New Film ‘After Death’ Explores Stories of People Who Visited Heaven, Came Back
Don Piper once was skeptical of near-death experiences. He didn’t believe people could taste the fruit of heaven and come back. That is until he faced his own near-death experience back in 1989, he says.
“I would have counted myself among them, frankly,” he now says of skeptics.
Piper was involved in a horrific car crash more than three decades ago and was declared dead by paramedics on the scene. For the next 90 minutes, he says, he visited heaven, talked to deceased loved ones, and even saw angels. It wasn’t until a man on the scene of the crash prayed for Piper that he was revived.
Piper’s story is one of several near-death experiences that are retold in the new Angel Studios film After Death (PG-13), which opens in theaters Oct. 27. It’s the first theatrical movie for Angel Studios since its summer blockbuster movie Sound of Freedom shocked Hollywood.
“This movie is the get-people-into-heaven movie,” Piper told Christian Headlines about his goals for the film. “At the very least, it’s a conversation starter. But at the very most, it’s somebody’s first step into the glory of God.”
Piper is the author of numerous books, including his bestseller 90 Minutes In Heaven, which itself was made into a film of the same name. At the time of the crash, he was driving from a pastors conference back to his church. It was a rainy, cold day, he said.
“I was crossing a rural, narrow bridge, and the tractor-trailer truck crossed the center line and hit me head-on [in a] horrific collision,” Piper said. “Two other vehicles besides the truck and myself were involved. So it was just a horrific accident. Miraculously, everyone else was okay. I was not. I was killed instantly. And was treated by four paramedics and the state trooper who worked the accident. And in spite of their best efforts to resuscitate me, they were unsuccessful. I was pronounced by those paramedics dead on the scene — body covered up with a waterproof tarp. And they were waiting for a medical examiner to come in and do an investigation so they could take me away.”
At the exact moment of the car crash, Piper said, he went to heaven.
“I was standing at the gates of heaven, at least one of them — there are 12 according to the Revelation — and I was at one. And [I was] surrounded by people I had known and loved in life who had preceded me in death. And we were having a spectacular reunion. They looked great. If you want to look great, heaven is where you want to be. And they looked great. Back on the bridge, I looked terrible.”
Piper remembers heaven vividly, he said.
“The music is beyond any music we’ve ever heard — not just the quality of the music, but the quantity, for instance. I heard thousands of songs at the same time in heaven. But they were symbiotic. They didn’t clash with each other. Quite the contrary, they complemented each other. And you could distinguish each one of them with your heavenly ears.”
In heaven, he said, “There are colors there that we have never seen here.”
“There’s [also] a gate made of pearl, but it’s so dazzling because of the light reflecting off of it that it looks living,” he said. “And I’m not sure that it is living in our sense. But it certainly looks that way. The people that I saw were so perfect in every way and timeless in the sense that they were not old, and they were not particularly young but fully recognizable as themselves. I knew them. They knew me. … They were perfect in every way — no scars, no blemishes.”
Above Piper in heaven, he said, there were angels.
“I don’t even know how many [but] they were different sizes and shapes and different numbers of wings. There were angels without wings.”
The accident took place around 11:45 a.m. At 1:30 p.m., an attendee of the conference who had encountered the crash stopped and prayed for Piper.
“At 1:30, he’s singing the great old hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, and I start singing it with him. And I was back … unaware of what had happened to me, didn’t know anything about the accident.”
All total, he was in the hospital for 13 months and had 34 operations. He was in rehab for three years.
Earth, he told Christian Headlines, cannot compare to heaven.
“I obviously have had a meaningful life for the past 34, 35 years being here,” he said of Earth. “But honestly, I would rather be there. These people that are in the movie, they would rather be there, too.”
After Death is rated PG-13 for thematic material, including violent descriptions, some bloody images, and drug references.
Photo Courtesy: ©Angel Studios / used with permission.
Video Courtesy: Angel Studios via YouTube
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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