Welcome to RoundtripDeath everybody. I have a reluctant person on the line with me today.
His name is Will, he's my son and he's the guy that helps with this whole thing. He does
editing, he does all the behind the scenes stuff and he's awesome. And you all need to
meet him because this is our 100th episode together. So Will, this is where you add in
a big cheering sound effect. And actually we have a fantastic episode today that everybody's
gonna want to hear because we have Don Piper and his story is fascinating. If you have seen
the new movie called The Afterlife, you've seen Don. He is a prominent figure in the documentary
but you're gonna hear a whole bunch more about his story here today. And if you haven't heard
Don's story, stand by to be amazed. It's pretty cool. He was dead for roughly 90 minutes,
something like that. So it's a big time story. But first, Will and I wanted to chat a little bit.
I mean it's over a year and a half ago now that we started doing this and it's kind of crazy that
we've made it so far and come to this 100 episode mark. It's really exciting and we're grateful
to all of the listeners that are able to support us and make this happen. And especially to all
the people that have been on the show as well. It's very inspiring hearing the stories and the
life changing things that happen, especially to all of the experiencers.
That was very well done. We should switch places I think. I disagree. I can just write you a million
questions and away you go. I did want to read a couple things from my notes here. So was doing
a little research this week. I mean as you know, we have hundreds of thousands of downloads from
people all over the world. But I counted up, we have listeners in 93 countries. I'm not sure I
even knew there were that many. So this would be like some kind of Olympic opening ceremonies. I'd
love to have all of them walk in here at this point. In case you didn't know, a couple of months
ago we started putting our podcasts on YouTube. Now before you get too excited, we're not doing
video yet. Maybe someday down the road we're not in any hurry to do that at all. But there are a lot
of people that like to just listen to an audio podcast on YouTube. So you can find it there.
It's just go search for round trip death. And you'll find it. You'll see all of our episodes there.
Here's something Eric, for our people on YouTube that are watching it that way,
because we do quite a bit of editing on these audio podcasts. We would love to know if on YouTube,
to be 100% honest, we probably don't have time to do all the video editing as well.
So if you want just more of a raw edit, more of a raw cut, all the filler on YouTube as well,
leave a comment and we'll see what the feedback is on that. Maybe we can make something work there.
Where are they going to leave that comment? For the YouTube people, leave it on right on
the YouTube channel. Leave it on any of the videos. Okay. You can also send an email to
ericatroundtripdeath.com. Will and I both see those. By the way, he's a university student. So
he is very busy and he just takes a little time out of a schedule every week to do this and
gives us a good chance to talk regularly, which is good fun. I wanted to mention a couple other
things that we have done recently. And I'm not sure why anyone would actually want to read a
transcript of our podcast, but it is something that helps with SEO and a lot of people are doing
it because there actually are some people that want to read it. So you can find transcripts of all
of this year's, this season shows are on the website at roundtripdeath.com where you can find
the episodes. Now you can find transcripts in case you're interested. And lastly, the other thing
that we added, we could really use some help now and then with this show. In addition to guests,
which are a huge help and you guys sharing it, if you want to throw a donation our way to help pay
the bills for this, it'd be very much appreciated. Again, go to roundtripdeath.com. There's a little
teeny button in the upper right hand corner that says donate. And we've tried to make it really
easy. Instead of taking all your credit card information for a donation, we've just got Venmo
and the Cash App up there. So it's really easy to make a donation there. $5, $3,000, $3,000 will take
whatever you feel like donating to help this thing along. $3 million, Will, how would that be?
A pretty life changing. If for some tuition, wouldn't it? Yeah, there you go. No, but we
appreciate being able to do this and hearing the feedback from everyone. It's great.
The main thing is the feedback that we get, we feel like we're affecting some people's lives.
We do get a lot of feedback from people that are giving us comments about how this really helped
them on one particularly rough day. Or maybe there was a loss of a loved one recently in their
life. These discussions that we have with people that have experienced the other side has given
them some hope that their loved one is still alive and that there is something beyond this life.
And that's really the bottom line to this whole thing. And we're really grateful to be able to
share that. Like Will said, we're grateful for all the guests we've had on and for all of you
listeners. Now, let's get to the interview. From the time that they pronounced me dead was a good
45 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart. My heart had stopped and I could
see people screaming and crying. But I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I
was somewhere else. The only thing that I could feel if you could imagine absolute love and peace,
there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. On
back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome to round trip death, everybody. We have a
very special guest with us today. He's pretty famous, I'd say. Are you a celebrity, Don? I am
not a celebrity. I'm just an old guy that got run over by a truck. Sometimes it kind of seems
that way just trying to get through another day. Well, Don is one of the stars of a new movie that
has taken the world by storm. I hear it's breaking all kinds of records for documentaries and
theaters. If you haven't seen it yet, it's called After Death. It's by Angel Studios. And Don is one
of the stars of it because his story is really impressive. And if you haven't seen it or read
any of Don's books or anything, you'll find out in just a few minutes why his story is so amazing.
If you have seen the film, stay with us too because the few minutes that he has to explain
everything there is not enough. We're going to dig a whole bunch deeper today. And we're going to
ask Don the kind of questions that hopefully you're curious about. So anyway, Don, welcome again.
Can you give us a little bit of background on you before we get started in your NDE?
Honored to be here. I'm 73. I didn't expect to be here, honestly. In 1989, I was killed in a head-on
collision with a tractor trailer truck in Texas. I was a 38-year-old man with a wife and three
kids. I was a pastor of a church south of Houston, Texas. And I had been to a pastor's conference
north of Houston, probably 120 miles from my church. So I have a background in the radio and
television business. I was in that business for nearly 15 years. So I had surrendered to the
ministry. I felt like I had a calling on my life like many years before that. But I was enamored
with the broadcasting business and went into that business. But I had just been in the ministry at
that point for about four or five years. And I felt like I needed some more education. I needed
some more interaction with other people who were doing the same thing. So that's the reason I decided
to go to the conference that day. I had a great conference. Actually, my wife was supposed to be
with me on the conference. She taught school for 40 years. Of course, she's retired at this point.
But her principal told her that she was going to have several new students on the following
Monday morning, which is when the conference started. So being the conscientious teacher that
she is, she decided not to go with me on the conference because she didn't want those new
students to be with a substitute teacher. So she stayed. She would have been in the car with me
that day had she gone to the conference with me. We wanted some getaway time. You know, we had three
kids, a 12 year old and twin boys who were seven. So we needed a little getaway. We did not get one
that week. And we would not get one for several years after that. So I got in the car that morning.
It was just before noon. And it was a cold, rainy day, a really kind of a miserable day
weather wise. And I was headed to my church 120 miles away just south of Houston, which meant I
had to go through Houston to get there. And as we say in Houston, in Houston, you're about an hour,
hour away from wherever you want to be, because it's a massive sprawling city. So I was prepared
for a lengthy trip. But I knew that evening I was going to teach a Bible study in the church on a
Wednesday evening. And so I had a stack of sermons on the seat beside me. I was beginning a new
sermon series the following Sunday, even though it was Saturday, but also had written a Bible study
to teach that night. I never did teach that Bible study. And those sermons remained unpreached
in that church for many, many years. So sometimes you set out to do something and life changes in a
fraction of a second. For me, that day, it did. Okay, let's talk about, well, first of all,
did you have any inkling this was going to be an unusual day, anything out of the ordinary?
Not really. It was unusual weather. I mean, we don't usually have freezing weather that early in
January in that part of Texas. The town where I was serving in Alvin is only 30 miles from the Gulf
of Mexico. So it was an unusual weather day. And, you know, you just, in fact, I decided to go home
a different way that day, because the other way was a winding road around this lake that was not
particularly easy to navigate. I figured if I went the other direction that I would be on interstate
in like less than 30 minutes. And so I did go home a different way. Was it raining where the
roads really slick? Yes, yes. And near freezing, conference center was on the lake. It was easy
for the bridges to freeze over, you know, since they were elevated. And so I was trying to get as
far south as fast as I could in the event that the bridges started freezing. So it was unusual
weather for that time of year. And I was mindful of it. And I was trying to get as close to home
as I could as fast as I could. And was it dark? No, no, it was just before noon. It was very
overcast, pretty heavy rain, and just frankly, miserable driving conditions. You know, they may
have affected this massive wreck because there were four vehicles involved. But it was a bad
location. This old bridge was built in the 1930s. It was very narrow. And it was the only bridge
across this particular portion of the lake. So it was a death trap, really many accidents that
occurred on that bridge and many fatalities. So you've set the stage. Now what happened? What
set off the chain of events? Well, I was no more than 15 minutes out of the gates of the conference
center on a trip that was probably going to take at least two hours, maybe more, oh, probably three
hours. Since I went home a different way, I was unfamiliar with the area. And I looked in the
distance on this lake, and I saw a massive bridge that looked like what we would normally see is
a railway trestle. It had massive superstructure over the top of it. And of course, on both sides
of it, steel railings and a cover over the top of it. So it's similar to a tunnel. And when you're
driving onto it, and it's fairly long. So I was almost exiting that bridge at the other end of the
bridge is the bank of the lake. And it's very steep. It was then it's been corrected now. But
so as you're exiting the bridge, the highway goes up. Obviously, if you're coming in the
opposite direction, you come over a hill and go right down onto this bridge. As I was about to exit
the bridge, a tractor trailer truck was coming over that hill down onto the bridge. It turns out that
it was a tractor trailer truck owned by the Texas Department of Corrections. It's a prison truck
driven by a prisoner, an inmate. The regular driver did not show up that day. So they went
out to the prison yard and asked for volunteers. And needless to say, every prisoner in the yard
said, I can drive a big truck. They wanted to get out of jail free that day. And this guy did.
And he hadn't driven any kind of vehicle in a long time, much less a tractor trailer truck.
I'm not even sure to this day he had even ever driven one of those. But they put him behind
the wheel of the truck. And he was he was only about 10 minutes out of that prison. And he came
over a very unfamiliar area. He'd not been there before. Down onto the bridge, he set a slow moving
car pulled out at the last minute. And he tried to avoid hitting that car, which meant that he
swerved over into my lane. And he hit me head on. I never saw it coming. It was in a fraction of a
second, probably 110 miles an hour of impact. He literally just rolled over the top of my car and
crushed it and then went back over into the lane he was supposed to be in and hit two cars. So it's
a four vehicle pile up on what is called in that area, the Trinity River Bridge. Amazingly,
after the EMTs and police arrived, they discovered that no one else was hurt but me. They were
shaken up, needless to say. What were you driving by the way? I was driving a Ford Escort.
Oh, little car. Little car. I don't think it would have meant a mind. It would have been
any difference at all if I'd have been driving a Buick ELECTRA 225. I mean, it was in fact,
that's what I said I was going to get after the accident. I was going to get the biggest
land yacht I could find. It just seems so unfair. A great big tractor trailer against a little teeny
Ford Escort. You had no chance. He just crushed it really and rolled off the back and hit the other
two cars. So they're dealing, they sent four ambulances to the bridge because there were four
vehicles and so they're treating everyone and it became very obvious from the onset that I was a
fatality. But they did work on me, especially when they released the other three guys and they're
working on me and doing everything they could think of to try to resuscitate me, but they are
unsuccessful. So all four of those paramedics and including the state trooper in charge, pronounced
me dead on the scene, the body was covered up with a waterproof tarp. So there was no water going
into the car because all the windows were gone. And they're waiting for a medical examiner to come
to the bridge to investigate and release the body. I mean, for all practical purposes, it's a crime
scene because somebody has killed me. Yeah. Do you know how much time had passed between the accident
and when they declared you dead? Really a matter of minutes. Even the first people on the scene
tried to get a pulse from me. And in fact, when the state trooper walked up to the car, paramedics
said there's no need to work on him. He's a fatality. He did not make it. And the others joined in,
although they did try to do heroic measures to resuscitate me and they were unsuccessful. So
they're really waiting for a medical examiner to show up. Apparently, there were other accidents in
the county that morning because they were having trouble getting someone out there, which meant
the traffic started backing up in both directions. On that bridge, behind me were a lot of other
people who had been to the same conference I had been to, some of whom I had met, many of whom I
had not met. And one of those guys, actually one of the featured speakers at the conference,
and his wife, Dick and Anita, owner-recker, walked up to the accident site, probably as much out of
curiosity as seeing if they could help, and saw all the carnage and the wreckage. And Dick
and the counter-recker said he felt God speak to him, which was very unusual that God would be audible
in his opinion. And God said, pray for the man in the red car. That would have been me.
So he asked the state trooper in charge, can I need to pray for that man? And the officer said,
well, go right ahead. He's dead. But if you want to, you're welcome to do it. No, no, I need to get
in the car. I need to be near him. I need to put my hand on him, and I need to pray for him. And
the policeman said, I'm sorry you can't do that. If you see all the twisted metal and broken glass
over there, we can't allow anybody to get close to that. Besides that, it's a crime scene. So he
pleaded, finally prevailed, and they let him come in from the rear of the car, which would have been
the only way he could have gotten in the car anyway, because it was up against the railing of the
bridge, the front was smashed in, side was caved in. So he came in from behind, got under the tarp
with the dead body, and could see that the only thing I didn't break was my right arm. So from
behind, he puts his hand on my right shoulder, and he begins to pray because God told him to.
This is now 11.45 a.m. Just before noon, he would remain under that tarp for an hour and a half,
praying and singing old hymns. At 1.15 in the afternoon, he is now singing an old hymn called
What a Friend We Have in Jesus, very, very famous old hymn, 150 years old now. And he's singing that
song, Holding on to my Right Shoulder, and as he sings it, suddenly under that tarp, I start singing
it with him, and he gets out of the car really fast, runs over to the policeman and says, officer,
the dead man is singing. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life.
Okay, hold on a minute here. This has been an over an hour and a half?
Yeah, it has. Medically impossible. And all the medical people knew that.
Yeah. In fact, they, they, I wouldn't say refuse. I think that sounds too strong. They just wouldn't
come back over there. They, three of the four ambulances had already departed. The remaining
one is packed up and is leaving to go back on duty because they have another vehicle standing
by to take away the body. It is, it is not an ambulance. I won't tell you what they call that.
It's not very nice. They're, you know, they're getting ready to remove me. Removing a living
person is very different from removing a deceased person from a wrecked car because it was going
to require a massive effort to crack open that car and get me out. And so there he goes over and
they won't come over. Yeah. I'm just trying to get the whole timeline here because it is so amazing.
So it's about 90 minutes that he's praying and singing with your body. It is. And he doesn't
get there until a few minutes after the crash. Oh yeah. Just, yeah. I don't know that they,
they may have seen the accident or knew there was something going on in the distance, but no,
they had to walk up to the bridge, which probably took a few minutes. And then immediately he heard
God speak to him and say, pray for them on the red car. And then he had to negotiate with the
policeman to get in the car. Yeah. So there's an hour and a half of him there, plus at least
probably 15 minutes. I would think so. At least 10, yeah, at least 10. Yeah. So 100,
105 minutes approximately that you've been deceased. Yeah. It's impossible, but now,
since I was killed instantly and I had massive gaping wounds all over me, I lost four inches of
my left femur. My left arm was in the back seat of the car because I must have put it up in the air
and it went over and my shoulder into the back seat. I was impaled on the steering wheel. I had
brain damage as a result to being hit against the side of the car. I had blood coming out of my eyes,
my ears, my nose, my mouth, but it was all dried because since my heart stopped beating immediately,
I did not bleed out of these enormous wounds. So they know that. They know that I was killed
instantly. So that did not allow me to bleed out because examination is almost always the
cause of this. They can't keep your blood in you and so it's leaving faster than they can compensate
for. And by the way, for the young people here, we didn't have airbags in cars back then.
No, no airbags. No. I had a seatbelt on, but the only reason I put that on is because
three weeks before the accident, I got a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt.
So I put it on. In fact, that ticket was on the front seat of the car to be paid when I got back
home just to remind me. And when I saw that ticket that morning, I put my seatbelt on and 10 minutes
later, I had an head-on collision with an 18-wheeler. So my life was saved by that ticket in a sense
that I would have been destroyed, probably ejected from the car. Yeah, even worse. Okay,
I'm sorry for interrupting, but the timeline is really interesting to me. Sure. And just how long
you had been with your heart stopped, especially when doctors nowadays will say, hey, after what,
six minutes or five minutes or something without oxygen to your brain? It's not very long. Certainly
after 20 minutes, your brain waves have ceased to function because you're not getting oxygen to your
brain. So I did not really have, technically speaking, a near-death experience. I was dead.
Sure. Dead for quite some time. And they don't really have a medical explanation for my coming
back, except in the words of several doctors, it's just a miracle that you are still here,
that we're actually looking at you and talking to you because we cannot medically explain.
Now, it was a cold morning. That might have had something to do with it, but otherwise,
I have no explanation for how and why I came back. And believe me, when I tell you this,
I did not want to come back. And when I came back in the condition that I was in for several years,
being back here was the last thing I wanted to happen. And that's such a normal thing for people
to not want to come back, especially to a body that's going to be in so much pain with so much
trauma. Okay, let's go back, though, to where we left off. All of a sudden, you start singing along.
Yeah. And I was unaware of who he was. Now, I had just been at the gates of heaven,
and I heard thousands of songs at the same time without chaos because they were all symbiotic.
They all fit together. So I am actually permeated by that music, great, glorious songs, glorifying God
for He alone is worthy of our worship. And I'm experiencing that the next moment,
I'm in darkness, not the brilliance of heaven, darkness, silence. And then suddenly, I hear
this voice behind me, not in front of me. And it's one voice. And it's a guy singing, and he's coaxing
me to sing with him, because now that I'm back, he wants me to be conscious. He wants to keep me
while he runs over and tells the EMTs, you need to come and check on this guy. So I didn't know
who he was. Three weeks later in the ICU, he comes to see me. And at that point, we put together
what had happened. He was behind me. He had been a conference speaker. I got to hear him,
and I did not get to meet him. And we met in the ICU when I was still in pretty critical condition.
And he realized that the only reason he was behind me, instead of in front of me that day,
because he left before me, was because he and his wife stopped to get coffee on a cold rainy day.
And I passed them while they were getting coffee. So the reason he came in behind me that day was
a couple of cups of coffee. They gave those cups of coffee to the other two gentlemen whose cars
were totaled, sitting as they were sitting on the side of the bridge, shearing in the rain.
Okay, we're going to talk about what happened spiritually in just a minute, but first let's
finish up the physical stuff. So he tells the EMTs, this guy's singing, he's alive, come check him out.
Did they then, did it take him a while to extract you from the car, get you into the ambulance,
get you to the hospital? They wouldn't even come over. Well, they didn't believe him.
They basically said to him, sir, we're medical professionals. We know a dead man when we see
one and that man is extremely dead. And not only that, he's been dead for quite some time.
And he said, I'm telling you, I heard him singing and they really question that. And he said, all
right, there's no time to waste. If you don't come and check on him, I'm going to lay down
on this bridge in front of your ambulance, and you're going to have to run over me,
if you don't come and check on him, because he knew what he'd heard. So they kind of looked at
each other and humored him and came over, looked under the tarp and discovered that I was alive,
not very alive, but alive, weak pulse. And then they sprang into action. Regrettably,
the equipment to remove a living person was not on the scene because it was obvious,
in their opinion, early on that I was not alive. So they had to order that equipment from about
30 miles away, a machine called the Jaws of Life. And they finally got that out there
while they were working on me to crack open the car and get me out. They eventually were able to
do that. I was put on a gurney, obviously in my back, and I'm looking at the girders of the bridge
above me. And it was my first notion that something really horrific had happened. And I was part of
it. I knew that the last earthly memory I had was driving onto that bridge. And now I'm facing up,
the rain is falling on my face. And I know something is up, something has occurred. I don't
feel anything. I'm in shock, obviously. So they took me to a local clinic. They didn't even take
me out of the ambulance there, because the doctor said there's nothing we can do for him.
You're going to have to get to a trauma center. They did drive to a regional hospital 30 miles away.
There I was taken out and more or less stabilized. It was immediately determined. I needed to be in
a level one trauma center. The nearest one was in Houston, where I was headed. Because of the
weather being so bad, lifelike helicopters could not take off and land that day. So I was put
in an ambulance and driven 70 miles to Houston. The accident happened 11.45 in the morning.
I arrived at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston at 6.15 that evening, six and a half hours
after the wreck. And from that night forward, I would be in a hospital bed for 13 months. And I
would have 34 operations to try to put me back together again. Wow. Well, congratulations for
surviving all of that. That just sounds so horrific. It was bad. It has not diminished with age, I must
say. Do you have lasting effects from it? Well, I end up wearing experimental devices,
what are called bone stretching devices. They were not, they'd never been used on a femur
in this country. In fact, they had to fly in the technology, which had just landed here
from Italy and the Soviet Union. And that's where it was invented. And it involves breaking your limb
in another place. And then putting wires and screws through your leg, turning screws on them
four times a day for a year to try to stretch the bone that is remaining in your leg to close the
gap. So I'm still about an inch and a half shorter on the left side than the right, even though they
were able to restore three inches of my femur. And my left arm has nothing but transplants in it.
It's all bones from my pelvis, it's skin from my right leg, it's muscles from other places.
So they did some very revolutionary kind of treatments to put me back together again. So I
walk on my own, my own two legs. This arm that was in the back seat that they told me would just
hang by my side for the rest of my life is useful. It's not, there's a lot of things I can't do with
it. So we've kind of defied the odds of being more mobile and doing a lot of things that I dreamed
I'd never do again, but also leaving many things behind in that moment on that bridge when I would
never bicycle again, I would never ski again, I would never things that I was very used to doing.
I have never been able to do again, squat down so I could talk to little children
face to face. I have six grandchildren. I literally have to lean over to talk to them.
So those are things we all take for granted and they don't seem like terrific things,
but if they're a part of your life and you really love doing them, they're gone and not this side
of heaven will I ever do them again. So yes, I have a lot of residual effects of what happened to me
that day and fully dressed. Most people have no idea. Sometimes I show up to speak somewhere and
they'll meet me at the door with a wheelchair because they read the book and I can walk to
wherever I'm supposed to speak. I just can't do it very quickly.
Well, as horrific as all that was, there's an amazing beautiful story on the other side.
Let's get into that now. I believe that we're going to take our last breath here on the on the
on earth one day. I think we all know the death rate here is 100 percent. And I believe we're
going to take our next breath somewhere else. For me, that day it was heaven. I wasn't planning to
die that day, but I was ready. I had made reservations at the age of 16. I was 38. I took my last breath
on the bridge. I took my next breath. In this case at the gates of heaven, I did not go down a long
tunnel. There was no bright light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that's such a common
description. And I think it's very accurate for many of not most people. I was killed in a head
on collision with the tractor, tractor, truck. It was a it was not even a fraction of a second
when I died. So I did literally take my last breath here. And I was at one of the gates of heaven.
In the revelation, it tells us in chapter 21 that there are 12 of these gates,
three on each side of the great city of God. And so I was at one of those gates.
It was magnificent. It looked like the inside of an oyster. And I know what that looks like. We
live on the Gulf Coast. It's iridescent. It's glistening. It's a brilliant, brilliant thing
made even more brilliant by the light reflecting off of the gate. And in heaven, it is so bright
that we would not be able to see it with earthly eyes, but we won't have earthly eyes there.
And I'm looking at this, this dazzling gate and thinking it's alive. But I do believe it was
the light that made it look that way. And I'm taking that in and just kind of panning down.
And I'm looking in the faces of people I had known and loved in life who had preceded me in
death. They all look good. I suggest that if you want to look good, heaven is the place to be.
They were perfect. Now, many of them had been killed in tragic accidents. Some of them had been quite
elderly and infirmed when they died, but nobody showed any evidence of any of that. They were
fully recognizable as themselves, but perfect in every way. I think the only person in heaven
with scars is Christ to remind us of how we got there. So they were unblemished. My grandfather
was missing fingers on both hands. I was very close to him. He had a heart attack one night.
I rode with him actually in the ambulance to the hospital and was outside when they came out to
tell me that he did not make it. I often say I have a lot of broken bones in this body,
but nothing hurts like a broken heart. And when he died, it really broke my heart.
Now he's standing in front of me and he's got his arms extended to me. And I'm looking down at the
hands he used to hold me with when I was a little boy. And the fingers that were missing were there.
I'd never seen them before. He spoke a language I never heard before and said,
welcome home, Donnie, which is his name for me here. Donnie is what he called me.
I knew where I was because I knew where he was and this was home.
A couple of quick questions here. He spoke a language you hadn't heard before, but you understood it.
Yes, I did. I think heaven has its own language. Here, we are literally confounded by our languages.
We have to have translators. We have to, even people who sometimes speak the same language we do are unintelligible.
In heaven, everyone understands everyone else. And since we come from all over what we know of as the world,
there is only heaven there. We understand each other. And I understood him and I understood everyone that said something to me.
And keep in mind now, some people communicated me with me without speaking. I think it's beyond telepathy.
I just knew what they were trying to impart to me. But in this case, he actually verbally spoke to me.
Obviously, I recognize his voice. So I think that was part of why he chose to do that.
And I also think he was so excited to see me. I don't think people in heaven miss you. I think they expect you.
Heaven is a timeless place. There is no time there. It's eternal. Very difficult for us to wrap our earthbound brains around that.
But he was expecting me. They all were. Everyone who met me were people who played a role in my life.
And so they came to meet me at the gate. That's the only explanation I have because they knew I was coming that day.
And it was a glorious reunion. The other question I wanted to ask just then, because you were talking about how perfect they looked.
Can you put an age on them? Was your grandfather still as old as when you last saw him?
Or did he seem younger in his perfect form? I'll answer that question this way. He seemed aged.
I've joined him now, but the speech patterns of an elderly person, the gate, the way they hold themselves.
My great grandmother was right beside him, not his mother. My mother's grandmother.
And she had osteoporosis. So she walked with an enormous slump, leaning over. She could not straighten up.
And in heaven, she was a good, good, good, good, good.
She was leaning over. She could not straighten up. And in heaven, she was a good six inches taller there than she had been here.
I've never seen her standing upright like that. So did she, did I recognize her for who she was? Yes. Yes.
But her infirmities and in many ways, her age, the things that make us aged here just don't evidence themselves there.
There were two guys I went to high school with, both of whom were killed either right before we graduated or right after we graduated.
They were there, but they didn't necessarily look like teenage boys. I mean, they were fully developed humans.
People often ask me about babies. And I will say this, I did not see any babies.
No babies contributed to my becoming a believer, a follower of Christ. So they wouldn't have been there anyway, because the people who get together at the gate were people who helped me come to Christ.
And they deserve to be there because they helped me get there. And so they came to greet me.
But I don't know if there are any. And some people are very disappointed that, and we and my wife and I lost a child at birth.
And we also recently lost our daughter at the age of 46. And, you know, it's not the natural order of things to bury your children.
But realistically, they were his before they were ours. And they're just loaned to us, really.
So I didn't see any people like children there. Adam and Eve were not created as children.
They were created as what we would call fully developed humans. I think even an adult is an estate as a stage of life.
And that's an earth stage of life. So I don't think there are children, infants, babies, teenagers, elderly.
We have to forget that notion. Heaven is an age less place. And so everyone was recognizable, but it was without age.
I just didn't notice any age. And I certainly didn't notice any scars. I have many on my body, but I had none in heaven.
Two more questions that I want you to keep going. The first one is you said your grandfather put his arms out to give you a hug.
Was there a hug? Was there an embrace? Yeah, I think people in heaven right now are not fully constituted because we're told in the second judgment that we will be given glorified bodies.
They look pretty glorious to me, but I sense that they were not complete.
But he was fully recognizable as himself and constituted in front of me as was I.
So yes, it was an embrace. But I also know that there is more to come. There is another stage that is imminent.
And in that stage, we will really truly have glorified bodies. And if they're better than what I saw, I just can't even conceive of how awesome that is going to be.
Did you also meet people there that you had not known here? For example, was there a great great great grandfather that you never knew here that maybe you met there or something like that?
Or were these all people that you remembered? No, they were all people who had lived during my lifetime.
And I could certainly concluded immediately afterwards when I was conscious enough to know that I was back here, that they were all people who did things as simple as giving me the first Bible I ever owned or took me to church when nobody else would,
or certainly told me about Jesus and who he was and why he should be important to me.
These were people who literally lived the Christian life in front of me, so I knew what one was.
So they all made that kind of difference in my life. And they were all different acts that they completed towards me that would have influenced me that way.
I think everybody else is inside. And I was only approaching inside when I came back here going through the great passageway that leads inside the gate.
I saw untold numbers of people inside, but I did not meet them personally and I'm going to them.
I think the people who greeted me were people who helped me get there. Everyone else is inside. I think I will walk the street of goal and talk to Mary.
I will talk to Moses. I'll talk to all those people who have preceded me and because they also, and as you pointed out, my great grandparents had an influence in my life because they had an influence on my grandparents and my parents.
So that does happen, but they did not meet me at the gates. I think they're inside. And that's why almost immediately upon seeing these people and hearing this music and being greeted by angels and all the other things that were there,
almost immediately I wanted to go in. I mean, I wanted to go in because I wanted to see those people and I wanted to talk to those people.
All right. Keep going. You met your grandfather. What happened next?
Well, I am surrounded by angels. They're all over the place. Some are like, have six wings. Some have two. Some have none. The angels were told by scripture, the ones who bear us up.
And so they had delivered me. As it turned out, I found out many, many months later that one had been in the car with me. I thought it was Dick Honorecker.
But he was only holding onto my shoulder. This entity was holding onto my hand, which no one else could reach. So the angels are everywhere.
And they're quite magnificent. We do not become angels in heaven. Angels are a completely separate group of beings created for a completely different purpose than we were and are.
So they're glorious, but they're not us. I was surrounded by the music. I certainly saw colors I've never seen here and the spectrum that we cannot see.
I smelled aromas and I can only conclude that in some cases, though, those are the, that is the aroma of the prayers of the saints coming from the throne of God.
We are told that that is there. I smelled it. I don't have a description for it.
One of the reasons I resisted the temptation to tell this story, and I waited 15 years to write the book 90 Minutes in Heaven was because I didn't have the words for it. Who does?
I mean, how do you describe a heavenly place with earthly words? It's, it's, it's impossible.
Humanly speaking, even the Apostle Paul said it was impossible to describe. And so I have been a reluctant witness in that regard, but it seemed a matter to people in ways I never dreamed.
In fact, I tried to put all this behind me and it ended up God put it in front of me.
I just wanted to get all of my life when I finally got back on my feet. So I'm going in the music, thousands of songs. I could still hear them now.
It's the one thing I really brought back with me. The more weary I grow here on earth, the louder that music gets inside of my soul.
I heard, I heard that are the, I heard the angels singing. I, I saw the gate. It's a small entrance. The gate is huge and glorious, but the entrance is comparatively very small Bible says we go in.
It's a personal decision we go in one at a time.
It's not something you inherit. You have to decide. And I decided at the age of 16, that I would follow Christ. So I'm going in there behind me now.
My, my group is behind me and I could see a golden boulevard bisecting the city. God can make his streets out of whatever he wants.
The most important thing is the choice and there are, there are trees inside. In fact, we are told that we will eat in heaven for fellowship, not for sustenance. And the tree that I saw was the tree of life.
You know, we were forbidden to do that in the Garden of Eden, but there is no evil in heaven. So there's no knowledge of good and evil. There's only good.
We will eat of that tree, but not to stay alive. It will eat because God wants his children to fellowship together in, in, in dying with him.
So there is a pinnacle in the center of the city high and lifted up. There were thrones at the top of that pinnacle.
It was my intention after passing these people and going through this very thick wall inside that I would go down that street and mount that hill and fall at the feet of the great God of all creation and say, thank you for letting me come.
Thank you for letting me be here. But I never got the chance to do that.
I could see all the things that were inside and it was even more glorious than everything outside and more brilliant, more absolutely brilliant.
But the moment I, I was entering inside, that's when it all stopped and I found myself in darkness and silence.
Darkness and silence in the car back in the car in your body or something. Was there an in between?
Well, it was instantaneous. Okay, just as quickly as I'd arrived that quickly I was back.
And now keep in mind that Dick Honorecker was not the only one praying for me by that time.
When they found my ID on my body, they also found my business card. So they called my church in Alvin, since they didn't know how to get in touch with my wife.
And they told the church that I had been in a horrific accident, but not that I was fatality. They tried never to do that on the phone unless they have no other alternative.
So all the people know at churches I've been in a bad accident and they try to go notify my wife. They start calling every church on the phone book.
I remember phone books and they start, they start spreading out literally, I'm not exaggerating, around the world in a very short period of time.
It's like a phone chain. It just goes everywhere. I met a man in California a few years ago and he, he was crying and he looked at me and said, I prayed for you that, that day.
And I said, well, it worked. You know, I'm here. He said, no, no, I wasn't Taipei, Taiwan, when I got word that you had been in a bad accident.
So he's on the outside of the world, not at 1145 in the morning, 1145 in the evening. And so tens of thousands untold numbers of people were pleading with God on my behalf.
And he said, yes, I have nothing to do with my survival. I would have rather stayed there a thousand times over, but they were praying and God answered their prayer and the Gona records prayer in the back of that car.
So it was thousands upon thousands of petitions being lifted up to the throne of God. And then he sent me back.
Did you have a choice? Was there any kind of conversation or was it just go back? Because a lot of people, as you know, as you've studied this topic, a lot of people are given a choice.
Some people aren't. They're just told to go back. And some people just go back without that conversation ever happening. It sounds like that's what fits your situation.
I think the word pause is too strong. But there was a moment there upon entering with all those things that are happening.
Heaven is a sensory explosion. It's just simply the most real thing that's ever happened to me. So in the middle of that, we're just for a fraction of a fraction of a second.
Now, remember, there's no time there, but it just paused for a moment. And I guess I knew in that moment that I was not going to be able to stay.
I wanted to make my voice say something. I wanted to say what's happening. I just, I just got here. Those are the words I was trying to say when I found myself in darkness immediately.
And there was silence and the silence was broken by that, that man behind me. In the distance, I could kind of hear what sounded like people walking on broken glass, which is exactly what they were doing outside the car.
But Dick was singing. And he was a very good singer and he and I'm not and he was making me sing. And I'm thinking, who is this person?
And why am I singing in the darkness when the last thing I remembered was driving onto an old bridge in a rainstorm?
I know there's so much about the experience in heaven that you can't describe. As you've put it, there aren't words for it.
And I've had artists on the show that tell me they can't explain the colors that they saw there, for example, or, or, hey, I've tried to paint what I saw.
But we don't have the colors on our palette here. Can you explain anything else about the music? Is there anything here that is close to it? Have you tried to replicate it?
Well, you know, I've heard, I've heard renderings of, of some songs, anthems. Certainly, oh my, what is the song we sing at Christmas time? It's not a Christmas song, but it's performed as a hallelujah chorus.
In its full iteration with the orchestra and the choirs and all those things, there's some of that that sounds like it. But yet there were some very simple songs, very plaintive kind of songs, almost solos with maybe even a guitar accompanist or something.
Of what we would call praise songs nowadays. So there were all kinds of songs. It's been my privilege over the years to speak all over the world. And there have been many services where I've been in that, that I don't understand the word they're singing at all.
The tune might be familiar, but the words are not familiar at all. And yet there are many songs I've sung on many Native American reservations. I have, I've been in Hawaii many, many times and had people perform the hula in front of me as I'm about to.
So I've run the gammon of all those. And I think God understands our hearts and ever how that manifests itself. And I think that's the way the music is in heaven. It's all manner of songs, but they're all praising God.
They're all, he is the audience of worship. We are not. Now we get to listen almost eavesdrop into, into what's being performed, but it's for him. When we go to a service and the music is, is being performed, we're really listening to a piece of music that's supposed to be dedicated to God.
And so that's what all the music is there. The, the one thing that it does as it have in common is that God is the audience of the music and we get to hear it, which is an incredible privilege to say the least.
But that struck me. I'm kind of a music person by nature. I grew up with it. I used to play it on the radio. I mean, I just, you know, I asked a psychologist one time who was listening to this.
And I said, why do you suppose that one of my most vivid memories was music? I mean, I, that wouldn't have been a prediction for me before all this happened. And he said, that's important to you.
You, you lean in. And I think if you listen to a lot of these testimonies, sometimes they emphasize this, sometimes this, well, we're different people.
We would notice different things because that's the way we're wired. Some people would be overwhelmed by the, by the colors, the dazzling colors and they are dazzling.
In my case, it was the music. And I think the additional thing about my case is that I, I still hear it. I still hear it.
Wow. What a blessing that is.
Yeah, I can get very tired or maybe overwrought here from traveling and the music gets louder and louder in my soul. So I still hear it.
That is awesome.
Oh, what happened next?
I entered and that was when it all stopped and I found myself back here.
We talked about the ambulance and the EMTs and all that kind of stuff already. Was it a horrible feeling? I mean, what?
I'll tell you when the horrible feeling happened.
Okay.
I was, I just left the second hospital, the regional hospital in a town called Huntsville, and I'm headed towards Houston on I-45.
I don't know how far out of Huntsville it happened, but I found myself in the back of that ambulance.
And I think people who have never ridden in one, and I hope you don't have to get right in one, don't really realize how bumpy the whole ride is.
And I'm back there and I have so many broken bones that every time it just hits them, just a small pothole or something.
I mean, it's like somebody's hitting me with a hammer. It was just, it was unbearable. The shock is worn off.
They're giving me a lot of medications. And I am in excruciating pain.
I simply didn't know that you could feel that bad, that you could hurt that badly.
I just didn't know because I never hurt like that before. And of course I'd been hurt before, but this was a whole new level and it remains a new level.
So the young man in the back with me and EMT, I just leaned over. I'm on oxygen and I'm wrapped up like a mummy.
They have inflatable casts on me all over. Right leg broken. I broke my right leg too.
So those two casts are on the ones on my arm and they have IVs in my right arm.
And I just kind of grunted, I guess, and he rolled over a little stool beside me.
Now keep in mind this ambulance is going back and forth. And I said to him, through the mask, sir, is there any way you could give me something for pain, please?
And he said, I'm sorry, Mr. Piper, I can't, I can't give you anything else for pain.
If I give you anything else for pain, you'll probably just pass out.
And I know there must have been a shocked expression on my face because I said, I want to pass out.
Pass out is what I want. And he said, I'm sorry, the doctors in Houston have already told us that we can't let you become unconscious again,
because if you do, we might not ever get you back. And I said, oh, okay.
Well, we drove along. I don't know how much further. And I said, I heard all this screaming going on.
It was just blood curdling screams. And I kind of gestured and he came over and he didn't seem annoyed.
It was just like, yes, sir, what can I do for you? I said, all the screams, they're scary. I mean, they're terrible.
Is there any way you can make that stop? And he's very close to my face because a lot of outside noise, the siren is blaring.
And he gets very close to my face and he says, Mr. Piper, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you are screaming.
It's you. And I was so shocked. He had tears in his eyes when he told me this. I mean, these people see things no one should ever have to see, truly.
They're heroic people. And I know I had tears in my eyes and I thought to myself, oh, dear Lord, I'm screaming and I don't even know it's me.
And that was the lowest point. I knew then at that moment I would never ever be the same again, no matter what happened.
If I lived, I would never be the same again. And that has been true. I will never forget that moment.
So we finally rushed in Houston and my wife was waiting for me there outside the Amulet's doors and some other church members.
And I was rolled inside and then taken in to be evaluated. And then I went into a 12 hour surgery.
And the next morning was the first day of the rest of my life.
How has this whole thing changed you as a person?
You know, I was a pastor before this happened. I was trying to get people into heaven and help them have a better trip on the way.
And you still are?
I still am. Yes, I surely am. I'm more of an itinerant evangelist now because I travel wherever I'm invited to try to get people into heaven,
tell them about heaven and then give them an invitation to go.
I've written five books. That's something I never planned to do.
We certainly made a biographical movie about our life in 2015. And then we have a new movie, of course, that's just out called After Death.
So I'm doing whatever I can to help people be prepared because they're going to take their last breath here one day and the next breath somewhere else.
I believe that hell is just as real as heaven. And you certainly don't have to go there. God doesn't want you to go there.
That's why Jesus said, upon leaving here, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I do, I will receive you unto myself.
So where I am, you will be also. People want to know the best thing about heaven. You're with God. It's his place.
And it's an eternal place. So that's what I'm trying to do. I will say that I do funeral services differently than I used to do them.
People who know me when I'm up there on the platform leading a memorial service for somebody know that I've seen it.
I understand it. And I do my best to try to describe it so that they'll know if their deceased loved one was a believer that that's where they are.
They're absent from the body and present with the Lord. So I used to say that before I got killed in a car wreck. But now I say with a deep conviction if I put my hand on the on the end of a casket before we go to the cemetery and say,
in a little while we're going out to the cemetery and have an internment service. But I got news for you. She's more alive now than she ever was while she was here.
She's the one having a glorious time. And one day if we're ready, we will have a reunion with her. There are no goodbyes in heaven only hellos.
And so yes, it's fundamentally changed the emphasis that I have on life and death, because I've seen both of them.
And I'm trying to get people ready for what happens next. And that means by whatever means is necessary, whether it's a movie, or a book, or speaking to them personally face to face.
And I have done a lot of that in the past 35 years.
I'm sure you have.
My next question I just want to preface a little bit. This show is completely non denominational. We are not trying to push any one religion over another or slam on any religions or anything like that.
I've had a lot of people come on this show and say I went to such and such a church before my experience.
Right.
After my experience, I quit going to church at all. And for various reasons, either they say, Oh, I learned that my church was teaching some things that aren't quite right, or I just want my relationship to be directly with God and not through a church or something like that.
Right.
But would you address that issue a little bit?
It's amazing that these experiences in the movie after death, we deal with just that very kind of thing. People who came from different backgrounds, no backgrounds, people who were functional atheists or agnostics.
And it is a universal, I mean, going back to the ancient first recorded times that people, I mean, one man, a Roman soldier woke up on his funeral pyre, came to.
What he had seen. So it's a fairly universal human experience that we know deep down there is something beyond this, that this is not it, that we are passing through here.
And that that goes deeply inside most people.
And then that is to say that is I'm from Texas, we say, you know, everyone wrote in a different horse. I mean, we, we came from some different kind of attitudes, some different kind of theology or no theology at all.
But that is to say, that I believe my theology includes somebody who went to create a place for us.
And in this case, it's Christ, who came and died and came back to life. So that is the way I come. And I must tell you that as a kid growing up, I didn't have a tremendous amount of theological input.
One of the young men who greeted me at the gates of heaven was somebody who convinced me to go to church as a teenager.
I just got my driver's license and I drove myself there. Well, the other people took me when I was nine years old and live next door to her.
So I had to get there on my own. This was a, this was a journey that was mostly me, even though I had in retrospect some very positive experiences.
So I understand how people can come from different directions, but I also know what I believe in my personal experience. After all, is there a more personal experience than this dying?
It's, it's, it couldn't get any more personal than that. But in my case, I died and lived and I'm back. I just can only relate what I, what I see and what I understand.
And it is my firm conviction as a, as a person who's been called, I believe by God to tell people that heaven is real is that in my opinion, and for me, it's a much more than an opinion.
And in my way of thinking and living and dying and living again, it is, it is Jesus. He said, when he was asked by one of his own followers who was with him for three years and still didn't get it.
And I understand not getting it.
Thomas says, how do we get to heaven? How do we get there? And Jesus' response was so plaintive and direct. I am the way.
I am the truth. I'm the life. If you want to come to the Father, you're going to have to come through the Son. And so I found that to be true on the day that the truck hit me.
But I do understand why it might be confusing. I would just say to people who are listening, consider that your life is fragile, that it is temporary, and that it could end at any moment.
You don't need to live in fear every day. I mean, that's no way to live. I just think you have to be ready. I believe this. I believe heaven is a prepared place for prepared people.
I was prepared that day. I just didn't think after making the decision at 16 that 22 years later, I was going to be killed by an 18-wheeler on a truck in Texas.
I had no concept that anything like that could happen. When I got in the car that morning, I'm not thinking that this is the last day of the rest of my life.
I'm thinking about my wife. I'm thinking about my children. I'm thinking about my church. I'm thinking about what I'm going to say that night.
I'm focused on that, and I'm trying to go home.
Eva, my wife, says that when they reached me at the second hospital, they found out where I was because they were trying to track me down. Where did they take him?
A nurse that was a member of our church, she got on the phone and she knew what to say, and she called those hospitals and finally one of them said, yes, he's here.
He's in the emergency room right now.
They got her, that nurse, to convince the people on the other end to take a phone and put it beside my ear on the hospital bed, the gurney inside the emergency room.
And it's frantic. People are running around, putting needles in here and doing this.
To me, it was utter chaos, but I know they knew what they were doing.
And they put the phone by me, so my wife says to me, Don, Don, are you there? And she said, all I ever said to her was, I just want to go home.
I just want to go home. I want to go home. She said, I just repeated it over and over again.
And then they finally took the phone away and said, look, we're going to send him to Houston. It may be three or four hours before he gets there, so on and so forth.
And one time later, she has this conversation with me because I don't remember that.
And she says, you kept saying, I want to go home. Well, it was nearly, it was a year and a half, maybe two years before I told her what had really happened to me.
So she didn't know the context at all, that it was revealed at a later day.
I was not trying to get to Alvin. I wanted to go home.
Because heaven was my home. Heaven is my home.
And I just, that's where I wanted to be. And she, of course, understandably thought I meant home. I was trying to come home that day.
Well, I was, but after I'd seen the real home, I wanted to go there. I still do.
What's the one last message you'd like to leave with our listeners here?
My dad was a career army, so he was gone almost all the time. So I didn't have a whole lot of interaction with, you know, like mentors, people who could help me.
I joined the Boy Scout troop. And so we went camping. We did all those things.
The motto of the Boy Scouts is be prepared.
And that's a good motto. And it applies because they teach you a lot of skills that would come in handy later in life.
But as time has gone by, I've discovered that motto is a lot more than knowing how to tie knots and build a campfire.
I think we have to be prepared for what happens next because something is going to happen next. You can count on it.
So I'm just encouraging people. This, this movie after death is exactly about that. It's, it's be prepared.
What it is trying to persuade you is there is life after death.
But then the decision is ultimately up to you. And it couldn't be a more personal decision. It really couldn't be.
But it is a decision and it won't come naturally. You're not, in my opinion, going to heaven because you're good or your grandmother was a Methodist.
I mean, I don't, I don't think that's the way it works. I think you're going to have to decide where you want to spend eternity.
And, and so that's, that's, that's the point we're trying to bring people to. That's why we wouldn't even make a movie about it.
And we did. So, and that's why I would write a book about it or I would make another movie about it.
We're concerned about the eternal destiny of humanity. That's what we're concerned about. That's a big thing, but it's also a personal thing.
Just one person at a time. So I sign all my books, see you at the gate.
And if people know my story, they know what that means. So I sometimes when I'm talking to somebody, I know it's a prayer, not wishful thinking, but a prayer, because I know they don't seem to be ready at all.
Others, I know I will see them at the gate and we will never say goodbye. And I speak to so many people in so many areas.
It's hard to leave them sometimes. I'm just with somebody for a few minutes and then I know, wow, if we lived near each other, we'd be lifelong friends.
But I have to say goodbye in heaven. There aren't any goodbyes. And so I know I'll get to see those people again, like my own daughter died at 46 a little over a year ago of cancer.
And if I didn't think I would see her again, I don't know how I'd function. She's my little girl.
Thanks a lot, Don. I appreciate it. My privilege.
Thanks again for listening to our 100th episode. And hey, if you want to help us get to another 100 episodes after this, go to roundtripdeath.com, hit that donate button.
We'd really appreciate it. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.
Thank you.