I was visiting the home of a former aunt in 1972, just a week after my 60th birthday. Frankly I had never expected to achieve even this age, because I had always physically overstrained myself. My wife, who has since died, and I had travelled from home to clear a family house following the death of an aunt. I was anxious, as ever, to get it over and done with so that I could get back home, where I had lots of appointments in my hospital and clinic.
Coming down to the second floor from the attic with a box of debris, a voice in my ear told me to go through the door in the adjoining room, onto the balcony and drop the box from there as it would save me time. So I dashed out and leaned against the railing which, unknown to me, had been eaten away by termites. With my weight, and that of the box, the railing gave way, and I plunged headfirst two storeys down onto a concrete sidewalk. I actually landed on the edge of the concrete. The part of the head that hit the concrete stopped suddenly. The part of my head that was hanging over the edge continued on a bit, split the egg shell of my skull completely, and broke the large blood vessel at the top of the brain. Later, I was told that some of my brain tissue was left on the sidewalk, and that my body ricocheted into a bush with the heels on top. By the time the paramedics arrived I was a bloodless corpse hanging by its feet in the bush, with my scalp torn loose.
As far as the paramedics were concerned, this was a corpse to take to the hospital for certification of death, and then on to undertaker. There was absolutely no way I could have been alive with the blood having drained from my body. Anyone can be sceptic, but as a doctor, I am just explaining what happened. It was 18 hours before I showed any evidence of life. There was no pain, because there is no pain with death. Death is a sudden release from all pain and suffering.
Instantly, but even faster than that word implies, I found myself landing with a thud in a new body, feet first, onto a solid foundation. So instantaneous was it that there is nothing we have on Earth that could calibrate the speed. It seemed as though there was a feeling of vitality in this place. It was so ecstatic, beautiful, loaded with love and there was peace. I knew I was in Heaven, because it was so fantastically different to anything we know of in Earth. I was in Paradise, that tiny portion of Heaven where saved souls are on hold until they get their resurrections bodies. It was a place of release from all the physical difficulties that this body or mind can register. I heard myself saying, without having any ability to compose the thought, ‘Dick you’re dead’. The voice seemingly came out from me and I heard it as if I had spoken it, but it was not my voice. It was the voice of the One whom I knew had to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There are so many adjectives needed to describe the qualities of this voice, although in many ways it is indescribable. It was judicial, absolutely authoritative, loving, humble and kind. Conversation up there is quite different. It is mind to mind, because there is no air and therefore sound would not transmit. There is nothing in the physics of Heaven that is similar to the physics of matter here on Earth. Down here we have five senses, but in the spirit body there are so many. You can think so fast that it could not be computed. It is the same mind that Christ has.
Had you met me up there, you would have recognised me as Dick Eby because my body was of the same size and shape. The difference was that I was in my spirit body. My spirit was transparent, like clear glass. When I looked to the side my spirit body would take on an opacity, but at the same time I could see right through it. It had no weight, and none of the senses which register pain, fright or discomfort. There were no bones, ligaments, tissues or organs.
My mind operated quite differently to my mind whilst here on Earth. When Jesus wanted to say something, I knew it immediately in my mind. If I asked a question, it seemed as if He had answered it before I finished the question. We walked and talked together in Paradise, and just as talking is not really the right word, neither is walking. Flying would perhaps be a more adequate description, because we had no weight, and went simply as we wished without touching the ground.
One of the things that most excited me in Heaven was the beauty of the music. As a youngster I had thought that the Lord would perhaps let me go into music as my profession, but this was not to be. Nevertheless, my musical background helped me appreciate that the music in Heaven has no similarity in sound or form to the music is on Earth, where it is limited to airwaves, and to say 88 keys on a piano. Up there the music flows so beautifully, and has an unlimited vibration or set of waves. It is not based on a mathematical equation, as is Earthly music. It is of an entirely different level of hearing, because we don’t hear it through our ears. Instead you hear it directly on your mind. I asked Jesus who had composed this wonderful music, and again He asked me whether or not I had read His book. In it Jesus declares He has made everything not only for His pleasure, but also for the pleasure of His family.
Yet another thing which amazed me was the aroma. This was a perfume so absolutely Heavenly that it had to be made by God, and for God. Later, when I was back on Earth, and I began reading through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation to find the answer as to what this was, I learned it was the prayers of saints. Every believer can have the great joy of knowing that when they pray to their Heavenly Father, He enjoys those prayers so much that He changes them into a Heavenly aroma which He can enjoy, and will share with us when we are up there.
Jesus also explained to me that He had made every individual different so that they could use their skills and abilities to fulfil their desires. Up in Heaven Jesus has completed them as an individual, and each individual’s Paradise is different. So, if you are an artist, your Paradise might be works of art even more wonderful than the greatest works of art on Earth. If you are a musician you would want your Paradise to reflect music, and so on through all the categories which He has placed in the human experience. Jesus also explained to me that because of the new mind, by which everything is instantaneous, if you want to visit someone all you have to do is to think it, and you’re there.
One last thing that is so different is colour. The eye of the spirit body, once liberated from Earthly limitations, has limitless vision. This means that colours are different because the wavelengths, if that’s what they are in that airless place, are limitless. All the colours of the flowers, the trees, the greenery, the sky and so forth, are so much more pure than anything that is here on Earth. But one of the more exciting things to me was seeing, at times, all colours at the same time, and yet you are able to see them all individually. It is so much more beautiful than anything we can perceive here.
There was so much I wanted to know, but the first was about the place I was in. The response of Jesus was in the form of a question that He was to put to me a number of times, ‘My son, didn’t you read My book?’ He went on to explain that the Bible tells us He has prepared Paradise as a holding place for saved souls until the day when God the Father will tell Jesus that the body He was preparing for Him on Earth was complete. On that day Jesus said that He will call all those in this area of Paradise to join Him, and they will descend from the third Heaven, through the second Heaven, through the atmosphere of the first Heaven when Gabriel will sound the trumpet. Jesus said He will then call, ‘Come’, and those on Earth who have accepted Him as their Saviour will be taken up with Him, and given a resurrection body. Everyone will come back to the Third Heaven, but not to Paradise. This time it will be to the throne room of God.
Had the Lord given me the privilege of staying in Paradise I would certainly have taken it, but it was not yet my time and I had to return to this body. I can remember the suddenness with which Jesus, as it were, removed His mind from me and then the wonderful, brilliant light went, and I was in total blackness. It was instant cut off, and later I was to find out the reason. Friends of ours were praying so fervently that I would be restored back to life that God answered their prayers. There were about six prayer lines organised by one of the black churches, who were the first to be told. A lovely lady from that church had been looking over the fence when I had fallen. She immediately ran in and phoned her pastor who got all these prayer lines into action.
It was about 10 o’clock on the morning of the accident that I was brought into the hospital, and it was around six o’clock the following morning when I began to show signs of life. So it was roughly 18 hours that my body lay in that hospital room.
When I returned to my body, once more I heard the Lord speaking to me saying, ‘I have come back to replace life in your body for the purpose that I put you here. That was to continue your practice, and to explain to people the things that I have shown you’. Then He started, from head to foot, putting life back into the body. We had a tremendous dialogue, at my request, because I asked him to do it slowly so that I could see what He would do first, and how He would bring life back to all my organs. This, of course, was my medical training coming to the fore. As a professor I had taught in college for many years as well as practising medicine. It was like an incredible lesson from God Almighty, who had created my body. Despite all this, I have never needed any cosmetic surgery or suffered any loss of memory.
This, however, was not my only miraculous experience of being outside of my natural body. Some five years later I was in Israel visiting the tomb of Lazarus. This place can only hold three people at a time. I was with two ladies, looking at this tomb, two storeys underground. It was lit only by a small light. Suddenly that light went out, and we were plunged into total blackness. The two ladies screamed, but I turned and said, ‘Ladies, don’t scream, just pray and praise’. As I said that word ‘praise’, something remarkable happened. Instantly the two ladies seemed to be taken out of the tomb and the absolute blackness, in which I could not see my hand or the exit, was illuminated by the same light I had experienced in Paradise. It was the light of Heaven which originates from Christ Himself, and which would burn out our optic nerves if they were in normal function. Realisation dawned on me that the Lord must have placed me back in a spirit situation, because instead of being blinded I could see perfectly.
Standing beside me was the most beautiful person I have ever seen. Slightly taller than I, about six foot, He was interposed between my body and the wall of the tomb. He grabbed me with His arms. Suddenly it was as if I had fallen on my hands and knees and was trying to grope for the exit. As I was doing this I noticed there were 10 toes protruding beneath the golden hem of a garment. I wanted to get up and look at this Person, because at the same moment, (this was all happening simultaneously with great speed), I heard the voice which I had heard in Heaven. This had to be Jesus, I knew. So I stood up and looked into His eyes. As He looked at me it was like laser beams, such was the power of God. Again, as before, He began to speak directly to my mind. He told me that He had brought me to this place to show me many things, and to tell me others. It is impossible to describe the amazement and total surprise when Jesus then hugged me so tightly I thought my arms might break. Then I realised He was pulling me into Himself to feel the type of body He had. Now to a doctor this means something. He wanted me to realise that His resurrection body, in which He was now standing, was the same one that was seen by 500 people at one time, and more, as it says in the Scriptures. The body had no liquid, no softness. It had no blood, serum, plasma, cerebrospinal fluid or water, but was of a material that we do not know on Earth. It is, of course, incorruptible and eternal. Having felt thousands of human bodies, it was an amazing sensation.
The next word Jesus spoke to me shook me rigid. ‘My son, I must take you to Hell’. I protested, and told Him that my name was written in His Book of Life. ‘I know my son’, He said, ‘but I’m going to expunge it for two minutes so that I can take you and show you what the present Hell is’. I told Him I did not want to go, but He said that I had to, because this was the end of the age, and I was one who was available. Having told Jesus to get it over with, I then asked if He would go with me. ‘I will send my mind with you, but not My body. You’ll want to ask questions and I can answer them that way’.
Once again I felt myself travelling at a speed which cannot be calibrated, this time into the centre of the Earth. I landed with a thud inside a 4ft x 4ft hole, 6ft high, inside solid rock. The immediate impression was one of absolute cold, absolute blackness, and absolute silence. I immediately spoke to the mind of Jesus saying that this was different to my learning in church. His words were: ‘My son, I want you to know that the present Hell is a holding tank for the unsaved souls, pending the eventual Great White Throne judgement. God is not there. People who elect to go to Hell do not want Him to interfere with their plans. They just tell Him one way or another to stay out of their lives. My Heavenly Father said He will give the desires of their hearts to all of His creatures. He grants them by placing them in a holding tank apart from Him, until that day when they will be called and judged before the Great White Throne’.
I tell you, the terror is unbelievable. With a spirit body, it cannot be frozen or burned. It simply exists with thousands of sensations, which this nervous system we own down here could not take. It is absolutely Hell. I was surrounded by demons. They seemed to be so excited they were doing a fancy rock and roll dance in honour of getting me there. Thousands of them shouted to me that I would never get out. They didn’t realise I was only there for a short period, and told me I was there because I had believed their deceptions whilst I was on Earth. The stench was indescribable. It was the smell of dying and dead flesh. Satan, their captain, is of course the author of death. Jesus called them unclean spirits, and they certainly are that.
I wanted to get out of there and screamed and yelled. As I did so, the realisation came that there was no communication from the present Hell to Heaven. It is a place of isolation, as Jesus said. If it had not been for His mind being placed within mine, so that we could communicate, it would have been sheer terror. Suddenly, however, I was snatched out of there. I found myself standing before the Great White Throne that St. John describes in the book of Revelation. I became aware of a Personage surrounded by a mist, and I knew Him to be God, my Heavenly Father. I wanted to look into His loving eyes to see the kind of Love that would sacrifice His own son for me. Once again came those words from Jesus, ‘Didn’t you read My book? I told you in your present form you could not look upon God and live. He is too powerful, and you would be extinguished. Instead you are here to be edified and educated, not exterminated. He has surrounded himself with this mist to protect you’.
Suddenly, out of this mist, came a hand holding a book on which was written, ‘The Lamb’s Book of Life’. A finger started turning the pages with lightening speed. Jesus told me He was looking for my name, but that He himself had expunged it for two minutes so that I could experience what it was like to be a lost sinner. Sure enough, He got to the end of the book and closed it with a clap of thunder. He said, ‘Your name is not in my family album. There is only one other family, that of Satan. Depart’. If I could just transmit to people the sensation that was mine when I heard God Almighty say to me, ‘Depart’. If only people could experience this then everyone would rush to make sure they knew Jesus as their Saviour.
The full story of Dr. Richard Eby is recounted in his book ‘Caught Up Into Paradise’ and ‘Didn’t you read My Book?’ He has frequently appeared on both radio and television.