A Catholic pastor from northern Florida asserts that during a brush with death he was shown the afterlife and saw priests and even bishops in both paradise and hell.

The priest is Father Jose Maniyangat of St. Mary's Church in Macclenny and he says the event occurred on April 14, 1985 -- Divine Mercy Sunday -- when he was still in his homeland of India. We present it for your discernment.

Now 54 and ordained in 1975, Father Maniyangat recalls that he was on his way to celebrate Mass at a mission when the motorcycle he was riding -- the common means of transport there -- was hit by a jeep driven by a man who was intoxicated.

Father Maniyangat, who came to America in 1986 -- first to Idaho, then Florida -- told Spirit Daily that he was rushed to a hospital 35 miles away -- and that on the way, "my soul came out from the body."

"Immediately I saw my guardian angel," he relates. "I also saw my body and the people who were carrying me to the hospital. They were crying, and immediately the angel told me, 'I'm going to take you to Heaven. The Lord wants to meet you.' He said that on the way he wanted to show me hell and purgatory."

That, asserts Father Maniyangat, was when hell, an awful sight, opened before him. It was daunting. "I saw Satan and people fighting, tortured, and screaming," claims the cleric. "And the fire too. I saw fire. I saw people suffering and the angel told me it was due to mortal sin and the fact that they were not repentant. That was the thing. Unrepentant."

The priest says he was told there are seven "degrees" or levels of suffering in the netherworld. Those who committed "mortal sin after mortal sin" in life were suffering the most intense heat. "They had bodies and looked very ugly, so cruel and ugly, horrifying," says Father Maniyangat. "They were human but like monsters: fearful, ugly-looking things. I saw people I knew but I can't say who they were. The angel told me I could not reveal this."

The sins that got them into that state, he says, were transgressions such as abortion, homosexuality, hatefulness, and sacrilege. If they had repented, they would have gone to purgatory -- the angel allegedly told him. He was surprised at who he saw in hell. Some were priests. Some were bishops. "There were many, because they had misled the people," he asserts -- again, for your discernment. "They were people I never expected." 

After that, purgatory allegedly opened before him. There are also seven levels there, he says, and fire, but it is far less intense than hell and there was "no quarreling or fighting." The main suffering is that they can't see God. He says that souls in purgatory may have committed numerous mortal sins but had made it there by virtue of simple repentance -- and now have the joy of knowing that one day they will be in Heaven. "I had a chance to communicate with the souls," says Father Maniyangat -- who by all first impressions is pious and holy. "They asked me to pray for them and ask the people to pray for them also."

His angel, he says, was "very beautiful and bright and white," difficult to put into words, and took Father Maniyangat to Heaven. That was when a tunnel -- as experienced in so many near-death accounts -- materialized.

"Heaven opened and I heard the music, the angels singing and praising God," he says. "Beautiful music. I never heard music like that in this world. I saw God face to Face, and Jesus and Mary, so bright and illuminating. Jesus told me, 'I need you. I want you to go back. In your second life you will be an instrument of healing to My people, and you will walk in a foreign land and speak a foreign tongue.'"

Within a year, Father Maniyangat found himself in a far-off land called the United States.

The priest says the Lord was far more beautiful than any image can convey. His Face resembled the Sacred Heart, but was far more luminous, says Father Maniyangat, who describes it as like "a thousand suns." The Blessed Mother was next to Jesus. Once more, earthly representations of her, he emphasizes, are "just a shadow." The priest says she told him simply to do whatever her Son said.

Heaven, he says, has a beauty, peace, and happiness that are "a million times" more than anything we know on earth.

"I saw priests and bishops also there," he notes. "The clouds were different -- not dark or cloudy, but shining. Very beautiful. Very bright. And there were rivers that were different than you see here. This is our real home. I never experienced in my life that kind of peace and joy."

He says the Blessed Mother and his angel still appear to him. She comes every first Saturday during his morning meditation. "It is personal, to guide me in my ministry," says the pastor, whose church is thirty miles from downtown Jacksonville. "The apparitions are private, not public. Her face is the same, but one day she appears with the Child, one day as Our Lady of Grace, or Our Lady of Sorrows. Different times she appears different ways. She told me the world is full of sin and asked me to fast and pray and offer Mass for the world, so that God will not punish it. We need more prayer. She is concerned about the future of the world because of abortion, homosexuality, and euthanasia. She said if people don't come back to God, there will be chastisement."

The main message, however, is hope: like so many others, Father Maniyangat saw the afterlife as filled with a healing Light, and brought some of that light back with him. Afterward he started a healing ministry and says he has seen people cured of everything from cancer to asthma. He also conducts generational healing services, in which darkness is allegedly erased from ancestry.

Has the devil attacked? Yes, especially before services. He has been harassed. He has been physically assaulted. But it is nothing, he says, compared to the grace. 

Cancer, AIDS, heart problems, arterial blockages. People are slain in the spirit around him. It is when they come to that they feel the peace and at times report healings that serve as a taste of what he saw and felt in Heaven.

July 2004

[resources: Afterlife books]

[As always, before attending healing services, we urge fasting and extensive prayers of discernment]

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