Talented athlete Scott Drummond was drafted into the army in 1971. While his peers were sent to Vietnam, he was lucky: his basketball skills allowed him to avoid the front line. He played in Germany when many of his peers were dying in Vietnam.
Although Drummond escaped the war, he faced death while skiing at the age of 28. He had a near-death experience during which he went to Heaven and met the Creator.
He did not talk about his experience for 40 years, until the moment came to support others in difficult times.
Now 68, Drummond lives in Provo, Utah, where he had a mountainside accident decades ago. Pulling off his glove, he saw that his dislocated thumb dangled limply against the skin. Drummond called his wife and was taken to the hospital, where he had an out-of-body experience during surgery. Drummond later related what happened.
“I was lying on the operating table, and the doctors were planning to start the operation. Next to me were a nurse and a doctor. They put a sheet between me and the operated finger,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The anesthesiologist was supposed to give me a drug to put me to sleep during the operation, but he was urgently called.”
Although the nurse was quite experienced, she had never performed a Beer block (using a tourniquet to regulate local anesthesia during surgery). For this reason, she made a mistake, and during the operation, the medicine hit the Drummond’s heart.
“They used lidocaine for local anesthesia. I later found out that I was allergic to it. This is one of the reasons that caused cardiac arrest, Drummond recalled. “It happened that I was lifted right out of my body. I stood there and looked at my body. I watched all this from above, looked down and saw my body lying on the table.
Nurse ran out of the room in a panic, screaming that she had killed Drummond. The medical staff began working to save his life, while the doctor continued to operate on his thumb, all of which Drummond could clearly see outside of his body. Suddenly, he heard a voice in his head:
“It’s time to go”.
“Someone was standing next to me. I couldn’t look at him, but I communicated with him telepathically,” he said. – And in the next moment I realized that I was standing in a field, and it was a beautiful field with tall grass to the waist. This grass streamed and flowed towards me, and I felt love emanating from it.“
Drummond heard an order in his mind not to look back, an order that echoes in his mind to this day.
“I was gone. I was dead. I moved on. I could look from side to side, in front of me, but I couldn’t look back,” he said. There were big tall trees on the left, and it was a forest. These were trees I had never seen before until I visited the Olympic Forest in Washington about three years ago. …
“The next thing I noticed was the gorgeous colors. I have never seen such flowers before. We tend to see things in 3D here on Earth. If you multiply this by a factor of 10, you get the color of the leaves on the tree. They were brilliant green.”
Between Drummond and the trees was a field of flowers.
“The uniqueness of these wildflowers was that all the flowers were facing me,” he said. “I felt a connection with these flowers because love emanated from them. I thought it was a very calming feeling. And a cloud appeared in front of me, but it was brilliant, pearly white.”
At this moment, Drummond saw his whole life unfolding before his eyes, as if on a screen, starting from the age of 8.
“I have seen everything. It didn’t feel like a movie. It was all in my head, in my mind, and I relived it all again,” he said. — I experienced it again. I saw my family, I learned what sacrifices my parents made for me and my sport, taking me to all my games and events. All this was done by them out of pure love for me.”
He sharply recalls his experiences, living again all his life within clear limits – “black and white”, “good and evil”, without a middle, without a gray zone.
“There is either right or wrong, good or evil. And I had no one to justify myself to,” he said.
“In my life up to this point, I have not always done the right thing. Whether you’re playing professional or collegiate sports, you have to do everything you can to advance. And sometimes I did wrong. And even in the business world, to get ahead, I often had to step over other people. I realized that what I did was wrong.”
Encounter with God
Drummond then found himself in front of the cloud again, towards which he headed. A hand extended from there.
“I have never seen such a cloud before. It was so pure that I could not determine its color. It was too clean,” he said. — I took up the study of the hand. … His forearms were larger than mine. From the way his hand passed through the cloud, I realized that he was a little taller than me.
“Those arms were much more muscular. This was a man who either worked in construction or was a farmer or carpenter. It looked like he was working with his hands. …They were very strong.”
Drummond believes that this man was in fact the Lord, who then told him:
“Your time has not yet come. You still have a lot to do.”
Drummond continues to hear those words every day.
“And the next moment I was sent back to my body and I was on a stretcher,” he said.
“I was being taken out of the ward, and suddenly I began to move in all directions. There was a real war in my body, because I did not want to return, because I had never felt such love and such peace before.“
Life from scratch
Drummond’s heart didn’t beat for 20 minutes. Now he understands that he was given the opportunity to start life on Earth from the beginning, and he had to take advantage of this.
“I was sent back because I was too selfish in my previous life. I was not kind to other people and did not treat them with respect as I should have,” he told the newspaper.
“There was one thing I regretted the most: I never told my wife how much I loved her. Before the operation, I just said: “See you later.” I didn’t even imagine that I could not return after it.”
After his encounter with death and subsequent celestial encounter, Drummond learned to be kind and considerate to others. Instead of focusing on himself, he prefers to help people in their careers, contributing to their improvement.
“The lessons I have learned are very valuable,” he said. “And it didn’t happen overnight. This is what I had to learn for 40 years, because I want to look more worthy when I go back there next time.”
