Christian Living

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Opportunity Missed
© 2008

by

Stephen A. Peterson


Dr. Cassandra Swartz, MD (not her real name) was a respected surgeon who lived and died rejecting Jesus Christ and all religious beliefs and practice as inhuman, mythical and dangerous to all humanity. In her view, religion had no value to human existence. She further asserted that if she could not see, touch, taste, hear or smell an entity, it CANNOT exist as a reality. She believed Christianity, in particular, had to be eradicated if humanity had any chance of surviving beyond the 21st century.

While driving from Saint Louis to Kansas City, on a very hot July afternoon, Dr. Swartz was involved in 6 car accident. The accident resulted in serious head injuries to Dr. Swartz. She was in a coma nearly four months. When she finally came out of her coma, Dr. Swartz told a close associate about an overwhelming heavenly experience she had had. “My entire person seemed lifted up above my body where I could see myself, hear doctors and nurse talk about my condition. During this time I talked with a man who knew everything about me. In fact, things I really never knew about myself. I felt a kind of heavenly happiness, security and joy far more intense than anything I had ever experienced. I felt I was in another world. But I really wasn’t sure where I was.”

Unfortunately, Dr. Swartz had a dilemma followed by a theory as to what she had experienced. She believed she had experienced a psychotic delusion due the shock of a traumatic situation caused by a serious accident. Dr. Swartz also believed the person, if indeed it was a person (God), was brought on by having heard so many people mention God and Jesus Christ. She further believed if she allowed herself to be influenced by her accident and coma, she would have to change. Members of her medical circle might think she had lost her mind diminishing her standing in her profession. Therefore, she concluded, “I was so traumatized by my accident. This gave rise to this God-related experience. Any psychiatrist will tell you that a serious accident like I had can make things happen. I’m okay now. I’m not likely to have another experience like that ever again. I believe God is a figment of a person’s imagination and not to be believed under any circumstances.”

What a tragedy! Within eight years of her tragic accident, Dr. Swartz died to this life having rejected any relationship with Jesus Christ as far as one could determine. If only she had responded to the seldom experienced glimpse of the Lord before one’s conclusion to their earthly existence! If only she had opened herself up to the divine and away from those things of the world, then she would have become a part of that invisible world that is not an illusion but a glorious reality.

God can enable any of us to change, no matter how deeply attached a person be to this world—the difficult part is opening ourselves up what our being and sense intuitively know. The miracle of the promise and reality of a blissful eternal life in God’s presence will take place when one says “yes” to the stirrings of God’s amazing grace in our total being and senses though seemingly invisible.

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