Apologetics
My Life Flashed Before My Eyes
We’ve all heard the expression, “my life flashed before my eyes.” I heard it recently on a rerun of the sitcom “Happy Days.” Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, had just had a “close call,” probably on his motorcycle, so he was visiting the Cunninghams to talk about his mortality and baptism. When Fonzie had his “flash” experience it was a “comic moment” but this experience is no laughing matter. I know, I had one too.
In 1973 I was a law student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In the early spring of 1973 I had begun to spend the weekends in Lansing where I planned to work after graduating. On this particular Monday morning, I had gotten on the road early, probably Highway 96, and had turn off on Highway 23 going south toward Ann Arbor. I was driving a 1970 Ford Maverick that I had bought new. I remember that I paid exactly $1995 plus about $9 shipping to get the car from the factory in Detroit to Ann Arbor. I’m pretty sure that I was driving the posted speed limit of 70 miles per hour so I could get home, change clothes and make it to a 9 o’clock class. I was traveling on a section of divided highway on what was otherwise a clear blue morning when suddenly it happened—my entire life “flashed” in my head and before my eyes. Suddenly I realized that my car was spinning out of control. Before I knew what was happening my car came to rest at a 45-degree angle to the highway with both rear tires stuck in the mud of the slopping embankment. It did not take long for me to realize that I had suddenly come upon the most hazardous road condition one could encounter, something called “black ice.” Black ice is invisible, and, unless one knows in advance what to do, it can be a recipe for disaster. I had learned to drive using my stepfather’s 1954 Ford and 1957 Chevy. I had never before had an accident. When I started to spin I had done all the wrong things. I had slammed on my brakes which spun me around 360-degrees, then, somehow the car had bounced off the road and come to rest in the ditch. As I sat behind the steering wheel looking across the highway I realized that others cars were also sliding and spinning. I got out of the car and within a few minutes I was able to flag a tow truck that pulled me from the ditch. The only damage to my car was a slightly bent rear bumper. Nervously, very slowly and cautiously I completed the trip home.
What I remember to this day, as if it were yesterday, is that I went inside my apartment and called my mother to tell her about the “flash” and the near-accident. I had remained calm enough to drive home after the incident but suddenly I was overcome with fright so much so that I could not sit still. I kept pacing the floor completely overwrought. For days afterwards I keep re-living the incident in my head, especially the “flash.”
It has been 32 years since the “flash” and this is the first time that I have tried to articulate what I think it meant. In 1981 I became a born-again Christian. To me, saying “born-again Christian” is a redundancy because one cannot be one without the other, but I still use the phrase. In 1981 I accepted Christ as my personal Savior and experienced the free gift of the Holy Spirit. It is only from the “saved” vantage point that I can now understand the “flash” that occurred in 1973.
I believe that the “flash” that I experienced was a forewarning and a glimpse of the surety and brevity of the coming “judgment.” In Romans 14:10-12, Paul speaks about the “judgment seat of Christ” and that “…every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” In Hebrews 6:1-2, Paul exhorts the Hebrews to move on from the basic, foundational principles of Christianity, which includes the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. In Hebrews 9:27 Paul says that it is “appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” But what is this “judgment?” Revelations 20:12-15 explains this final judgment.
So what about the “flash” that I experienced? I sincerely believe, looking back from the vantage point of having accepted Christ as my personal Savior, that when my car spun out of control, that God withheld death which could have so easily come given the speed I was driving and the road conditions at the time. For anyone who has not had a “flash” experience, one’s life does not appears as a long, drawn-out soap opera, instead every details appears or “flashes” in a “twinkling of an eye.” The life that “flashed” before my eyes was clear and real as if I were suddenly watching myself re-live every moment of my being. In an instant I saw every detail of my entire existence. I now believe that the “flash” was the sum total of my life, in its most intimate details, that I would have carried before the judgment seat of Christ if I had been killed in that accident. I now believe that had I died in 1973 that I would have stood before the judgment seat of Christ as an unsaved person.
I still think about that “near-death” experience of 1973 and thank God that He found reason to “hold back” death until I could accept Christ. I thank God that my name is written in the “book of Life” that exempts me from the “judgment of the dead.” I believe that for the unsaved that the final judgment will be as brief as the “flash” that I experienced. I do not believe that there will be a “question and answer” session about why a person did not accept Christ. I believe that the final judgment will be “instant and immediate” with eternal consequences. I think it can be summed us thus: Christ: “I can see (looking at your life) that you did not spend any time with me and now I have no time to spend with you— goodbye.”
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