Man Stung By 5 Jellyfish Dies, Encounters Jesus in Heaven, and is Fully Healed
New Zealand native Ian McCormack was in his late twenties and living a carefree surfing lifestyle in some of the most beautiful places on the planet.
One fateful night in 1982 he was night diving for lobster off the island of Mauritius when he was stung by five box jellyfish, one of the most venomous creatures in the world. A sting from a single box jellyfish can kill a person in under five minutes. Getting stung by five should have been beyond lethal.
In this conversation, Randy and Shaun go deep into Ian’s Heaven experience, talking about what he heard and saw in Heaven, recounting his dramatic healing after he woke up in the morgue, and unpacking the many surprising experiences that transpired after Ian left the hospital.
When I shut my eyes, it felt like the battle to stay alive had finished.
As I was feeling this extraordinary release, I heard the flatline alarm go off on the heart monitor. My pulse was gone. Some people see a lot of stuff once they are dead, and of course, this was not just heart dead, because it was a neurotoxin. This was not a heart attack where you can be heart dead but not brain dead. I was killed by the poison. I was flatlined, everything, heart dead and brain dead. At the moment of death, I felt this extraordinary release and suddenly I was out of my body.
Many people talk about being able to look down and see people standing and talking during their out-of-body experience. Of course, what Jesus said is that when a man dies, his spirit leaves his body. You know, the physical body is just a clay vessel. It is ash to ash, dust to dust. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection of life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet they should live.” So the physical body dies but the spirit of the man created in the image of God leaves. So, in a second, I was out of the hospital, in a completely different realm. But now I was awake, standing upright, and everything was pitch black.
I thought, Did I just die? Have I just died and left my body or have I just woken up in the dark? I was not sure how long I had been asleep. Well, I had to be alive, not dead. It was dark. Obviously my pupils were dilated and I had been asleep longer than I had thought. Sometimes you can go to sleep for a few seconds and it ends up that a few hours have passed. I thought, Well, do not panic. Your pupils are dilated. Let them adjust to the dark. You will see some light. So I then turned 360 degrees around looking for light. I began looking for a light switch, reaching out to my right, trying to not trip over anything. Of course, to my amazement, there was no wall. I went back to where my hospital bed should have been, looking for a lamp or a table.
Nothing. It was so dark I could not see my hand in front of my face; so I brought my hand toward where my face should have been and my hand passed straight through my head. That was impossible. I tried two hands. They both went straight through my face. Yet I could feel that I was there and my hands were there. When I tried to touch my body, I discovered there was no physical form. I was now in a realm where I was dead and out of my body. The only thing I could relate this to was Grandfather telling stories of people who had lost limbs in the war but who continued to experience what they call phantom pain. In my mind I was going, Well, forget just losing an arm or a leg. You have potentially lost your entire human form that is back in that hospital, and you are potentially dead but also alive in a realm of complete darkness.
That shook me. I then became very aware of a cold evil, an encroaching presence in the darkness. It was spiritual, not just physical. It felt like there was something in the darkness, aware of my presence, aware of my thoughts, now making a beeline for me. Then I heard men scream, “Shut up!” And I went, “I said nothing.” They said, “You deserve to be here.” Screaming my loudest I said, “Deserve to be where? Where am I now?” They said, “Man, you are in hell. Now shut up.” I said, “I am good. I do not believe in hell. It is just a thing to terrify flipping weak-minded people. If this is hell, where is the party, where are the sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”
Stories of Heaven and the Afterlife
Randy Kay & Shaun Tabatt
My understanding was that if you made it down to hell for some bizarre reason, everything you could not do on earth you could do down there. Well, it is ridiculously hard to grab a beer or hold a woman when you cannot touch anything. I was thinking, Well, if this is hell, from a Christian point of view, shouldn’t there be rotting corpses with maggots trying to eat them? I thought, Well, that can’t happen because my maggoty body is back there in the hospital and this is a spiritual body. I wondered where the demons and fire were. I was thinking about how there were all these beings around me trying to tune me in to the fact that I was in hell. I should have just shut my face since I deserved to be there just like they were. And then I was thinking, Well, if there was fire down here, you would have light. You would see something. I had no concept of that. Paul says in acts 26:18 that there are two kingdoms in the spirit realm, a kingdom of darkness ruled by satan and a kingdom of light ruled by almighty God. And I remembered something like Psalm 23 that you often hear read at funerals: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. What was amazing is that the evil was all around me but it could not touch me.
It was as though, and the Scriptures say it, greater is He within us than he who is in the world. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. So I was standing there recognizing that you cannot get hungry, you cannot do all the things you want to do, but God could potentially have judged me to this realm and held me in darkness. The Bible says until the day of judgment, so I thought then maybe that is when they get thrown into the fire. I did not know. I had never read the Bible, but that is exactly what the Bible says. At the final judgment, they will be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone. There will be a final judgment, but men are held there until then.
So I am standing there and pure light pierces through the darkness above me. It pinpoints me. It somehow had just singled me out amid that darkness. As it enveloped me, my entire body had a weightless sensation. I began to lift into this incredible light and I was moving up toward it. The source of this radiance was far above me as this was taking place. When I looked back, I could see the darkness was now far beneath me. I thought, Man, is that wise to do? And then I had a childhood, a Sunday school, memory of Lot’s wife. The angel said, “We are going to deliver you out of Sodom and Gomorrah, but just a warning: we are about to destroy it. Whatever you do, do not look back.” And of course, Lot’s poor wife did the worst thing. She looked back and instantly turned into a pillar of salt.
Sometimes those Sunday school stories do stick. I started thinking, No, do not look back. You do not want to go back into the darkness. Fix your eyes upon this radiance. At least you are going in the right direction. As I kept moving up, I saw that I was being drawn into a circular-shaped opening. As I entered it, I became acutely aware. It was the beginning of a long narrow tunnel. As I looked along the length of it, I could see the source of the radiance at the farthest point. I realized that the tunnel was not the source of the light; it was only conducting pure light through it. And somehow it pulled me out of the darkness. Those walking in darkness have seen a great light, light shines in the darkness, and the darkness flees. I was now moving toward this light that was coming at me.
I watched the thick intense light hit me like a wave of radiance and my entire body was full of comfort. It was like a living emotion had just been given off from this light. But that was it: it was a living light. Another wave of light came up, bringing pure peace from the tip of my head to the base of my feet. And Jesus said, “Peace I give you. Not of this world.” I then thought, Well, in the light I might be able to see what I look like in the darkness. My hand went straight through my face. So I turned my head to the right and my arm, hand, and fingers were transparent, full of white radiance. It was my hand. It responded and I could see it. And I remember reading later that we are transformed. Mortality takes on immortality. First the natural, then the heavenly. First the earthly, then the spiritual, but we shall be changed.
Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God, for God, who is the Father of lights, will bring us home and we will become sons and daughters of light. I was now seeing that I was me because of my mind, will, and emotions. Just me. The only thing that I had lost was my physical body. Yet I had the appearance of a physical body within a spiritual body. I do not know how to explain it. Then I realized that was why my hand could go through my face. I was a spiritual being of light yet clothed with immortality, with a heavenly one, you know? So I kept moving down. Another wave of light hit, total joy.
It was an overwhelming experience. There was this comfort that just enveloped me. It was everything you have been looking for in your entire existence. The peace of mind I felt at that moment has not left me in over 40 years. Then there was joy. It was not a joy that I used to get from getting wasted or when I was just being an idiot. It was an eternal joy that brought strength to your entire inner being. It was like your entire being had been waiting for this encounter all your life. I knew that wherever I was going, it could only get better. Suddenly I found myself coming out of the tunnel of light. I remember reading later that Jesus said small and narrow is the way, few find it, and no unclean thing can travel down it. I came out of this into a kingdom of light. The enormity would be as though you had now arrived at the center of the universe.
The tunnel made it look incredibly small. Now I had unrestricted access to a radiance that filled the heavens. I thought star systems and the entire universe must take their energy from this light. What was it? Was that just energy of good or was there something or someone in this radiance? As I was pondering this to myself, a person inside the light responded—the same person who led me through the Lord’s Prayer, the same person who spoke to me on the beach. He said, “Ian, do you wish to return?” How did he know my name? There was a person there. Return where? So of course I turned back. Here was the tunnel dissipating back into darkness. I was going darkness, hospital bed…
Have I died? Has it transpired that I have left my form, moved through a valley of darkness, up a tunnel of light, and I am standing before a person who holds the radiance and glory of the universe around him? Is this real or am I lying in a hospital bed comatose in an NDE, near-death? My mind was playing tricks on me. It had endorphins. There was starvation of oxygen. I can give you all the clinical and intellectual arguments for it. And I could rationally walk through what was happening: Am I lying in a near-death state, in a hospital with my eyes shut, hallucinating with endorphins and starvation oxygen? Is this a euphoric effect or am I dead, standing before a being of light, out of my body, and this is reality?
See this is the trouble: we rely a lot upon our so-called brain, but if you have a heart transplant, the mind is not just in the head. You can get the thoughts of a person when you move a heart to another body, so it is out of the heart. God looks at the heart. The heart reflects the true person. And I am not even talking about a physical heart. I am talking about the spirit of a man. So, the fact that you have a mind, will, and emotions, which I was going through, all of these, I was emotionally feeling love, peace, joy, all this stuff. I was able to cognitively think and rationally understand my position where I could be, and I could make a choice. I believe the Jews got it right: when a man dies, his spirit, his person leaves. The Greeks tried to break it up into body, soul, and spirit. I was out of my body. The same person who could think, feel, and rationalize in a physical body was now able to do the same. It was me, not separated, some part of me sleeping somewhere, talking and in front of a being of light.
I knew that whoever that was, there was nothing like Him in the entire universe. I assumed that this was God almighty. Who that might be I could not see because of the radiance and the glory shining. So I just responded and said, “Look, if I am dead, if I am out of my physical body, I wish to return.” He then responded, saying, “Ian, if you return, you must see in a new light.” He qualified it. Light. See the light. I am seeing the light. This is where? Where else could you see? I have heard about people being enlightened. I have heard about people who have seen this light, that light, strobe lights. Who knows? I said, “Are you the true light?” That was my immediate response. He said, “Ian, God is light, and in Him, there is no darkness at all” [see 1 John 1:5]. I had no idea He was quoting Scripture because I had never read the Bible, but He was quoting something.
And as He spoke it, it appeared like I had seen the Lord’s Prayer and like words of light. It was as though His word was coming out as words of light. Words were coming out and I could read what He was saying. So I could capture the essence of it. God is light in whom there is no darkness at all. I thought, Well, I have just come from darkness and the men called it hell, hades. I did not believe in it. I thought that was just to scare people. I thought hell was just a thing that people were frightened of. That was why they believed in religion. So I was going, Well, there is a hell and it’s darkness. God is light. Well, I have not believed in God and all I am seeing is someone surrounded by a light that fills the universe and it says that in Him, there is no darkness at all.
So I stood there trying to look for darkness because there is always a shadow. So I looked behind me. To my amazement, I could see the light from His presence shining through my spiritual body of light and of course casting no shadow; as Scripture says, there is no shadow or shifting in the Lord. I read this later when I read the Bible. I had not had access to this, but it is true. All His Word is true. His Word is truth. God is light. In Him, there is no darkness at all. Yet Psalm 91 says, in the shadow of His wings. Well, if God has no shadows, then everything in His wings is only light. So I was standing there putting it together and going, That must be what is called almighty God.
Ian McComack’s story doesn’t stop there…
To hear more of Ian’s experience and his return from heaven, check out his story in Stories of Heaven and the Afterlife!
1 in 10 people has had a near-death experience.
Do these NDEs reveal the heaven and hell we read about in the Bible?
All of us long to know with absolute certainty what happens after we die. Popular authors and podcasters Randy Kay and Shaun Tabatt are on a mission to have pointed conversations with people who died and spent time on the other side.
Randy and Shaun personally selected these firsthand accounts of the afterlife from the most popular episodes of their 2 Christian Dudes podcast. These conversations include:
Ian McCormack - Stung By 5 Jellyfish and Encountered Jesus in Heaven
Bryan Melvin - Died from Cholera and Encountered Adolph Hitler in Hell
Heidi Barr - Crushed in a Horse-Riding Accident and Encountered Jesus in Heaven
Messianic Rabbi Felix Halpern - Died and Encountered the Fire of God’s Glory in Heaven’s Throne Room
Each of these encounters will leave you hungry to discover more of the God who is actively engaged in every moment of your life, both now and throughout eternity!
