A Tennessee construction worker says he came close to death, encountered Jesus and now recalls in detail what he believes Christ looked like.
Mike McKinsey was working as a superintendent in 2004 when a ruptured appendix left him critically ill. The severe infection required emergency surgery and nearly cost him his life.
As doctors operated and his condition remained critical, McKinsey said Jesus entered the operating room in physical form, took his hand and brought him to a hill overlooking what he understood to be heaven.
McKinsey said his vision differed from many traditional Christian portrayals of Jesus. He remembered him as having darker skin, green or blue-green eyes, and wavy brown hair that reached his shoulders.
He also recalled Jesus having a short beard and wearing a white robe as he entered the hospital room. McKinsey said Christ extended his hand and told him: ‘I want to answer your prayer.’
Speaking to the BearFruitWithChrist podcast, McKinsey said: ‘I would say it was just love, and the only way I’ve ever described it is when his eyes looked in mine, he looked into my soul. As soon as our eyes met, he knew me. He was the brother I never had, the perfect father. It was all love.’
McKinsey said the experience extended beyond the brief near-death experience, or NDE, he reported during surgery. While recovering in hospital, he developed pneumonia and claimed Jesus appeared again, speaking with him for three hours.
The former construction worker, who later became an author, said he was given a heavenly calling to share Jesus’s teachings on Earth.
Mike McKinsey (pictured) became an author after saying Jesus instructed him to spread the word of God.
A man who said he had a near-death experience in 2004 claimed he saw the face of Jesus (stock image).
‘I feel this holy presence enter the room, and it was like the NDE started all over again. I just could tell he pulled up a chair and he sat down at the end of my bed and I just knew he was there but I couldn’t see him,’ McKinsey revealed.
‘He says, “I had to get you flat on your back away from all the distractions so you could hear me… I’m calling you out to do more for my kingdom… Millions are going to hear about our story.”‘
In multiple interviews, McKinsey has stated that he believed the presence of Jesus sat by his bedside as nurses came to check on him during his bout with pneumonia – a spirit only he was able to feel.
ALSO READ: Father’s Criminal History Revealed Before He Was Accused of Killing Newborn Baby
He compared the experience to a friend sitting with a sick friend, talking and consoling him, but also giving McKinsey a mission to spread the message of Christianity.
McKinsey claimed that he pushed back when the spirit of Jesus told him to become a Christian messenger, saying that ‘I’m not Billy Graham. I can’t do that.’
‘He did chuckle when I said I’m not Billy Graham. I’ve never heard him laugh, but that was probably the closest that I’ve come to that. But yeah, he’s a friend,’ he explained on the Peaceful Presence Podcast on July 23.
McKinsey added that his experience should not be considered uncommon, believing that the crucifixion of Jesus – the biblical act where he died for the sins of humanity – gave people the ‘authority’ to speak directly with God.
‘We have direct access to the throne. I think of him as a friend now,’ said McKinsey, who is now a published author who shares his insights from the near-death experience and conversation with Jesus.
Unlike other depictions across Christianity, McKinsey said he vividly remembered Jesus having darker skin, green or blue-green eyes and shoulder-length, wavy brown hair. Pictured: Jesus as he is depicted in the Sermon on the Mount in the Old Testament
The author also claimed Jesus had warned him that those who spread the word of God would also face growing ‘attacks from the enemy.’
McKinsey explained that he believed this warning meant the devil would stir up more trouble in a Christian believer’s life, creating more doubts, harsh criticism, fear and personal setbacks that try to shut them down.
After spending 12 days in the hospital recovering from the surgery and pneumonia, McKinsey said those ‘attacks’ from Satan began to impact his life, even before he began writing about his NDE.
‘I lost my parents within a couple of years after the NDE, and I lost both of them within six months of each other, and I just knew,’ he revealed.
‘I could feel God’s presence and Jesus holding me up, the Holy Spirit holding me up, and I just kept thinking, “wow, this is one of those attacks.”‘
However, McKinsey said his experience with Jesus pushed him to not view these tragedies as a personal attack against him specifically.
He came to see hard losses as part of a fallen world that hurts many people at once, not as Satan singling him out for spreading the message of Jesus, and he tried to keep his focus on God holding him through it.