A Georgia man who "died" as a youngster says he was not only shown the afterlife but also the future of the world including America.

Once more, we are confronted by an issue of discernment, for the claims are unusual and dramatic even by the standards of prophecy or near-death episodes. But the man, James Wilburn Chauncey, of Fayetteville, has an impressive resume, including a stint as a weather forecaster in the military and work as a cost engineer for NASA, Disney, and the federal laboratories in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; before retiring he owned a consulting firm in Orlando, Florida.

It was way back in 1946, says Chauncey -- now in his mid-seventies -- that he "died" of bacterial spinal meningitis (Meninococcal) -- his vital signs disappearing to such an extent that a doctor told the nurses to prepare his body for the morgue and cremation (to prevent spread of the highly contagious and, back then, almost always deadly germ). 

It was during a period of about two hours -- between three and five a.m. -- that Chauncey believes he was taken by Jesus and angels to various parts of eternity. There he was introduced to radiant beings who appeared to be in their mid-twenties to early thirties.

"When I was in paradise there was a young man who had characteristics of my sister and older brother," says the retired businessman. "I was told his name was 'Ralph' and I was told he was a brother of mine who had died shortly after birth before I myself was born. I also saw two other people, a boy and a girl of the same age and wearing white robes and they were also siblings who had died shortly after they were born. Ralph died in 1930 at the age of six months or so. Yet I saw him as a young adult. He had been killed when a drunk driver jumped a ditch and hit a basket he was in and nearly hit my mother too. I had asked, 'Who is this?' and an angel said, 'Your brother.' 'I don't have a brother,' I said. 'Yes you do,' said the angel."

"There were all these trees with fruit on them and beautiful vegetation and the sky was just so blue," continues Chauncey, who is a Baptist and has written a book  called Eyewitness to Heaven.

"I don't remember any clouds. I saw the 'river of life' and on one side were people who had lived after the Crucifixion and on the other side people who had lived before -- this is my conjecture -- biblical-like people, people like out of the Old Testament, and they also looked to be in their twenties or thirties and were dressed in the attire that they had worn on earth. Jesus came out of a large building, a mansion, and I heard lots of singing and music. It was praise music. The atmosphere was sweet like honeysuckle. The building Jesus had been in was made of like stones or blocks and cut with three levels of stairs. No one went beyond the first layer. There were columns and it was like all white, sort of like Roman buildings, but really not like that, not like anything. I call it stone but it could have been something else. I wasn't allowed to go to that section, just to this gate.

"People kept coming out," Chauncey told Spirit Daily. "I was told it was all my bloodline. There were some interesting characters in this big crowd -- a Carthusian monk and a knight in the Crusades. I didn't want to go back (to earth) but was shown what would happen to my family if I didn't. I was also shown the beautiful woman I would marry, which I later did. I wasn't much interested though in women at that age.

"Then they showed me what would happen to me and the earth and this consumed a lot of the time. We went to the edge of paradise, like a cliff, and you could see the blue earth hanging there and when you wanted you could just zoom in on various places on earth. I could smell smoke and heard booming noises and it was like I was seeing over the Northeast toward Europe and I could see these armies moving from Russia over Syria and continuing southwest and southeast, bypassing Israel. They conquered all of Africa and Asia except for China, then they started across the rest of Europe and across to England. The English fought very hard. After England was decimated I saw missiles lobbed from boats at New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, and Atlanta and some other place but at this point they weren't nuclear. That was followed by a landing of troops and I looked toward the other side of America when I heard some huge blasts and I looked toward Mexico and New Mexico. There were troops coming from Mexico and South America and they were Islamic. I kept getting that Russia has a pact with the Islamic countries. After this, there were nuclear blasts. Atomic bombs started falling."

Is this all imagining -- a composite of various scenarios that folks have bandied about for years? Is it something a nine-year-old could be expected to "witness" -- back in the 1940s, when countries like Syria were not an issue in geopolitics? The assertion about Syria is also made in Chauncey's book, which was published in 2011. Moreover, a number of near-death experiences have included prophecies that are also dramatic.

But there is no question that the extreme and apocalyptic nature of Chauncey's purported visions exceed virtually any others and in that extremism necessitate cautious discernment.

In the midst of great war -- lasting twenty years -- the Georgia man also claimed to have seen great natural disasters, including quakes that would create a massive lake in the Midwest, disappearance of much of Florida and the East Coast, and a gulf of water between the mainland and California along with volcanic eruptions and epidemics as unprecedented perturbations afflicted the earth, which he was shown would wobble before regaining equilibrium and actually ending up -- after great mayhem -- straighter on its axis than it is currently -- "totally upright."

Dramatic?

To the point of evoking skepticism. Wars and massive disasters?

Yet, we do not despise prophecy here -- and in this case it is coming from a man who recalled it from the very time it happened and says he was extremely reluctant for years to publicly discuss what he had been been shown at that "ledge."

He says he was shown military weapons that made no sense at the time but that he now sees in modern combat, including the stealth jet fighter, which he said he used to draw as a child, to the consternation of teachers. "Seeing these weapons now convinces me that we are on the threshold of disaster," he asserts -- although he doesn't see it happening during the next presidency, for a man he "saw" as a president coming out of a bunker from the White House does not fit the description of any current candidates. At the time of his experience, he says he did not know what the White House was.

Is it all a subconscious replay of what he may have heard growing up in a revival-type Christian atmosphere?

He believes a purification -- a reshaping -- of earth will take place, but probably not until after his own death. It will be followed, he says, by a renewal as survivors begin over and after years of desiccation normal rainfall resumes. "Mountains had fallen; canyons disappeared; the courses of rivers were changed, and much land disappeared," he claims. "Portions of Texas and Arizona were now lakes. What had been deserts of the west were now green and lush with trees and vegetation. Asia, Africa, Europe, and the world over became lush with vegetation, clear water, lakes, and rivers, and an abundance of fish, fowl, and animal life."

He wrote a book, says Chauncey, because over a period of recent months, "the conviction that Heaven wants my experiences made known has become more and more apparent. My choice for six decades has been never to talk or write about the experiences. I am under great stressful pain thinking about the possibilities of persecution that may be heaped on my family. Because of this pain, on many occasions, I have repeatedly asked God to remove this burden from me. His answer is always the same: 'Remember Nineveh."

"One thing has been made perfectly clear to me," writes Chauncey. "Humanity can cause delay or shifts within periods of time, but humanity cannot prevent them unless humanity totally rejects evil.

[resources: The Final Hour, Tower of Light, Catholic Prophecy, The End of This Era, and afterlife books]

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