As a successful airline pilot and businessman, Jim Woodford had a lot going for him. a challenging career, a large home, an adoring wife, a young family, and financial security. Acquiring another new car, another new aircraft did not fulfill his inner void. Jim longed for something deeper.

Jim was never a religious man. Although his wife, Lorraine, was a vibrant Christian, Jim gave very little thought to religion, God, creation, or mans purpose in life. Matters of faith just were not of much concern. Jims inner drive and motivation were acquiring more tangible possessions.

Suddenly Jims world was spinning out of control. The doctors diagnosis was Guillain-Barre disease. He couldnt work. His livelihood was gone. He has to start selling off assets to keep up his life style, and then one night he ended up in the hospital, his life drained from him. That night he was pronounced clinically dead.

Jim describes the next eleven hours as being sub-consciously aware of being transported into the magnitude of heavens awesome splendor, and the horror of the deep blackness of the chasm leading to hell. He relates the reality of his extraordinary experience, the intense brightness, and spectacular sights of heaven, and the awe of being face to face with Jesus.

Jims consciousness returned. His life was changed forever. He had called out to God and found the answer to what his soul had been longing for. Jim is taking the message of his journey across America, sharing the good news of heaven, the grace and mercy of God, and the glory of His presence.

Each chapter includes a scripture refuge, profound thought-provoking questions, parallels from Jims career as a pilot, and a place for the reader to record or journal an observation, question, personal insight, and a spiritual application.

As you read and reflect on the scriptural you'll discover, the life-changing message of forgiveness, wholeness, and freedom, resulting from Jims journey.

Jims story is compelling, and heart-stirring, a clear message with an eternal perspective; inspiring and challenging, a story that will resonate with anyone seeking to deepen their faith and experience a new awareness of Christs presence.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided for review purposes. The opinions expressed are my own.

I have read several NDE books. They usually talk about heaven and/or hell a little bit, but it turns out to be more of an autobiography. However, this author does spend a large amount of the book on describing heaven with very little focus on himself.

It was very interesting and I finished it in 2 days. I usually dont go through a book that quick because I start getting bored. This book was interesting the whole way through!

A window into afterlife for Christians. I was blessed by the opening scripture 1 Peter 1:3-5. The book has blessed me, esp since my mom passed away recently.. It was such a great reminder that life of earth is temporal and Heaven is our eternal destination, where God is. Praise God.

I believe I'm on my fourth reading of Woodford's book. Every time I am drawn in from the get-go as he is very detail oriented and his book is well-organized, telling the story from the beginning to the end without jumping around or digressing into bible passages and such. It's just a straight shot. Jim's lifetime of experience as a pilot gives him the ability to assess how fast he's moving with a keen eye on every detail of his experience, even though much of it defies what we can begin to comprehend, much less express and share with others.

He's very down to earth, in many regards. A "normal" perfunctory Christian (Catholic) - going to church because "that's just what we did." No real soul-searching for greater meaning or purpose to life. Until he died - and even then had trouble grasping that the dead body in his truck was himself! - and was able to provide in great detail the "portal" that opened up and through which he was transported to another place where he teetered on the brink between what appeared to be heaven vs hell. His Catholic upbringing would have colored his perceptions to some extent, but he does a good job of taking the reader through a temporal sequence of his experiences. This temporal sequencing can be very difficult for many who have NDEs because of all that happens simultaneously since "heaven" is outside of our normal sense of time and space. Yet Jim manages to make some sense out of it and keep the reader on a progressive journey.

It is interesting that he did not encounter his deceased and much-loved grandparents nor his father whom he never knew. He conjectures that such meetings are for people who will stay in heaven, and yet many NDErs report seeing deceased loved ones and come back to report it...so obviously the were NOT going to be staying in heaven! Perhaps because Jim was not on the "right" spiritual plane (no pun intended) with his loved ones, he could not see them. Had Jim been a man of faith, perhaps he would have seen his relatives? It's not for me to judge, but he's honest about it.

I have read other NDE accounts and most are discombobulated, often filled with bible quotes and "lessons" they wish to convey rather than giving the straight story. I confess that I have not taken the time to read any of the "Taking the Journey" parts authored by Thom Gardner in Jim Woodford's book - I get a lot out of the straight story and usually read it again for inspiration. The "take the journey" pages are a distraction from the story! But maybe those parts are helpful to some people.

Few people come back with clear vivid detailed accounts like Jim's. I've read Dannion Brinkley's "Saved by the Light" numerous times as that is another beginning-to-end sequential account with great detail about his time in heaven. Both men proceed in a logical way, with Jim being more humbled than Dannion. In the aftermath of their NDEs, both men had a great deal of painful rehabilitation to go through in order to recover. Perhaps that is humbling of them as well. The NDE accounts I do NOT care for are ones where the person is hardly humbled but returns as a braggart. I don't know who, upon experiencing Christ and/or God, could possibly be other than humbled. Jim Woodford was very much humbled, chastened and charged with telling people about his experience to help others return to faith... and especially to revere the power of prayers!

The columns of light Jim sees in the skies of heaven parallel the story of a woman who was "killed" in a car accident, left her body and was able to perceive the thoughts and feelings of the people in the traffic jam behind her wrecked vehicle: they were mostly angry that they were stuck behind an accident and would be late for whatever they were going it... but it was around the fourth or fifth car back from the accident that the woman who died and went out of body saw a beam of light going straight on up into the sky -- and she realized this woman was praying for her! So the "beam of light" from prayers has been documented elsewhere, but Jim did not know about this when he was dead.

It's all very fascinating and I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a straightforward case story of dying and experiencing what appears to be "heaven"..