reputation, their own righteousness, the thing they were sure would be enough. They wouldn't let go of it. I watched a man stop just for a second like he'd heard something, like someone called his name. He looked back over his shoulder and for just a moment I saw him look right at Jesus. Then he turned around and held his papers tighter and kept walking.
I said, "Why don't they stop? Why don't they turn around? Can't they see where they're going?" Jesus said, "They can see it. They think what they're holding will carry them across." Then he said, "Look further back, Mariam." I looked back along that line of people and I saw myself. I was about halfway back walking along with everybody else in the blue scrubs I wore to work. I was holding my grandmother's prayer beads in one hand, and in the other hand, I was holding a stack of papers. My little notebook from when I was a teenager with every prayer marked off. My certificate from the Hajj. My nursing license. The complaint I wrote about Brenda. Under all of it, crumpled up the torn pieces of her card. I watched myself walk. I looked so certain, so calm. I was moving my lips. I was counting. And I was walking straight toward the fire. I screamed. I think I screamed. I said, "No, that's not right. I did everything right. I prayed. I fasted. I went to Mecca three times." Jesus looked at me with the most terrible sadness I have ever seen on any face. He said, "Mariam, who were you doing it for?" I opened my mouth and the answer came out before I could stop it. "For me." That was the truth. I'd prayed so I'd be safe. I'd fasted so I'd be safe. I went to Mecca so I'd have enough in my account. Every bead I counted was a coin I was putting in the bank. I'd spent my whole life trying to buy my way out of that fire. And I'd never once done any of it out of love. Not for God. Not for Yousef. Not for Rana. Not for Brenda. The things I was holding on to were the very things walking me toward the flames. My father's words came back to me so clearly, I could almost smell the bread. "The fire doesn't care who you are. It doesn't care if you're good. It only cares if you're close." I'm sitting here right now almost 3 years later and my hands are sweating just telling you about it. Isn't that something? I fell down on that hot dry ground and I said the thing I'd been afraid to say my whole life. I said, "What about the others? What about my mother? What about Yousef? What about all the people like me? What happens to them when they die?" Jesus knelt down next to me. He said, "No one walks this road because of the family they were born into." No one walks it because of the country they came from or the name of the building they prayed in. They walk it holding what they won't let go. Then he said, "And I don't want one of them here. Not one. Not your mother. Not Yousef. Not the man who taught your husband. Not one."
I said, "Then what do you do?" He said, "I go after them." He said, "I go to them in dreams. I stand at the foot of their beds in hospitals. I send them a Brenda. I send them Arana. I call their names until their very last breath. I called yours for 52 years." He said, "I've been calling you since you were 9 years old, reciting my mother's chapter in your aunt's living room." I thought about Rana at the payphone and Brenda in her car and the little green Bible and the card in my locker." And all the times something in me had stirred and I'd pushed it down and counted harder. He'd been calling me the whole time and I'd been counting so loud I couldn't hear him. Then Jesus said the thing that still wakes me up at night. He said, "The door is open until it closes." I understood it's open right now. It's open for my mother and Yousef and everybody I love, but it doesn't stay open forever. Every one of us gets a last breath. And I'd been walking toward that fire, calm and certain and counting, and I was maybe a heartbeat away from it being too late. I looked at myself in that line in those blue scrubs walking, and I looked at what I was holding, and I let go. I can't explain how. I was lying on the ground next to Jesus. And I was also in that line and in both places I opened my hands. I let the beads fall, my grandmother's beads that I'd counted on every night for 45 years. I let the papers fall, the notebook, the certificate, the complaint. They fell on that hot ground and they didn't even make a sound. I said, "I'm sorry." It came from somewhere so deep in me, I didn't know it was there. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I betrayed Rana. I let her walk out in the snow with no coat and I didn't answer her call. I hurt Brenda for doing what I should have been doing. I've hated my husband for 20 years while I prayed for him like I was better than him. I've been proud. I've been so so proud. I thought I could earn you. I thought I didn't need anybody to save me. I've been walking toward that fire my whole life and I called it faith. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Please, Jesus, please." It was the first time in my life I'd said his name like that as a prayer to him. He put his hand on the back of my head the way my father used to when he pulled me back from the oven and he pulled me back. The heat went away. The roaring went away. It was quiet and the golden light came back and I was on my knees in front of him and my hands were empty. For the first time in my life, my hands were empty, and it felt like the most wonderful thing in the world. He said, "It's done, Mariam. That's all. It's done. Not 'we'll see.' Not 'if your good deeds are heavy enough'--just 'done', 'paid', 'finished', 'nothing left to count'."
I've never felt anything like that. I felt like I'd been carrying a sack of flour on my back my whole life, and somebody finally lifted it off. I felt light. I felt clean. I felt like a little girl again, running through my father's bakery at 4 o'clock in the morning with flour on my nose. I said, "Yes, yes. Whatever you want, I'm yours." He smiled at me and it was like the sun came up. Then he said, "You're going back." I said, "No." I actually said no to him. I said, "Please don't make me go back. They'll never believe me. Yousef, my mother, my brother, they'll say I'm crazy. They'll say I'm possessed. Please let me stay with you. He said, "You'll lose some things. Some of them will hurt." I said, "Then why?" He said, "Because Rana is still praying." I didn't understand. He said, "Every Friday for 30 years, she's asked me for one thing. Go and let her see it." Then he said, "And tell them I'm still calling." I felt myself being pulled. I held on to him as long as I could. I said, "Will you be there when I go back? Will you be there?" He said, "I was always there."
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
1:09 AM
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