The following is an excerpt from One Heartbeat Away by author Mark Cahill. His book is designed to help us think about the inevitable: our death. It is a great witnessing tool to promote discussion with anyone not sure of their eternal destiny.

I talked to a young man one day who mentioned that he had been injured and wound up on an emergency room operating table. He said his heart had stopped beating and as his soul rose out of his body, immediately the sense of an evil presence began to come over him and he could hear an evil, hissing laughter. He told me he was so glad to get back into his body and be alive. He now knows how real evil is.

A respiratory nurse who works in an emergency room told me about a patient who had gone "code red," —he flatlined. She and some other medical personnel rushed over with the defibrillator to try to bring him back to life. They applied the paddles and revived him. She said that he started screaming and shouting, "The heat! the heat!" Then his heart stopped again.

They brought him back to the second time. He shouted, "The flames, the flames!" They lost him again.

Four times the man flatlined and was brought back, each time shouting about the heat or the flames. After the last time, he died, and they couldn't bring him back. She said all the doctors and nurses just stood there for a few minutes and stared at the body. They all knew that man went to hell. He was screaming it to them before he even got out of here.

I have met several people (all in a non-drug and non-alcohol-induced state) who experienced a burning hell rather than being with Jesus, or the typical tunnel- and white-lights scenario. So, don't believe that sweetness-and-light neardeath stories are the only kind people report.

Dr. Maurice Rawlings, a cardiologist, has witnessed numerous patients during and after their near-death experiences and reported his findings in Omni magazine. After interviewing 300 patients immediately after resuscitation, Dr. Rawlins says that nearly half of them reported seeing a lake of fire, devil-like figures, and other sights reflecting the reality of hell. "There is a life after death," Rawlins said, and if I don't know where I'm going, it's not safe to die.